Hindered mobility of a particle near a soft interface

The translational motion of a solid sphere near a deformable fluid interface is studied in the low Reynolds number regime. In this problem, the fluid flow driven by the sphere is dynamically coupled the instantaneous conformation of the interface. Using a two-dimensional Fourier transform technique, we are able to account for the multiple backflows scattered from the interface. The mobility tensor is then obtained from the matrix elements of the relevant Green function. This analysis allows us to express the explicit position and frequency dependence of the mobility. We recover in the steady limit the result for a sphere near a perfectly flat interface. At intermediate time scales, the mobility exhibits an imaginary part, which is a signature of the elastic response of the interface. In the short time limit, we find the intriguing feature that the perpendicular mobility may, under some circumstances, become lower than the bulk value. All those results can be explained from the definition of the relaxation time of the soft interface.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Nonequilibrium fluctuations of an interface under shear

The steady state properties of an interface in a stationary Couette flow are addressed within the framework of fluctuating hydrodynamics. Our study reveals that thermal fluctuations are driven out of equilibrium by an effective shear rate that differs from the applied one. In agreement with experiments, we find that the mean square displacement of the interface is strongly reduced by the flow. We also show that nonequilibrium fluctuations present a certain degree of universality in the sense that all features of the fluids can be factorized into a single control parameter. Finally, the results are discussed in the light of recent experimental and numerical studies.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Scale-dependent rigidity of polymer-ornamented membranes

We study the fluctuation spectrum of fluid membranes carrying grafted polymers. Contrary to usual descriptions, we find that the modifications induced by the polymers cannot be reduced to the renormalization of the membrane bending rigidity. Instead we show that the ornamented membrane exhibits a scale-dependent elastic modulus that we evaluate. In ornamented lamellar stacks, we further show that this leads to a modification of the Caille parameter characterizing the power-law singularities of the Bragg peaks.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Vergleichende Qualitätsforschung - Neue Ansätze und Impulse täten gut

Eine am FiBL durchgeführte Auswertung neuer Studien im Bereich der vergleichenden Qualitätsforschung brachte die Bestätigung bekannter Befunde und Tendenzen, zeigte aber keine grundsätzlich neuen Ansätze. Für den biologischen Landbau bleibt die Qualitätsforschung von zentraler Bedeutung

Sharp failure rates for the bootstrap particle filter in high dimensions

We prove that the maximum of the sample importance weights in a high-dimensional Gaussian particle filter converges to unity unless the ensemble size grows exponentially in the system dimension. Our work is motivated by and parallels the derivations of Bengtsson, Bickel and Li (2007); however, we weaken their assumptions on the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix of the prior distribution and establish rigorously their strong conjecture on when weight collapse occurs. Specifically, we remove the assumption that the nonzero eigenvalues are bounded away from zero, which, although the dimension of the involved vectors grow to infinity, essentially permits the effective system dimension to be bounded. Moreover, with some restrictions on the rate of growth of the maximum eigenvalue, we relax their assumption that the eigenvalues are bounded from above, allowing the system to be dominated by a single mode.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/074921708000000228 the IMS Collections (http://www.imstat.org/publications/imscollections.htm) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Polarization of active Janus particles

We study the collective motion of Janus particles in a temperature or concentration gradient. Because of the torque exerted by an external or self-generated field, the particles align their axis on this gradient. In a swarm of self-driven particles, this polarization enhances the interactiondriven confinement. Self-polarization in a non-uniform laser beam could be used for guiding hot particles along a given trajectory.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Tailor-made tests for goodness of fit to semiparametric hypotheses

We introduce a new framework for constructing tests of general semiparametric hypotheses which have nontrivial power on the $n^{-1/2}$ scale in every direction, and can be tailored to put substantial power on alternatives of importance. The approach is based on combining test statistics based on stochastic processes of score statistics with bootstrap critical values.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053606000000137 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A note on confined diffusion

The random motion of a Brownian particle confined in some finite domain is considered. Quite generally, the relevant statistical properties involve infinite series, whose coefficients are related to the eigenvalues of the diffusion operator. Unfortunately, the latter depend on space dimensionality and on the particular shape of the domain, and an analytical expression is in most circumstances not available. In this article, it is shown that the series may in some circumstances sum up exactly. Explicit calculations are performed for 2D diffusion restricted to a circular domain and 3D diffusion inside a sphere. In both cases, the short-time behaviour of the mean square displacement is obtained.Comment: 10 pages; Eq. (2) correcte

Once-daily saquinavir (SAQ)/ritonavir (RTV) (2000/100 mg) with abacavir/lamivudine (600/300 mg) or tenofovir/emtricitabine (245/300 mg) in naïve patients

Poster presentation: Background In the past years, once-daily (QD) dosing of antiretroviral combination therapy has become an increasingly available treatment option for HIV-1+ patients. Methods Open label study in which HIV-1+ patients treated with SAQ/RTV (1000/100 mg BID) and two NRTIs with HIV-RNA-PCR < 50 copies/ml were switched to SAQ/RTV(2000/100 mg QD) with unchanged NRTI-backbone. CD4-cells, HIV-RNA-PCR, SAQ and RTV drug-levels and metabolic parameters were compared. Summary of results 17 patients (15 male, 42 years), median CD4 456 ± 139/micro l were included so far. The median follow-up time is 4 months. The HIV-RNA-PCR remained <50 copies/ml for all patients. Fasting metabolic parameters remained unchanged. The SAQ AUC 0–12 h were significantly higher when given QD vs. BID (median 29,400 vs. 18,500 ng*h/ml; p = 0.009), whereas the Cmin, Cmax and AUC was lower for RTV when given QD vs. BID (7,400 vs. 11,700 ng*h/ml; p = 0.02). Conclusion In this ongoing study SAQ/RTV (2000/100 mg QD) was well tolerated and demonstrated higher SAQ and lower RTV drug levels as compared to the BID dosing schedule. (Table 1 and Figure 1.