7,320 research outputs found
Resistivity in Co-doped Ba-122: comparison of thin films and single crystals
The temperature dependence of the resistivity of epitaxial
Ba(Fe_(1-x)Co_x)2As2 thin films (with nominal doping x = 0.08, 0.10 and 0.15)
has been analyzed and compared with analogous measurements on single crystals
taken from literature. The rho(T) of thin films looks different from that of
single crystals, even when the cobalt content is the same. All rho(T) curves
can be fitted by considering an effective two-band model (with holes and
electrons bands) in which the electrons are more strongly coupled with the
bosons (spin fluctuations) than holes, while the effect of impurities is mainly
concentrated in the hole band. Within this model the mediating boson has the
same characteristic energy in single crystals and thin films, but the shape of
the transport spectral function at low energy has to be very different, leading
to a "hardening" of the electron-boson spectral function in thin films,
associated with the strain induced by the substrate.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure
GALNT2 as a novel modulator of adipogenesis and adipocyte insulin signaling
Background/objectives: A better understanding of adipose tissue biology is crucial to tackle insulin resistance and eventually coronary heart disease and diabetes, leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. GALNT2, a GalNAc-transferase, positively modulates insulin signaling in human liver cells by down-regulating ENPP1, an insulin signaling inhibitor. GALNT2 expression is increased in adipose tissue of obese as compared to that of non-obese individuals. Whether this association is secondary to a GALNT2-insulin sensitizing effect exerted also in adipocytes is unknown. We then investigated in mouse 3T3-L1 adipocytes the GALNT2 effect on adipogenesis, insulin signaling and expression levels of both Enpp1 and 72 adipogenesis-related genes. Methods: Stable over-expressing GALNT2 and GFP preadipocytes (T 0 ) were generated. Adipogenesis was induced with (R+) or without (R−) rosiglitazone and investigated after 15 days (T 15 ). Lipid accumulation (by Oil Red-O staining) and intracellular triglycerides (by fluorimetric assay) were measured. Lipid droplets (LD) measures were analyzed at confocal microscope. Gene expression was assessed by RT-PCR and insulin-induced insulin receptor (IR), IRS1, JNK and AKT phosphorylation by Western blot. Results: Lipid accumulation, triglycerides and LD measures progressively increased from T 0 to T 15 R- and furthermore to T 15 R+. Such increases were significantly higher in GALNT2 than in GFP cells so that, as compared to T 15 R+GFP, T 15 R- GALNT2 cells showed similar (intracellular lipid and triglycerides accumulation) or even higher (LD measures, p < 0.01) values. In GALNT2 preadipocytes, insulin-induced IR, IRS1 and AKT activation was higher than that in GFP cells. GALNT2 effect was totally abolished during adipocyte maturation and completely reversed at late stage maturation. Such GALNT2 effect trajectory was paralleled by coordinated changes in the expression of Enpp1 and adipocyte-maturation key genes. Conclusions: GALNT2 is a novel modulator of adipogenesis and related cellular phenotypes, thus becoming a potential target for tackling the obesity epidemics and its devastating sequelae
Geometric Aspects of the Dipolar Interaction in Lattices of Small Particles
The hysteresis curves of systems composed of small interacting magnetic
particles, regularly placed on stacked layers, are obtained with Monte Carlo
simulations. The remanence as a function of temperature, in interacting
systems, presents a peak that separates two different magnetic states. At low
temperatures, small values of remanence are a consequence of antiferromagnetic
order due to the dipolar interaction. At higher values of temperature the
increase of the component normal to the lattice plane is responsible for the
small values of remanence. The effect of the number of layers, coordination
number and distance between particles are investigated.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure
Light-cone fluctuations and the renormalized stress tensor of a massless scalar field
We investigate the effects of light-cone fluctuations over the renormalized
vacuum expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of a real massless
minimally coupled scalar field defined in a ()-dimensional flat space-time
with topology . For modeling the influence of
light-cone fluctuations over the quantum field, we consider a random
Klein-Gordon equation. We study the case of centered Gaussian processes. After
taking into account all the realizations of the random processes, we present
the correction caused by random fluctuations. The averaged renormalized vacuum
expectation value of the stress-energy associated with the scalar field is
presented
Improved fidelity of triggered entangled photons from single quantum dots
We demonstrate the on-demand emission of polarisation-entangled photon pairs
from the biexciton cascade of a single InAs quantum dot embedded in a GaAs/AlAs
planar microcavity. Improvements in the sample design blue shifts the wetting
layer to reduce the contribution of background light in the measurements.
Results presented show that >70% of the detected photon pairs are entangled.
The high fidelity of the (|HxxHx>+|VxxVx>)/2^0.5 state that we determine is
sufficient to satisfy numerous tests for entanglement. The improved quality of
entanglement represents a significant step towards the realisation of a
practical quantum dot source compatible with applications in quantum
information.Comment: 9 pages. Paper is available free of charge at
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1367-2630/8/2/029/, see also 'A semiconductor
source of triggered entangled photon pairs', R. M. Stevenson et al., Nature
439, 179 (2006
Variational principles for involutive systems of vector fields
In many relevant cases -- e.g., in hamiltonian dynamics -- a given vector
field can be characterized by means of a variational principle based on a
one-form. We discuss how a vector field on a manifold can also be characterized
in a similar way by means of an higher order variational principle, and how
this extends to involutive systems of vector fields.Comment: 31 pages. To appear in International Journal of Geometric Methods in
Modern Physics (IJGMMP
Mesoscopic Casimir forces from effects of discrete particle number in the quantum vacuum
Traditionally it is assumed that the Casimir vacuum pressure does not depend
on the ultraviolet cut-off. There are, however, some arguments that the effect
actually depends on the regularization procedure and thus on the
trans-Planckian physics. We provide the condensed matter example where the
Casimir forces do explicitly depend on the microscopic (correspondingly
trans-Planckian) physics due to the mesoscopic finite-N effects, where N is the
number of bare particles in condensed matter (or correspondingly the number of
the elements comprising the quantum vacuum). The finite-N effects lead to
mesoscopic fluctuations of the vacuum pressure. The amplitude of the mesoscopic
flustuations of the Casimir force in a system with linear dimension L is larger
by the factor N^{1/3}\sim L/a than the traditional value of the Casimir force
given by effective theory, where a is the interatomic distance which plays the
role of the Planck length.Comment: LaTeX file, 13 pages, no figures, submitted to JETP Letter
DACA Associated with Improved Birth Outcomes Among Mexican-Immigrant Mothers
The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted work authorization and protection from deportation to more than 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors. In a recent study, we investigated the association between this expansion of legal rights and birth outcomes among 72,613 singleton births to high school-educated Mexican-immigrant women in the United States from June 2010 to May 2014 using birth records data from the National Center for Health Statistics. We found that DACA was associated with improvements in the rates of low birth weight and very low birth weight, birth weight in grams, and gestational age among infants born to Mexican-immigrant mothers. Policymakers should consider this evidence of DACA's direct and intergenerational health benefits in future reforms of immigration legislation
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