27,263 research outputs found
Preliminary investigations of ion thruster cathodes
Mercury vapor fed hollow cathodes for electron bombardment ion thruster
Dark states of dressed Bose-Einstein condensates
We combine the ideas of dressed Bose-Einstein condensates, where an
intracavity optical field allows one to design coupled, multicomponent
condensates, and of dark states of quantum systems, to generate a full quantum
entanglement between two matter waves and two optical waves. While the matter
waves are macroscopically populated, the two optical modes share a single
photon. As such, this system offers a way to influence the behaviour of a
macroscopic quantum system via a microscopic ``knob''.Comment: 6 pages, no figur
Shift Equivalence of Measures and the Intrinsic Structure of Shocks in the Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process
We investigate properties of non-translation-invariant measures, describing
particle systems on \bbz, which are asymptotic to different translation
invariant measures on the left and on the right. Often the structure of the
transition region can only be observed from a point of view which is
random---in particular, configuration dependent. Two such measures will be
called shift equivalent if they differ only by the choice of such a viewpoint.
We introduce certain quantities, called translation sums, which, under some
auxiliary conditions, characterize the equivalence classes. Our prime example
is the asymmetric simple exclusion process, for which the measures in question
describe the microscopic structure of shocks. In this case we compute
explicitly the translation sums and find that shocks generated in different
ways---in particular, via initial conditions in an infinite system or by
boundary conditions in a finite system---are described by shift equivalent
measures. We show also that when the shock in the infinite system is observed
from the location of a second class particle, treating this particle either as
a first class particle or as an empty site leads to shift equivalent shock
measures.Comment: Plain TeX, 2 figures; [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected]
Fluid Velocity Fluctuations in a Suspension of Swimming Protists
In dilute suspensions of swimming microorganisms the local fluid velocity is
a random superposition of the flow fields set up by the individual organisms,
which in turn have multipole contributions decaying as inverse powers of
distance from the organism. Here we show that the conditions under which the
central limit theorem guarantees a Gaussian probability distribution function
of velocities are satisfied when the leading force singularity is a Stokeslet,
but are not when it is any higher multipole. These results are confirmed by
numerical studies and by experiments on suspensions of the alga Volvox carteri,
which show that deviations from Gaussianity arise from near-field effects.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
(k,q)-Compressed Sensing for dMRI with Joint Spatial-Angular Sparsity Prior
Advanced diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) techniques, like
diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) and high angular resolution diffusion imaging
(HARDI), remain underutilized compared to diffusion tensor imaging because the
scan times needed to produce accurate estimations of fiber orientation are
significantly longer. To accelerate DSI and HARDI, recent methods from
compressed sensing (CS) exploit a sparse underlying representation of the data
in the spatial and angular domains to undersample in the respective k- and
q-spaces. State-of-the-art frameworks, however, impose sparsity in the spatial
and angular domains separately and involve the sum of the corresponding sparse
regularizers. In contrast, we propose a unified (k,q)-CS formulation which
imposes sparsity jointly in the spatial-angular domain to further increase
sparsity of dMRI signals and reduce the required subsampling rate. To
efficiently solve this large-scale global reconstruction problem, we introduce
a novel adaptation of the FISTA algorithm that exploits dictionary
separability. We show on phantom and real HARDI data that our approach achieves
significantly more accurate signal reconstructions than the state of the art
while sampling only 2-4% of the (k,q)-space, allowing for the potential of new
levels of dMRI acceleration.Comment: To be published in the 2017 Computational Diffusion MRI Workshop of
MICCA
Sound radiation from a high speed axial flow fan due to the inlet turbulence quadrupole interaction
A formula is obtained for the total acoustic power spectra radiated out the front of the fan as a function of frequency. The formula involves the design parameters of the fan as well as the statistical properties of the incident turbulence. Numerical results are calculated for values of the parameters in the range of interest for quiet fans tested at the Lewis Research Center. As in the dipole analysis, when the turbulence correlation lengths become equal to the interblade spacing, the predicted spectra exhibit peaks around the blade passing frequency and its harmonics. There has recently been considerable conjecture about whether the stretching of turbulent eddies as they enter a stationary fan could result in the inlet turbulence being the dominant source of pure tones from nontranslating fans. The results of the current analysis show that, unless the turbulent eddies become quite elongated, this noise source contributes predominantly to the broadband spectrum
How to Track Protists in Three Dimensions
We present an apparatus optimized for tracking swimming microorganisms in the
size range 10-1000 microns, in three dimensions (3D), far from surfaces, and
with negligible background convective fluid motion. CCD cameras attached to two
long working distance microscopes synchronously image the sample from two
perpendicular directions, with narrowband dark-field or bright-field
illumination chosen to avoid triggering a phototactic response. The images from
the two cameras can be combined to yield 3D tracks of the organism. Using
additional, highly directional broad-spectrum illumination with millisecond
timing control the phototactic trajectories in 3D of organisms ranging from
Chlamydomonas to Volvox can be studied in detail. Surface-mediated hydrodynamic
interactions can also be investigated without convective interference. Minimal
modifications to the apparatus allow for studies of chemotaxis and other taxes.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
Liver Transplantation to Provide Low-Density-Lipoprotein Receptors and Lower Plasma Cholesterol in a Child with Homozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia
A six-year-old girl with severe hypercholesterolemia and atherosclerosis had two defective genes at the low-density-lipoprotein (LDL) receptor locus, as determined by biochemical studies of cultured fibroblasts. One gene, inherited from the mother, produced no LDL receptors; the other gene, inherited from the father, produced a receptor precursor that was not transported to the cell surface and was unable to bind LDL. The patient degraded intravenously administered 125I-LDL at an extremely low rate, indicating that her high plasma LDL-cholesterol level was caused by defective receptor-mediated removal of LDL from plasma. After transplantation of a liver and a heart from a normal donor, the patient's plasma LDL-cholesterol level declined by 81 per cent, from 988 to 184 mg per deciliter. The fractional catabolic rate for intravenously administered 125I-LDL, a measure of functional LDL receptors in vivo, increased by 2.5-fold. Thus, the transplanted liver, with its normal complement of LDL receptors, was able to remove LDL cholesterol from plasma at a nearly normal rate. We conclude that a genetically determined deficiency of LDL receptors can be largely reversed by liver transplantation. These data underscore the importance of hepatic LDL receptors in controlling the plasma level of LDL cholesterol in human beings. (N Engl J Med 1984; 311: 1658–64.). © 1984, Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved
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