1,334 research outputs found
Coulomb gauge confinement in the heavy quark limit
The relationship between the nonperturbative Green's functions of Yang-Mills
theory and the confinement potential is investigated. By rewriting the
generating functional of quantum chromodynamics in terms of a heavy quark mass
expansion in Coulomb gauge, restricting to leading order in this expansion and
considering only the two-point functions of the Yang-Mills sector, the
rainbow-ladder approximation to the gap and Bethe-Salpeter equations is shown
to be exact in this case and an analytic, nonperturbative solution is
presented. It is found that there is a direct connection between the string
tension and the temporal gluon propagator. Further, it is shown that for the
4-point quark correlation functions, only confined bound states of
color-singlet quark-antiquark (meson) and quark-quark (baryon) pairs exist.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure
Extension of holomorphic functions and cohomology classes from non reduced analytic subvarieties
The goal of this survey is to describe some recent results concerning the L 2
extension of holomorphic sections or cohomology classes with values in vector
bundles satisfying weak semi-positivity properties. The results presented here
are generalized versions of the Ohsawa-Takegoshi extension theorem, and borrow
many techniques from the long series of papers by T. Ohsawa. The recent
achievement that we want to point out is that the surjectivity property holds
true for restriction morphisms to non necessarily reduced subvarieties,
provided these are defined as zero varieties of multiplier ideal sheaves. The
new idea involved to approach the existence problem is to make use of L 2
approximation in the Bochner-Kodaira technique. The extension results hold
under curvature conditions that look pretty optimal. However, a major unsolved
problem is to obtain natural (and hopefully best possible) L 2 estimates for
the extension in the case of non reduced subvarieties -- the case when Y has
singularities or several irreducible components is also a substantial issue.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1703.00292,
arXiv:1510.0523
Local maximum points of explicitly quasiconvex functions
This work concerns generalized convex real-valued functions defined on a nonempty convex subset of a real topological linear space. Its aim is twofold: first, to show that any local maximum point of an explicitly quasiconvex function is a global minimum point whenever it belongs to the intrinsic core of the function’s domain and second, to characterize strictly convex normed spaces by applying this property for a particular class of convex functions
Distributed Memory, GPU Accelerated Fock Construction for Hybrid, Gaussian Basis Density Functional Theory
With the growing reliance of modern supercomputers on accelerator-based
architectures such a GPUs, the development and optimization of electronic
structure methods to exploit these massively parallel resources has become a
recent priority. While significant strides have been made in the development of
GPU accelerated, distributed memory algorithms for many-body (e.g.
coupled-cluster) and spectral single-body (e.g. planewave, real-space and
finite-element density functional theory [DFT]), the vast majority of
GPU-accelerated Gaussian atomic orbital methods have focused on shared memory
systems with only a handful of examples pursuing massive parallelism on
distributed memory GPU architectures. In the present work, we present a set of
distributed memory algorithms for the evaluation of the Coulomb and
exact-exchange matrices for hybrid Kohn-Sham DFT with Gaussian basis sets via
direct density-fitted (DF-J-Engine) and seminumerical (sn-K) methods,
respectively. The absolute performance and strong scalability of the developed
methods are demonstrated on systems ranging from a few hundred to over one
thousand atoms using up to 128 NVIDIA A100 GPUs on the Perlmutter
supercomputer.Comment: 45 pages, 9 figure
Endometrial stromal cells of women with recurrent miscarriage fail to discriminate between high- and low-quality human embryos
Background
The aetiology of recurrent miscarriage (RM) remains largely unexplained. Women with RM have a shorter time to pregnancy interval than normally fertile women, which may be due to more frequent implantation of non-viable embryos. We hypothesized that human endometrial stromal cells (H-EnSCs) of women with RM discriminate less effectively between high-and low-quality human embryos and migrate more readily towards trophoblast spheroids than H-EnSCs of normally fertile women.
