51,857 research outputs found
Quantitative Analysis of Electrotonic Structure and Membrane Properties of NMDA-Activated Lamprey Spinal Neurons
Parameter optimization methods were used to quantitatively analyze frequency-domain-voltage-clamp data of NMDA-activated lamprey spinal neurons simultaneously over a wide range of membrane potentials. A neuronal cable model was used to explicitly take into account receptors located on the dendritic trees. The driving point membrane admittance was measured from the cell soma in response to a Fourier synthesized point voltage clamp stimulus. The data were fitted to an equivalent cable model consisting of a single lumped soma compartment coupled resistively to a series of equal dendritic compartments. The model contains voltage-dependent NMDA sensitive (INMDA), slow potassium (IK), and leakage (IL) currents. Both the passive cable properties and the voltage dependence of ion channel kinetics were estimated, including the electrotonic structure of the cell, the steady-state gating characteristics, and the time constants for particular voltage- and time-dependent ionic conductances. An alternate kinetic formulation was developed that consisted of steady-state values for the gating parameters and their time constants at half-activation values as well as slopes of these parameters at half-activation. This procedure allowed independent restrictions on the magnitude and slope of both the steady-state gating variable and its associated time constant. Quantitative estimates of the voltage-dependent membrane ion conductances and their kinetic parameters were used to solve the nonlinear equations describing dynamic responses. The model accurately predicts current clamp responses and is consistent with experimentally measured TTX-resistant NMDA-induced patterned activity. In summary, an analysis method is developed that provides a pragmatic approach to quantitatively describe a nonlinear neuronal system
An automated classification approach to ranking photospheric proxies of magnetic energy build-up
We study the photospheric magnetic field of ~2000 active regions in solar
cycle 23 to search for parameters indicative of energy build-up and subsequent
release as a solar flare. We extract three sets of parameters: snapshots in
space and time- total flux, magnetic gradients, and neutral lines; evolution in
time- flux evolution; structures at multiple size scales- wavelet analysis.
This combines pattern recognition and classification techniques via a relevance
vector machine to determine whether a region will flare. We consider
classification performance using all 38 extracted features and several feature
subsets. Classification performance is quantified using both the true positive
rate and the true negative rate. Additionally, we compute the true skill score
which provides an equal weighting to true positive rate and true negative rate
and the Heidke skill score to allow comparison to other flare forecasting work.
We obtain a true skill score of ~0.5 for any predictive time window in the
range 2-24hr, with a TPR of ~0.8 and a TNR of ~0.7. These values do not appear
to depend on the time window, although the Heidke skill score (<0.5) does.
Features relating to snapshots of the distribution of magnetic gradients show
the best predictive ability over all predictive time windows. Other
gradient-related features and the instantaneous power at various wavelet scales
also feature in the top five ranked features in predictive power. While the
photospheric magnetic field governs the coronal non-potentiality (and
likelihood of flaring), photospheric magnetic field alone is not sufficient to
determine this uniquely. Furthermore we are only measuring proxies of the
magnetic energy build up. We still lack observational details on why energy is
released at any particular point in time. We may have discovered the natural
limit of the accuracy of flare predictions from these large scale studies
A deep, wide-field search for substellar members in NGC 2264
We report the first results of our ongoing campaign to discover the first
brown dwarfs (BD) in NGC 2264, a young (3 Myr), populous star forming region
for which our optical studies have revealed a very high density of potential
candidates - 236 in 1 deg - from the substellar limit down to at least
20 M for zero reddening. Candidate BD were first selected
using wide field () band imaging with CFH12K, by reference to current
theoretical isochrones. Subsequently, 79 (33%) of the sample were found
to have near-infrared 2MASS photometry ( 0.3 mag. or better),
yielding dereddened magnitudes and allowing further investigation by comparison
with the location of NextGen and DUSTY isochrones in colour-colour and
colour-magnitude diagrams involving various combinations of ,, and
. We discuss the status and potential substellarity of a number of
relatively unreddened (A 5) likely low-mass members in our
sample, but in spite of the depth of our observations in , we are as yet
unable to unambiguously identify substellar candidates using only 2MASS data.
