8,732 research outputs found
Octopamine increases the excitability of neurons in the snail feeding system by modulation of inward sodium current but not outward potassium currents
Background: Although octopamine has long been known to have major roles as both transmitter and modulator in arthropods, it has only recently been shown to be functionally important in molluscs, playing a role as a neurotransmitter in the feeding network of the snail Lymnaea stagnalis. The synaptic potentials cannot explain all the effects of octopamine-containing neurons on the feeding network, and here we test the hypothesis that octopamine is also a neuromodulator. Results: The excitability of the B1 and B4 motoneurons in the buccal ganglia to depolarising current clamp pulses is significantly (P << 0.05) increased by (10 mu M) octopamine, whereas the B2 motoneuron becomes significantly less excitable. The ionic currents evoked by voltage steps were recorded using 2-electrode voltage clamp. The outward current of B1, B2 and B4 motoneurons had two components, a transient I-A current and a sustained I-K delayed-rectifier current, but neither was modulated by octopamine in any of these three buccal neurons. The fast inward current was eliminated in sodium - free saline and so is likely to be carried by sodium ions. 10 mu M octopamine enhanced this current by 33 and 45% in the B1 and B4 motoneurons respectively (P << 0.05), but a small reduction was seen in the B2 neuron. A Hodgkin-Huxley style simulation of the B1 motoneuron confirms that a 33% increase in the fast inward current by octopamine increases the excitability markedly. Conclusion: We conclude that octopamine is also a neuromodulator in snails, changing the excitability of the buccal neurons. This is supported by the close relationship from the voltage clamp data, through the quantitative simulation, to the action potential threshold, changing the properties of neurons in a rhythmic network. The increase in inward sodium current provides an explanation for the polycyclic modulation of the feeding system by the octopamine-containing interneurons, making feeding easier to initiate and making the feeding bursts more intense
UV/IR duality in noncommutative quantum field theory
We review the construction of renormalizable noncommutative euclidean
phi(4)-theories based on the UV/IR duality covariant modification of the
standard field theory, and how the formalism can be extended to scalar field
theories defined on noncommutative Minkowski space.Comment: 12 pages; v2: minor corrections, note and references added;
Contribution to proceedings of the 2nd School on "Quantum Gravity and Quantum
Geometry" session of the 9th Hellenic School on Elementary Particle Physics
and Gravity, Corfu, Greece, September 13-20 2009. To be published in General
Relativity and Gravitatio
Fermions and noncommutative emergent gravity II: Curved branes in extra dimensions
We study fermions coupled to Yang-Mills matrix models from the point of view
of emergent gravity. The matrix model Dirac operator provides an appropriate
coupling for fermions to the effective gravitational metric for general branes
with nontrivial embedding, albeit with a non-standard spin connection. This
generalizes previous results for 4-dimensional matrix models. Integrating out
the fermions in a nontrivial geometrical background induces indeed the
Einstein-Hilbert action of the effective metric, as well as additional terms
which couple the Poisson tensor to the Riemann tensor, and a dilaton-like term.Comment: 34 pages; minor change
The effect of quantization on the FCIQMC sign problem
The sign problem in Full Configuration Interaction Quantum Monte Carlo
(FCIQMC) without annihilation can be understood as an instability of the
psi-particle population to the ground state of the matrix obtained by making
all off-diagonal elements of the Hamiltonian negative. Such a matrix, and hence
the sign problem, is basis dependent. In this paper we discuss the properties
of a physically important basis choice: first versus second quantization. For a
given choice of single-particle orbitals, we identify the conditions under
which the fermion sign problem in the second quantized basis of antisymmetric
Slater determinants is identical to the sign problem in the first quantized
basis of unsymmetrized Hartree products. We also show that, when the two
differ, the fermion sign problem is always less severe in the second quantized
basis. This supports the idea that FCIQMC, even in the absence of annihilation,
improves the sign problem relative to first quantized methods. Finally, we
point out some theoretically interesting classes of Hamiltonians where first
and second quantized sign problems differ, and others where they do not.Comment: 4 pages w/ 2 page appendix, 2 figures, 1 tabl
Hartree-Fock and Many-Body Perturbation Theory with Correlated Realistic NN-Interactions
We employ correlated realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions for the
description of nuclear ground states throughout the nuclear chart within the
Hartree-Fock approximation. The crucial short-range central and tensor
correlations, which are induced by the realistic interaction and cannot be
described by the Hartree-Fock many-body state itself, are included explicitly
by a state-independent unitary transformation in the framework of the unitary
correlation operator method (UCOM). Using the correlated realistic interaction
V_UCOM resulting from the Argonne V18 potential, bound nuclei are obtained
already on the Hartree-Fock level. However, the binding energies are smaller
than the experimental values because long-range correlations have not been
accounted for. Their inclusion by means of many-body perturbation theory leads
to a remarkable agreement with experimental binding energies over the whole
mass range from He-4 to Pb-208, even far off the valley of stability. The
observed perturbative character of the residual long-range correlations and the
apparently small net effect of three-body forces provides promising
perspectives for a unified nuclear structure description.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, using REVTEX
Adaptive high-order finite element solution of transient elastohydrodynamic lubrication problems
This article presents a new numerical method to solve transient line contact elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) problems. A high-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method is used for the spatial discretization, and the standard Crank-Nicolson method is employed to approximate the time derivative. An h-adaptivity method is used for grid adaptation with the time-stepping, and the penalty method is employed to handle the cavitation condition.
The roughness model employed here is a simple indentation, which is located on the upper surface. Numerical results are presented comparing the DG method to standard finite difference (FD) techniques. It is shown that micro-EHL features are captured with far fewer degrees of freedom than when using low-order FD methods
Violation of the phase space general covariance as a diffeomorphism anomaly in quantum mechanics
We consider a topological quantum mechanics described by a phase space path
integral and study the 1-dimensional analog for the path integral
representation of the Kontsevich formula. We see that the naive bosonic
integral possesses divergences, that it is even naively non-invariant and thus
is ill-defined. We then consider a super-extension of the theory which
eliminates the divergences and makes the theory naively invariant. This
super-extension is equivalent to the correct choice of measure and was
discussed in the literature. We then investigate the behavior of this extended
theory under diffeomorphisms of the extended phase space and despite of its
naive invariance find out that the theory possesses anomaly under nonlinear
diffeomorphisms. We localize the origin of the anomaly and calculate the lowest
nontrivial anomalous contribution.Comment: 36 page
The Electrostatic Ion Beam Trap : a mass spectrometer of infinite mass range
We study the ions dynamics inside an Electrostatic Ion Beam Trap (EIBT) and
show that the stability of the trapping is ruled by a Hill's equation. This
unexpectedly demonstrates that an EIBT, in the reference frame of the ions
works very similar to a quadrupole trap. The parallelism between these two
kinds of traps is illustrated by comparing experimental and theoretical
stability diagrams of the EIBT. The main difference with quadrupole traps is
that the stability depends only on the ratio of the acceleration and trapping
electrostatic potentials, not on the mass nor the charge of the ions. All kinds
of ions can be trapped simultaneously and since parametric resonances are
proportional to the square root of the charge/mass ratio the EIBT can be used
as a mass spectrometer of infinite mass range
A symmetry reduction technique for higher order Painlev\'e systems
The symmetry reduction of higher order Painlev\'e systems is formulated in
terms of Dirac procedure.
A set of canonical variables that admit Dirac reduction procedure is proposed
for Hamiltonian structures governing the and
Painlev\'e systems for .Comment: to appear in Phys. Lett.
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