10,354 research outputs found
Memory effects in vibrated granular systems
Granular materials present memory effects when submitted to tapping
processes. These effects have been observed experimentally and are discussed
here in the context of a general kind of model systems for compaction
formulated at a mesoscopic level. The theoretical predictions qualitatively
agree with the experimental results. As an example, a particular simple model
is used for detailed calculations.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; to appear in Journal of Physics: Condensed
Matter (Special Issue: Proceedings of ESF SPHINX Workshop on ``Glassy
behaviour of kinetically constrained models.''
Metastability of a granular surface in a spinning bucket
The surface shape of a spinning bucket of granular material is studied using
a continuum model of surface flow developed by Bouchaud et al. and Mehta et al.
An experimentally observed central subcritical region is reproduced by the
model. The subcritical region occurs when a metastable surface becomes unstable
via a nonlinear instability mechanism. The nonlinear instability mechanism
destabilizes the surface in large systems while a linear instability mechanism
is relevant for smaller systems. The range of angles in which the granular
surface is metastable vanishes with increasing system size.Comment: 8 pages with postscript figures, RevTex, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Unexpected cell type-dependent effects of autophagy on polyglutamine aggregation revealed by natural genetic variation in C. elegans.
BACKGROUND: Monogenic protein aggregation diseases, in addition to cell selectivity, exhibit clinical variation in the age of onset and progression, driven in part by inter-individual genetic variation. While natural genetic variants may pinpoint plastic networks amenable to intervention, the mechanisms by which they impact individual susceptibility to proteotoxicity are still largely unknown.
RESULTS: We have previously shown that natural variation modifies polyglutamine (polyQ) aggregation phenotypes in C. elegans muscle cells. Here, we find that a genomic locus from C. elegans wild isolate DR1350 causes two genetically separable aggregation phenotypes, without changing the basal activity of muscle proteostasis pathways known to affect polyQ aggregation. We find that the increased aggregation phenotype was due to regulatory variants in the gene encoding a conserved autophagy protein ATG-5. The atg-5 gene itself conferred dosage-dependent enhancement of aggregation, with the DR1350-derived allele behaving as hypermorph. Surprisingly, increased aggregation in animals carrying the modifier locus was accompanied by enhanced autophagy activation in response to activating treatment. Because autophagy is expected to clear, not increase, protein aggregates, we activated autophagy in three different polyQ models and found a striking tissue-dependent effect: activation of autophagy decreased polyQ aggregation in neurons and intestine, but increased it in the muscle cells.
CONCLUSIONS: Our data show that cryptic natural variants in genes encoding proteostasis components, although not causing detectable phenotypes in wild-type individuals, can have profound effects on aggregation-prone proteins. Clinical applications of autophagy activators for aggregation diseases may need to consider the unexpected divergent effects of autophagy in different cell types
Consonant Context Effects on Vowel Sensorimotor Adaptation
Speech sensorimotor adaptation is the short-term learning of modified articulator movements evoked through sensory-feedback perturbations. A common experimental method manipulates acoustic parameters, such as formant frequencies, using real time resynthesis of the participant\u27s speech to perturb auditory feedback. While some studies have examined phrases comprised of vowels, diphthongs, and semivowels, the bulk of research on auditory feedback-driven sensorimotor adaptation has focused on vowels in neutral contexts (/hVd/). The current study investigates coarticulatory influences of adjacent consonants on sensorimotor adaptation. The purpose is to evaluate differences in the adaptation effects for vowels in consonant environments that vary by place and manner of articulation. In particular, we addressed the hypothesis that contexts with greater intra-articulator coarticulation and more static articulatory postures (alveolars and fricatives) offer greater resistance to vowel adaptation than contexts with primarily inter-articulator coarticulation and more dynamic articulatory patterns (bilabials and stops). Participants completed formant perturbation-driven vowel adaptation experiments for varying CVCs. Results from discrete formant measures at the vowel midpoint were generally consistent with the hypothesis. Analyses of more complete formant trajectories suggest that adaptation can also (or alternatively) influence formant onsets, offsets, and transitions, resulting in complex formant pattern changes that may reflect modifications to consonant articulatio
Stratification Instability in Granular Flows
When a mixture of two kinds of grains differing in size and shape is poured
in a vertical two-dimensional cell, the mixture spontaneously stratifies in
alternating layers of small and large grains, whenever the large grains are
more faceted than the small grains. Otherwise, the mixture spontaneously
segregates in different regions of the cell when the large grains are more
rounded than the small grains. We address the question of the origin of the
instability mechanism leading to stratification using a recently proposed set
of equations for surface flow of granular mixtures. We show that the stable
solution of the system is a segregation solution due to size (large grains tend
to segregate downhill near the substrate and small grains tend to segregate
uphill) and shape (rounded grains tend to segregate downhill and more faceted
grains tend to segregate uphill). As a result, the segregation solution of the
system is realized for mixtures of large-rounded grains and small-cubic grains
with the large-rounded grains segregating near the bottom of the pile.
Stability analysis reveals the instability mechanism driving the system to
stratification as a competition between size-segregation and shape-segregation
taking place for mixtures of large-cubic grains and small-rounded grains. The
large-cubic grains tend to size-segregate at the bottom of the pile, while at
the same time, they tend to shape-segregate near the pouring point. Thus, the
segregation solution becomes unstable, and the system evolves spontaneously to
stratification.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, http://polymer.bu.edu/~hmakse/Home.htm
Breakdown of self-organized criticality
We introduce two sandpile models which show the same behavior of real
sandpiles, that is, an almost self-organized critical behavior for small
systems and the dominance of large avalanches as the system size increases. The
systems become fully self-organized critical, with the critical exponents of
the Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld model, as the system parameters are changed,
showing that these systems can make a bridge between the well known theoretical
and numerical results and what is observed in real experiments. We find that a
simple mechanism determines the boundary where self-organized can or cannot
exist, which is the presence of local chaos.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure
Slowly driven sandpile formation with granular mixtures
We introduce a one-dimensional sandpile model with different particle types and an infinitesimal driving rate. The parameters for the model are the N^2 critical slopes for one type of particle on top of another. The model is trivial when N=1, but for N=2 we observe four broad classes of sandpile structure in different regions of the parameter space. We describe and explain the behaviour of each of these classes, giving quantitative analysis wherever possible. The behaviour of sandpiles with N>2 essentially consists of combinations of these four classes. We investigate the model's robustness and highlight the key areas that any experiment designed to reproduce these results should focus on
A Model for Force Fluctuations in Bead Packs
We study theoretically the complex network of forces that is responsible for
the static structure and properties of granular materials. We present detailed
calculations for a model in which the fluctuations in the force distribution
arise because of variations in the contact angles and the constraints imposed
by the force balance on each bead of the pile. We compare our results for force
distribution function for this model, including exact results for certain
contact angle probability distributions, with numerical simulations of force
distributions in random sphere packings. This model reproduces many aspects of
the force distribution observed both in experiment and in numerical simulations
of sphere packings
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