Methodology/Principal Findings
Monolayers of decidualized H-EnSCs were generated from endometrial biopsies of 6 women with RM and 6 fertile controls. Cell-free migration zones were created and the effect of the presence of a high-quality (day 5 blastocyst, n = 13), a low-quality (day 5 blastocyst with three pronuclei or underdeveloped embryo, n = 12) or AC-1M88 trophoblast cell line spheroid on H-ESC migratory activity was analyzed after 18 hours. In the absence of a spheroid or embryo, migration of H-EnSCs from fertile or RM women was similar. In the presence of a low-quality embryo in the zone, the migration of H-EnSCs of control women was inhibited compared to the basal migration in the absence of an embryo (P<0.05) and compared to the migration in the presence of high-quality embryo (p<0.01). Interestingly, the migratory response H-EnSCs of women with RM did not differ between high- and low-quality embryos. Furthermore, in the presence of a spheroid their migration was enhanced compared to the H-EnSCs of controls (p<0.001).
Conclusions
H-EnSCs of fertile women discriminate between high- and low-quality embryos whereas H-EnSCs of women with RM fail to do so. H-EnSCs of RM women have a higher migratory response to trophoblast spheroids. Future studies will focus on the mechanisms by which low-quality embryos inhibit the migration of H-EnSCs and how this is deregulated in women with RM
Section Extension from Hyperbolic Geometry of Punctured Disk and Holomorphic Family of Flat Bundles
The construction of sections of bundles with prescribed jet values plays a
fundamental role in problems of algebraic and complex geometry. When the jet
values are prescribed on a positive dimensional subvariety, it is handled by
theorems of Ohsawa-Takegoshi type which give extension of line bundle valued
square-integrable top-degree holomorphic forms from the fiber at the origin of
a family of complex manifolds over the open unit 1-disk when the curvature of
the metric of line bundle is semipositive. We prove here an extension result
when the curvature of the line bundle is only semipositive on each fiber with
negativity on the total space assumed bounded from below and the connection of
the metric locally bounded, if a square-integrable extension is known to be
possible over a double point at the origin. It is a Hensel-lemma-type result
analogous to Artin's application of the generalized implicit function theorem
to the theory of obstruction in deformation theory. The motivation is the need
in the abundance conjecture to construct pluricanonical sections from flatly
twisted pluricanonical sections. We also give here a new approach to the
original theorem of Ohsawa-Takegoshi by using the hyperbolic geometry of the
punctured open unit 1-disk to reduce the original theorem of Ohsawa-Takegoshi
to a simple application of the standard method of constructing holomorphic
functions by solving the d-bar equation with cut-off functions and additional
blowup weight functions
Analysis of a low-cost EEG monitoring system and dry electrodes toward clinical use in the neonatal ICU
Electroencephalography (EEG) is an important clinical tool for monitoring neurological health. However, the required equipment, expertise, and patient preparation inhibits its use outside of tertiary care. Non-experts struggle to obtain high-quality EEG due to its low amplitude and artefact susceptibility. Wet electrodes are currently used, which require abrasive/conductive gels to reduce skin-electrode impedance. Advances in dry electrodes, which do not require gels, have simplified this process. However, the assessment of dry electrodes on neonates is limited due to health and safety barriers. This study presents a simulation framework for assessing the quality of EEG systems using a neonatal EEG database, without the use of human participants. The framework is used to evaluate a low-cost EEG acquisition system and compare performance of wet and dry (Micro Transdermal Interface Platforms (MicroTIPs), g.tec-g.SAHARA) electrodes using accurately acquired impedance models. A separate experiment assessing the electrodes on adult participants was conducted to verify the simulation framework’s efficacy. Dry electrodes have higher impedance than wet electrodes, causing a reduction in signal quality. However, MicroTIPs perform comparably to wet electrodes at the frontal region and g.tec-g.SAHARA performs well at the occipital region. Using the simulation framework, a 25dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was obtained for the low-cost EEG system. The tests on adults closely matched the simulated results
Hormonal Signal Amplification Mediates Environmental Conditions during Development and Controls an Irreversible Commitment to Adulthood