Nevertheless, there are excellent arguments for considering two faint (observed
18.4 and 21.2) objects as cluster candidates with masses
respectively at or rather below the hydrogen burning limit. More current
candidates could be proven to be cluster members with masses around 0.1
M {\it via} gravity-sensitive spectroscopy, and deeper near-infrared
imaging will surely reveal a hitherto unknown population of young brown dwarfs
in this region, accessible to the next generation of deep near-infrared
surveys.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, accepted by A&
Insect Infestation of Farm-Stored Maize in South Carolina: Towards Characterization of a Habitat
Protecting stored grain from insect damage, with minimum pesticide risk, will require pest management based on comprehensive understanding of storage environments and their interactions with pest populations. Computer modeling offers the means to this understanding. To obtain data sets for modeling selected pests of stored maize, we studied maize storages on six farms in a four-county area of southwestern South Carolina. Grain moisture content was measured monthly, and grain temperatures were recorded hourly for one storage season. Insect populations were monitored by taking grain and pitfall trap samples at weekly or monthly intervals. Hourly mean grain temperatures remained below optimal levels for growth and development of insects during most of the storage period. Grain moisture content varied from 11.2 to 16.4%. Forty three species of insects and one species complex, representing 26 families in four orders, were detected. The estimated importance of each species in the farm storage habitat, as measured by relative abundance and frequency of occurrence, depended on whether grain sampling or trapping was used. With trapping, Cryptolestes species (mostly C. pusillus (Schonherr)), the Carpophilus dimidiatus complex (C. dimidiatus (F.), C.freemani Dobson and C. mutilatus Erichson), Sitophilus species (mostly S. zeamais Motschulsky), Xylocoris flavipes (Reuter) and Oryzaephilus surinamensis (L.) appeared most important. With grain sampling, S. zeamais, Sitotroga cerealella (Olivier) and C. pusillus appeared most important. Insects were most abundant (or active) in the fall and again in the spring, if storage extended that long. Grain samples indicated more insects near the grain surface, but traps sometimes detected more near the bottom of the bulk
Surface bubble nucleation phase space
Recent research has revealed several different techniques for nanoscopic gas
nucleation on submerged surfaces, with findings seemingly in contradiction with
each other. In response to this, we have systematically investigated the
occurrence of surface nanobubbles on a hydrophobised silicon substrate for
various different liquid temperatures and gas concentrations, which we
controlled independently. We found that nanobubbles occupy a distinct region of
this phase space, occurring for gas concentrations of approximately 100-110%.
Below the nanobubble phase we did not detect any gaseous formations on the
substrate, whereas micropancakes (micron wide, nanometer high gaseous domains)
were found at higher temperatures and gas concentrations. We moreover find that
supersaturation of dissolved gases is not a requirement for nucleation of
bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Synchronization and Control in Intrinsic and Designed Computation: An Information-Theoretic Analysis of Competing Models of Stochastic Computation
We adapt tools from information theory to analyze how an observer comes to
synchronize with the hidden states of a finitary, stationary stochastic
process. We show that synchronization is determined by both the process's
internal organization and by an observer's model of it. We analyze these
components using the convergence of state-block and block-state entropies,
comparing them to the previously known convergence properties of the Shannon
block entropy. Along the way, we introduce a hierarchy of information
quantifiers as derivatives and integrals of these entropies, which parallels a
similar hierarchy introduced for block entropy. We also draw out the duality
between synchronization properties and a process's controllability. The tools
lead to a new classification of a process's alternative representations in
terms of minimality, synchronizability, and unifilarity.Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures, 1 tabl
Low Luminosity States of the Black Hole Candidate GX~339--4. II. Timing Analysis
Here we present timing analysis of a set of eight Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer
(RXTE) observations of the black hole candidate GX 339-4 that were taken during
its hard/low state. On long time scales, the RXTE All Sky Monitor data reveal
evidence of a 240 day periodicity, comparable to timescales expected from
warped, precessing accretion disks. On short timescales all observations save
one show evidence of a persistent f approximately equal to 0.3 Hz QPO. The
broad band (10^{-3}-10^2 Hz) power appears to be dominated by two independent
processes that can be modeled as very broad Lorentzians with Q approximately
less than 1. The coherence function between soft and hard photon variability
shows that if these are truly independent processes, then they are individually
coherent, but they are incoherent with one another. This is evidenced by the
fact that the coherence function between the hard and soft variability is near
unity between 0.005-10 Hz but shows evidence of a dip at f approximately equal
to 1 Hz. This is the region of overlap between the broad Lorentzian fits to the
PSD. Similar to Cyg X-1, the coherence also drops dramatically at frequencies
approximately greater than 10 Hz. Also similar to Cyg X-1, the hard photon
variability is seen to lag the soft photon variability with the lag time
increasing with decreasing Fourier frequency. The magnitude of this time lag
appears to be positively correlated with the flux of GX 339-4. We discuss all
of these observations in light of current theoretical models of both black hole
spectra and temporal variability.Comment: To Appear in the AStrophysical Journa
Many Roads to Synchrony: Natural Time Scales and Their Algorithms
We consider two important time scales---the Markov and cryptic orders---that
monitor how an observer synchronizes to a finitary stochastic process. We show
how to compute these orders exactly and that they are most efficiently
calculated from the epsilon-machine, a process's minimal unifilar model.
Surprisingly, though the Markov order is a basic concept from stochastic
process theory, it is not a probabilistic property of a process. Rather, it is
a topological property and, moreover, it is not computable from any
finite-state model other than the epsilon-machine. Via an exhaustive survey, we
close by demonstrating that infinite Markov and infinite cryptic orders are a
dominant feature in the space of finite-memory processes. We draw out the roles
played in statistical mechanical spin systems by these two complementary length
scales.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures:
http://cse.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/kro.htm. Santa Fe Institute Working
Paper 10-11-02
Josephson junctions in thin and narrow rectangular superconducting strips
I consider a Josephson junction crossing the middle of a thin rectangular
superconducting strip of length L and width W subjected to a perpendicular
magnetic induction B. I calculate the spatial dependence of the gauge-invariant
phase difference across the junction and the resulting B dependence of the
critical current Ic(B).Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, revised following referee's comment
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