508 research outputs found
Chiral phase transitions: focus driven critical behavior in systems with planar and vector ordering
The fixed point that governs the critical behavior of magnets described by
the -vector chiral model under the physical values of () is
shown to be a stable focus both in two and three dimensions. Robust evidence in
favor of this conclusion is obtained within the five-loop and six-loop
renormalization-group analysis in fixed dimension. The spiral-like approach of
the chiral fixed point results in unusual crossover and near-critical regimes
that may imitate varying critical exponents seen in physical and computer
experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Discussion enlarge
Evaluation of candidate probiotic strains for gilthead sea bream larvae (Sparus aurata) using an in vivo approach
Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of six bacterial strains on gilthead sea bream larvae (Sparus aurata). Methods and Results: Six bacterial strains isolated from well-performing live food cultures were identified by sequencing fragments of their 16s rDNA genome to the genus level as Cytophaga sp., Roseobacter sp., Ruergeria sp., Paracoccus sp., Aeromonas sp. and Shewanella sp. Survival rates of gilthead sea bream larvae transferred to seawater added these bacterial strains at concentrations of 6 +/- 0.3 x 10(5) bacteria ml(-1) were similar to those of larvae transferred to sterilized seawater and showed an average of 86% at 9 days after hatching, whereas, survival rates of larvae transferred to filtered seawater were lower (P < 0.05), and showed an average of 39%, 9 days after hatching. Conclusion: Several bacterial strains isolated from well-performing live food cultures showed a positive effect for sea bream larvae when compared with filtered seawater. Significance and Impact of the Study: The approach used in this study could be applied as an in vivo evaluation method of candidate probiotic strains used in the rearing of marine fish larvae
Miracles and complementarity in de Sitter space
In this paper we consider a scenario, consisting of a de Sitter phase
followed by a phase described by a scale factor , where
, which can be viewed as an inflationary toy model. It is argued that
this scenario naively could lead to an information paradox. We propose that the
phenomenon of Poincar\'{e} recurrences plays a crucial role in the resolution
of the paradox. We also comment on the relevance of these results to inflation
and the CMBR.Comment: 13 page
Critical scaling of the a.c. conductivity for a superconductor above Tc
We consider the effects of critical superconducting fluctuations on the
scaling of the linear a.c. conductivity, \sigma(\omega), of a bulk
superconductor slightly above Tc in zero applied magnetic field. The dynamic
renormalization- group method is applied to the relaxational time-dependent
Ginzburg-Landau model of superconductivity, with \sigma(\omega) calculated via
the Kubo formula to O(\epsilon^{2}) in the \epsilon = 4 - d expansion. The
critical dynamics are governed by the relaxational XY-model
renormalization-group fixed point. The scaling hypothesis \sigma(\omega) \sim
\xi^{2-d+z} S(\omega \xi^{z}) proposed by Fisher, Fisher and Huse is explicitly
verified, with the dynamic exponent z \approx 2.015, the value expected for the
d=3 relaxational XY-model. The universal scaling function S(y) is computed and
shown to deviate only slightly from its Gaussian form, calculated earlier. The
present theory is compared with experimental measurements of the a.c.
conductivity of YBCO near Tc, and the implications of this theory for such
experiments is discussed.Comment: 16 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Scaling critical behavior of superconductors at zero magnetic field
We consider the scaling behavior in the critical domain of superconductors at
zero external magnetic field. The first part of the paper is concerned with the
Ginzburg-Landau model in the zero magnetic field Meissner phase. We discuss the
scaling behavior of the superfluid density and we give an alternative proof of
Josephson's relation for a charged superfluid. This proof is obtained as a
consequence of an exact renormalization group equation for the photon mass. We
obtain Josephson's relation directly in the form , that
is, we do not need to assume that the hyperscaling relation holds. Next, we
give an interpretation of a recent experiment performed in thin films of
. We argue that the measured mean field like
behavior of the penetration depth exponent is possibly associated with a
non-trivial critical behavior and we predict the exponents and
for the correlation lenght and specific heat, respectively. In the
second part of the paper we discuss the scaling behavior in the continuum dual
Ginzburg-Landau model. After reviewing lattice duality in the Ginzburg-Landau
model, we discuss the continuum dual version by considering a family of
scalings characterized by a parameter introduced such that
, where is the bare mass of the magnetic
induction field. We discuss the difficulties in identifying the renormalized
magnetic induction mass with the photon mass. We show that the only way to have
a critical regime with is having , that
is, with having the scaling behavior of the renormalized photon mass.Comment: RevTex, 15 pages, no figures; the subsection III-C has been removed
due to a mistak
A hybrid semantic approach to building dynamic maps of research communities
