New combined PIC-MCC approach for fast simulation of a radio frequency discharge at low gas pressure

A new combined PIC-MCC approach is developed for accurate and fast simulation of a radio frequency discharge at low gas pressure and high density of plasma. Test calculations of transition between different modes of electron heating in a ccrf discharge in helium and argon show a good agreement with experimental data. We demonstrate high efficiency of the combined PIC-MCC algorithm, especially for the collisionless regime of electron heating.Comment: 6 paged, 8 figure

Influence of external factors on dielectric permittivity of Rochelle salt: humidity, annealing, stresses, electric field

The present work contains results of experimental investigation of external factors, such as dessicating/wetting, thermal annealing, uniaxial and hydrostatic pressures on dielectric permittivity of Rochelle salt crystals. The obtained results are compared with available literature data. A conslusion is made that the dispersion of experimental data can be attributed to internal polar point defects in crystals and to influence of storage conditions. The obtained results are analyzed within the phenomenological Landau approach

Dynamics of spin correlations in the spin-1/2 isotropic XY chain in a transverse field

Dynamic xx spin pair correlation functions for the isotropic spin-1/2 XY chain are calculated numerically for long open chains in the presence of a transverse magnetic field at finite temperature. As an application we discuss the temperature dependence of the spin-spin relaxation time in PrCl_3.Comment: 2 pages, latex, 2 figures, abstract of the paper presented at Ampere Summer School ``Applications of Magnetic Resonance in Novel Materials'' Nafplion, Greece, 3-9 September, 2000, partially published in J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 33, 3063 (2000

Acoustic Response to the Action of Nanosecond Laser Pulses on an In/CdTe Thin-Film Heterostructure

The photothermoacoustic method has been used for diagnostics of thermobarodynamic processes in the metal In(400 nm)/semiconductor (CdTe) thin-film system under nanosecond laser irradiation (7 ns, λ = 532 nm) in natural conditions (in air) and in a liquid medium (water). From the analysis of the data obtained, the dependence of the pressure induced in the energy-release region on the irradiation energy den-sity has been established and the melting threshold of In film has been determined. Under irradiation of In/CdTe in water, the pressure is higher than in air: 17 times higher at the melting threshold of In film and 30 times higher at twice the temperature. It has been found that the laser pulse treatment of In/CdTe/Au samples in water makes it possible to obtain diode structures with better parameters: smaller leak currents and a steeper current-voltage characteristic under the forward bias of the p-n junction

Effective transcription factor binding site prediction using a combination of optimization, a genetic algorithm and discriminant analysis to capture distant interactions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Reliable transcription factor binding site (TFBS) prediction methods are essential for computer annotation of large amount of genome sequence data. However, current methods to predict TFBSs are hampered by the high false-positive rates that occur when only sequence conservation at the core binding-sites is considered.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To improve this situation, we have quantified the performance of several Position Weight Matrix (PWM) algorithms, using exhaustive approaches to find their optimal length and position. We applied these approaches to bio-medically important TFBSs involved in the regulation of cell growth and proliferation as well as in inflammatory, immune, and antiviral responses (NF-κB, ISGF3, IRF1, STAT1), obesity and lipid metabolism (PPAR, SREBP, HNF4), regulation of the steroidogenic (SF-1) and cell cycle (E2F) genes expression. We have also gained extra specificity using a method, entitled SiteGA, which takes into account structural interactions within TFBS core and flanking regions, using a genetic algorithm (GA) with a discriminant function of locally positioned dinucleotide (LPD) frequencies.</p> <p>To ensure a higher confidence in our approach, we applied resampling-jackknife and bootstrap tests for the comparison, it appears that, optimized PWM and SiteGA have shown similar recognition performances. Then we applied SiteGA and optimized PWMs (both separately and together) to sequences in the Eukaryotic Promoter Database (EPD). The resulting SiteGA recognition models can now be used to search sequences for BSs using the web tool, SiteGA.</p> <p>Analysis of dependencies between close and distant LPDs revealed by SiteGA models has shown that the most significant correlations are between close LPDs, and are generally located in the core (footprint) region. A greater number of less significant correlations are mainly between distant LPDs, which spanned both core and flanking regions. When SiteGA and optimized PWM models were applied together, this substantially reduced false positives at least at higher stringencies.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Based on this analysis, SiteGA adds substantial specificity even to optimized PWMs and may be considered for large-scale genome analysis. It adds to the range of techniques available for TFBS prediction, and EPD analysis has led to a list of genes which appear to be regulated by the above TFs.</p