5,764 research outputs found
Electronic states and optical properties of PbSe nanorods and nanowires
A theory of the electronic structure and excitonic absorption spectra of PbS
and PbSe nanowires and nanorods in the framework of a four-band effective mass
model is presented. Calculations conducted for PbSe show that dielectric
contrast dramatically strengthens the exciton binding in narrow nanowires and
nanorods. However, the self-interaction energies of the electron and hole
nearly cancel the Coulomb binding, and as a result the optical absorption
spectra are practically unaffected by the strong dielectric contrast between
PbSe and the surrounding medium. Measurements of the size-dependent absorption
spectra of colloidal PbSe nanorods are also presented. Using room-temperature
energy-band parameters extracted from the optical spectra of spherical PbSe
nanocrystals, the theory provides good quantitative agreement with the measured
spectra.Comment: 35 pages, 12 figure
IMMUNOSUPPRESSIVE AND GRAFT-REJECTING ANTIBODIES IN HETEROLOGOUS ANTI-LYMPHOCYTIC SERUM
Skin allografts survived longer on ALS-treated, complement-deficient (C5 negative) recipients than on ALS-treated, complement-competent (C5 positive) recipients. Administration of C5-positive serum to C5-negative, ALS-treated recipients resulted in reduced graft survival. A percentage of grafts from ALS-treated, C5-positive donors was rejected when transferred to untreated syngeneic recipients; this was not observed when C5-negative, syngeneic animals served as ALS-treated donors and untreated recipients. It was concluded that ALS has graft-rejecting properties which are promoted by late acting complement components. Unlike ALS-mediated graft rejection, ALS-mediated immunosuppression appeared to be independent of the late acting complement components. The effect of ALS on the humoral response to sheep erythrocytes was examined in complement-deficient and complement-competent mice. Immune-suppression was determined by ALS treatment of C5-competent and C5-deficient mice and also by transfer of in vitro ALS-treated spleen cells from C5-negative and C5-positive donors to cyclophosphamide-treated recipients. The ability of ALS to depress the humoral response to sheep cells and to decrease immunological competence of spleen cells was the same in the presence as in the absence of C5
On the Correlation of Torque and Luminosity in GX 1+4
Over five years of daily hard X-ray (>20 keV) monitoring of the 2-min
accretion-powered pulsar GX 1+4 with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory/BATSE
large-area detectors has found nearly continuous rapid spin-down, interrupted
by a bright 200-d spin-up episode. During spin-down, the torque becomes more
negative as the luminosity increases (assuming that the 20-60 keV pulsed flux
traces bolometric luminosity), the opposite of what is predicted by standard
accretion torque theory. No changes in the shape of the 20-100 keV pulsed
energy spectrum were detected, so that a very drastic change in the spectrum
below 20 keV or the pulsed fraction would be required to make the 20-60 keV
pulsed flux a poor luminosity tracer. These are the first observations which
flatly contradict standard magnetic disk accretion theory, and they may have
important implications for understanding the spin evolution of X-ray binaries,
cataclysmic variables, and protostars. We briefly discuss the possibility that
GX 1+4 may be accreting from a retrograde disk during spin-down, as previously
suggested.Comment: 10 pages including 3 PS figures. To appear in ApJ Letter
Glucose metabolism and oscillatory behavior of pancreatic islets
A variety of oscillations are observed in pancreatic islets.We establish a
model, incorporating two oscillatory systems of different time scales: One is
the well-known bursting model in pancreatic beta-cells and the other is the
glucose-insulin feedback model which considers direct and indirect feedback of
secreted insulin. These two are coupled to interact with each other in the
combined model, and two basic assumptions are made on the basis of biological
observations: The conductance g_{K(ATP)} for the ATP-dependent potassium
current is a decreasing function of the glucose concentration whereas the
insulin secretion rate is given by a function of the intracellular calcium
concentration. Obtained via extensive numerical simulations are complex
oscillations including clusters of bursts, slow and fast calcium oscillations,
and so on. We also consider how the intracellular glucose concentration depends
upon the extracellular glucose concentration, and examine the inhibitory
effects of insulin.Comment: 11 pages, 16 figure
Three-dimensional N=4 supersymmetry in harmonic N=3 superspace
We consider the map of three-dimensional N=4 superfields to N=3 harmonic
superspace. The left and right representations of the N=4 superconformal group
are constructed on N=3 analytic superfields. These representations are
convenient for the description of N=4 superconformal couplings of the Abelian
gauge superfields with hypermultiplets. We analyze the N=4 invariance in the
non-Abelian N=3 Yang-Mills theory.Comment: Latex file, 22 pages; v2 two references adde
Noncommutative field gas driven inflation
We investigate early time inflationary scenarios in an Universe filled with a
dilute noncommutative bosonic gas at high temperature. A noncommutative bosonic
gas is a gas composed of bosonic scalar field with noncommutative field space
