Nanoscale capacitance: a classical charge-dipole approximation

Modeling nanoscale capacitance presents particular challenge because of dynamic contribution from electrodes, which can usually be neglected in modeling macroscopic capacitance and nanoscale conductance. We present a model to calculate capacitances of nano-gap configurations and define effective capacitances of nanoscale structures. The model is implemented by using a classical atomic charge-dipole approximation and applied to calculate capacitance of a carbon nanotube nano-gap and effective capacitance of a buckyball inside the nano-gap. Our results show that capacitance of the carbon nanotube nano-gap increases with length of electrodes which demonstrates the important roles played by the electrodes in dynamic properties of nanoscale circuits.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

ITT Analysis of Randomized Encouragement Design Studies with Missing-Data

In this paper we considered a missing outcome problem in causal inferences for a randomized encouragement design study. We proposed both moment and maximum likelihood estimators for the marginal distributions of potential outcomes and the local complier average causal effect (CACE) parameter. We illustrated our methods in a real randomized encouragement design study on the e®ectiveness of flu shots

Identifying the Riemann zeros by periodically driving a single qubit

The Riemann hypothesis, one of the most important open problems in pure mathematics, implies the most profound secret of prime numbers. One of the most interesting approaches to solve this hypothesis is to connect the problem with the spectrum of the physical Hamiltonian of a quantum system. However, none of the proposed quantum Hamiltonians have been experimentally feasible.Here, we report the first experiment to identify the first non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function and the first two zeros of P\'olya's fake zeta function, using a novel Floquet method, through properly designed periodically driving functions. According to this method, the zeros of these functions are characterized by the occurrence of crossings of quasi-energies when the dynamics of the system are frozen. The experimentally obtained zeros are in excellent agreement with their exact values. Our study provides the first experimental realization of the Riemann zeros, which may provide new insights into this fundamental mathematical problem.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure

Supersymmetric Nonlinear Sigma Model in AdS_5

We construct the supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model in a fixed AdS_5 background. We use component fields and find that the complex bosons must be the coordinates of a hyper-Kahler manifold that admits a Killing vector satisfying an inhomogeneous tri-holomorphic condition. We propose boundary conditions that map the on-shell bulk hypermultiplets into off-shell chiral multiplets on 3-branes that foliate the bulk. The supersymmetric AdS_5 isometries reduce to superconformal transformations on the brane fields.Comment: Latex, 7 pages. Published versio

Prevalence and correlates of sexual and gender-based violence against Chinese adolescent women who are involved in commercial sex: a cross-sectional study

Objectives: Despite the vast quantity of research among Chinese female sex workers (FSWs) to address concerns regarding HIV/sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk, there is a paucity of research on issues of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and the missed opportunity for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) promotion among young FSWs. Our research aimed to assess the prevalence and correlates of SGBV among Chinese adolescent FSWs, and to explore SRH service utilisation. Design and methods: A cross-sectional study using a one-stage cluster sampling method was employed. A semistructured questionnaire was administered by trained peer educators or health workers. Multivariable logistic regression was conducted to determine individual and structural correlates of SGBV. Setting and participants: Between July and September 2012, 310 adolescent women aged 15–20 years, and who self-reported having received money or gifts in exchange for sex in the past 6 months were recruited and completed their interview in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. Results: Findings confirm the high prevalence of SGBV against adolescent FSWs in China, with 38% (118/310) of participants affected in the past year. Moreover, our study demonstrated the low uptake of public health services and high rates of prior unwanted pregnancy (52%; 61/118), abortion (53%; 63/118) and self-reported STI symptoms (84%; 99/118) in participants who were exposed to SGBV. Forced sexual debut was reported by nearly a quarter of FSWs (23%; 70/310) and was independently associated with having had a drug-using intimate partner and younger age (\u3c17 years old) at first abortion. When controlling for potential confounders, having experienced SGBV was associated with frequent alcohol use, having self-reported symptoms of STI, having an intimate partner and having an intimate partner with illicit drug use. Conclusions: This study calls for effective and integrated interventions addressing adolescent FSWs\u27 vulnerability to SGBV and broader SRH consequences

Transcriptome-Wide Survey of Mouse CNS-Derived Cells Reveals Monoallelic Expression within Novel Gene Families

Monoallelic expression is an integral component of regulation of a number of essential genes and gene families. To probe for allele-specific expression in cells of CNS origin, we used next-generation sequencing (RNA-seq) to analyze four clonal neural stem cell (NSC) lines derived from Mus musculus C57BL/6 (B6)×Mus musculus molossinus (JF1) adult female mice. We established a JF1 cSNP library, then ascertained transcriptome-wide expression from B6 vs. JF1 alleles in the NSC lines. Validating the assay, we found that 262 of 268 X-linked genes evaluable in at least one cell line showed monoallelic expression (at least 85% expression of the predominant allele, p-value<0.05). For autosomal genes 170 of 7,198 genes (2.4% of the total) showed monoallelic expression in at least 2 evaluable cell lines. The group included eight known imprinted genes with the expected pattern of allele-specific expression. Among the other autosomal genes with monoallelic expression were five members of the glutathione transferase gene superfamily, which processes xenobiotic compounds as well as carcinogens and cancer therapeutic agents. Monoallelic expression within this superfamily thus may play a functional role in the response to diverse and potentially lethal exogenous factors, as is the case for the immunoglobulin and olfactory receptor superfamilies. Other genes and gene families showing monoallelic expression include the annexin gene family and the Thy1 gene, both linked to inflammation and cancer, as well as genes linked to alcohol dependence (Gabrg1) and epilepsy (Kcnma1). The annotated set of genes will provide a resource for investigation of mechanisms underlying certain cases of these and other major disorders

