Dynamic response studies on aggregation and breakage dynamics of colloidal dispersions in stirred tanks

Aggregation and breakage of aggregates of fully destabilized polystyrene latex particles in turbulent flow was studied experimentally in both batch and continuous stirred tanks using small-angle static light scattering. It was found that the steady-state values of the root-mean-square radius of gyration are fully reversible upon changes of stirring speed as well as solid volume fraction. Steady-state values of the root-mean-square radius of gyration were decreasing with decreasing solid volume fraction as well as with increasing stirring speed. Moreover, it was found that the steady-state structure and shape of the aggregates is not influenced by the applied stirring speed

Dynamical invariants and nonadiabatic geometric phases in open quantum systems

We introduce an operational framework to analyze non-adiabatic Abelian and non-Abelian, cyclic and non-cyclic, geometric phases in open quantum systems. In order to remove the adiabaticity condition, we generalize the theory of dynamical invariants to the context of open systems evolving under arbitrary convolutionless master equations. Geometric phases are then defined through the Jordan canonical form of the dynamical invariant associated with the super-operator that governs the master equation. As a by-product, we provide a sufficient condition for the robustness of the phase against a given decohering process. We illustrate our results by considering a two-level system in a Markovian interaction with the environment, where we show that the non-adiabatic geometric phase acquired by the system can be constructed in such a way that it is robust against both dephasing and spontaneous emission.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures. v2: minor corrections and subsection IV.D added. Published versio

Thirty Femtograms Detection of Iron in Mammalian Cells

Inorganic nanomaterials and particles with enhanced optical, mechanical or magnetic attributes are currently being developed for a wide range of applications. Safety issues have been formulated however concerning their potential cyto- and genotoxicity. For in vivo and in vitro experimentations, recent developments have heightened the need of simple and facile methods to measure the amount of nanoparticles taken up by cells or tissues. In this work, we present a rapid and highly sensitive method for quantifying the uptake of iron oxide nanoparticles in mammalian cells. Our approach exploits the digestion of incubated cells with concentrated hydrochloric acid reactant and a colorimetric based UV-Visible absorption technique. The technique allows the detection of iron in cells over 4 decades in masses, from 0.03 to 300 picograms per cell. Applied on particles of different surface chemistry and sizes, the protocol demonstrates that the coating is the key parameter in the nanoparticle/cell interactions. The data are corroborated by scanning and transmission electron microscopy and stress the importance of resiliently adsorbed nanoparticles at the plasma membrane.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure

An exact master equation for the system-reservoir dynamics under the strong coupling regime and non-Markovian dynamics

In this paper we present a method to derive an exact master equation for a bosonic system coupled to a set of other bosonic systems, which plays the role of the reservoir, under the strong coupling regime, i.e., without resorting to either the rotating-wave or secular approximations. Working with phase-space distribution functions, we verify that the dynamics are separated in the evolution of its center, which follows classical mechanics, and its shape, which becomes distorted. This is the generalization of a result by Glauber, who stated that coherent states remain coherent under certain circumstances, specifically when the rotating-wave approximation and a zero-temperature reservoir are used. We show that the counter-rotating terms generate fluctuations that distort the vacuum state, much the same as thermal fluctuations.Finally, we discuss conditions for non-Markovian dynamics

In vitro toxicity of nanoceria: effect of coating and stability in biofluids

Due to the increasing use of nanometric cerium oxide in applications, concerns about the toxicity of these particles have been raised and have resulted in a large number of investigations. We report here on the interactions between 7 nm anionically charged cerium oxide particles and living mammalian cells. By a modification of the particle coating including low-molecular weight ligands and polymers, two generic behaviors are compared: particles coated with citrate ions that precipitate in biofluids and particles coated with poly(acrylic acid) that are stable and remain nanometric. We find that nanoceria covered with both coating agents are taken up by mouse fibroblasts and localized into membrane-bound compartments. However, flow cytometry and electron microscopy reveal that as a result of their precipitation, citrate-coated particles interact more strongly with cells. At cerium concentration above 1 mM, only citrate-coated nanoceria (and not particles coated with poly(acrylic acid)) display toxicity and moderate genotoxicity. The results demonstrate that the control of the surface chemistry of the particles and its ability to prevent aggregation can affect the toxicity of nanomaterials.Comment: 33 pages 10 figures, accepted at Nanotoxicolog

Control of the geometric phase and pseudo-spin dynamics on coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

We describe the behavior of two coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in time-dependent (TD) trap potentials and TD Rabi (or tunneling) frequency, using the two-mode approach. Starting from Bloch states, we succeed to get analytical solutions for the TD Schroedinger equation and present a detailed analysis of the relative and geometric phases acquired by the wave function of the condensates, as well as their population imbalance. We also establish a connection between the geometric phases and constants of motion which characterize the dynamic of the system. Besides analyzing the affects of temporality on condensates that differs by hyperfine degrees of freedom (internal Josephson effect), we also do present a brief discussion of a one specie condensate in a double-well potential (external Josephson effect).Comment: 1 tex file and 11 figures in pdf forma

Application of Neural Networks and Adaptive-Network-Based Fuzzy System in the Prediction of Optimum Bitumen Content for Asphaltic Concrete Mixtures

The objective of this study is to explore the applicability of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and Adaptive-Network-Based fuzzy System (ANFIS) for predicting the bitumen content (OBC) of asphaltic concrete mixtures based on the experimental data. Samples were collected from different regions in Makkah region in Saudi Arabia during construction and tested at laboratories of Umm Al-Qura University for bitumen content, gradation of aggregate determination. Asphaltic concrete mixtures data were used to test the performance of the ANNs and ANFIS models. Among the two ANN models (a feed-forward back propagation (BP) and a radial basis function (RBF)) employed for this investigation, the BP neural network was found to be superior to RBF network for prediction of the OBC of asphaltic concrete mixtures. For improving model prediction efficiency, optimization of network structure and spread are important for BP and RBF types of the network, respectively. A BPNN model having a structure 3-8-4-1 (three neurons in input and eight neurons in first hidden layers, four neurons in second hidden layer and one neuron in output layer) produced better prediction performance efficiencies with an accuracy of 96.37%. The BPNN (3-8-4-1) model was fairly close to the corresponding actual values of OBC with the average error of 1.1854% and 1.01% for trained and tested data respectively. The results of the testing of ANFIS were indicated almost same performance of the BPNN (3-8-4-1) model

Teleportation of a Zero-and One-photon Running Wave State by Projection Synthesis

We show how to teleport a running wave superposition of zero- and one-photon field state through the projection synthesis technique. The fidelity of the scheme is computed taking into account the noise introduced by dissipation and the efficiency of the detectors. These error sources have been introduced through a single general relationship between input and output operators.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

Three path interference using nuclear magnetic resonance: a test of the consistency of Born's rule

The Born rule is at the foundation of quantum mechanics and transforms our classical way of understanding probabilities by predicting that interference occurs between pairs of independent paths of a single object. One consequence of the Born rule is that three way (or three paths) quantum interference does not exist. In order to test the consistency of the Born rule, we examine detection probabilities in three path intereference using an ensemble of spin-1/2 quantum registers in liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance (LSNMR). As a measure of the consistency, we evaluate the ratio of three way interference to two way interference. Our experiment bounded the ratio to the order of $10^{-3} \pm 10^{-3}$, and hence it is consistent with Born's rule.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures; Improved presentation of figures 1 and 4, changes made in section 2 to better describe the experiment, minor changes throughout, and added several reference