QFT with Twisted Poincar\'e Invariance and the Moyal Product

We study the consequences of twisting the Poincare invariance in a quantum field theory. First, we construct a Fock space compatible with the twisting and the corresponding creation and annihilation operators. Then, we show that a covariant field linear in creation and annihilation operators does not exist. Relaxing the linearity condition, a covariant field can be determined. We show that it is related to the untwisted field by a unitary transformation and the resulting n-point functions coincide with the untwisted ones. We also show that invariance under the twisted symmetry can be realized using the covariant field with the usual product or by a non-covariant field with a Moyal product. The resulting S-matrix elements are shown to coincide with the untwisted ones up to a momenta dependent phase.Comment: 11 pages, references adde

Gravitational- and self-coupling of partially massless spin 2

We show that higher spin systems specific to cosmological spaces are subject to the same problems as models with Poincaré limits. In particular, we analyze partially massless (PM) spin 2 and find that both its gravitational coupling and nonlinear extensions suffer from the usual background- and self-coupling difficulties: Consistent free field propagation does not extend beyond background Einstein geometries. Then (using conformal, Weyl, gravity, which contains relative ghost PM and graviton excitations) we find that avoiding graviton ghosts restricts Weyl-generated PM self-couplings to the usual, leading, safe, Noether current cubic ones

Vertical structure of a supernova-driven turbulent magnetized ISM

Stellar feedback drives the circulation of matter from the disk to the halo of galaxies. We perform three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a vertical column of the interstellar medium with initial conditions typical of the solar circle in which supernovae drive turbulence and determine the vertical stratification of the medium. The simulations were run using a stable, positivity-preserving scheme for ideal MHD implemented in the FLASH code. We find that the majority (\approx 90 %) of the mass is contained in thermally-stable temperature regimes of cold molecular and atomic gas at T < 200 K or warm atomic and ionized gas at 5000 K < T < 10^{4.2} K, with strong peaks in probability distribution functions of temperature in both the cold and warm regimes. The 200 - 10^{4.2} K gas fills 50-60 % of the volume near the plane, with hotter gas associated with supernova remnants (30-40 %) and cold clouds (< 10 %) embedded within. At |z| ~ 1-2 kpc, transition-temperature (10^5 K) gas accounts for most of the mass and volume, while hot gas dominates at |z| > 3 kpc. The magnetic field in our models has no significant impact on the scale heights of gas in each temperature regime; the magnetic tension force is approximately equal to and opposite the magnetic pressure, so the addition of the field does not significantly affect the vertical support of the gas. The addition of a magnetic field does reduce the fraction of gas in the cold (< 200 K) regime with a corresponding increase in the fraction of warm (~ 10^4 K) gas. However, our models lack rotational shear and thus have no large-scale dynamo, which reduces the role of the field in the models compared to reality. The supernovae drive oscillations in the vertical distribution of halo gas, with the period of the oscillations ranging from ~ 30 Myr in the T < 200 K gas to ~ 100 Myr in the 10^6 K gas, in line with predictions by Walters & Cox.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. Replacement corrects an error in the observed CNM pressure distribution in Figure 15 and associated discussio

Haptic Cushion: Automatic Generation of Vibro- tactile Feedback Based on Audio Signal for Immersive Interaction with Multimedia

This paper presents a haptic display providing audio-based vibrotactile feedback to enhance the immersive feeling of the user who interacts with multimedia content. The newly developed display has two main features, i) an automatic transformation algorithm and ii) a vibrotactile actuator. The proposed algorithm automatically transforms auditory signals into vibrotactile patterns in real-time by extracting principal frequencies from acoustic unit sequences and superposing vibration waves. The actuator was designed based on the structure of the voice coil linear motor to operate effectively over a wide range of vibration frequencies. Experiments were carried out to evaluate characteristics of the implemented system and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Photoionization of High Altitude Gas in a Supernova-Driven Turbulent Interstellar Medium