on a commutative spacetime. Such noncommutative field theories was recently
introduced as a generalization of quantum mechanics on a noncommutative
spacetime. As key features of these theories are Lorentz invariance violation
and CPT violation. In the present study we use a noncommutative bosonic field
theory that besides the noncommutative parameter shows up a further
parameter . This parameter controls the range of the
noncommutativity and acts as a regulator for the theory. Both parameters play a
key role in the modified dispersion relations of the noncommutative bosonic
field, leading to possible striking consequences for phenomenology. In this
work we obtain an equation of state for the
noncommutative bosonic gas relating pressure and energy density , in
the limit of high temperature. We analyse possible behaviours for this gas
parameters , and , so that , which
is the region where the Universe enters an accelerated phase.Comment: Reference added. Version to appear in Journal of Cosmology and
Astroparticle Physics - JCA
Intelligent Financial Fraud Detection Practices: An Investigation
Financial fraud is an issue with far reaching consequences in the finance
industry, government, corporate sectors, and for ordinary consumers. Increasing
dependence on new technologies such as cloud and mobile computing in recent
years has compounded the problem. Traditional methods of detection involve
extensive use of auditing, where a trained individual manually observes reports
or transactions in an attempt to discover fraudulent behaviour. This method is
not only time consuming, expensive and inaccurate, but in the age of big data
it is also impractical. Not surprisingly, financial institutions have turned to
automated processes using statistical and computational methods. This paper
presents a comprehensive investigation on financial fraud detection practices
using such data mining methods, with a particular focus on computational
intelligence-based techniques. Classification of the practices based on key
aspects such as detection algorithm used, fraud type investigated, and success
rate have been covered. Issues and challenges associated with the current
practices and potential future direction of research have also been identified.Comment: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Security and
Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm 2014
Hamiltonian submanifolds of regular polytopes
We investigate polyhedral -manifolds as subcomplexes of the boundary
complex of a regular polytope. We call such a subcomplex {\it -Hamiltonian}
if it contains the full -skeleton of the polytope. Since the case of the
cube is well known and since the case of a simplex was also previously studied
(these are so-called {\it super-neighborly triangulations}) we focus on the
case of the cross polytope and the sporadic regular 4-polytopes. By our results
the existence of 1-Hamiltonian surfaces is now decided for all regular
polytopes.
Furthermore we investigate 2-Hamiltonian 4-manifolds in the -dimensional
cross polytope. These are the "regular cases" satisfying equality in Sparla's
inequality. In particular, we present a new example with 16 vertices which is
highly symmetric with an automorphism group of order 128. Topologically it is
homeomorphic to a connected sum of 7 copies of . By this
example all regular cases of vertices with or, equivalently, all
cases of regular -polytopes with are now decided.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure
Dendritic Spine Shape Analysis: A Clustering Perspective
Functional properties of neurons are strongly coupled with their morphology.
Changes in neuronal activity alter morphological characteristics of dendritic
spines. First step towards understanding the structure-function relationship is
to group spines into main spine classes reported in the literature. Shape
analysis of dendritic spines can help neuroscientists understand the underlying
relationships. Due to unavailability of reliable automated tools, this analysis
is currently performed manually which is a time-intensive and subjective task.
Several studies on spine shape classification have been reported in the
literature, however, there is an on-going debate on whether distinct spine
shape classes exist or whether spines should be modeled through a continuum of
shape variations. Another challenge is the subjectivity and bias that is
introduced due to the supervised nature of classification approaches. In this
paper, we aim to address these issues by presenting a clustering perspective.
In this context, clustering may serve both confirmation of known patterns and
discovery of new ones. We perform cluster analysis on two-photon microscopic
images of spines using morphological, shape, and appearance based features and
gain insights into the spine shape analysis problem. We use histogram of
oriented gradients (HOG), disjunctive normal shape models (DNSM), morphological
features, and intensity profile based features for cluster analysis. We use
x-means to perform cluster analysis that selects the number of clusters
automatically using the Bayesian information criterion (BIC). For all features,
this analysis produces 4 clusters and we observe the formation of at least one
cluster consisting of spines which are difficult to be assigned to a known
class. This observation supports the argument of intermediate shape types.Comment: Accepted for BioImageComputing workshop at ECCV 201
- …