684 research outputs found
Analytical challenges of glycosaminoglycans at biological interfaces
The analysis of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) is a challenging task due to their high structural heterogeneity, which results in diverse GAG chains with similar chemical properties. Simultaneously, it is of high importance to understand their role and behavior in biological systems. It has been known for decades now that GAGs can interact with lipid molecules and thus contribute to the onset of atherosclerosis, but their interactions at and with biological interfaces, such as the cell membrane, are yet to be revealed. Here, analytical approaches that could yield important knowledge on the GAG-cell membrane interactions as well as the synthetic and analytical advances that make their study possible are discussed. Due to recent developments in laser technology, we particularly focus on nonlinear spectroscopic methods, especially vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy, which has the potential to unravel the structural complexity of heterogeneous biological interfaces in contact with GAGs, in situ and in real time
Some notes on the Kruskal - Szekeres completion
The Kruskal - Szekeres (KS) completion of the Schwarzschild spacetime is open
to Synge's methodological criticism that the KS procedure generates "good"
coordinates from "bad". This is addressed here in two ways: First I generate
the KS coordinates from Israel coordinates, which are also "good", and then I
generate the KS coordinates directly from a streamlined integration of the
Einstein equations.Comment: One typo correcte
Maximally extended, explicit and regular coverings of the Schwarzschild - de Sitter vacua in arbitrary dimension
Maximally extended, explicit and regular coverings of the Schwarzschild - de
Sitter family of vacua are given, first in spacetime (generalizing a result due
to Israel) and then for all dimensions (assuming a sphere). It is
shown that these coordinates offer important advantages over the well known
Kruskal - Szekeres procedure.Comment: 12 pages revtex4 5 figures in color. Higher resolution version at
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~lake/regularcoordinates.pd
A Simple Family of Analytical Trumpet Slices of the Schwarzschild Spacetime
We describe a simple family of analytical coordinate systems for the
Schwarzschild spacetime. The coordinates penetrate the horizon smoothly and are
spatially isotropic. Spatial slices of constant coordinate time feature a
trumpet geometry with an asymptotically cylindrical end inside the horizon at a
prescribed areal radius (with ) that serves as the free
parameter for the family. The slices also have an asymptotically flat end at
spatial infinity. In the limit the spatial slices lose their trumpet
geometry and become flat -- in this limit, our coordinates reduce to
Painlev\'e-Gullstrand coordinates.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Can Gravitational Waves Prevent Inflation?
To investigate the cosmic no hair conjecture, we analyze numerically
1-dimensional plane symmetrical inhomogeneities due to gravitational waves in
vacuum spacetimes with a positive cosmological constant. Assuming periodic
gravitational pulse waves initially, we study the time evolution of those waves
and the nature of their collisions. As measures of inhomogeneity on each
hypersurface, we use the 3-dimensional Riemann invariant and the electric and magnetic parts of
the Weyl tensor. We find a temporal growth of the curvature in the waves'
collision region, but the overall expansion of the universe later overcomes
this effect. No singularity appears and the result is a ``no hair" de Sitter
spacetime. The waves we study have amplitudes between and widths between ,
where , the horizon scale of de Sitter spacetime. This
supports the cosmic no hair conjecture.Comment: LaTeX, 11 pages, 3 figures are available on request <To
[email protected] (Hisa-aki SHINKAI)>, WU-AP/29/9
Recovering Shared Objects Without Stable Storage
This paper considers the problem of building fault-tolerant shared objects when processes can crash and recover but lose their persistent state on recovery. This Diskless Crash-Recovery (DCR) model matches the way many long-lived systems are built. We show that it presents new challenges, as operations that are recorded at a quorum may not persist after some of the processes in that quorum crash and then recover.
To address this problem, we introduce the notion of crash-consistent quorums, where no recoveries happen during the quorum responses. We show that relying on crash-consistent quorums enables a recovery procedure that can recover all operations that successfully finished. Crash-consistent quorums can be easily identified using a mechanism we term the crash vector, which tracks the causal relationship between crashes, recoveries, and other operations.