Development of engineered cementitious composites with limestone powder and blast furnace slag

Nowadays limestone powder and blast furnace slag (BFS) are widely used in concrete as blended materials in cement. The replacement of Portland cement by limestone powder and BFS can lower the cost and enhance the greenness of concrete, since the production of these two materials needs less energy and causes less CO(2) emission than Portland cement. Moreover, the use of limestone powder and BFS improves the properties of fresh and hardened concrete, such as workability and durability. Engineered cementitious composites (ECC) is a class of ultra ductile fiber reinforced cementitious composites, characterized by high ductility, tight crack width control and relatively low fiber content. The limestone powder and BFS are used to produce ECC in this research. The mix proportion is designed experimentally by adjusting the amount of limestone powder and BFS, accompanied by four-point bending test and uniaxial tensile test. This study results in an ECC mix proportion with the Portland cement content as low as 15% of powder by weight. This mixture, at 28 days, exhibits a high tensile strain capacity of 3.3%, a tight crack width of 57 mu m and a moderate compressive strength of 38 MPa. In order to promote a wide use of ECC, it was tried to simplify the mixing of ECC with only two matrix materials, i.e. BFS cement and limestone powder, instead of three matrix materials. By replacing Portland cement and BFS in the aforementioned ECC mixture with BFS cement, the ECC with BFS cement and limestone powder exhibits a tensile strain capacity of 3.1%, a crack width of 76 mu m and a compressive strength of 40 MPa after 28 days of curing

Models of Interaction as a Grounding for Peer to Peer Knowledge Sharing

Most current attempts to achieve reliable knowledge sharing on a large scale have relied on pre-engineering of content and supply services. This, like traditional knowledge engineering, does not by itself scale to large, open, peer to peer systems because the cost of being precise about the absolute semantics of services and their knowledge rises rapidly as more services participate. We describe how to break out of this deadlock by focusing on semantics related to interaction and using this to avoid dependency on a priori semantic agreement; instead making semantic commitments incrementally at run time. Our method is based on interaction models that are mobile in the sense that they may be transferred to other components, this being a mechanism for service composition and for coalition formation. By shifting the emphasis to interaction (the details of which may be hidden from users) we can obtain knowledge sharing of sufficient quality for sustainable communities of practice without the barrier of complex meta-data provision prior to community formation

Rare Variants of Putative Candidate Genes Associated With Sporadic Meniere&apos;s Disease in East Asian Population

Objectives: The cause of Meniere&apos;s disease (MD) is unclear but likely involves genetic and environmental factors. The aim of this study was to investigate the genetic basis underlying MD by screening putative candidate genes for MD. Methods: Sixty-eight patients who met the diagnostic criteria for MD of the Barany Society were included. We performed targeted gene sequencing using next generation sequencing (NGS) panel composed of 45 MD-associated genes. We identified the rare variants causing non-synonymous amino acid changes, stop codons, and insertions/deletions in the coding regions, and excluded the common variants with minor allele frequency &gt;0.01 in public databases. The pathogenicity of the identified variants was analyzed by various predictive tools and protein structural modeling. Results: The average read depth for the targeted regions was 1446.3-fold, and 99.4% of the targeted regions were covered by 20 or more reads, achieving the high quality of the sequencing. After variant filtering, annotation, and interpretation, we identified a total of 15 rare heterozygous variants in 12 (17.6%) sporadic patients. Among them, four variants were detected in familial MD genes (DTNA, FAM136A, DPT), and the remaining 11 in MD-associated genes (PTPN22, NFKB1, CXCL10, TLR2, MTHFR, SLC44A2, NOS3, NOTCH2). Three patients had the variants in two or more genes. All variants were not detected in our healthy controls (n = 100). No significant differences were observed between patients with and without a genetic variant in terms of sex, mean age of onset, bilaterality, the type of MD, and hearing threshold at diagnosis. Conclusions: Our study identified rare variants of putative candidate genes in some of MD patients. The genes were related to the formation of inner ear structures, the immune-associated process, or systemic hemostasis derangement, suggesting the multiple genetic predispositions in the development of MD

Some projective surfaces of GK-dimension 4

We construct a family of connected graded domains of GK-dimension 4 that are birational to P2, and show that the general member of this family is noetherian. This disproves a conjecture of the first author and Stafford. The algebras we construct are Koszul and have global dimension 4. They fail to be Artin-Schelter Gorenstein, however, showing that a theorem of Zhang and Stephenson for dimension 3 algebras does not extend to dimension 4. The Auslander-Buchsbaum formula also fails to hold for our family. The algebras can be obtained as global sections of a certain quasicoherent graded sheaf on P1xP1, and our key technique is to work with this sheaf. In contrast to all previously known examples of birationally commutative graded domains, the graded pieces of the sheaf fail to be ample in the sense of Van den Bergh. Our results thus require significantly new techniques.Comment: 48 pages, 1 figure, comments welcome; v2 introduction rewritten, no other significant change