3,149 research outputs found
The Effect of Mutators on Adaptability in Time-Varying Fitness Landscapes
This Letter studies the quasispecies dynamics of a population capable of
genetic repair evolving on a time-dependent fitness landscape. We develop a
model that considers an asexual population of single-stranded, conservatively
replicating genomes, whose only source of genetic variation is due to copying
errors during replication. We consider a time-dependent, single-fitness-peak
landscape where the master sequence changes by a single point mutation every
time . We are able to analytically solve for the evolutionary dynamics
of the population in the point-mutation limit. In particular, our model
provides an analytical expression for the fraction of mutators in the dynamic
fitness landscape that agrees well with results from stochastic simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Oral contraception and eye disease: findings in two large cohort studies
AIM : To investigate the relation between oral contraceptive use and certain eye diseases. \ud
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METHODS : Abstraction of the relevant data from the two large British cohort studies of the effects of oral contraception, the Royal College of General Practitioners' (RCGP) Oral Contraception Study and the Oxford-Family Planning Association (Oxford-FPA) Contraceptive Study. Both cohort studies commenced in 1968 and were organised on a national basis. Between them they have accumulated over 850 000 person years of observation involving 63 000 women. \ud
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RESULTS : The conditions considered in the analysis were conjunctivitis, keratitis, iritis, lacrimal disease, strabismus, cataract, glaucoma, retinal detachment, and retinal vascular lesions. With the exception of retinal vascular lesions, there was no consistent evidence of important increases in risk of eye diseases in users of oral contraception. There was about a twofold increase in the risk of retinal vascular lesions in recent pill users in both studies (statistically significant only in the RCGP study). The increase was not limited to any specific type of lesion and may well reflect diagnostic bias. \ud
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CONCLUSION : Oral contraceptive use does not appear to increase the risk of eye disease, with the possible exception of retinal vascular lesions. \ud
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Keywords: oral contraception; eye disease; cohort studie
A proposal for highly tunable optical parametric oscillation in silicon micro-resonators
We propose a novel scheme for continuous-wave pumped optical parametric oscillation (OPO) inside silicon micro-resonators. The proposed scheme not only requires a relative low lasing threshold, but also exhibits extremely broad tunability extending from the telecom band to mid infrared
On the dynamic tensile strength of Zirconium
Despite its fundamental nature, the process of dynamic tensile failure (spall) is poorly understood. Spall initiation via cracks, voids, etc, before subsequent coalesce, is known to be highly microstructure-dependant. In particular, the availability of slip planes and other methods of plastic deformation controls the onset (or lack thereof) of spall. While studies have been undertaken into the spall response of BCC and FCC materials, less attention has paid to the spall response of highly anisotropic HCP materials. Here the dynamic behaviour of zirconium is investigated via plate-impact experiments, with the aim of building on an ongoing in-house body of work investigating these highly complex materials. In particular, in this paper the effect of impact stress on spall in a commercially sourced Zr rod is considered, with apparent strain-rate softening highlighted
Growth, processing, and optical properties of epitaxial Er_2O_3 on silicon
Erbium-doped materials have been investigated for generating and amplifying light in low-power chip-scale optical networks on silicon, but several effects limit their performance in dense microphotonic applications. Stoichiometric ionic crystals are a potential alternative that achieve an Er^(3+) density 100× greater. We report the growth, processing, material characterization, and optical properties of single-crystal Er_2O_3 epitaxially grown on silicon. A peak Er^(3+) resonant absorption of 364 dB/cm at 1535nm with minimal background loss places a high limit on potential gain. Using high-quality microdisk resonators, we conduct thorough C/L-band radiative efficiency and lifetime measurements and observe strong upconverted luminescence near 550 and 670 nm
Self-optimization of optical confinement in ultraviolet photonic crystal slab laser
We studied numerically and experimentally the effects of structural disorder
on the performance of ultraviolet photonic crystal slab lasers. Optical gain
selectively amplifies the high-quality modes of the passive system. For these
modes, the in-plane and out-of-plane leakage rates may be automatically
balanced in the presence of disorder. The spontaneous optimization of in-plane
and out-of-plane confinement of light in a photonic crystal slab may lead to a
reduction of the lasing threshold.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Pattern formation in a generalised chemotactic model
Many models have been proposed for spatial pattern formation in embryology and analyzed for the standard case of zero-flux boundary conditions. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of boundary conditions on the form of the final pattern. Here we investigate, numerically, the effect of nonstandard boundary conditions on a model pattern generator, which we choose to be of a cell-chemotactic type. We specifically focus on the role of boundary conditions and the effects of scale and aspect ratio, and study the spatiotemporal dynamics of pattern formation. We illustrate the properties of the model by application to the spatiotemporal sequence of skeletal development
Feasibility of detecting single atoms using photonic bandgap cavities
We propose an atom-cavity chip that combines laser cooling and trapping of
neutral atoms with magnetic microtraps and waveguides to deliver a cold atom to
the mode of a fiber taper coupled photonic bandgap (PBG) cavity. The
feasibility of this device for detecting single atoms is analyzed using both a
semi-classical treatment and an unconditional master equation approach.
Single-atom detection seems achievable in an initial experiment involving the
non-deterministic delivery of weakly trapped atoms into the mode of the PBG
cavity.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Mutator Dynamics on a Smooth Evolutionary Landscape
We investigate a model of evolutionary dynamics on a smooth landscape which
features a ``mutator'' allele whose effect is to increase the mutation rate. We
show that the expected proportion of mutators far from equilibrium, when the
fitness is steadily increasing in time, is governed solely by the transition
rates into and out of the mutator state. This results is a much faster rate of
fitness increase than would be the case without the mutator allele. Near the
fitness equilibrium, however, the mutators are severely suppressed, due to the
detrimental effects of a large mutation rate near the fitness maximum. We
discuss the results of a recent experiment on natural selection of E. coli in
the light of our model.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
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