527 research outputs found
Thermal fluctuation field for current-induced domain wall motion
Current-induced domain wall motion in magnetic nanowires is affected by
thermal fluctuation. In order to account for this effect, the
Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation includes a thermal fluctuation field and
literature often utilizes the fluctuation-dissipation theorem to characterize
statistical properties of the thermal fluctuation field. However, the theorem
is not applicable to the system under finite current since it is not in
equilibrium. To examine the effect of finite current on the thermal
fluctuation, we adopt the influence functional formalism developed by Feynman
and Vernon, which is known to be a useful tool to analyze effects of
dissipation and thermal fluctuation. For this purpose, we construct a quantum
mechanical effective Hamiltonian describing current-induced domain wall motion
by generalizing the Caldeira-Leggett description of quantum dissipation. We
find that even for the current-induced domain wall motion, the statistical
properties of the thermal noise is still described by the
fluctuation-dissipation theorem if the current density is sufficiently lower
than the intrinsic critical current density and thus the domain wall tilting
angle is sufficiently lower than pi/4. The relation between our result and a
recent result, which also addresses the thermal fluctuation, is discussed. We
also find interesting physical meanings of the Gilbert damping alpha and the
nonadiabaticy parameter beta; while alpha characterizes the coupling strength
between the magnetization dynamics (the domain wall motion in this paper) and
the thermal reservoir (or environment), beta characterizes the coupling
strength between the spin current and the thermal reservoir.Comment: 16 page, no figur
Geometrically Induced Multiple Coulomb Blockade Gaps
We have theoretically investigated the transport properties of a ring-shaped
array of small tunnel junctions, which is weakly coupled to the drain
electrode. We have found that the long range interaction together with the
semi-isolation of the array bring about the formation of stable standing
configurations of electrons. The stable configurations break up during each
transition from odd to even number of trapped electrons, leading to multiple
Coulomb blockade gaps in the the characteristics of the system.Comment: 4 Pages (two-columns), 4 Figures, to be published in Physical Review
Letter
Investigation of the 2013 Alberta Flood from Weather and Climate Perspectives
During 19–21 June 2013 a heavy precipitation event affected southern Alberta and adjoining regions, leading to severe flood damage in numerous communities and resulting in the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history. This flood was caused by a combination of meteorological and hydrological factors, which are investigated from weather and climate perspectives with the fifth generation Canadian Regional Climate Model. Results show that the contribution of orographic ascent to precipitation was important, exceeding 30% over the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Another contributing factor was evapotranspiration from the land surface, which is found to have acted as an important moisture source and was likely enhanced by antecedent rainfall that increased soil moisture over the northern Great Plains. Event attribution analysis suggests that human induced greenhouse gas increases may also have contributed by causing evapotranspiration rates to be higher than they would have been under pre-industrial conditions. Frozen and snow-covered soils at high elevations are likely to have played an important role in generating record streamflows. Results point to a doubling of surface runoff due to the frozen conditions, while 25% of the modelled runoff originated from snowmelt. The estimated return time of the 3-day precipitation event exceeds 50 years over a large region, and an increase in the occurrence of similar extreme precipitation events is projected by the end of the 21st century. Event attribution analysis suggests that greenhouse gas increases may have increased 1-day and 3-day return levels of May–June precipitation with respect to pre-industrial climate conditions. However, no anthropogenic influence can be detected for 1-day and 3-day surface runoff, as increases in extreme precipitation in the present-day climate are offset by decreased snow cover and lower frozen water content in soils during the May–June transition months, compared to pre-industrial climate
Impact of Atmospheric Rivers on Future Poleward Moisture Transport and Arctic Climate in EC-Earth2
