4,925 research outputs found
Characterizing Human Mobility Patterns in a Large Street Network
Previous studies demonstrated empirically that human mobility exhibits Levy
flight behaviour. However, our knowledge of the mechanisms governing this Levy
flight behaviour remains limited. Here we analyze over 72 000 people's moving
trajectories, obtained from 50 taxicabs during a six-month period in a large
street network, and illustrate that the human mobility pattern, or the Levy
flight behaviour, is mainly attributed to the underlying street network. In
other words, the goal-directed nature of human movement has little effect on
the overall traffic distribution. We further simulate the mobility of a large
number of random walkers, and find that (1) the simulated random walkers can
reproduce the same human mobility pattern, and (2) the simulated mobility rate
of the random walkers correlates pretty well (an R square up to 0.87) with the
observed human mobility rate.Comment: 13 figures, 17 page
Rotation of the cluster of galaxies A2107
We present indications of rotation in the galaxy cluster A2107 by a method
that searches for the maximum gradient in the velocity field in a flat
disk-like model of a cluster. Galaxies from cumulative sub-samples containing
more and more distant members from the cluster centre, are projected onto an
axis passing through the centre and we apply a linear regression model on the
projected distances and the line-of-sight velocities . The axis with the
maximum linear correlation coefficient defines the
direction of the maximum velocity gradient, and consequently it presents the
major axis of the apparently elliptical cluster. Because the effects of
rotation are subtle, we put strong emphasis on the estimation of the
uncertainties of the results by implementing different bootstrap techniques. We
have found the rotational effects are more strongly expressed from distances
Mpc from the cluster centre. The total virial mass of the
cluster is (3.2\pm0.6)\times10^{14} {\cal M}_{\sun}, while the virial mass,
corrected for the rotation, is (2.8\pm0.5) \times 10^{14}{\cal M}_{\sun}.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures gzipped tar file. to be published in MNRA
Density functional calculations of the electronic structure and magnetic properties of the hydrocarbon K3picene superconductor near the metal-insulator transition
We have investigated the electronic structures and magnetic properties of of
K3picene, which is a first hydrocarbon superconductor with high transition
temperature T_c=18K. We have shown that the metal-insulator transition (MIT) is
driven in K3picene by 5% volume enhancement with a formation of local magnetic
moment. Active bands for superconductivity near the Fermi level E_F are found
to have hybridized character of LUMO and LUMO+1 picene molecular orbitals.
Fermi surfaces of K3picene manifest neither prominent nesting feature nor
marked two-dimensional behavior. By estimating the ratio of the Coulomb
interaction U and the band width W of the active bands near E_F, U/W, we have
demonstrated that K3picene is located in the vicinity of the Mott transition.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Warm dust in the terrestrial planet zone of a sun-like Pleiad: collisions between planetary embryos?
