299 research outputs found
Curvature, hybridization, and STM images of carbon nanotubes
The curvature effects in carbon nanotubes are studied analytically as a
function of chirality. The pi-orbitals are found to be significantly
rehybridized in all tubes, so that they are never normal to the tubes' surface.
This results in a curvature induced gap in the electronic band-structure, which
turns out to be larger than previous estimates. The tilting of the pi-orbitals
should be observable by atomic resolution scanning tunneling microscopy
measurements.Comment: Four pages in revtex format including four epsfig-embedded figures.
The latest version in PDF format is available from
http://fy.chalmers.se/~eggert/papers/hybrid.pd
Functional Integral Bosonization for Impurity in Luttinger Liquid
We use a functional integral formalism developed earlier for the pure
Luttinger liquid (LL) to find an exact representation for the electron Green
function of the LL in the presence of a single backscattering impurity. This
allows us to reproduce results (well known from the bosonization techniques)
for the suppression of the electron local density of states (LDoS) at the
position of the impurity and for the Friedel oscillations at finite
temperature. In addition, we have extracted from the exact representation an
analytic dependence of LDoS on the distance from the impurity and shown how it
crosses over to that for the pure LL.Comment: 7 pages, 1 LaTeX produced figur
Postural orientation and equilibrium processes associated with increased postural sway in autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
Background:
Increased postural sway has been repeatedly documented in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Characterizing the control processes underlying this deficit, including postural orientation and equilibrium, may provide key insights into neurophysiological mechanisms associated with ASD. Postural orientation refers to children’s ability to actively align their trunk and head with respect to their base of support, while postural equilibrium is an active process whereby children coordinate ankle dorsi-/plantar-flexion and hip abduction/adduction movements to stabilize their upper body. Dynamic engagement of each of these control processes is important for maintaining postural stability, though neither postural orientation nor equilibrium has been studied in ASD.
Methods:
Twenty-two children with ASD and 21 age and performance IQ-matched typically developing (TD) controls completed three standing tests. During static stance, participants were instructed to stand as still as possible. During dynamic stances, participants swayed at a comfortable speed and magnitude in either anterior-posterior (AP) or mediolateral (ML) directions. The center of pressure (COP) standard deviation and trajectory length were examined to determine if children with ASD showed increased postural sway. Postural orientation was assessed using a novel virtual time-to-contact (VTC) approach that characterized spatiotemporal dimensions of children’s postural sway (i.e., body alignment) relative to their postural limitation boundary, defined as the maximum extent to which each child could sway in each direction. Postural equilibrium was quantified by evaluating the amount of shared or mutual information of COP time series measured along the AP and ML directions.
Results:
Consistent with prior studies, children with ASD showed increased postural sway during both static and dynamic stances relative to TD children. In regard to postural orientation processes, children with ASD demonstrated reduced spatial perception of their postural limitation boundary towards target directions and reduced time to correct this error during dynamic postural sways but not during static stance. Regarding postural equilibrium, they showed a compromised ability to decouple ankle dorsi-/plantar-flexion and hip abduction/adduction processes during dynamic stances.
Conclusions:
These results suggest that deficits in both postural orientation and equilibrium processes contribute to reduced postural stability in ASD. Specifically, increased postural sway in ASD appears to reflect patients’ impaired perception of their body movement relative to their own postural limitation boundary as well as a reduced ability to decouple distinct ankle and hip movements to align their body during standing. Our findings that deficits in postural orientation and equilibrium are more pronounced during dynamic compared to static stances suggests that the increased demands of everyday activities in which children must dynamically shift their COP involve more severe postural control deficits in ASD relative to static stance conditions that often are studied. Systematic assessment of dynamic postural control processes in ASD may provide important insights into new treatment targets and neurodevelopmental mechanisms
A Novel Role for Wnt/Ca2+ Signaling in Actin Cytoskeleton Remodeling and Cell Motility in Prostate Cancer
