18,459 research outputs found
The effect of external forces on discrete motion within holographic optical tweezers
Holographic optical tweezers is a widely used technique to manipulate the individual positions of optically trapped micron-sized particles in a sample. The trap positions are changed by updating the holographic image displayed on a spatial light modulator. The updating process takes a finite time, resulting in a temporary decrease of the intensity, and thus the stiffness, of the optical trap. We have investigated this change in trap stiffness during the updating process by studying the motion of an optically trapped particle in a fluid flow. We found a highly nonlinear behavior of the change in trap stiffness vs. changes in step size. For step sizes up to approximately 300 nm the trap stiffness is decreasing. Above 300 nm the change in trap stiffness remains constant for all step sizes up to one particle radius. This information is crucial for optical force measurements using holographic optical tweezers
Vertebrate DNA in Fecal Samples from Bonobos and Gorillas: Evidence for Meat Consumption or Artefact?
Background: Deciphering the behavioral repertoire of great apes is a challenge for several reasons. First, due to their elusive behavior in dense forest environments, great ape populations are often difficult to observe. Second, members of the genus Pan are known to display a great variety in their behavioral repertoire; thus, observations from one population are not necessarily representative for other populations. For example, bonobos (Pan paniscus) are generally believed to consume almost no vertebrate prey. However, recent observations show that at least some bonobo populations may consume vertebrate prey more commonly than previously believed. We investigated the extent of their meat consumption using PCR amplification of vertebrate mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) segments from DNA extracted from bonobo feces. As a control we also attempted PCR amplifications from gorilla feces, a species assumed to be strictly herbivorous. Principal Findings: We found evidence for consumption of a variety of mammalian species in about 16% of the samples investigated. Moreover, 40% of the positive DNA amplifications originated from arboreal monkeys. However, we also found duiker and monkey mtDNA in the gorilla feces, albeit in somewhat lower percentages. Notably, the DNA sequences isolated from the two ape species fit best to the species living in the respective regions. This result suggests that the sequences are of regional origin and do not represent laboratory contaminants. Conclusions: Our results allow at least three possible and mutually not exclusive conclusions. First, all results may represent contamination of the feces by vertebrate DNA from the local environment. Thus, studies investigating a species' diet from feces DNA may be unreliable due to the low copy number of DNA originating from diet items. Second, there is some inherent difference between the bonobo and gorilla feces, with only the later ones being contaminated. Third, similar to bonobos, for which the consumption of monkeys has only recently been documented, the gorilla population investigated (for which very little observational data are as yet available) may occasionally consume small vertebrates. Although the last explanation is speculative, it should not be discarded a-priori given that observational studies continue to unravel new behaviors in great ape species
Electronic entanglement in late transition metal oxides
Here we present a study of the entanglement in the electronic structure of
the late transition metal monoxides - MnO, FeO, CoO, and NiO - obtained by
means of density-functional theory in the local density approximation combined
with dynamical mean-field theory (LDA+DMFT). The impurity problem is solved
through Exact Diagonalization (ED), which grants full access to the thermally
mixed many-body ground state density operator. The quality of the electronic
structure is affirmed through a direct comparison between the calculated
electronic excitation spectrum and photoemission experiments. Our treatment
allows for a quantitative investigation of the entanglement in the electronic
structure. Two main sources of entanglement are explicitly resolved through the
use of a fidelity based geometrical entanglement measure, and additional
information is gained from a complementary entropic entanglement measure. We
show that the interplay of crystal field effects and Coulomb interaction causes
the entanglement in CoO to take a particularly intricate form.Comment: Minor changes. Journal reference adde
Finite-size effects in the dynamics of few bosons in a ring potential
We study the temporal evolution of a small number of ultra-cold bosonic
atoms confined in a ring potential. Assuming that initially the system is in a
solitary-wave solution of the corresponding mean-field problem, we identify
significant differences in the time evolution of the density distribution of
the atoms when it instead is evaluated with the many-body Schr\"odinger
equation. Three characteristic timescales are derived: the first is the period
of rotation of the wave around the ring, the second is associated with a
"decay" of the density variation, and the third is associated with periodic
"collapses" and "revivals" of the density variations, with a factor of separating each of them. The last two timescales tend to infinity in the
appropriate limit of large , in agreement with the mean-field approximation.
These findings are based on the assumption of the initial state being a
mean-field state. We confirm this behavior by comparison to the exact solutions
for a few-body system stirred by an external potential. We find that the exact
solutions of the driven system exhibit similar dynamical features.Comment: To appear in Journal of Physics
Investigation of all Ricci semi-symmetric and all conformally semi-symmetric spacetimes
We find all Ricci semi-symmetric as well as all conformally semi-symmetric
spacetimes. Neither of these properties implies the other. We verify that only
conformally flat spacetimes can be Ricci semi-symmetric without being
conformally semi-symmetric and show that only vacuum spacetimes and spacetimes
with just a -term can be Ricci semi-symmetric without being
conformally semi-symmetric.Comment: 4 pages, 1 tabl
Nongaussian fluctuations arising from finite populations: Exact results for the evolutionary Moran process
The appropriate description of fluctuations within the framework of
evolutionary game theory is a fundamental unsolved problem in the case of
finite populations. The Moran process recently introduced into this context
[Nowak et al., Nature (London) 428, 646 (2004)] defines a promising standard
model of evolutionary game theory in finite populations for which analytical
results are accessible. In this paper, we derive the stationary distribution of
the Moran process population dynamics for arbitrary games for the
finite size case. We show that a nonvanishing background fitness can be
transformed to the vanishing case by rescaling the payoff matrix. In contrast
to the common approach to mimic finite-size fluctuations by Gaussian
distributed noise, the finite size fluctuations can deviate significantly from
a Gaussian distribution.Comment: 4 pages (2 figs). Published in Physical Review E (Rapid
Communications
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