Fast radio bursts and their gamma-ray or radio afterglows as Kerr-Newman black hole binaries

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are radio transients lasting only about a few milliseconds. They seem to occur at cosmological distances. We propose that these events can be originated in the collapse of the magnetosphere of Kerr-Newman black holes (KNBHs). We show that the closed orbits of charged particles in the magnetosphere of these objects are unstable. After examining the dependencies on the specific charge of the particle and the spin and charge of the KNBH, we conclude that the resulting timescale and radiation mechanism fit well with the extant observations of FRBs. Furthermore, we argue that the merger of a KNBH binary is one of the plausible central engines for potential gamma-ray or radio afterglow following a certain FRBs, and can also account for gravitational wave (GW) events like GW 150914. Our model leads to predictions that can be tested by combined multi-wavelength electromagnetic and GW observations.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Analysis of chromatin boundary activity in Drosophila cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chromatin boundaries, also known as insulators, regulate gene activity by organizing active and repressive chromatin domains and modulate enhancer-promoter interactions. However, the mechanisms of boundary action are poorly understood, in part due to our limited knowledge about insulator proteins, and a shortage of standard assays by which diverse boundaries could be compared.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We report here the development of an enhancer-blocking assay for studying insulator activity in Drosophila cultured cells. We show that the activities of diverse Drosophila insulators including suHw, SF1, SF1b, Fab7 and Fab8 are supported in these cells. We further show that double stranded RNA (dsRNA)-mediated knockdown of SuHw and dCTCF factors disrupts the enhancer-blocking function of suHw and Fab8, respectively, thereby establishing the effectiveness of using RNA interference in our cell-based assay for probing insulator function.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The novel boundary assay provides a quantitative and efficient method for analyzing insulator mechanism and can be further exploited in genome-wide RNAi screens for insulator components. It provides a useful tool that complements the transgenic and genetic approaches for studying this important class of regulatory elements.</p

Kinetics and thermodynamics of electron transfer in Debye solvents: An analytical and nonperturbative reduced density matrix theory

A nonperturbative electron transfer rate theory is developed based on the reduced density matrix dynamics, which can be evaluated readily for the Debye solvent model without further approximation. Not only does it recover for reaction rates the celebrated Marcus' inversion and Kramers' turnover behaviors, the present theory also predicts for reaction thermodynamics, such as equilibrium Gibbs free-energy and entropy, some interesting solvent-dependent features that are calling for experimental verification. Moreover, a continued fraction Green's function formalism is also constructed, which can be used together with Dyson equation technique, for efficient evaluation of nonperturbative reduced density matrix dynamics.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. J. Phys. Chem. B, accepte

Shanghai Street Names as Means of Creating City Image: History and Modernity

This article focuses on street names of Shanghai. Street names are considered in linguo-cultural aspect (as a means of representation of the history of the city and its cultural characteristics), as well as in the key of image-making (as a way of creating the image of the city in the minds of speakers of particular language and culture). Appeal to street names of Shanghai is due to their particular historical and cultural context that includes the period of European colonization, as reflected in the onomastic identity of the city. General comments on the tradition of studying street names and various approaches to their study are provided. Semantic classification of traditional street names of Shanghai, complementing their structural classification existing in scientific literature is given. Unique Shanghai street names relating to the period of Western colonization are described. Some features of the modern category of the streets are discussed. It is proved that Shanghai street names are setting for the formation of semantic microsystems, as well as a system, connecting street name with the space in which it is inscribed. Shanghai street names form the image of the city as strongly associated with the cultural tradition, but at the same time open to the cultural dialogue and interaction

Nanoelectromechanical Resonator Arrays for Ultrafast, Gas-Phase Chromatographic Chemical Analysis

Miniaturized gas chromatography (GC) systems can provide fast, quantitative analysis of chemical vapors in an ultrasmall package. We describe a chemical sensor technology based on resonant nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) mass detectors that provides the speed, sensitivity, specificity, and size required by the microscale GC paradigm. Such NEMS sensors have demonstrated detection of subparts per billion (ppb) concentrations of a phosphonate analyte. By combining two channels of NEMS detection with an ultrafast GC front-end, chromatographic analysis of 13 chemicals was performed within a 5 s time window

Three Different Types of Galaxy Alignment within Dark Matter Halos

Using a large galaxy group catalogue based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4 we measure three different types of intrinsic galaxy alignment within groups: halo alignment between the orientation of the brightest group galaxies (BGG) and the distribution of its satellite galaxies, radial alignment between the orientation of a satellite galaxy and the direction towards its BGG, and direct alignment between the orientation of the BGG and that of its satellites. In agreement with previous studies we find that satellite galaxies are preferentially located along the major axis. In addition, on scales r < 0.7 Rvir we find that red satellites are preferentially aligned radially with the direction to the BGG. The orientations of blue satellites, however, are perfectly consistent with being isotropic. Finally, on scales r < 0.1 \Rvir, we find a weak but significant indication for direct alignment between satellites and BGGs. We briefly discuss the implications for weak lensing measurements.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, ApJL accepte

Enhancing the gain by quantum coherence in terahertz quantum cascade lasers

We propose and study GaAs/AlGaAs terahertz frequency quantum cascade lasers in which mid-infrared radiation is used as a coherent drive for enhancing the terahertz gain

Silicon-lattice-matched boron-doped gallium phosphide: A scalable acousto-optic platform

The compact size, scalability, and strongly confined fields in integrated photonic devices enable new functionalities in photonic networking and information processing, both classical and quantum. Gallium phosphide (GaP) is a promising material for active integrated photonics due to its high refractive index, wide band gap, strong nonlinear properties, and large acousto-optic figure of merit. In this work we demonstrate that silicon-lattice-matched boron-doped GaP (BGaP), grown at the 12-inch wafer scale, provides similar functionalities as GaP. BGaP optical resonators exhibit intrinsic quality factors exceeding 25,000 and 200,000 at visible and telecom wavelengths respectively. We further demonstrate the electromechanical generation of low-loss acoustic waves and an integrated acousto-optic (AO) modulator. High-resolution spatial and compositional mapping, combined with ab initio calculations indicate two candidates for the excess optical loss in the visible band: the silicon-GaP interface and boron dimers. These results demonstrate the promise of the BGaP material platform for the development of scalable AO technologies at telecom and provide potential pathways toward higher performance at shorter wavelengths

Anomalous Dimension and Spatial Correlations in a Point-Island Model

We examine the island size distribution function and spatial correlation function of a model for island growth in the submonolayer regime in both 1 and 2 dimensions. In our model the islands do not grow in shape, and a fixed number of adatoms are added, nucleate, and are trapped at islands as they diffuse. We study the cases of various critical island sizes $i$ for nucleation as a function of initial coverage. We found anomalous scaling of the island size distribution for large $i$ . Using scaling, random walk theory, a version of mean-field theory we obtain a closed form for the spatial correlation function. Our analytic results are verified by Monte Carlo simulations