In the last ten years, ontology-based recommender systems have been shown to be effective tools for predicting user preferences and suggesting items. There are however some issues associated with the ontologies adopted by these approaches, such as: 1) their crafting is not a cheap process, being time consuming and calling for specialist expertise; 2) they may not represent accurately the viewpoint of the targeted user community; 3) they tend to provide rather static models, which fail to keep track of evolving user perspectives. To address these issues, we propose Klink UM, an approach for extracting emergent semantics from user feedbacks, with the aim of tailoring the ontology to the users and improving the recommendations accuracy. Klink UM uses statistical and machine learning techniques for finding hierarchical and similarity relationships between keywords associated with rated items and can be used for: 1) building a conceptual taxonomy from scratch, 2) enriching and correcting an existing ontology, 3) providing a numerical estimate of the intensity of semantic relationships according to the users. The evaluation shows that Klink UM performs well with respect to handcrafted ontologies and can significantly increase the accuracy of suggestions in content-based recommender systems
Anomalous dimensions and phase transitions in superconductors
The anomalous scaling in the Ginzburg-Landau model for the superconducting
phase transition is studied. It is argued that the negative sign of the
exponent is a consequence of a special singular behavior in momentum space. The
negative sign of comes from the divergence of the critical correlation
function at finite distances. This behavior implies the existence of a Lifshitz
point in the phase diagram. The anomalous scaling of the vector potential is
also discussed. It is shown that the anomalous dimension of the vector
potential has important consequences for the critical dynamics in
superconductors. The frequency-dependent conductivity is shown to obey the
scaling . The prediction is
obtained from existing Monte Carlo data.Comment: RevTex, 20 pages, no figures; small changes; version accepted in PR
Continuous cerebroventricular administration of dopamine: A new treatment for severe dyskinesia in Parkinson’s disease?
In Parkinson’s disease (PD) depletion of dopamine in the nigro-striatal pathway is a main pathological hallmark that requires continuous and focal restoration. Current predominant treatment with intermittent oral administration of its precursor, Levodopa (l-dopa), remains the gold standard but pharmacological drawbacks trigger motor fluctuations and dyskinesia. Continuous intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) administration of dopamine previously failed as a therapy because of an inability to resolve the accelerated dopamine oxidation and tachyphylaxia. We aim to overcome prior challenges by demonstrating treatment feasibility and efficacy of continuous i.c.v. of dopamine close to the striatum. Dopamine prepared either anaerobically (A-dopamine) or aerobically (O-dopamine) in the presence or absence of a conservator (sodium metabisulfite, SMBS) was assessed upon acute MPTP and chronic 6-OHDA lesioning and compared to peripheral l-dopa treatment. A-dopamine restored motor function and induced a dose dependent increase of nigro-striatal tyrosine hydroxylase positive neurons in mice after 7 days of MPTP insult that was not evident with either O-dopamine or l-dopa. In the 6-OHDA rat model, continuous circadian i.c.v. injection of A-dopamine over 30 days also improved motor activity without occurrence of tachyphylaxia. This safety profile was highly favorable as A-dopamine did not induce dyskinesia or behavioral sensitization as observed with peripheral l-dopa treatment. Indicative of a new therapeutic strategy for patients suffering from l-dopa related complications with dyskinesia, continuous i.c.v. of A-dopamine has greater efficacy in mediating motor impairment over a large therapeutic index without inducing dyskinesia and tachyphylaxia
Green function techniques in the treatment of quantum transport at the molecular scale
The theoretical investigation of charge (and spin) transport at nanometer
length scales requires the use of advanced and powerful techniques able to deal
with the dynamical properties of the relevant physical systems, to explicitly
include out-of-equilibrium situations typical for electrical/heat transport as
well as to take into account interaction effects in a systematic way.
Equilibrium Green function techniques and their extension to non-equilibrium
situations via the Keldysh formalism build one of the pillars of current
state-of-the-art approaches to quantum transport which have been implemented in
both model Hamiltonian formulations and first-principle methodologies. We offer
a tutorial overview of the applications of Green functions to deal with some
fundamental aspects of charge transport at the nanoscale, mainly focusing on
applications to model Hamiltonian formulations.Comment: Tutorial review, LaTeX, 129 pages, 41 figures, 300 references,
submitted to Springer series "Lecture Notes in Physics
Forward pi^0 Production and Associated Transverse Energy Flow in Deep-Inelastic Scattering at HERA
Deep-inelastic positron-proton interactions at low values of Bjorken-x down
to x \approx 4.10^-5 which give rise to high transverse momentum pi^0 mesons
are studied with the H1 experiment at HERA. The inclusive cross section for
pi^0 mesons produced at small angles with respect to the proton remnant (the
forward region) is presented as a function of the transverse momentum and
energy of the pi^0 and of the four-momentum transfer Q^2 and Bjorken-x.
Measurements are also presented of the transverse energy flow in events
containing a forward pi^0 meson. Hadronic final state calculations based on QCD
models implementing different parton evolution schemes are confronted with the
data.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures and 3 table
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