The Deformation of an Elastic Substrate by a Three-Phase Contact Line

Young's classic analysis of the equilibrium of a three-phase contact line ignores the out-of-plane component of the liquid-vapor surface tension. While it has long been appreciated that this unresolved force must be balanced by elastic deformation of the solid substrate, a definitive analysis has remained elusive because conventional idealizations of the substrate imply a divergence of stress at the contact line. While a number of theories of have been presented to cut off the divergence, none of them have provided reasonable agreement with experimental data. We measure surface and bulk deformation of a thin elastic film near a three-phase contact line using fluorescence confocal microscopy. The out-of-plane deformation is well fit by a linear elastic theory incorporating an out-of-plane restoring force due to the surface tension of the gel. This theory predicts that the deformation profile near the contact line is scale-free and independent of the substrate elastic modulus.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

SU(3) breaking in hyperon transition vector form factors

We present a calculation of the SU(3)-breaking corrections to the hyperon transition vector form factors to $\mathcal{O}(p^4)$ in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory with finite-range regularisation. Both octet and decuplet degrees of freedom are included. We formulate a chiral expansion at the kinematic point $Q^2=-(M_{B_1}-M_{B_2})^2$, which can be conveniently accessed in lattice QCD. The two unknown low-energy constants at this point are constrained by lattice QCD simulation results for the $\Sigma^-\rightarrow n$ and $\Xi^0\rightarrow \Sigma^+$ transition form factors. Hence we determine lattice-informed values of $f_1$ at the physical point. This work constitutes progress towards the precise determination of $|V_{us}|$ from hyperon semileptonic decays

Diagnosis and Threat Detection Capabilities of the SERENITY Monitoring Framework

The SERENITY monitoring framework offers mechanisms for diagnosing the causes of violations of security and dependability (S&D) properties and detecting potential violations of such properties, called “threats”. Diagnostic information and threat detection are often necessary for deciding what an appropriate reaction to a violation is and taking pre-emptive actions against predicted violations, respectively. In this chapter, we describe the mechanisms of the SERENITY monitoring framework which generate diagnostic information for violations of S&D properties and detecting threats

Molecular transport and flow past hard and soft surfaces: Computer simulation of model systems

The properties of polymer liquids on hard and soft substrates are investigated by molecular dynamics simulation of a coarse-grained bead-spring model and dynamic single-chain-in-mean-field (SCMF) simulations of a soft, coarse-grained polymer model. Hard, corrugated substrates are modelled by an FCC Lennard-Jones solid while polymer brushes are investigated as a prototypical example of a soft, deformable surface. From the molecular simulation we extract the coarse-grained parameters that characterise the equilibrium and flow properties of the liquid in contact with the substrate: the surface and interface tensions, and the parameters of the hydrodynamic boundary condition. The so-determined parameters enter a continuum description like the Stokes equation or the lubrication approximation.Comment: 41 pages, 13 figure

Influence of wiring cost on the large-scale architecture of human cortical connectivity

In the past two decades some fundamental properties of cortical connectivity have been discovered: small-world structure, pronounced hierarchical and modular organisation, and strong core and rich-club structures. A common assumption when interpreting results of this kind is that the observed structural properties are present to enable the brain's function. However, the brain is also embedded into the limited space of the skull and its wiring has associated developmental and metabolic costs. These basic physical and economic aspects place separate, often conflicting, constraints on the brain's connectivity, which must be characterized in order to understand the true relationship between brain structure and function. To address this challenge, here we ask which, and to what extent, aspects of the structural organisation of the brain are conserved if we preserve specific spatial and topological properties of the brain but otherwise randomise its connectivity. We perform a comparative analysis of a connectivity map of the cortical connectome both on high- and low-resolutions utilising three different types of surrogate networks: spatially unconstrained (‘random’), connection length preserving (‘spatial’), and connection length optimised (‘reduced’) surrogates. We find that unconstrained randomisation markedly diminishes all investigated architectural properties of cortical connectivity. By contrast, spatial and reduced surrogates largely preserve most properties and, interestingly, often more so in the reduced surrogates. Specifically, our results suggest that the cortical network is less tightly integrated than its spatial constraints would allow, but more strongly segregated than its spatial constraints would necessitate. We additionally find that hierarchical organisation and rich-club structure of the cortical connectivity are largely preserved in spatial and reduced surrogates and hence may be partially attributable to cortical wiring constraints. In contrast, the high modularity and strong s-core of the high-resolution cortical network are significantly stronger than in the surrogates, underlining their potential functional relevance in the brain

Quenched QCD with O(a) improvement: I. The spectrum of light hadrons

We present a comprehensive study of the masses of pseudoscalar and vector mesons, as well as octet and decuplet baryons computed in O(a) improved quenched lattice QCD. Results have been obtained using the non-perturbative definition of the improvement coefficient c_sw, and also its estimate in tadpole improved perturbation theory. We investigate effects of improvement on the incidence of exceptional configurations, mass splittings and the parameter J. By combining the results obtained using non-perturbative and tadpole improvement in a simultaneous continuum extrapolation we can compare our spectral data to experiment. We confirm earlier findings by the CP-PACS Collaboration that the quenched light hadron spectrum agrees with experiment at the 10% level.Comment: 36 pages, 7 postscript figures, REVTEX; typo in Table XVIII corrected; extended discussion of finite-size effects in sections III and VII; version to appear in Phys. Rev.