We apply crash-consistent quorums and crash vectors to build two storage primitives. We give a new algorithm for multi-writer, multi-reader atomic registers in the DCR model that guarantees safety under all conditions and termination under a natural condition. It improves on the best prior protocol for this problem by requiring fewer rounds, fewer nodes to participate in the quorum, and a less restrictive liveness condition. We also present a more efficient single-writer, single-reader atomic set - a virtual stable storage abstraction. It can be used to lift any existing algorithm from the traditional Crash-Recovery model to the DCR model. We examine a specific application, state machine replication, and show that existing diskless protocols can violate their correctness guarantees, while ours offers a general and correct solution
Collisions of Einstein-Conformal Scalar Waves
A large class of solutions of the Einstein-conformal scalar equations in
D=2+1 and D=3+1 is identified. They describe the collisions of asymptotic
conformal scalar waves and are generated from Einstein-minimally coupled scalar
spacetimes via a (generalized) Bekenstein transformation. Particular emphasis
is given to the study of the global properties and the singularity structure of
the obtained solutions. It is shown, that in the case of the absence of pure
gravitational radiation in the initial data, the formation of the final
singularity is not only generic, but is even inevitable.Comment: 17 pages, LaTe
The Embedding of Schwarzschild in Braneworld
The braneworlds models were inspired partly by Kaluza-Klein's theory, where
both the gravitational and the gauge fields are obtained from the geometry of a
higher dimensional space. The positive aspects of these models consist in
perspectives of modifications it could bring in to particle physics, such as:
unification in a TeV scale, quantum gravity in this scale and deviation of
Newton's law for small distances. One of the principles of these models is to
suppose that all space-times can be embedded in a bulk of higher dimension. The
main result in these notes is a theorem showing a mathematical inconsistency of
the Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, namely that the Schwarzschild space-time
cannot be embedded locally and isometrically in a five dimensional bulk with
constant curvature,(for example AdS-5). From the point of view of
semi-Riemannian geometry this last result represents a serious restriction to
the Randall-Sundrum's braneworld model.Comment: Published in the Int. J. Theor. Phys, 200
Apparent horizons in the quasi-spherical Szekeres models
The notion of an apparent horizon (AH) in a collapsing object can be carried
over from the Lema\^{\i}tre -- Tolman (L--T) to the quasispherical Szekeres
models in three ways: 1. Literally by the definition -- the AH is the boundary
of the region, in which every bundle of null geodesics has negative expansion
scalar. 2. As the locus, at which null lines that are as nearly radial as
possible are turned toward decreasing areal radius . These lines are in
general nongeodesic. The name "absolute apparent horizon" (AAH) is proposed for
this locus. 3. As the boundary of a region, where null \textit{geodesics} are
turned toward decreasing . The name "light collapse region" (LCR) is
proposed for this region (which is 3-dimensional in every space of constant
); its boundary coincides with the AAH. The AH and AAH coincide in the L--T
models. In the quasispherical Szekeres models, the AH is different from (but
not disjoint with) the AAH. Properties of the AAH and LCR are investigated, and
the relations between the AAH and the AH are illustrated with diagrams using an
explicit example of a Szekeres metric. It turns out that an observer who is
already within the AH is, for some time, not yet within the AAH. Nevertheless,
no light signal can be sent through the AH from the inside. The analogue of the
AAH for massive particles is also considered.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, includes little extensions and style corrections
made after referee's comments, the text matches the published versio
Quantum mechanical virial theorem in systems with translational and rotational symmetry
Generalized virial theorem for quantum mechanical nonrelativistic and
relativistic systems with translational and rotational symmetry is derived in
the form of the commutator between the generator of dilations G and the
Hamiltonian H. If the conditions of translational and rotational symmetry
together with the additional conditions of the theorem are satisfied, the
matrix elements of the commutator [G, H] are equal to zero on the subspace of
the Hilbert space. Normalized simultaneous eigenvectors of the particular set
of commuting operators which contains H, J^{2}, J_{z} and additional operators
form an orthonormal basis in this subspace. It is expected that the theorem is
relevant for a large number of quantum mechanical N-particle systems with
translational and rotational symmetry.Comment: 24 pages, accepted for publication in International Journal of
Theoretical Physic
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