Wnt signaling is a critical regulatory pathway in development and disease. Very little is known about the mechanisms of Wnt signaling in prostate cancer, a leading cause of death in men. A quantitative analysis of the expression of Wnt5A protein in human tissue arrays, containing 600 prostate tissue cores, showed >50% increase in malignant compared to benign cores (p<0.0001). In a matched pair of prostate cancer and normal cell line, expression of Wnt5A protein was also increased. Calcium waves were induced in prostate cells in response to Wnt5A with a 3 fold increase in Flou-4 intensity. The activity of Ca2+/calmodulin dependent protein kinase (CaMKII), a transducer of the non-canonical Wnt/Ca2+ signaling, increased by 8 fold in cancer cells; no change was observed in β-catenin expression, known to activate the canonical Wnt/β-catenin pathway. Mining of publicly available human prostate cancer oligoarray datasets revealed that the expression of numerous genes (e.g., CCND1, CD44) under the control of β-catenin transcription is down-regulated. Confocal and quantitative electron microscopy showed that specific inhibition of CaMKII in cancer cells causes remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton, irregular wound edges and loose intercellular architecture and a 6 and 8 fold increase in the frequency and length of filopodia, respectively. Conversely, untreated normal prostate cells showed an irregular wound edge and loose intercellular architecture; incubation of normal prostate cells with recombinant Wnt5A protein induced actin remodeling with a regular wound edge and increased wound healing capacity. Live cell imaging showed that a functional consequence of CaMKII inhibition was 80% decrease in wound healing capacity and reduced cell motility in cancer cells. We propose that non-canonical Wnt/Ca2+ signaling via CaMKII acts as a novel regulator of structural plasticity and cell motility in prostate cancer
Quantum Phase Transition in a Resonant Level Coupled to Interacting Leads
An interacting one-dimensional electron system, the Luttinger liquid, is
distinct from the "conventional" Fermi liquids formed by interacting electrons
in two and three dimensions. Some of its most spectacular properties are
revealed in the process of electron tunneling: as a function of the applied
bias or temperature the tunneling current demonstrates a non-trivial power-law
suppression. Here, we create a system which emulates tunneling in a Luttinger
liquid, by controlling the interaction of the tunneling electron with its
environment. We further replace a single tunneling barrier with a
double-barrier resonant level structure and investigate resonant tunneling
between Luttinger liquids. For the first time, we observe perfect transparency
of the resonant level embedded in the interacting environment, while the width
of the resonance tends to zero. We argue that this unique behavior results from
many-body physics of interacting electrons and signals the presence of a
quantum phase transition (QPT). In our samples many parameters, including the
interaction strength, can be precisely controlled; thus, we have created an
attractive model system for studying quantum critical phenomena in general. Our
work therefore has broadly reaching implications for understanding QPTs in more
complex systems, such as cold atoms and strongly correlated bulk materials.Comment: 11 pages total (main text + supplementary
Band gaps of primary metallic carbon nanotubes
Primary metallic, or small gap semiconducting nanotubes, are tubes with band
gaps that arise solely from breaking the bond symmetry due to the curvature. We
derive an analytic expression for these gaps by considering how a general
symmetry breaking opens a gap in nanotubes with a well defined chiral wrapping
vector. This approach provides a straightforward way to include all types of
symmetry breaking effects, resulting in a simple unified gap equation as a
function of chirality and deformations.Comment: Final published version. Four pages in revtex format including one
epsf-embedded figure. The latest version in PDF format is available from
http://fy.chalmers.se/~eggert/papers/nanodeform.pd
The TESS-Keck Survey: Science Goals and Target Selection
Space-based transit missions such as Kepler and TESS have demonstrated that
planets are ubiquitous. However, the success of these missions heavily depends
on ground-based radial velocity (RV) surveys, which combined with transit
photometry can yield bulk densities and orbital properties. While most Kepler
host stars are too faint for detailed follow-up observations, TESS is detecting
planets orbiting nearby bright stars that are more amenable to RV
characterization. Here we introduce the TESS-Keck Survey (TKS), an RV program
using ~100 nights on Keck/HIRES to study exoplanets identified by TESS. The
primary survey aims are investigating the link between stellar properties and
the compositions of small planets; studying how the diversity of system
architectures depends on dynamical configurations or planet multiplicity;
identifying prime candidates for atmospheric studies with JWST; and
understanding the role of stellar evolution in shaping planetary systems. We
present a fully-automated target selection algorithm, which yielded 103 planets
in 86 systems for the final TKS sample. Most TKS hosts are inactive,
solar-like, main-sequence stars (4500 K < Teff < 6000 K) at a wide range of
metallicities. The selected TKS sample contains 71 small planets (Rp < 4 Re),
11 systems with multiple transiting candidates, 6 sub-day period planets and 3
planets that are in or near the habitable zone of their host star. The target
selection described here will facilitate the comparison of measured planet
masses, densities, and eccentricities to predictions from planet population
models. Our target selection software is publicly available (at
https://github.com/ashleychontos/sort-a-survey) and can be adapted for any
survey which requires a balance of multiple science interests within a given
telescope allocation.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 5 table
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