7,475 research outputs found
Determination of chemical composition of the atmosphere of Venus by the interplanetary station ''Venera-4''
Venera-4 observation of chemical composition of Venus atmospher
Low-temperature specific heat of real crystals: Possibility of leading contribution of optical and short-wavelength acoustical vibrations
We point out that the repeatedly reported glass-like properties of
crystalline materials are not necessarily associated with localized (or
quasilocalized) excitations. In real crystals, optical and short-wavelength
acoustical vibrations remain damped due to defects down to zero temperature. If
such a damping is frequency-independent, e.g. due to planar defects or charged
defects, these optical and short-wavelength acoustical vibrations yield a
linear-in- contribution to the low-temperature specific heat of the crystal
lattices. At low enough temperatures such a contribution will prevail over that
of the long-wavelength acoustical vibrations (Debye contribution). The
crossover between the linear and the Debye regime takes place at , where is the concentration of the defects responsible for the
damping. Estimates show that this crossover could be observable.Comment: 5 pages. v4: Error in Appendix corrected, which does not change the
main results of the pape
Cognitive Impairments in Schizophrenia as Assessed Through Activation and Connectivity Measures of Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Data
The cognitive dysfunction present in patients with schizophrenia is thought to be driven in part by disorganized connections between higher-order cortical fields. Although studies utilizing electroencephalography (EEG), PET and fMRI have contributed significantly to our understanding of these mechanisms, magnetoencephalography (MEG) possesses great potential to answer long-standing questions linking brain interactions to cognitive operations in the disorder. Many experimental paradigms employed in EEG and fMRI are readily extendible to MEG and have expanded our understanding of the neurophysiological architecture present in schizophrenia. Source reconstruction techniques, such as adaptive spatial filtering, take advantage of the spatial localization abilities of MEG, allowing us to evaluate which specific structures contribute to atypical cognition in schizophrenia. Finally, both bivariate and multivariate functional connectivity metrics of MEG data are useful for understanding how these interactions in the brain are impaired in schizophrenia, and how cognitive and clinical outcomes are affected as a result. We also present here data from our own laboratory that illustrates how some of these novel functional connectivity measures, specifically imaginary coherence (IC), are quite powerful in relating disconnectivity in the brain to characteristic behavioral findings in the disorder
Inverse Borrmann effect in photonic crystals
The Borrmann effect, which is related to the microscopic distribution of the
electromagnetic field inside the primitive cell, is studied in photonic and
magnetophotonic crystals. This effect, well-known in x-ray spectroscopy, is
responsible for the enhancement or suppression of various linear and nonlinear
optical effects when the incidence angle and/or the frequency change. It is
shown that by design of the primitive cell this effect can be suppressed and
even inverted
Corrections to the Central Limit Theorem for Heavy-Tailed Probability Densities
Classical Edgeworth expansions provide asymptotic correction terms to the
Central Limit Theorem (CLT) up to an order that depends on the number of
moments available. In this paper, we provide subsequent correction terms beyond
those given by a standard Edgeworth expansion in the general case of regularly
varying distributions with diverging moments (beyond the second). The
subsequent terms can be expressed in a simple closed form in terms of certain
special functions (Dawson's integral and parabolic cylinder functions), and
there are qualitative differences depending on whether the number of moments
available is even, odd or not an integer, and whether the distributions are
symmetric or not. If the increments have an even number of moments, then
additional logarithmic corrections must also be incorporated in the expansion
parameter. An interesting feature of our correction terms for the CLT is that
they become dominant outside the central region and blend naturally with known
large-deviation asymptotics when these are applied formally to the spatial
scales of the CLT
Modelisation of transition and noble metal vicinal surfaces: energetics, vibrations and stability
The energetics of transition and noble metal (Rh, Pd, Cu) vicinal surfaces,
i.e., surface energy, step energy, kink energy and electronic interactions
between steps, is studied at 0K from electronic structure calculations in the
tight-binding approximation using a {\it s, p} and {\it d} valence orbital
basis set. Then, the surface phonon spectra of copper are investigated in the
harmonic approximation with the help of a semi-empirical inter-atomic
potential. This allows to derive the contribution of phonons at finite
temperatures to the step free energy and to the interactions between steps. The
last part is devoted to the stability of vicinal surfaces relative to faceting
with special attention to the domain of orientations (100)-(111).
Semi-empirical potentials are shown to be not realistic enough to give a
reliable answer to this problem. The results derived from electronic structure
calculations predict a variety of behaviors and, in particular, a possible
faceting into two other vicinal orientations. Finally, temperature effects are
discussed. Comparisons are made with other theoretical works and available
experiments
A unified approach to computation of integrable structures
We expose (without proofs) a unified computational approach to integrable
structures (including recursion, Hamiltonian, and symplectic operators) based
on geometrical theory of partial differential equations. We adopt a coordinate
based approach and aim to provide a tutorial to the computations.Comment: 19 pages, based on a talk on the SPT 2011 conference,
http://www.sptspt.it/spt2011/ ; v2, v3: minor correction
Crystallization of Hemoglobins II and III of the Symbiont-Harboring Clam Lucina pectinata
Diffraction data to 2.7 A resolution were measured on crystals of the homotetramers of components II and III of the cytoplacmic hemoglobin of the symbiont-harboring clam Lucina pectinata. Even though the crystallization conditions are different and the sequence homology of the two hemoglobins is only 63%, the crystals are isomorphous to each other and to the heterotetramer Hb II/III, implying that the residues primarily involved in the intermolecular interactions and responsible for crystal cohesion may be invariant
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