29 research outputs found
Superconductivity in the Intercalated Graphite Compounds C6Yb and C6Ca
In this letter we report the discovery of superconductivity in the
isostructural graphite intercalation compounds C6Yb and C6Ca, with transition
temperatures of 6.5K and 11.5K respectively. A structural characterisation of
these compounds shows them to be hexagonal layered systems in the same class as
other graphite intercalates. If we assume that all the outer s-electrons are
transferred from the intercalant to the graphite sheets, then the charge
transfer in these compounds is comparable to other superconducting graphite
intercalants such as C8K 1,2 . However, the superconducting transition
temperatures of C6Yb and C6Ca are up to two orders of magnitude greater.
Interestingly, superconducting upper critical field studies and resistivity
measurements suggest that these compounds are significantly more isotropic than
pure graphite. This is unexpected as the effect of introducing the intercalant
is to move the graphite layer further apart.Comment: 2 Figures. Please see accompanying theoretical manuscript,
"Electronic Structure of the Superconducting Graphite Intercalates" by Csanyi
et al., cond-mat/050356
Chromosomal copy number heterogeneity predicts survival rates across cancers.
Survival rates of cancer patients vary widely within and between malignancies. While genetic aberrations are at the root of all cancers, individual genomic features cannot explain these distinct disease outcomes. In contrast, intra-tumour heterogeneity (ITH) has the potential to elucidate pan-cancer survival rates and the biology that drives cancer prognosis. Unfortunately, a comprehensive and effective framework to measure ITH across cancers is missing. Here, we introduce a scalable measure of chromosomal copy number heterogeneity (CNH) that predicts patient survival across cancers. We show that the level of ITH can be derived from a single-sample copy number profile. Using gene-expression data and live cell imaging we demonstrate that ongoing chromosomal instability underlies the observed heterogeneity. Analysing 11,534 primary cancer samples from 37 different malignancies, we find that copy number heterogeneity can be accurately deduced and predicts cancer survival across tissues of origin and stages of disease. Our results provide a unifying molecular explanation for the different survival rates observed between cancer types
Simulating rare events in dynamical processes
Atypical, rare trajectories of dynamical systems are important: they are
often the paths for chemical reactions, the haven of (relative) stability of
planetary systems, the rogue waves that are detected in oil platforms, the
structures that are responsible for intermittency in a turbulent liquid, the
active regions that allow a supercooled liquid to flow... Simulating them in an
efficient, accelerated way, is in fact quite simple.
In this paper we review a computational technique to study such rare events
in both stochastic and Hamiltonian systems. The method is based on the
evolution of a family of copies of the system which are replicated or killed in
such a way as to favor the realization of the atypical trajectories. We
illustrate this with various examples