Impurity Scattering in Luttinger Liquid with Electron-Phonon Coupling

We study the influence of electron-phonon coupling on electron transport through a Luttinger liquid with an embedded weak scatterer or weak link. We derive the renormalization group (RG) equations which indicate that the directions of RG flows can change upon varying either the relative strength of the electron-electron and electron-phonon coupling or the ratio of Fermi to sound velocities. This results in the rich phase diagram with up to three fixed points: an unstable one with a finite value of conductance and two stable ones, corresponding to an ideal metal or insulator.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Invisible Pixels Are Dead, Long Live Invisible Pixels!

Privacy has deteriorated in the world wide web ever since the 1990s. The tracking of browsing habits by different third-parties has been at the center of this deterioration. Web cookies and so-called web beacons have been the classical ways to implement third-party tracking. Due to the introduction of more sophisticated technical tracking solutions and other fundamental transformations, the use of classical image-based web beacons might be expected to have lost their appeal. According to a sample of over thirty thousand images collected from popular websites, this paper shows that such an assumption is a fallacy: classical 1 x 1 images are still commonly used for third-party tracking in the contemporary world wide web. While it seems that ad-blockers are unable to fully block these classical image-based tracking beacons, the paper further demonstrates that even limited information can be used to accurately classify the third-party 1 x 1 images from other images. An average classification accuracy of 0.956 is reached in the empirical experiment. With these results the paper contributes to the ongoing attempts to better understand the lack of privacy in the world wide web, and the means by which the situation might be eventually improved.Comment: Forthcoming in the 17th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES 2018), Toronto, AC

MoodBar: Increasing new user retention in Wikipedia through lightweight socialization

Socialization in online communities allows existing members to welcome and recruit newcomers, introduce them to community norms and practices, and sustain their early participation. However, socializing newcomers does not come for free: in large communities, socialization can result in a significant workload for mentors and is hard to scale. In this study we present results from an experiment that measured the effect of a lightweight socialization tool on the activity and retention of newly registered users attempting to edit for the first time Wikipedia. Wikipedia is struggling with the retention of newcomers and our results indicate that a mechanism to elicit lightweight feedback and to provide early mentoring to newcomers improves their chances of becoming long-term contributors.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for presentation at CSCW'1

Spin Relaxation in a Quantized Hall Regime in Presence of a Disorder

We study the spin relaxation (SR) of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in the quantized Hall regime and discuss the role of spatial inhomogeneity effects on the relaxation. The results are obtained for small filling factors ($\nu\ll 1$) or when the filling factor is close to an integer. In either case SR times are essentially determined by a smooth random potential. For small $\nu$ we predict a "magneto-confinement" resonance manifested in the enhancement of the SR rate when the Zeeman energy is close to the spacing of confinement sublevels in the low-energy wing of the disorder-broadened Landau level. In the resonant region the $B$-dependence of the SR time has a peculiar non-monotonic shape. If $\nu\simeq 2n+1$, the SR is going non-exponentially. Under typical conditions the calculated SR times range from $10^{-8}$ to $10^{-6}$s.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure. To appear in JETP Letter

Cosine and Sine Operators Related with Orthogonal Polynomial Sets on the Intervall [-1,1]

The quantization of phase is still an open problem. In the approach of Susskind and Glogower so called cosine and sine operators play a fundamental role. Their eigenstates in the Fock representation are related with the Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind. Here we introduce more general cosine and sine operators whose eigenfunctions in the Fock basis are related in a similar way with arbitrary orthogonal polynomial sets on the intervall [-1,1]. To each polynomial set defined in terms of a weight function there corresponds a pair of cosine and sine operators. Depending on the symmetry of the weight function we distinguish generalized or extended operators. Their eigenstates are used to define cosine and sine representations and probability distributions. We consider also the inverse arccosine and arcsine operators and use their eigenstates to define cosine-phase and sine-phase distributions, respectively. Specific, numerical and graphical results are given for the classical orthogonal polynomials and for particular Fock and coherent states.Comment: 1 tex-file (24 pages), 11 figure

