805 research outputs found
Temperature Dependence of Facet Ridges in Crystal Surfaces
The equilibrium crystal shape of a body-centered solid-on-solid (BCSOS) model
on a honeycomb lattice is studied numerically. We focus on the facet ridge
endpoints (FRE). These points are equivalent to one dimensional KPZ-type growth
in the exactly soluble square lattice BCSOS model. In our more general context
the transfer matrix is not stochastic at the FRE points, and a more complex
structure develops. We observe ridge lines sticking into the rough phase where
thesurface orientation jumps inside the rounded part of the crystal. Moreover,
the rough-to-faceted edges become first-order with a jump in surface
orientation, between the FRE point and Pokrovsky-Talapov (PT) type critical
endpoints. The latter display anisotropic scaling with exponent instead
of familiar PT value .Comment: 12 pages, 19 figure
Facet ridge end points in crystal shapes
Equilibrium crystal shapes (ECS) near facet ridge end points (FRE) are
generically complex. We study the body-centered solid-on-solid model on a
square lattice with an enhanced uniaxial interaction range to test the
stability of the so-called stochastic FRE point where the model maps exactly
onto one dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang type growth and the local ECS is
simple. The latter is unstable. The generic ECS contains first-order ridges
extending into the rounded part of the ECS, where two rough orientations
coexist and first-order faceted to rough boundaries terminating in
Pokrovsky-Talapov type end points.Comment: Contains 4 pages, 5 eps figures. Uses RevTe
Pseudoscientific health beliefs and the perceived frequency of causal relationships
Beliefs about cause and effect, including health beliefs, are thought to be related to the frequency of the target outcome (e.g., health recovery) occurring when the putative cause is present and when it is absent (treatment administered vs. no treatment); this is known as contingency learning. However, it is unclear whether unvalidated health beliefs, where there is no evidence of cause– effect contingency, are also influenced by the subjective perception of a meaningful contingency between events. In a survey, respondents were asked to judge a range of health beliefs and estimate the probability of the target outcome occurring with and without the putative cause present. Over-all, we found evidence that causal beliefs are related to perceived cause–effect contingency. Interestingly, beliefs that were not predicted by perceived contingency were meaningfully related to scores on the paranormal belief scale. These findings suggest heterogeneity in pseudoscientific health beliefs and the need to tailor intervention strategies according to underlying causes
Enzymatic synthesis of oligonucleotides of defined sequence: synthesis of a segment of yeast iso-1-cytochrome c gene.
A new approach for uncovering student resources with multiple-choice questions
The traditional approach to studying student understanding presents a
question and uses the student answers to make inferences about their knowledge.
However, this method does not capture the range of possible alternative ideas
available to students. We use a new approach, asking students to generate a
plausible explanation for every choice of a multiple-choice question, to
capture a range of explanations that students can generate in answering physics
questions. Asking 16 students to provide explanations in this way revealed
alternative possibilities for student thinking that would not have been
captured if they only provided one solution. The findings show two ways these
alternatives can be productive for learning physics: (i) even students who
ultimately chose the wrong answer could often generate the correct explanation
and (ii) many incorrect explanations contained elements of correct physical
reasoning. We discuss the instructional implications of this multiple-choice
questioning approach and of student alternative ideas
Nanoscale Equilibrium Crystal Shapes
The finite size and interface effects on equilibrium crystal shape (ECS) have
been investigated for the case of a surface free energy density including step
stiffness and inverse-square step-step interactions. Explicitly including the
curvature of a crystallite leads to an extra boundary condition in the solution
of the crystal shape, yielding a family of crystal shapes, governed by a shape
parameter c. The total crystallite free energy, including interface energy, is
minimized for c=0, yielding in all cases the traditional PT shape (z x3/2).
Solutions of the crystal shape for c≠0 are presented and discussed in the
context of meta-stable states due to the energy barrier for nucleation.
Explicit scaled relationships for the ECS and meta-stable states in terms of
the measurable step parameters and the interfacial energy are presented.Comment: 35 page
General splicing factor SF2/ASF promotes alternative splicing by binding to an exonic splicing enhancer
The general splicing factor SF2/ASF binds in a sequence-specific manner to a purine-rich exonic splicing enhancer (ESE) in the last exon of bovine growth hormone (bGH) pre-mRNA. More importantly, SF2/ASF stimulates in vitro splicing of bGH intron D through specific interaction with the ESE sequences. However, another general splicing factor, SC35, does not bind the ESE sequences and has no effect on bGH intron D splicing. Thus, one possible function of SF2/ASF in alternative and, perhaps, constitutive pre-mRNA splicing is to recognize ESE sequences. The stimulation of bGH intron D splicing by SF2/ASF is counteracted by the addition of hnRNP A1. The relative levels of SF2/ASF and hnRNP A1 influence the efficiency of bGH intron D splicing in vitro and may be the underlying mechanism of this alternative pre-mRNA processing event in vivo
Vacuum ultraviolet instrumentation for solar irradiance and thermospheric airglow
A NASA sounding rocket experiment was developed to study the solar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectral irradiance and its effect on the upper atmosphere. Both the solar flux and the terrestrial molecular nitrogen via the Lyman-Birge-Hopfield bands in the far ultraviolet (FUV) were measured remotely from a sounding rocket on October 27, 1992. The rocket experiment also includes EUV instruments from Boston University (Supriya Chakrabarti), but only the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)/University of Colorado (CU) four solar instruments and one airglow instrument are discussed here. The primary solar EUV instrument is a 1/4 meter Rowland circle EUV spectrograph which has flown on three rockets since 1988 measuring the solar spectral irradiance from 30 to 110 nm with 0.2 nm resolution. Another solar irradiance instrument is an array of six silicon XUV photodiodes, each having different metallic filters coated directly on the photodiodes. This photodiode system provides a spectral coverage from 0.1 to 80 nm with about 15 nm resolution. The other solar irradiance instrument is a silicon avalanche photodiode coupled with pulse height analyzer electronics. This avalanche photodiode package measures the XUV photon energy providing a solar spectrum from 50 to 12,400 eV (25 to 0.1 nm) with an energy resolution of about 50 eV. The fourth solar instrument is an XUV imager that images the sun at 17.5 nm with a spatial resolution of 20 arc-seconds. The airglow spectrograph measures the terrestrial FUV airglow emissions along the horizon from 125 to 160 nm with 0.2 nm spectral resolution. The photon-counting CODACON detectors are used for three of these instruments and consist of coded arrays of anodes behind microchannel plates. The one-dimensional and two-dimensional CODACON detectors were developed at CU by Dr. George Lawrence. The pre-flight and post-flight photometric calibrations were performed at our calibration laboratory and at the Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility (SURF) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland
A Hybrid Monte Carlo Method for Surface Growth Simulations
We introduce an algorithm for treating growth on surfaces which combines
important features of continuum methods (such as the level-set method) and
Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations. We treat the motion of adatoms in
continuum theory, but attach them to islands one atom at a time. The technique
is borrowed from the Dielectric Breakdown Model. Our method allows us to give a
realistic account of fluctuations in island shape, which is lacking in
deterministic continuum treatments and which is an important physical effect.
Our method should be most important for problems close to equilibrium where KMC
becomes impractically slow.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
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