Quantification of Cell Subpopulations, Fractions of Dead Cells and Debris in Cell Suspensions by Laser Diffractometry

Laser diffractometry was employed for size analysis in liver cell and blood cell suspensions to assess its suitability for characterizing cell populations. The method proved sensitive to detect subpopulations in liver cells (bimodal or trimodal distributions) and to quantify their volume fractions. Cell debris and aggregates of cells could also be quantified, dead cell populations recognized by their shift in the mean cell diameter. Laser diffractometry is therefore suitable for determining the quality of cell isolations (e.g. by liver perfusion) or for following alterations in cell populations during culture of cells in suspension. Analysis of human blood allowed differenciations to be made between thrombocytes and other blood cells. No peak separation was obtained for the populations of erythrocytes and granulocytes due to their similarity in size. Monocytes could not be detected due to their extremely low number in the blood indicating the limit of the metho

Capacity Scaling in MIMO Systems with General Unitarily Invariant Random Matrices

We investigate the capacity scaling of MIMO systems with the system dimensions. To that end, we quantify how the mutual information varies when the number of antennas (at either the receiver or transmitter side) is altered. For a system comprising $R$ receive and $T$ transmit antennas with $R>T$, we find the following: By removing as many receive antennas as needed to obtain a square system (provided the channel matrices before and after the removal have full rank) the maximum resulting loss of mutual information over all signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) depends only on $R$, $T$ and the matrix of left-singular vectors of the initial channel matrix, but not on its singular values. In particular, if the latter matrix is Haar distributed the ergodic rate loss is given by $\sum_{t=1}^{T}\sum_{r=T+1}^{R}\frac{1}{r-t}$ nats. Under the same assumption, if $T,R\to \infty$ with the ratio $\phi\triangleq T/R$ fixed, the rate loss normalized by $R$ converges almost surely to $H(\phi)$ bits with $H(\cdot)$ denoting the binary entropy function. We also quantify and study how the mutual information as a function of the system dimensions deviates from the traditionally assumed linear growth in the minimum of the system dimensions at high SNR.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Probing the environment of emerin by Enhanced ascorbate peroxidase 2 (APEX2)-mediated proximity labeling.

Emerin is one of the best characterized proteins of the inner nuclear membrane, but can also occur at the level of the endoplasmic reticulum. We now use enhanced ascorbate peroxidase 2 (APEX2) to probe the environment of emerin. APEX2 can be used as a genetic tag that produces short-lived yet highly reactive biotin species, allowing the modification of proteins that interact with or are in very close proximity to the tagged protein. Biotinylated proteins can be isolated using immobilized streptavidin and analyzed by mass spectrometry. As an alternative to the standard approach with a genetic fusion of APEX2 to emerin, we also used RAPIDS (rapamycin- and APEX-dependent identification of proteins by SILAC), a method with improved specificity, where the peroxidase interacts with the protein of interest (i.e., emerin) only upon addition of rapamycin to the cells. We compare these different approaches, which, together, identify well-known interaction partners of emerin like lamin A and the lamina associated polypeptide 1 (LAP1), as well as novel proximity partners

Lagrangian Statistics of Navier-Stokes- and MHD-Turbulence

We report on a comparison of high-resolution numerical simulations of Lagrangian particles advected by incompressible turbulent hydro- and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows. Numerical simulations were performed with up to $1024^3$ collocation points and 10 million particles in the Navier-Stokes case and $512^3$ collocation points and 1 million particles in the MHD case. In the hydrodynamics case our findings compare with recent experiments from Mordant et al. [1] and Xu et al. [2]. They differ from the simulations of Biferale et al. [3] due to differences of the ranges choosen for evaluating the structure functions. In Navier-Stokes turbulence intermittency is stronger than predicted by a multifractal approach of [3] whereas in MHD turbulence the predictions from the multifractal approach are more intermittent than observed in our simulations. In addition, our simulations reveal that Lagrangian Navier-Stokes turbulence is more intermittent than MHD turbulence, whereas the situation is reversed in the Eulerian case. Those findings can not consistently be described by the multifractal modeling. The crucial point is that the geometry of the dissipative structures have different implications for Lagrangian and Eulerian intermittency. Application of the multifractal approach for the modeling of the acceleration PDFs works well for the Navier-Stokes case but in the MHD case just the tails are well described.Comment: to appear in J. Plasma Phy