Gene identification for the cblD defect of vitamin B12 metabolism

Background Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) is an essential cofactor in several metabolic pathways. Intracellular conversion of cobalamin to its two coenzymes, adenosylcobalamin in mitochondria and methylcobalamin in the cytoplasm, is necessary for the homeostasis of methylmalonic acid and homocysteine. Nine defects of intracellular cobalamin metabolism have been defined by means of somatic complementation analysis. One of these defects, the cblD defect, can cause isolated methylmalonic aciduria, isolated homocystinuria, or both. Affected persons present with multisystem clinical abnormalities, including developmental, hematologic, neurologic, and metabolic findings. The gene responsible for the cblD defect has not been identified. Methods We studied seven patients with the cblD defect, and skin fibroblasts from each were investigated in cell culture. Microcell-mediated chromosome transfer and refined genetic mapping were used to localize the responsible gene. This gene was transfected into cblD fibroblasts to test for the rescue of adenosylcobalamin and methylcobalamin synthesis. Results The cblD gene was localized to human chromosome 2q23.2, and a candidate gene, designated MMADHC (methylmalonic aciduria, cblD type, and homocystinuria), was identified in this region. Transfection of wild-type MMADHC rescued the cellular phenotype, and the functional importance of mutant alleles was shown by means of transfection with mutant constructs. The predicted MMADHC protein has sequence homology with a bacterial ATP-binding cassette transporter and contains a putative cobalamin binding motif and a putative mitochondrial targeting sequence. Conclusions Mutations in a gene we designated MMADHC are responsible for the cblD defect in vitamin B12 metabolism. Various mutations are associated with each of the three biochemical phenotypes of the disorder

Evaluation of cell culture in microfluidic chips for application in monoclonal antibody production

Microfluidic chips are useful devices for cell culture that allow cell growth under highly controlled conditions, as is required for production of therapeutic recombinant proteins. To understand the optimal conditions for growth of cells amenable of recombinant protein expression in these devices,we culturedHEK-293T cells under different microfluidic experimental conditions. The cells were cultured in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and polydi-methylsiloxane (PDMS)microdevices, in the absence or presence of the cell adhesion agent poly-D-lysine. Different microchannel geometries and thicknesses, as well as the influence of the flow rate have also been tested, showing their great influence in cell adhesion and growth. Results show that the presence of poly-D-lysine improves the adhesion and viability of the cells in continuous or discontinuous flow. Moreover, the optimal adhesion of cells was observed in the corners of themicrochannels, as well as in wide channels possibly due to the decrease in the flow rate in these areas. These studies provide insight into the optimal architecture of microchannels for long-term culture of adherent cells in order to use microfluidics devices as bioreactors for monoclonal antibodies production.Fil: Peñaherrera Pazmiño, Ana Belén. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Payés, Cristian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Sierra Rodero, Marina. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Vega, M.. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional; ArgentinaFil: Rosero, G.. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Lerner, Betiana. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Helguera, Gustavo Fernando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Pérez, M. S.. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

A two-dimensional, two-electron model atom in a laser pulse: exact treatment, single active electron-analysis, time-dependent density functional theory, classical calculations, and non-sequential ionization

Owing to its numerical simplicity, a two-dimensional two-electron model atom, with each electron moving in one direction, is an ideal system to study non-perturbatively a fully correlated atom exposed to a laser field. Frequently made assumptions, such as the ``single active electron''- approach and calculational approximations, e.g. time dependent density functional theory or (semi-) classical techniques, can be tested. In this paper we examine the multiphoton short pulse-regime. We observe ``non-sequential'' ionization, i.e.\ double ionization at lower field strengths as expected from a sequential, single active electron-point of view. Since we find non-sequential ionization also in purely classical simulations, we are able to clarify the mechanism behind this effect in terms of single particle trajectories. PACS Number(s): 32.80.RmComment: 10 pages, 16 figures (gzipped postscript), see also http://www.physik.tu-darmstadt.de/tqe

Sharing and Preserving Computational Analyses for Posterity with encapsulator

Open data and open-source software may be part of the solution to science's "reproducibility crisis", but they are insufficient to guarantee reproducibility. Requiring minimal end-user expertise, encapsulator creates a "time capsule" with reproducible code in a self-contained computational environment. encapsulator provides end-users with a fully-featured desktop environment for reproducible research.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

The Zipf law for random texts with unequal probabilities of occurrence of letters and the Pascal pyramid

We model the generation of words with independent unequal probabilities of occurrence of letters. We prove that the probability $p(r)$ of occurrence of words of rank $r$ has a power asymptotics. As distinct from the paper published earlier by B. Conrad and M. Mitzenmacher, we give a brief proof by elementary methods and obtain an explicit formula for the exponent of the power law.Comment: 4 page