Alongside mean increases in poleward moisture transport (PMT) to the Arctic, most climate models also project a linear increase in the interannual variability (IAV) with future warming. It is still uncertain to what extent atmospheric rivers (ARs) contribute to the projected IAV increase of PMT. We analyzed large-ensemble climate simulations to (a) explore the link between PMT and ARs in the present-day (PD) and in two warmer climates (+2 and +3°C compared to pre-industrial global mean temperature), (b) assess the dynamic contribution to changes in future ARs, and (c) analyze the effect of ARs on Arctic climate on interannual timescales. We find that the share of AR-related PMT (ARPMT) to PMT increases from 42% in the PD to 53% in the +3°C climate. Our results show that the mean increases in AR-frequency and intensity are mainly caused by higher atmospheric moisture levels, while dynamic variability regulates regional ARs on an interannual basis. Notably, the amount of ARs reaching the Arctic in any given region and season strongly depends on the regional jet stream position and speed southwest of this region. This suggests that future changes in dynamics may significantly amplify or dampen the regionally consistent moisture-induced increase in ARs in a warmer climate. Our results further support previous findings that positive ARPMT anomalies are profoundly linked to increased surface air temperature and precipitation, especially in the colder seasons, and have a predominantly negative effect on sea ice.</p
Disorder and Synchronization in a Josephson Junction Plaquette
We describe the effects of disorder on the coherence properties of a 2 x 2 array of Josephson junctions (a plaquette ). The disorder is introduced through variations in the junction characteristics. We show that the array will remain one-to-one frequency locked despite large amounts of the disorder, and determine analytically the maximum disorder that can be tolerated before a transition to a desynchronized state occurs. Connections with larger N x M arrays are also drawn
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Rapid attribution of the August 2016 flood-inducing extreme precipitation in south Louisiana to climate change
A stationary low pressure system and elevated levels of precipitable water
provided a nearly continuous source of precipitation over Louisiana, United
States (US), starting around 10 August 2016. Precipitation was heaviest in
the region broadly encompassing the city of Baton Rouge, with a 3-day maximum
found at a station in Livingston, LA (east of Baton Rouge), from 12 to 14 August 2016 (648.3 mm, 25.5 inches). The intense precipitation was followed
by inland flash flooding and river flooding and in subsequent days produced
additional backwater flooding. On 16 August, Louisiana officials reported
that 30 000 people had been rescued, nearly 10 600 people had slept in
shelters on the night of 14 August and at least 60 600 homes had been
impacted to varying degrees. As of 17 August, the floods were reported to
have killed at least 13 people. As the disaster was unfolding, the Red
Cross called the flooding the worst natural disaster in the US since Super
Storm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey on 24 October 2012. Before the
floodwaters had receded, the media began questioning whether this extreme
event was caused by anthropogenic climate change. To provide the necessary
analysis to understand the potential role of anthropogenic climate change, a
rapid attribution analysis was launched in real time using the best readily
available observational data and high-resolution global climate model
simulations.
The objective of this study is to show the possibility of performing rapid
attribution studies when both observational and model data and analysis
methods are readily available upon the start. It is the authors' aspiration
that the results be used to guide further studies of the devastating
precipitation and flooding event. Here, we present a first estimate of how
anthropogenic climate change has affected the likelihood of a comparable
extreme precipitation event in the central US Gulf Coast. While the
flooding event of interest triggering this study occurred in south Louisiana,
for the purposes of our analysis, we have defined an extreme precipitation
event by taking the spatial maximum of annual 3-day inland maximum
precipitation over the region of 29–31° N, 85–95° W, which
we refer to as the central US Gulf Coast. Using observational data, we find
that the observed local return time of the 12–14 August precipitation event
in 2016 is about 550 years (95 % confidence interval (CI): 450–1450).