We investigate models for the photoionization of the widespread diffuse ionized gas in galaxies. In particular we address the long standing question of the penetration of Lyman continuum photons from sources close to the galactic midplane to large heights in the galactic halo. We find that recent hydrodynamical simulations of a supernova-driven interstellar medium have low density paths and voids that allow for ionizing photons from midplane OB stars to reach and ionize gas many kiloparsecs above the midplane. We find ionizing fluxes throughout our simulation grids are larger than predicted by one dimensional slab models, thus allowing for photoionization by O stars of low altitude neutral clouds in the Galaxy that are also detected in Halpha. In previous studies of such clouds the photoionization scenario had been rejected and the Halpha had been attributed to enhanced cosmic ray ionization or scattered light from midplane H II regions. We do find that the emission measure distributions in our simulations are wider than those derived from Halpha observations in the Milky Way. In addition, the horizontally averaged height dependence of the gas density in the hydrodynamical models is lower than inferred in the Galaxy. These discrepancies are likely due to the absence of magnetic fields in the hydrodynamic simulations and we discuss how magnetohydrodynamic effects may reconcile models and observations. Nevertheless, we anticipate that the inclusion of magnetic fields in the dynamical simulations will not alter our primary finding that midplane OB stars are capable of producing high altitude diffuse ionized gas in a realistic three-dimensional interstellar medium.Comment: ApJ accepted. 17 pages, 7 figure

Construction of phylogenetic trees by kernel-based comparative analysis of metabolic networks

BACKGROUND: To infer the tree of life requires knowledge of the common characteristics of each species descended from a common ancestor as the measuring criteria and a method to calculate the distance between the resulting values of each measure. Conventional phylogenetic analysis based on genomic sequences provides information about the genetic relationships between different organisms. In contrast, comparative analysis of metabolic pathways in different organisms can yield insights into their functional relationships under different physiological conditions. However, evaluating the similarities or differences between metabolic networks is a computationally challenging problem, and systematic methods of doing this are desirable. Here we introduce a graph-kernel method for computing the similarity between metabolic networks in polynomial time, and use it to profile metabolic pathways and to construct phylogenetic trees. RESULTS: To compare the structures of metabolic networks in organisms, we adopted the exponential graph kernel, which is a kernel-based approach with a labeled graph that includes a label matrix and an adjacency matrix. To construct the phylogenetic trees, we used an unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean, i.e., a hierarchical clustering algorithm. We applied the kernel-based network profiling method in a comparative analysis of nine carbohydrate metabolic networks from 81 biological species encompassing Archaea, Eukaryota, and Eubacteria. The resulting phylogenetic hierarchies generally support the tripartite scheme of three domains rather than the two domains of prokaryotes and eukaryotes. CONCLUSION: By combining the kernel machines with metabolic information, the method infers the context of biosphere development that covers physiological events required for adaptation by genetic reconstruction. The results show that one may obtain a global view of the tree of life by comparing the metabolic pathway structures using meta-level information rather than sequence information. This method may yield further information about biological evolution, such as the history of horizontal transfer of each gene, by studying the detailed structure of the phylogenetic tree constructed by the kernel-based method

Chromatin regulation at the frontier of synthetic biology

As synthetic biology approaches are extended to diverse applications throughout medicine, biotechnology and basic biological research, there is an increasing need to engineer yeast, plant and mammalian cells. Eukaryotic genomes are regulated by the diverse biochemical and biophysical states of chromatin, which brings distinct challenges, as well as opportunities, over applications in bacteria. Recent synthetic approaches, including 'epigenome editing', have allowed the direct and functional dissection of many aspects of physiological chromatin regulation. These studies lay the foundation for biomedical and biotechnological engineering applications that could take advantage of the unique combinatorial and spatiotemporal layers of chromatin regulation to create synthetic systems of unprecedented sophistication.National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.) (Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship )United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects AgencyNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R24 Grant)Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired EngineeringHoward Hughes Medical Institut