Only a few solar-type main sequence stars are known to be orbited by warm
dust particles; the most extreme is the G0 field star BD+20 307 that emits ~4%
of its energy at mid-infrared wavelengths. We report the identification of a
similarly dusty star HD 23514, an F6-type member of the Pleiades cluster. A
strong mid-IR silicate emission feature indicates the presence of small warm
dust particles, but with the primary flux density peak at the non-standard
wavelength of ~9 micron. The existence of so much dust within an AU or so of
these stars is not easily accounted for given the very brief lifetime in orbit
of small particles. The apparent absence of very hot (>~1000 K) dust at both
stars suggests the possible presence of a planet closer to the stars than the
dust. The observed frequency of the BD+20 307/HD 23514 phenomenon indicates
that the mass equivalent of Earth's Moon must be converted, via collisions of
massive bodies, to tiny dust particles that find their way to the terrestrial
planet zone during the first few hundred million years of the life of many
(most?) sun-like stars. Identification of these two dusty systems among
youthful nearby solar-type stars suggests that terrestrial planet formation is
common.Comment: ApJ in press, 19 pages including 3 figures and 2 tables, minor
changes to the tables and figure
Boundary effects on the scaling of the superfluid density
We study numerically the influence of the substrate (boundary conditions) on
the finite--size scaling properties of the superfluid density in
superfluid films of thickness within the XY model employing the Monte Carlo
method. Our results suggest that the jump at the
Kosterlitz--Thouless transition temperature depends on the boundary
conditions.Comment: 2 pages, 1 Latex file, 1 postscript figure, 2 style file
Recommended from our members
Meteorological and chemical factors controlling ozone formation in Seoul during MAPS-Seoul 2015
To understand the chemical mechanisms of controlling factors in ozone (O3) formation in early summer in Seoul, a comprehensive study encompassing measurement and modeling was conducted under the Megacity Air Pollution Study-Seoul (MAPS-Seoul) campaign. From May 18 to June 12, 2015, O3 and peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) were measured, along with their precursors, including NOx and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, located in northeast Seoul. VOCs were sampled in a canister twice a day (at 09:30 and 15:00) and analyzed via gas chromatography. The meteorological conditions and chemical regimes of the air masses were clearly distinguished during the study period. In May, NOx concentrations were higher with more pronounced diurnal cycles of precursors and O3 under constant westerly winds. By contrast, stagnant conditions developed in June, which reduced the inflow of primary emissions from the downtown area but increased the influence from the neighboring forest under high temperatures. As a result, the ratio of O3 to odd oxygen was higher in June, indicating a less efficient removal of O3 by NOx. In the same context, the air mass was chemically more aged with a higher NO2/NOx ratio and enhanced OH reactivity of oxygenated and biogenic VOCs in June. The overall measurement results suggest that O3 formation is slightly more sensitive to VOCs than to NOx in Seoul during this season, when O3 concentrations are the highest of the year
Alignments of the Dominant Galaxies in Poor Clusters
We have examined the orientations of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in
poor MKW and AWM clusters and find that, like their counterparts in richer
Abell clusters, poor cluster BCGs exhibit a strong propensity to be aligned
with the principal axes of their host clusters as well as the surrounding
distribution of nearby (< 20/h Mpc) Abell clusters. The processes responsible
for dominant galaxy alignments are therefore independent of cluster richness.
We argue that these alignments most likely arise from anisotropic infall of
material into clusters along large-scale filaments.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Assessing moisture in porous traditional building materials
Historic England is often asked for advice on damp problems in historic and traditional buildings. Whilst many different methods are commonly used to assess damp problems in walls, all have some drawbacks. There is lack of agreement over how they should be used and little information about how they compare one with another. This project developed a common methodology in the laboratory to compare the performance of a range of invasive and non-invasive moisture measurement methods used to assess moisture in porous masonry. The findings suggested that most of the measurement techniques can provide good semi-quantitative estimates of moisture levels in porous traditional building materials
Sorting live stem cells based on Sox2 mRNA expression.
PMCID: PMC3507951This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.While cell sorting usually relies on cell-surface protein markers, molecular beacons (MBs) offer the potential to sort cells based on the presence of any expressed mRNA and in principle could be extremely useful to sort rare cell populations from primary isolates. We show here how stem cells can be purified from mixed cell populations by sorting based on MBs. Specifically, we designed molecular beacons targeting Sox2, a well-known stem cell marker for murine embryonic (mES) and neural stem cells (NSC). One of our designed molecular beacons displayed an increase in fluorescence compared to a nonspecific molecular beacon both in vitro and in vivo when tested in mES and NSCs. We sorted Sox2-MB(+)SSEA1(+) cells from a mixed population of 4-day retinoic acid-treated mES cells and effectively isolated live undifferentiated stem cells. Additionally, Sox2-MB(+) cells isolated from primary mouse brains were sorted and generated neurospheres with higher efficiency than Sox2-MB(-) cells. These results demonstrate the utility of MBs for stem cell sorting in an mRNA-specific manner
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