The probability for an event like this to happen anywhere in the region is
presently 1 in 30 years (CI 11–110). We estimate that these probabilities
and the intensity of extreme precipitation events of this return time have
increased since 1900. A central US Gulf Coast extreme precipitation event
has effectively become more likely in 2016 than it was in 1900. The global
climate models tell a similar story; in the most accurate analyses, the
regional probability of 3-day extreme precipitation increases by more than a
factor of 1.4 due to anthropogenic climate change. The magnitude of the shift in
probabilities is greater in the 25 km (higher-resolution) climate model than
in the 50 km model. The evidence for a relation to El Niño half a year
earlier is equivocal, with some analyses showing a positive connection and
others none
Resonant-Cavity-Induced Phase Locking and Voltage Steps in a Josephson Array
We describe a simple dynamical model for an underdamped Josephson junction
array coupled to a resonant cavity. From numerical solutions of the model in
one dimension, we find that (i) current-voltage characteristics of the array
have self-induced resonant steps (SIRS), (ii) at fixed disorder and coupling
strength, the array locks into a coherent, periodic state above a critical
number of active Josephson junctions, and (iii) when active junctions are
synchronized on an SIRS, the energy emitted into the resonant cavity is
quadratic with . All three features are in agreement with a recent
experiment [Barbara {\it et al}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 82}, 1963 (1999)]}.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figures included. Submitted to PRB Rapid Com
An unexpected Ireland–Claisen rearrangement cascade during the synthesis of the tricyclic core of Curcusone C: Mechanistic elucidation by trial-and-error and automatic artificial force-induced reaction (AFIR) computations
In the course of a total synthesis effort directed toward the natural product curcusone C, the Stoltz group discovered an unexpected thermal rearrangement of a divinylcyclopropane to the product of a formal Cope/1,3-sigmatropic shift sequence. Since the involvement of a thermally forbidden 1,3-shift seemed unlikely, theoretical studies involving two approaches, the “trial-and-error” testing of various conceivable mechanisms (Houk group) and an “automatic” approach using the Maeda–Morokuma AFIR method (Morokuma group) were applied to explore the mechanism. Eventually, both approaches converged on a cascade mechanism shown to have some partial literature precedent: Cope rearrangement/1,5-sigmatropic silyl shift/Claisen rearrangement/retro-Claisen rearrangement/1,5-sigmatropic silyl shift, comprising a quintet of five sequential thermally allowed pericyclic rearrangements
Multiplexed immunofluorescence identifies high stromal CD68+PD-L1+ macrophages as a predictor of improved survival in triple negative breast cancer.
Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) comprises 10-15% of all breast cancers and has a poor prognosis with a high risk of recurrence within 5 years. PD-L1 is an important biomarker for patient selection for immunotherapy but its cellular expression and co-localization within the tumour immune microenvironment and associated prognostic value is not well defined. We aimed to characterise the phenotypes of immune cells expressing PD-L1 and determine their association with overall survival (OS) and breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS). Using tissue microarrays from a retrospective cohort of TNBC patients from St George Hospital, Sydney (n = 244), multiplexed immunofluorescence (mIF) was used to assess staining for CD3, CD8, CD20, CD68, PD-1, PD-L1, FOXP3 and pan-cytokeratin on the Vectra Polaris™ platform and analysed using QuPath. Cox multivariate analyses showed high CD68+PD-L1+ stromal cell counts were associated with improved prognosis for OS (HR 0.56, 95% CI 0.33-0.95, p = 0.030) and BCSS (HR 0.47, 95% CI 0.25-0.88, p = 0.018) in the whole cohort and in patients receiving chemotherapy, improving incrementally upon the predictive value of PD-L1+ alone for BCSS. These data suggest that CD68+PD-L1+ status can provide clinically useful prognostic information to identify sub-groups of patients with good or poor prognosis and guide treatment decisions in TNBC
Dynamics of a Josephson Array in a Resonant Cavity
We derive dynamical equations for a Josephson array coupled to a resonant
cavity by applying the Heisenberg equations of motion to a model Hamiltonian
described by us earlier [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 63}, 144522 (2001); Phys. Rev. B
{\bf 64}, 179902 (E)]. By means of a canonical transformation, we also show
that, in the absence of an applied current and dissipation, our model reduces
to one described by Shnirman {\it et al} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 79}, 2371
(1997)] for coupled qubits, and that it corresponds to a capacitive coupling
between the array and the cavity mode. From extensive numerical solutions of
the model in one dimension, we find that the array locks into a coherent,
periodic state above a critical number of active junctions, that the
current-voltage characteristics of the array have self-induced resonant steps
(SIRS's), that when active junctions are synchronized on a SIRS, the
energy emitted into the resonant cavity is quadratic in , and that when a
fixed number of junctions is biased on a SIRS, the energy is linear in the
input power. All these results are in agreement with recent experiments. By
choosing the initial conditions carefully, we can drive the array into any of a
variety of different integer SIRS's. We tentatively identify terms in the
equations of motion which give rise to both the SIRS's and the coherence
threshold. We also find higher-order integer SIRS's and fractional SIRS's in
some simulations. We conclude that a resonant cavity can produce threshold
behavior and SIRS's even in a one-dimensional array with appropriate
experimental parameters, and that the experimental data, including the coherent
emission, can be understood from classical equations of motion.Comment: 15 pages, 10 eps figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
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