310 research outputs found
Measurement of optical to electrical and electrical to optical delays with ps-level uncertainty
We present a new measurement principle to determine the absolute time delay
of a waveform from an optical reference plane to an electrical reference plane
and vice versa. We demonstrate a method based on this principle with 2 ps
uncertainty. This method can be used to perform accurate time delay
determinations of optical transceivers used in fibre-optic time-dissemination
equipment. As a result the time scales in optical and electrical domain can be
related to each other with the same uncertainty. We expect this method to break
new grounds in high-accuracy time transfer and absolute calibration of
time-transfer equipment
Electronic stability of silicon front-end hybrids
Abstract Stability of front-ends hybrids is often not well understood. Multiple feedback loops are mostly the source of instabilities. The power distribution and ground system are the major common part of the circuit and play a dominant role in the oscillation. Adding only decoupling capacitors does not work, since power distribution foils of a Kapton hybrid have a very low Ohmic impedance. In addition ground-foil ACcurrent summation gives additional amplification. This results in instabilities when the number of operating front-end chips is greater than a critical number
Correlation dynamics between electrons and ions in the fragmentation of D molecules by short laser pulses
We studied the recollision dynamics between the electrons and D ions
following the tunneling ionization of D molecules in an intense short pulse
laser field. The returning electron collisionally excites the D ion to
excited electronic states from there D can dissociate or be further
ionized by the laser field, resulting in D + D or D + D,
respectively. We modeled the fragmentation dynamics and calculated the
resulting kinetic energy spectrum of D to compare with recent experiments.
Since the recollision time is locked to the tunneling ionization time which
occurs only within fraction of an optical cycle, the peaks in the D kinetic
energy spectra provides a measure of the time when the recollision occurs. This
collision dynamics forms the basis of the molecular clock where the clock can
be read with attosecond precision, as first proposed by Corkum and coworkers.
By analyzing each of the elementary processes leading to the fragmentation
quantitatively, we identified how the molecular clock is to be read from the
measured kinetic energy spectra of D and what laser parameters be used in
order to measure the clock more accurately.Comment: 13 pages with 14 figure
Entanglement and Timing-Based Mechanisms in the Coherent Control of Scattering Processes
The coherent control of scattering processes is considered, with electron
impact dissociation of H used as an example. The physical mechanism
underlying coherently controlled stationary state scattering is exposed by
analyzing a control scenario that relies on previously established entanglement
requirements between the scattering partners. Specifically, initial state
entanglement assures that all collisions in the scattering volume yield the
desirable scattering configuration. Scattering is controlled by preparing the
particular internal state wave function that leads to the favored collisional
configuration in the collision volume. This insight allows coherent control to
be extended to the case of time-dependent scattering. Specifically, we identify
reactive scattering scenarios using incident wave packets of translational
motion where coherent control is operational and initial state entanglement is
unnecessary. Both the stationary and time-dependent scenarios incorporate
extended coherence features, making them physically distinct. From a
theoretical point of view, this work represents a large step forward in the
qualitative understanding of coherently controlled reactive scattering. From an
experimental viewpoint, it offers an alternative to entanglement-based control
schemes. However, both methods present significant challenges to existing
experimental technologies
Geographical Detector-Based Risk Assessment of the Under-Five Mortality in the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, China
On 12 May, 2008, a devastating earthquake registering 8.0 on the Richter scale occurred in Sichuan Province, China, taking tens of thousands of lives and destroying the homes of millions of people. Many of the deceased were children, particular children less than five years old who were more vulnerable to such a huge disaster than the adult. In order to obtain information specifically relevant to further researches and future preventive measures, potential risk factors associated with earthquake-related child mortality need to be identified. We used four geographical detectors (risk detector, factor detector, ecological detector, and interaction detector) based on spatial variation analysis of some potential factors to assess their effects on the under-five mortality. It was found that three factors are responsible for child mortality: earthquake intensity, collapsed house, and slope. The study, despite some limitations, has important implications for both researchers and policy makers
Measurement of mechanical vibrations excited in aluminium resonators by 0.6 GeV electrons
We present measurements of mechanical vibrations induced by 0.6 GeV electrons
impinging on cylindrical and spherical aluminium resonators. To monitor the
amplitude of the resonator's vibrational modes we used piezoelectric ceramic
sensors, calibrated by standard accelerometers. Calculations using the
thermo-acoustic conversion model, agree well with the experimental data, as
demonstrated by the specific variation of the excitation strengths with the
absorbed energy, and with the traversing particles' track positions. For the
first longitudinal mode of the cylindrical resonator we measured a conversion
factor of 7.4 +- 1.4 nm/J, confirming the model value of 10 nm/J. Also, for the
spherical resonator, we found the model values for the L=2 and L=1 mode
amplitudes to be consistent with our measurement. We thus have confirmed the
applicability of the model, and we note that calculations based on the model
have shown that next generation resonant mass gravitational wave detectors can
only be expected to reach their intended ultra high sensitivity if they will be
shielded by an appreciable amount of rock, where a veto detector can reduce the
background of remaining impinging cosmic rays effectively.Comment: Tex-Article with epsfile, 34 pages including 13 figures and 5 tables.
