83 research outputs found
Study of Uniaxial Tensile Properties of Hexagonal Boron Nitride Nanoribbons
Uniaxial tensile properties of hexagonal boron nitride nanoribbons and
dependence of these properties on temperature, strain rate, and the inclusion
of vacancy defects have been explored with molecular dynamics simulations using
Tersoff potential. The ultimate tensile strength of pristine hexagonal boron
nitride nanoribbon of 26 nm x 5 nm with armchair chirality is found to be 100.5
GPa. The ultimate tensile strength and strain have been found decreasing with
increasing the temperature while an opposite trend has been observed for
increasing the strain rate. Furthermore, the vacancy defects reduce ultimate
tensile strength and strain where the effect of bi-vacancy is clearly
dominating over point vacancy
Supernova neutrino induced neutrons in liquid xenon dark matter detectors
Neutrinos from supernova (SN) bursts can give rise to detectable number of
nuclear recoil (NR) events through the process of coherent elastic
neutrino-nucleus scattering (CENS) in future large (multi-ton scale)
liquid xenon detectors employed for dark matter search depending on the SN
progenitor mass and distance to the SN event. Here we point out that in
addition to the direct NR events due to CENS process, there is a secondary
source of nuclear recoils due to elastic scattering of the neutrons produced
through inelastic neutrino-nucleus scattering of the supernova neutrinos with
the target xenon nuclei. We estimate the contribution of these supernova
neutrino-induced neutrons (In) to the total xenon NR spectrum and find
that the latter can be significantly modified at large recoil energies from
that expected from the CENS process alone, with the In contribution
dominating the total integral recoil energy spectrum at recoil energies above
20 keV. With the capability to measure the energies of individual recoil
events, sufficiently large liquid xenon detectors may be able to detect these
events due to In process triggered by neutrinos from reasonably close by
SN burst events. We also note that the In contribution to the recoil
spectrum receives dominant contribution from the charged current interaction of
the SN s with the target nuclei while the CENS contribution comes
from neutral current interactions of all the six species of neutrinos with the
target nuclei. This may offer the possibility of extracting useful information
about the distribution of the total SN explosion energy going into different
neutrino flavors.Comment: Replaced with revised version; includes results of GEANT4 simulation
of neutron induced xenon nuclear recoils; one additional author (SG); figures
modified; 2 new figures; main conclusions remain unchanged; latex 9 pages
with 6 figure
Active emulsions in living cell membranes driven by contractile stresses and transbilayer coupling
The spatiotemporal organisation of proteins and lipids on the cell surface
has direct functional consequences for signaling, sorting and endocytosis.
Earlier studies have shown that multiple types of membrane proteins including
transmembrane proteins that have cytoplasmic actin binding capacity and
lipid-tethered GPI-anchored proteins (GPI-APs) form nanoscale clusters driven
by active contractile flows generated by the actin cortex. To gain insight into
the role of lipids in organizing membrane domains in living cells, we study the
molecular interactions that promote the actively generated nanoclusters of
GPI-APs and transmembrane proteins. This motivates a theoretical description,
wherein a combination of active contractile stresses and transbilayer coupling
drive the creation of active emulsions, mesoscale liquid ordered (lo) domains
of the GPI-APs and lipids, at temperatures greater than equilibrium lipid-phase
segregation. To test these ideas we use spatial imaging of homo-FRET combined
with local membrane order and demonstrate that mesoscopic domains enriched in
nanoclusters of GPI-APs are maintained by cortical actin activity and
transbilayer interactions, and exhibit significant lipid order, consistent with
predictions of the active composite model
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