13,853 research outputs found
Near-Extreme Black Holes and the Universal Relaxation Bound
A fundamental bound on the relaxation time \tau of a perturbed
thermodynamical system has recently been derived, \tau \geq \hbar/\pi T, where
is the system's temperature. We demonstrate analytically that black holes
saturate this bound in the extremal limit and for large values of the azimuthal
number m of the perturbation field.Comment: 2 Pages. Submitted to PRD on 5/12/200
Time's Barbed Arrow: Irreversibility, Crypticity, and Stored Information
We show why the amount of information communicated between the past and
future--the excess entropy--is not in general the amount of information stored
in the present--the statistical complexity. This is a puzzle, and a
long-standing one, since the latter is what is required for optimal prediction,
but the former describes observed behavior. We layout a classification scheme
for dynamical systems and stochastic processes that determines when these two
quantities are the same or different. We do this by developing closed-form
expressions for the excess entropy in terms of optimal causal predictors and
retrodictors--the epsilon-machines of computational mechanics. A process's
causal irreversibility and crypticity are key determining properties.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Specific protein-protein binding in many-component mixtures of proteins
Proteins must bind to specific other proteins in vivo in order to function.
The proteins must bind only to one or a few other proteins of the of order a
thousand proteins typically present in vivo. Using a simple model of a protein,
specific binding in many component mixtures is studied. It is found to be a
demanding function in the sense that it demands that the binding sites of the
proteins be encoded by long sequences of bits, and the requirement for specific
binding then strongly constrains these sequences. This is quantified by the
capacity of proteins of a given size (sequence length), which is the maximum
number of specific-binding interactions possible in a mixture. This calculation
of the maximum number possible is in the same spirit as the work of Shannon and
others on the maximum rate of communication through noisy channels.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures (changes for v2 mainly notational - to be more in
line with notation in information theory literature
Cyclic exchange, isolated states and spinon deconfinement in an XXZ Heisenberg model on the checkerboard lattice
The antiferromagnetic Ising model on a checkerboard lattice has an ice-like
ground state manifold with extensive degeneracy. and, to leading order in J_xy,
deconfined spinon excitations. We explore the role of cyclic exchange arising
at order J^2_xy/J_z on the ice states and their associated spinon excitations.
By mapping the original problem onto an equivalent quantum six--vertex model,
we identify three different phases as a function of the chemical potential for
flippable plaquettes - a phase with long range Neel order and confined spinon
excitations, a non-magnetic state of resonating square plaquettes, and a
quasi-collinear phase with gapped but deconfined spinon excitations. The
relevance of the results to the square--lattice quantum dimer model is also
discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
APRIL:TACI axis is dispensable for the immune response to rabies vaccination.
There is significant need to develop a single-dose rabies vaccine to replace the current multi-dose rabies vaccine regimen and eliminate the requirement for rabies immune globulin in post-exposure settings. To accomplish this goal, rabies virus (RABV)-based vaccines must rapidly activate B cells to secrete antibodies which neutralize pathogenic RABV before it enters the CNS. Increased understanding of how B cells effectively respond to RABV-based vaccines may improve efforts to simplify post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) regimens. Several studies have successfully employed the TNF family cytokine a proliferation-inducing ligand (APRIL) as a vaccine adjuvant. APRIL binds to the receptors TACI and B cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-expressed by B cells in various stages of maturation-with high affinity. We discovered that RABV-infected primary murine B cells upregulate APRIL ex vivo. Cytokines present at the time of antigen exposure affect the outcome of vaccination by influencing T and B cell activation and GC formation. Therefore, we hypothesized that the presence of APRIL at the time of RABV-based vaccine antigen exposure would support the generation of protective antibodies against RABV glycoprotein (G). In an effort to improve the response to RABV vaccination, we constructed and characterized a live recombinant RABV-based vaccine vector which expresses murine APRIL (rRABV-APRIL). Immunogenicity testing in mice demonstrated that expressing APRIL from the RABV genome does not impact the primary antibody response against RABV G compared to RABV alone. In order to evaluate the necessity of APRIL for the response to rabies vaccination, we compared the responses of APRIL-deficient and wild-type mice to immunization with rRABV. APRIL deficiency does not affect the primary antibody response to vaccination. Furthermore, APRIL expression by the vaccine did not improve the generation of long-lived antibody-secreting plasma cells (PCs) as serum antibody levels were equivalent in response to rRABV-APRIL and the vector eight weeks after immunization. Moreover, APRIL is dispensable for the long-lived antibody-secreting PC response to rRABV vaccination as anti-RABV G IgG levels were similar in APRIL-deficient and wild-type mice six months after vaccination. Mice lacking the APRIL receptor TACI demonstrated primary anti-RABV G antibody responses similar to wild-type mice following immunization with the vaccine vector indicating that this response is independent of TACI-mediated signals. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that APRIL and associated TACI signaling is dispensable for the immune response to RABV-based vaccination
Lossless quantum data compression and variable-length coding
In order to compress quantum messages without loss of information it is
necessary to allow the length of the encoded messages to vary. We develop a
general framework for variable-length quantum messages in close analogy to the
classical case and show that lossless compression is only possible if the
message to be compressed is known to the sender. The lossless compression of an
ensemble of messages is bounded from below by its von-Neumann entropy. We show
that it is possible to reduce the number of qbits passing through a quantum
channel even below the von-Neumann entropy by adding a classical side-channel.