To be published in Rev. Scient. Instr., May 200
Risk Assessment of Gastric Cancer Caused by Helicobacter pylori Using CagA Sequence Markers
As a marker of Helicobacter pylori, Cytotoxin-associated gene A (cagA) has been revealed to be the major virulence factor causing gastroduodenal diseases. However, the molecular mechanisms that underlie the development of different gastroduodenal diseases caused by cagA-positive H. pylori infection remain unknown. Current studies are limited to the evaluation of the correlation between diseases and the number of Glu-Pro-Ile-Tyr-Ala (EPIYA) motifs in the CagA strain. To further understand the relationship between CagA sequence and its virulence to gastric cancer, we proposed a systematic entropy-based approach to identify the cancer-related residues in the intervening regions of CagA and employed a supervised machine learning method for cancer and non-cancer cases classification.An entropy-based calculation was used to detect key residues of CagA intervening sequences as the gastric cancer biomarker. For each residue, both combinatorial entropy and background entropy were calculated, and the entropy difference was used as the criterion for feature residue selection. The feature values were then fed into Support Vector Machines (SVM) with the Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel, and two parameters were tuned to obtain the optimal F value by using grid search. Two other popular sequence classification methods, the BLAST and HMMER, were also applied to the same data for comparison.Our method achieved 76% and 71% classification accuracy for Western and East Asian subtypes, respectively, which performed significantly better than BLAST and HMMER. This research indicates that small variations of amino acids in those important residues might lead to the virulence variance of CagA strains resulting in different gastroduodenal diseases. This study provides not only a useful tool to predict the correlation between the novel CagA strain and diseases, but also a general new framework for detecting biological sequence biomarkers in population studies
Cold gas accretion in galaxies
Evidence for the accretion of cold gas in galaxies has been rapidly
accumulating in the past years. HI observations of galaxies and their
environment have brought to light new facts and phenomena which are evidence of
ongoing or recent accretion:
1) A large number of galaxies are accompanied by gas-rich dwarfs or are
surrounded by HI cloud complexes, tails and filaments. It may be regarded as
direct evidence of cold gas accretion in the local universe. It is probably the
same kind of phenomenon of material infall as the stellar streams observed in
the halos of our galaxy and M31. 2) Considerable amounts of extra-planar HI
have been found in nearby spiral galaxies. While a large fraction of this gas
is produced by galactic fountains, it is likely that a part of it is of
extragalactic origin. 3) Spirals are known to have extended and warped outer
layers of HI. It is not clear how these have formed, and how and for how long
the warps can be sustained. Gas infall has been proposed as the origin. 4) The
majority of galactic disks are lopsided in their morphology as well as in their
kinematics. Also here recent accretion has been advocated as a possible cause.
In our view, accretion takes place both through the arrival and merging of
gas-rich satellites and through gas infall from the intergalactic medium (IGM).
The infall may have observable effects on the disk such as bursts of star
formation and lopsidedness. We infer a mean ``visible'' accretion rate of cold
gas in galaxies of at least 0.2 Msol/yr. In order to reach the accretion rates
needed to sustain the observed star formation (~1 Msol/yr), additional infall
of large amounts of gas from the IGM seems to be required.Comment: To appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics Reviews. 34 pages.
Full-resolution version available at
http://www.astron.nl/~oosterlo/accretionRevie
Regulation of RKIP Function by Helicobacter pylori in Gastric Cancer
Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a gram-negative, spiral-shaped bacterium that infects more than half of the world’s population and is a major cause of gastric adenocarcinoma. The mechanisms that link H. pylori infection to gastric carcinogenesis are not well understood. In the present study, we report that the Raf-kinase inhibitor protein (RKIP) has a role in the induction of apoptosis by H. pylori in gastric epithelial cells. Western blot and luciferase transcription reporter assays demonstrate that the pathogenicity island of H. pylori rapidly phosphorylates RKIP, which then localizes to the nucleus where it activates its own transcription and induces apoptosis. Forced overexpression of RKIP enhances apoptosis in H. pylori-infected cells, whereas RKIP RNA inhibition suppresses the induction of apoptosis by H. pylori infection. While inducing the phosphorylation of RKIP, H. pylori simultaneously targets non-phosphorylated RKIP for proteasome-mediated degradation. The increase in RKIP transcription and phosphorylation is abrogated by mutating RKIP serine 153 to valine, demonstrating that regulation of RKIP activity by H. pylori is dependent upon RKIP’s S153 residue. In addition, H. pylori infection increases the expression of Snail, a transcriptional repressor of RKIP. Our results suggest that H. pylori utilizes a tumor suppressor protein, RKIP, to promote apoptosis in gastric cancer cells
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