Trip-Based Public Transit Routing

We study the problem of computing all Pareto-optimal journeys in a public transit network regarding the two criteria of arrival time and number of transfers taken. We take a novel approach, focusing on trips and transfers between them, allowing fine-grained modeling. Our experiments on the metropolitan network of London show that the algorithm computes full 24-hour profiles in 70 ms after a preprocessing phase of 30 s, allowing fast queries in dynamic scenarios.Comment: Minor corrections, no substantial changes. To be presented at ESA 201

Faraday waves on a viscoelastic liquid

We investigate Faraday waves on a viscoelastic liquid. Onset measurements and a nonlinear phase diagram for the selected patterns are presented. By virtue of the elasticity of the material a surface resonance synchronous to the external drive competes with the usual subharmonic Faraday instability. Close to the bicriticality the nonlinear wave interaction gives rise to a variety of novel surface states: Localised patches of hexagons, hexagonal superlattices, coexistence of hexagons and lines. Theoretical stability calculations and qualitative resonance arguments support the experimental observations.Comment: 4 pages, 4figure

Testing Lorentz invariance by use of vacuum and matter filled cavity resonators

We consider tests of Lorentz invariance for the photon and fermion sector that use vacuum and matter-filled cavities. Assumptions on the wave-function of the electrons in crystals are eliminated from the underlying theory and accurate sensitivity coefficients (including some exceptionally large ones) are calculated for various materials. We derive the Lorentz-violating shift in the index of refraction n, which leads to additional sensitivity for matter-filled cavities ; and to birefringence in initially isotropic media. Using published experimental data, we obtain improved bounds on Lorentz violation for photons and electrons at levels of 10^-15 and below. We discuss implications for future experiments and propose a new Michelson-Morley type experiment based on birefringence in matter.Comment: 15 pages, 8 table

Performance of a First-Level Muon Trigger with High Momentum Resolution Based on the ATLAS MDT Chambers for HL-LHC

Highly selective first-level triggers are essential to exploit the full physics potential of the ATLAS experiment at High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). The concept for a new muon trigger stage using the precision monitored drift tube (MDT) chambers to significantly improve the selectivity of the first-level muon trigger is presented. It is based on fast track reconstruction in all three layers of the existing MDT chambers, made possible by an extension of the first-level trigger latency to six microseconds and a new MDT read-out electronics required for the higher overall trigger rates at the HL-LHC. Data from $pp$-collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 8\,\mathrm{TeV}$ is used to study the minimal muon transverse momentum resolution that can be obtained using the MDT precision chambers, and to estimate the resolution and efficiency of the MDT-based trigger. A resolution of better than $4.1\%$ is found in all sectors under study. With this resolution, a first-level trigger with a threshold of $18\,\mathrm{GeV}$ becomes fully efficient for muons with a transverse momentum above $24\,\mathrm{GeV}$ in the barrel, and above $20\,\mathrm{GeV}$ in the end-cap region.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures; conference proceedings for IEEE NSS & MIC conference, San Diego, 201

Optical fibers with interferometric path length stability by controlled heating for transmission of optical signals and as components in frequency standards

We present a simple method to stabilize the optical path length of an optical fiber to an accuracy of about 1/100 of the laser wavelength. We study the dynamic response of the path length to modulation of an electrically conductive heater layer of the fiber. The path length is measured against the laser wavelength by use of the Pound-Drever-Hall method; negative feedback is applied via the heater. We apply the method in the context of a cryogenic resonator frequency standard.Comment: Expanded introduction and outlook. 9 pages, 5 figure