16,517 research outputs found
Survival probability (heat content) and the lowest eigenvalue of Dirichlet Laplacian
We study the survival probability of a particle diffusing in a
two-dimensional domain, bounded by a smooth absorbing boundary. The short-time
expansion of this quantity depends on the geometric characteristics of the
boundary, whilst its long-time asymptotics is governed by the lowest eigenvalue
of the Dirichlet Laplacian defined on the domain. We present a simple algorithm
for calculation of the short-time expansion for an arbitrary "star-shaped"
domain. The coefficients are expressed in terms of powers of boundary
curvature, integrated around the circumference of the domain. Based on this
expansion, we look for a Pad\'e interpolation between the short-time and the
long-time behavior of the survival probability, i.e. between geometric
characteristics of the boundary and the lowest eigenvalue of the Dirichlet
Laplacian.Comment: Accepted in IJMP
Changes in the secretory profile of NSCLC-associated fibroblasts after ablative radiotherapy: potential impact on angiogenesis and tumor growth
In the context of radiotherapy, collateral effects of ablative ionizing radiation (AIR) on stromal components of tumors remains understudied. In this work, cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) isolated from freshly resected human lung tumors were exposed to AIR (1x18Gy) and analyzed for their release of paracrine factors. Inflammatory mediators and regulators of angiogenesis and tumor growth were analyzed by multiplex protein assays in conditioned medium (CM) from irradiated and non-irradiated CAFs. Additionally, the profile of secreted proteins was examined by proteomics. In functional assays, effects of CAF-CM on proliferative and migratory capacity of lung tumor cells (H-520/H-522) and endothelial cells (HUVECs), and on the tube-forming capacity of endothelial cells was assessed. Our data show that exposure of CAFs to ablative doses of ionizing radiation results in a) down-regulated release of angiogenic factors SDF-1, angiopoietin and thrombospondin-2; b) up-regulated release of growth factor bFGF from most donors, and c) unaffected expression-levels of HGF and inflammatory mediators IL-6, IL-8, IL-1ƒÒ and TNF-£. Conditioned medium from irradiated and control CAFs did not affect differently the proliferative or migratory capacity of tumor cells (H-520/H-522), whereas migratory capacity of endothelial HUVEC cells was partially reduced in the presence of irradiated CAF conditioned medium. Overall we conclude that AIR mediates a transformation on the secretory profile of CAFs that could influence the behavior of other cells in the tumor tissue and hence guide to some extent therapeutic outcomes. The downstream consequences of the changes observed in this study merits further investigations
Gain control in molecular information processing: Lessons from neuroscience
Statistical properties of environments experienced by biological signaling
systems in the real world change, which necessitate adaptive responses to
achieve high fidelity information transmission. One form of such adaptive
response is gain control. Here we argue that a certain simple mechanism of gain
control, understood well in the context of systems neuroscience, also works for
molecular signaling. The mechanism allows to transmit more than one bit (on or
off) of information about the signal independently of the signal variance. It
does not require additional molecular circuitry beyond that already present in
many molecular systems, and, in particular, it does not depend on existence of
feedback loops. The mechanism provides a potential explanation for abundance of
ultrasensitive response curves in biological regulatory networks.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Entropy-based analysis of the number partitioning problem
In this paper we apply the multicanonical method of statistical physics on
the number-partitioning problem (NPP). This problem is a basic NP-hard problem
from computer science, and can be formulated as a spin-glass problem. We
compute the spectral degeneracy, which gives us information about the number of
solutions for a given cost and cardinality . We also study an extension
of this problem for partitions. We show that a fundamental difference on
the spectral degeneracy of the generalized () NPP exists, which could
explain why it is so difficult to find good solutions for this case. The
information obtained with the multicanonical method can be very useful on the
construction of new algorithms.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Theory of the striped superconductor
We define a distinct phase of matter, a "pair density wave" (PDW), in which
the superconducting order parameter varies periodically as a function of
position such that when averaged over the center of mass position, all
components of vanish identically. Specifically, we study the simplest,
unidirectional PDW, the "striped superconductor," which we argue may be at the
heart of a number of spectacular experimental anomalies that have been observed
in the failed high temperature superconductor, La BaCuO. We
present a solvable microscopic model with strong electron-electron interactions
which supports a PDW groundstate. We also discuss, at the level of Landau
theory, the nature of the coupling between the PDW and other order parameters,
and the origins and some consequences of the unusual sensitivity of this state
to quenched disorder.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; Journal ref. adde
High orders of Weyl series for the heat content
This article concerns the Weyl series of spectral functions associated with
the Dirichlet Laplacian in a -dimensional domain with a smooth boundary. In
the case of the heat kernel, Berry and Howls predicted the asymptotic form of
the Weyl series characterized by a set of parameters. Here, we concentrate on
another spectral function, the (normalized) heat content. We show on several
exactly solvable examples that, for even , the same asymptotic formula is
valid with different values of the parameters. The considered domains are
-dimensional balls and two limiting cases of the elliptic domain with
eccentricity : A slightly deformed disk () and an
extremely prolonged ellipse (). These cases include 2D domains
with circular symmetry and those with only one shortest periodic orbit for the
classical billiard. We analyse also the heat content for the balls in odd
dimensions for which the asymptotic form of the Weyl series changes
significantly.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figur
Grundstate Properties of the 3D Ising Spin Glass
We study zero--temperature properties of the 3d Edwards--Anderson Ising spin
glass on finite lattices up to size . Using multicanonical sampling we
generate large numbers of groundstate configurations in thermal equilibrium.
Finite size scaling with a zero--temperature scaling exponent describes the data well. Alternatively, a descriptions in terms of Parisi
mean field behaviour is still possible. The two scenarios give significantly
different predictions on lattices of size .Comment: LATEX 9pages,figures upon request ,SCRI-9
Phase Structure of Z(3)-Polyakov-Loop Models
We study effective lattice actions describing the Polyakov loop dynamics
originating from finite-temperature Yang-Mills theory. Starting with a
strong-coupling expansion the effective action is obtained as a series of
Z(3)-invariant operators involving higher and higher powers of the Polyakov
loop, each with its own coupling. Truncating to a subclass with two couplings
we perform a detailed analysis of the statistical mechanics involved. To this
end we employ a modified mean field approximation and Monte Carlo simulations
based on a novel cluster algorithm. We find excellent agreement of both
approaches concerning the phase structure of the theories. The phase diagram
exhibits both first and second order transitions between symmetric,
ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic phases with phase boundaries merging at
three tricritical points. The critical exponents nu and gamma at the continuous
transition between symmetric and anti-ferromagnetic phases are the same as for
the 3-state Potts model.Comment: 20 pages, 22 figure
Effects of thermal fluctuation and the receptor-receptor interaction in bacterial chemotactic signalling and adaptation
Bacterial chemotaxis is controlled by the conformational changes of the
receptors, in response to the change of the ambient chemical concentration. In
a statistical mechanical approach, the signalling due to the conformational
changes is a thermodynamic average quantity, dependent on the temperature and
the total energy of the system, including both ligand-receptor interaction and
receptor-receptor interaction. This physical theory suggests to biology a new
understanding of cooperation in ligand binding and receptor signalling
problems. How much experimental support of this approach can be obtained from
the currently available data? What are the parameter values? What is the
practical information for experiments? Here we make comparisons between the
theory and recent experimental results. Although currently comparisons can only
be semi-quantitative or qualitative, consistency is clearly shown. The theory
also helps to sort a variety of data.Comment: 26 pages, revtex. Journal version. Analysis on another set of data on
adaptation time is adde
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