Many animals can choose between different developmental fates to maximize fitness. Despite the complexity of environmental cues and life history, different developmental fates are executed in a robust fashion. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans serves as a powerful model to examine this phenomenon because it can adopt one of two developmental fates (adulthood or diapause) depending on environmental conditions. The steroid hormone dafachronic acid (DA) directs development to adulthood by regulating the transcriptional activity of the nuclear hormone receptor DAF-12. The known role of DA suggests that it may be the molecular mediator of environmental condition effects on the developmental fate decision, although the mechanism is yet unknown. We used a combination of physiological and molecular biology techniques to demonstrate that commitment to reproductive adult development occurs when DA levels, produced in the neuroendocrine XXX cells, exceed a threshold. Furthermore, imaging and cell ablation experiments demonstrate that the XXX cells act as a source of DA, which, upon commitment to adult development, is amplified and propagated in the epidermis in a DAF-12 dependent manner. This positive feedback loop increases DA levels and drives adult programs in the gonad and epidermis, thus conferring the irreversibility of the decision. We show that the positive feedback loop canalizes development by ensuring that sufficient amounts of DA are dispersed throughout the body and serves as a robust fate-locking mechanism to enforce an organism-wide binary decision, despite noisy and complex environmental cues. These mechanisms are not only relevant to C. elegans but may be extended to other hormonal-based decision-making mechanisms in insects and mammals
Dynamics of an anisotropic Haldane antiferromagnet in strong magnetic field
We report the results of elastic and inelastic neutron scattering experiments
on the Haldane gap quantum antiferromagnet Ni(C5D14N2)2N3(PF6) performed at mK
temperatures in a wide range of magnetic field applied parallel to the S = 1
spin chains. Even though this geometry is closest to an ideal axially symmetric
configuration, the Haldane gap closes at the critical field Hc~4T, but reopens
again at higher fields. The field dependence of the two lowest magnon modes is
experimentally studied and the results are compared with the predictions of
several theoretical models. We conclude that of several existing theories, only
the recently proposed model [Zheludev et al., cond-mat/0301424 ] is able to
reproduce all the features observed experimentally for different field
orientations.Comment: 11 pages 8 figures submitted to Phys. Rev.
Long-range-transported Canadian smoke plumes in the lower stratosphere over northern France
Long-range-transported Canadian smoke layers in the stratosphere over
northern France were detected by three lidar systems in August 2017. The
peaked optical depth of the stratospheric smoke layer
exceeds 0.20 at 532 nm, which is
comparable with the simultaneous tropospheric aerosol optical depth. The
measurements of satellite sensors revealed that the observed stratospheric
smoke plumes were transported from Canadian wildfires after being lofted by
strong pyro-cumulonimbus. Case studies at two observation sites, Lille (lat
50.612, long 3.142, 60 m a.s.l.) and Palaiseau (lat 48.712, long 2.215,
156 m a.s.l.), are presented in detail. Smoke particle depolarization
ratios are measured at three wavelengths: over 0.20 at 355 nm, 0.18–0.19 at
532 nm, and 0.04–0.05 at 1064 nm. The high depolarization ratios and their
spectral dependence are possibly caused by the irregular-shaped aged smoke
particles and/or the mixing with dust particles. Similar results are found by
several European lidar stations and an explanation that can fully resolve
this question has not yet been found. Aerosol inversion based on lidar
2α+3β data derived a smoke effective radius of about
0.33 µm for both cases. The retrieved single-scattering albedo is
in the range of 0.8 to 0.9, indicating that the smoke plumes are absorbing.
The absorption can cause perturbations to the temperature vertical profile,
as observed by ground-based radiosonde, and it is also related to the ascent
of the smoke plumes when exposed in sunlight. A direct radiative
forcing (DRF) calculation is performed using the obtained optical and
microphysical properties. The calculation revealed that the smoke plumes in
the stratosphere can significantly reduce the radiation arriving at the
surface, and the heating rate of the plumes is about 3.5 K day−1. The
study provides a valuable characterization for aged smoke in the
stratosphere, but efforts are still needed in reducing and quantifying the
errors in the retrieved microphysical properties as well as radiative forcing
estimates.</p
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