8,610 research outputs found
Ab-initio shell model with a core
We construct effective 2- and 3-body Hamiltonians for the p-shell by
performing 12\hbar\Omega ab initio no-core shell model (NCSM) calculations for
A=6 and 7 nuclei and explicitly projecting the many-body Hamiltonians onto the
0\hbar\Omega space. We then separate these effective Hamiltonians into 0-, 1-
and 2-body contributions (also 3-body for A=7) and analyze the systematic
behavior of these different parts as a function of the mass number A and size
of the NCSM basis space. The role of effective 3- and higher-body interactions
for A>6 is investigated and discussed
A stochastic model of Min oscillations in Escherichia coli and Min protein segregation during cell division
The Min system in Escherichia coli directs division to the centre of the cell
through pole-to-pole oscillations of the MinCDE proteins. We present a one
dimensional stochastic model of these oscillations which incorporates membrane
polymerisation of MinD into linear chains. This model reproduces much of the
observed phenomenology of the Min system, including pole-to-pole oscillations
of the Min proteins. We then apply this model to investigate the Min system
during cell division. Oscillations continue initially unaffected by the closing
septum, before cutting off rapidly. The fractions of Min proteins in the
daughter cells vary widely, from 50%-50% up to 85%-15% of the total from the
parent cell, suggesting that there may be another mechanism for regulating
these levels in vivo.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures (25 figure files); published at
http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/physbi
Effective operators from exact many-body renormalization
We construct effective two-body Hamiltonians and E2 operators for the p-shell
by performing ab initio no-core shell model (NCSM) calculations
for A=5 and A=6 nuclei and explicitly projecting the many-body Hamiltonians and
E2 operator onto the space. We then separate the effective E2
operator into one-body and two-body contributions employing the two-body
valence cluster approximation. We analyze the convergence of proton and neutron
valence one-body contributions with increasing model space size and explore the
role of valence two-body contributions. We show that the constructed effective
E2 operator can be parametrized in terms of one-body effective charges giving a
good estimate of the NCSM result for heavier p-shell nuclei.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure
The non-Gaussian tail of cosmic-shear statistics
Due to gravitational instability, an initially Gaussian density field
develops non-Gaussian features as the Universe evolves. The most prominent
non-Gaussian features are massive haloes, visible as clusters of galaxies. The
distortion of high-redshift galaxy images due to the tidal gravitational field
of the large-scale matter distribution, called cosmic shear, can be used to
investigate the statistical properties of the LSS. In particular, non-Gaussian
properties of the LSS will lead to a non-Gaussian distribution of cosmic-shear
statistics. The aperture mass () statistics, recently introduced as
a measure for cosmic shear, is particularly well suited for measuring these
non-Gaussian properties. In this paper we calculate the highly non-Gaussian
tail of the aperture mass probability distribution, assuming Press-Schechter
theory for the halo abundance and the `universal' density profile of haloes as
obtained from numerical simulations. We find that for values of
much larger than its dispersion, this probability distribution is closely
approximated by an exponential, rather than a Gaussian. We determine the
amplitude and shape of this exponential for various cosmological models and
aperture sizes, and show that wide-field imaging surveys can be used to
distinguish between some of the currently most popular cosmogonies. Our study
here is complementary to earlier cosmic-shear investigations which focussed
more on two-point statistical properties.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRA
Stress Generation and Filament Turnover during Actin Ring Constriction
We present a physical analysis of the dynamics and mechanics of contractile actin rings. In particular, we analyze the dynamics of ring contraction during cytokinesis in the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo. We present a general analysis of force balances and material exchange and estimate the relevant parameter values. We show that on a microscopic level contractile stresses can result from both the action of motor proteins, which cross-link filaments, and from the polymerization and depolymerization of filaments in the presence of end-tracking cross-linkers
Coarse-grained model of entropic allostery
Many signaling functions in molecular biology require proteins to bind to substrates such as DNA in response to environmental signals such as the simultaneous binding to a small molecule. Examples are repressor proteins which may transmit information via a conformational change in response to the ligand binding. An alternative entropic mechanism of "allostery" suggests that the inducer ligand changes the intramolecular vibrational entropy, not just the mean static structure. We present a quantitative, coarse-grained model of entropic allostery, which suggests design rules for internal cohesive potentials in proteins employing this effect. It also addresses the issue of how the signal information to bind or unbind is transmitted through the protein. The model may be applicable to a wide range of repressors and also to signaling in trans-membrane proteins
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