1,342 research outputs found
Psychophysiological Assessment of Buddhist Taiwanese Chanting
The psychophysiological responses and subjective experience correlates of Buddhist chanting were recorded from a 54 year-old female Buddhist monk who performed chanting for approximately 30 to 60 minutes twice daily for 25 years. The measutes included respiration rate from upper thorax, blood volume pulse (BVP) from left middle finger with heart rate derived from BVP, finger temperature from right index finger, skin conductance (SC) from the left index finger and the ring finger and sutface electromyographic (sEMG) from right trapezius and left sternocleidomastoid muscles (SCM) and were recorded during normal chanting sequence which included reading sutra aloud with her eyes open (chanting "The Samanta-Mukha") and silent mental repetition of sutra with the eyes closed (chanting "The Heart Sutra" inside her mind). After chanting she reported feeling peaceful, more relaxation with a total focus of attention and "consciousness"-an experience that was similar to when she chanted in the temple with other monks. The most significant finding was that respiration rate changed from 7.2 br/min during pre-baseline, to 12.1 brlmin during reading sutra aloud, 5.7 brlmin during silent mental repetition of sutra and 7.5 brl/min during post-baseline. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was significantly higher during post-baseline than reading chanting and silent mental repetition of sutra. All physiological measures were significantly different for each condition. This study suggests that the subjective experience associated with chanting can not be attributed to increased RSA and slower breathing as it depends upon the style of chanting. The spiritual experience associated with chanting appears to be evoked through the focused attention on the sutra
Nonlinear elasticity of stiff biopolymers connected by flexible linkers
Networks of the biopolymer actin, cross-linked by the compliant protein filamin, form soft gels. They can, however, withstand large shear stresses due to their pronounced nonlinear elastic behavior. The nonlinear elasticity can be controlled by varying the number of cross-links per actin filament. We propose and test a model of rigid filaments decorated by multiple flexible linkers that is in quantitative agreement with experiment. This allows us to estimate loads on individual cross-links, which we find to be less than 10 pN. © 2009 The American Physical Society
Mapping QTL for sex and growth traits in Salt-Tolerant Tilapia (Oreochromis spp. X O. mossambicus)
In aquaculture, growth and sex are economically important traits. To accelerate genetic improvement in increasing growth in salt-tolerant tilapia, we conducted QTL mapping for growth traits and sex with an F2 family, including 522 offspring and two parents. We used 144 polymorphic microsatellites evenly covering the genome of tilapia to genotype the family. QTL analyses were carried out using interval mapping for all individuals, males and females in the family, respectively. Using all individuals, three suggestive QTL for body weight, body length and body thickness respectively were detected in LG20, LG22 and LG12 and explained 2.4% to 3.1% of phenotypic variance (PV). When considering only males, five QTL for body weight were detected on five LGs, and explained 4.1 to 6.3% of PV. Using only females from the F2 family, three QTL for body weight were detected on LG1, LG6 and LG8, and explained 7.9–14.3% of PV. The QTL for body weight in males and females were located in different LGs, suggesting that in salt-tolerant tilapia, different set of genes ‘switches’ control the growth in males and females. QTL for sex were mapped on LG1 and LG22, indicating multigene sex determination in the salt-tolerant tilapia. This study provides new insights on the locations and effects of QTL for growth traits and sex, and sets the foundation for fine mapping for future marker-assisted selection for growth and sex in salt-tolerant tilapia aquaculture
Quantum Phase Transition of Spin-2 Cold Bosons in an Optical Lattice
The Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian of spin-2 cold bosons with repulsive interaction
in an optical lattice is proposed. After neglecting the hopping term, the
site-independent Hamiltonian and its energy eigenvalues and eigenstates are
obtained. We consider the hopping term as a perturbation to do the calculations
in second order and draw the phase diagrams for different cases. The phase
diagrams show that there is a phase transition from Mott insulator with integer
number bosons to superfluid when the ratio ( is the
spin-independent on-site interaction and the hopping matrix element between
adjacent lattice sites) is decreased to a critical value and that there is
different phase boundary between superfluid and Mott insulator phase for
different Zeeman level component in some ground states. We find that the
position of phase boundary for different Zeeman level component is related to
its average population in the Mott ground state.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure
Entropic Interactions in Suspensions of Semi-Flexible Rods: Short-Range Effects of Flexibility
We compute the entropic interactions between two colloidal spheres immersed
in a dilute suspension of semi-flexible rods. Our model treats the
semi-flexible rod as a bent rod at fixed angle, set by the rod contour and
persistence lengths. The entropic forces arising from this additional
rotational degree of freedom are captured quantitatively by the model, and
account for observations at short range in a recent experiment. Global fits to
the interaction potential data suggest the persistence length of fd-virus is
about two to three times smaller than the commonly used value of .Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PRE rapid communication
Polynomial kernels for 3-leaf power graph modification problems
A graph G=(V,E) is a 3-leaf power iff there exists a tree T whose leaves are
V and such that (u,v) is an edge iff u and v are at distance at most 3 in T.
The 3-leaf power graph edge modification problems, i.e. edition (also known as
the closest 3-leaf power), completion and edge-deletion, are FTP when
parameterized by the size of the edge set modification. However polynomial
kernel was known for none of these three problems. For each of them, we provide
cubic kernels that can be computed in linear time for each of these problems.
We thereby answer an open problem first mentioned by Dom, Guo, Huffner and
Niedermeier (2005).Comment: Submitte
Universal relations in the finite-size correction terms of two-dimensional Ising models
Quite recently, Izmailian and Hu [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5160 (2001)] studied
the finite-size correction terms for the free energy per spin and the inverse
correlation length of the critical two-dimensional Ising model. They obtained
the universal amplitude ratio for the coefficients of two series. In this study
we give a simple derivation of this universal relation; we do not use an
explicit form of series expansion. Moreover, we show that the Izmailian and
Hu's relation is reduced to a simple and exact relation between the free energy
and the correlation length. This equation holds at any temperature and has the
same form as the finite-size scaling.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, to appear in Phys. Rev. E, Rapid Communication
Scaling of anisotropy flows in intermediate energy heavy ion collisions
Anisotropic flows (, and ) of light nuclear clusters are
studied by a nucleonic transport model in intermediate energy heavy ion
collisions. The number-of-nucleon scalings of the directed flow () and
elliptic flow () are demonstrated for light nuclear clusters. Moreover,
the ratios of of nuclear clusters show a constant value of 1/2
regardless of the transverse momentum. The above phenomena can be understood by
the coalescence mechanism in nucleonic level and are worthy to be explored in
experiments.Comment: Invited talk at "IX International Conference on Nucleus-Nucleus
Collisions", Rio de Janeiro, Aug 28- Sept 1, 2006; to appear on the
proceeding issue in Nuclear Physics
Typicality versus thermality: An analytic distinction
In systems with a large degeneracy of states such as black holes, one expects
that the average value of probe correlation functions will be well approximated
by the thermal ensemble. To understand how correlation functions in individual
microstates differ from the canonical ensemble average and from each other, we
study the variances in correlators. Using general statistical considerations,
we show that the variance between microstates will be exponentially suppressed
in the entropy. However, by exploiting the analytic properties of correlation
functions we argue that these variances are amplified in imaginary time,
thereby distinguishing pure states from the thermal density matrix. We
demonstrate our general results in specific examples and argue that our results
apply to the microstates of black holes.Comment: 22 pages + appendices, 3 eps figure
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