We give an explicit communication protocol that realizes lossless and
instantaneous quantum data compression and apply it to a simple example. This
protocol can be used for both online quantum communication and storage of
quantum data.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
Non-additivity of quantum capacity for multiparty communication channels
We investigate multiparty communication scenarios where information is sent
from several sender to several receivers. We establish a relation between the
quantum capacity of multiparty communication channels and their distillability
properties which enables us to show that the quantum capacity of such channels
is not additive.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Thermodynamic time asymmetry in nonequilibrium fluctuations
We here present the complete analysis of experiments on driven Brownian
motion and electric noise in a circuit, showing that thermodynamic entropy
production can be related to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry in the
statistical description of these nonequilibrium systems. The symmetry breaking
can be expressed in terms of dynamical entropies per unit time, one for the
forward process and the other for the time-reversed process. These entropies
per unit time characterize dynamical randomness, i.e., temporal disorder, in
time series of the nonequilibrium fluctuations. Their difference gives the
well-known thermodynamic entropy production, which thus finds its origin in the
time asymmetry of dynamical randomness, alias temporal disorder, in systems
driven out of equilibrium.Comment: to be published in : Journal of Statistical Mechanics: theory and
experimen
The protein information and property explorer: an easy-to-use, rich-client web application for the management and functional analysis of proteomic data
Motivation: Mass spectrometry experiments in the field of proteomics produce lists containing tens to thousands of identified proteins. With the protein information and property explorer (PIPE), the biologist can acquire functional annotations for these proteins and explore the enrichment of the list, or fraction thereof, with respect to functional classes. These protein lists may be saved for access at a later time or different location. The PIPE is interoperable with the Firegoose and the Gaggle, permitting wide-ranging data exploration and analysis. The PIPE is a rich-client web application which uses AJAX capabilities provided by the Google Web Toolkit, and server-side data storage using Hibernate. Availability: http://pipe.systemsbiology.net Contact: [email protected]
Are multiphase competition & order-by-disorder the keys to understanding Yb2Ti2O7?
If magnetic frustration is most commonly known for undermining long-range
order, as famously illustrated by spin liquids, the ability of matter to
develop new collective mechanisms in order to fight frustration is no less
fascinating, providing an avenue for the exploration and discovery of
unconventional properties of matter. Here we study an ideal minimal model of
such mechanisms which, incidentally, pertains to the perplexing quantum spin
ice candidate Yb2Ti2O7. Specifically, we explain how thermal and quantum
fluctuations, optimized by order-by-disorder selection, conspire to expand the
stability region of an accidentally degenerate continuous symmetry U(1)
manifold against the classical splayed ferromagnetic ground state that is
displayed by the sister compound Yb2Sn2O7. The resulting competition gives rise
to multiple phase transitions, in striking similitude with recent experiments
on Yb2Ti2O7 [Lhotel et al., Phys. Rev. B 89 224419 (2014)]. Considering the
effective Hamiltonian determined for Yb2Ti2O7, we provide, by combining a gamut
of numerical techniques, compelling evidence that such multiphase competition
is the long-sought missing key to understanding the intrinsic properties of
this material. As a corollary, our work offers a pertinent illustration of the
influence of chemical pressure in rare-earth pyrochlores.Comment: 9 page
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