5,877 research outputs found
Generalized Buneman pruning for inferring the most parsimonious multi-state phylogeny
Accurate reconstruction of phylogenies remains a key challenge in
evolutionary biology. Most biologically plausible formulations of the problem
are formally NP-hard, with no known efficient solution. The standard in
practice are fast heuristic methods that are empirically known to work very
well in general, but can yield results arbitrarily far from optimal. Practical
exact methods, which yield exponential worst-case running times but generally
much better times in practice, provide an important alternative. We report
progress in this direction by introducing a provably optimal method for the
weighted multi-state maximum parsimony phylogeny problem. The method is based
on generalizing the notion of the Buneman graph, a construction key to
efficient exact methods for binary sequences, so as to apply to sequences with
arbitrary finite numbers of states with arbitrary state transition weights. We
implement an integer linear programming (ILP) method for the multi-state
problem using this generalized Buneman graph and demonstrate that the resulting
method is able to solve data sets that are intractable by prior exact methods
in run times comparable with popular heuristics. Our work provides the first
method for provably optimal maximum parsimony phylogeny inference that is
practical for multi-state data sets of more than a few characters.Comment: 15 page
Microheated substrates for patterning cells and controlling development
Here, we seek to control cellular development by devising a means through which cells can be subjected to a microheated environment in standard culture conditions. Numerous techniques have been devised for controlling cellular function and development via manipulation of surface environmental cues at the micro- and nanoscale. It is well understood that temperature plays a significant role in the rate of cellular activities, migratory behavior (thermotaxis), and in some cases, protein expression. Yet, the effects and possible utilization of micrometer-scale temperature fields in cell cultures have not been explored. Toward this end, two types of thermally isolated microheated substrates were designed and fabricated, one with standard backside etching beneath a dielectric film and another with a combination of surface and bulk micromachining and backside etching. The substrates were characterized with infrared microscopy, finite element modeling, scanning electron microscopy, stylus profilometry, and electrothermal calibrations. Neuron culture studies were conducted on these substrates to 1) examine the feasibility of using a microheated environment to achieve patterned cell growth and 2) selectively accelerate neural development on regions less than 100wide. Results show that attached neurons, grown on microheated regions set at 37, extended processes substantially faster than those incubated at 25on the same substrate. Further, unattached neurons were positioned precisely along the length of the heater filament (operating at 45) using free convection currents. These preliminary findings indicate that microheated substrates may be used to direct cellular development spatially in a practical manner.$hfillhbox[1414]
Critical Susceptibility Exponent Measured from Fe/W(110) Bilayers
The critical phase transition in ferromagnetic ultrathin Fe/W(110) films has
been studied using the magnetic ac susceptibility. A statistically objective,
unconstrained fitting of the susceptibility is used to extract values for the
critical exponent (gamma), the critical temperature Tc, the critical amplitude
(chi_o) and the range of temperature that exhibits power-law behaviour. A
fitting algorithm was used to simultaneously minimize the statistical variance
of a power law fit to individual experimental measurements of chi(T). This
avoids systematic errors and generates objective fitting results. An ensemble
of 25 measurements on many different films are analyzed. Those which permit an
extended fitting range in reduced temperature lower than approximately .00475
give an average value gamma=1.76+-0.01. Bilayer films give a weighted average
value of gamma = 1.75+-0.02. These results are in agreement with the
-dimensional Ising exponent gamma= 7/4. Measurements that do not exhibit
power-law scaling as close to Tc (especially films of thickness 1.75ML) show a
value of gamma higher than the Ising value. Several possibilities are
considered to account for this behaviour.Comment: -Submitted to Phys. Rev. B -Revtex4 Format -6 postscript figure
Image tag completion by local learning
The problem of tag completion is to learn the missing tags of an image. In
this paper, we propose to learn a tag scoring vector for each image by local
linear learning. A local linear function is used in the neighborhood of each
image to predict the tag scoring vectors of its neighboring images. We
construct a unified objective function for the learning of both tag scoring
vectors and local linear function parame- ters. In the objective, we impose the
learned tag scoring vectors to be consistent with the known associations to the
tags of each image, and also minimize the prediction error of each local linear
function, while reducing the complexity of each local function. The objective
function is optimized by an alternate optimization strategy and gradient
descent methods in an iterative algorithm. We compare the proposed algorithm
against different state-of-the-art tag completion methods, and the results show
its advantages
Solar Magnetic Carpet I: Simulation of Synthetic Magnetograms
This paper describes a new 2D model for the photospheric evolution of the
magnetic carpet. It is the first in a series of papers working towards
constructing a realistic 3D non-potential model for the interaction of
small-scale solar magnetic fields. In the model, the basic evolution of the
magnetic elements is governed by a supergranular flow profile. In addition,
magnetic elements may evolve through the processes of emergence, cancellation,
coalescence and fragmentation. Model parameters for the emergence of bipoles
are based upon the results of observational studies. Using this model, several
simulations are considered, where the range of flux with which bipoles may
emerge is varied. In all cases the model quickly reaches a steady state where
the rates of emergence and cancellation balance. Analysis of the resulting
magnetic field shows that we reproduce observed quantities such as the flux
distribution, mean field, cancellation rates, photospheric recycle time and a
magnetic network. As expected, the simulation matches observations more closely
when a larger, and consequently more realistic, range of emerging flux values
is allowed (4e16 - 1e19 Mx). The model best reproduces the current observed
properties of the magnetic carpet when we take the minimum absolute flux for
emerging bipoles to be 4e16 Mx. In future, this 2D model will be used as an
evolving photospheric boundary condition for 3D non-potential modeling.Comment: 33 pages, 16 figures, 5 gif movies included: movies may be viewed at
http://www-solar.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~karen/movies_paper1
Probing neutral top-pion via a flavor-changing process
In the framework of topcolor-assisted-technicolor model(TC2), we study a
flavor-changing neutral top-pion production process . The study shows that there exists a resonance effect
which can enhance the cross section up to a few fb even tens fb. For a yearly
luminosity 100 at future linear colliders, there might be hundreds
even thousands events to be produced. On the other hand, the background of such
flavor-changing process is very clean due to the GIM mechanism in SM . With
such sufficient events and clean background, neutral toppion could be detected
at future linear colliders with high center of energy and luminosity. Our study
provides a possible way to test TC2 model.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures,has been accepted by Phys.Rev.
The productions of the top-pions and top-Higgs associated with the charm quark at the hadron colliders
In the topcolor-assistant technicolor (TC2) model, the typical physical
particles, top-pions and top-Higgs, are predicted and the existence of these
particles could be regarded as the robust evidence of the model. These
particles are accessible at the Tevatron and LHC, and furthermore the
flavor-changing(FC) feature of the TC2 model can provide us a unique chance to
probe them. In this paper, we study some interesting FC production processes of
top-pions and top-Higgs at the Tevatron and LHC, i.e., and
productions. We find that the light charged top-pions
are not favorable by the Tevatron experiments and the Tevatron has a little
capability to probe neutral top-pion and top-Higgs via these FC production
processes. At the LHC, however, the cross section can reach the level of
pb for production and fb for
production. So one can expect that enough signals could be
produced at the LHC experiments. Furthermore, the SM background should be clean
due to the FC feature of the processes and the FC decay modes can provide us the typical signal to
detect the top-pions and top-Higgs. Therefore, it is hopeful to find the signal
of top-pions and top-Higgs with the running of the LHC via these FC processes.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
High performance Beowulf computer for lattice QCD
We describe the construction of a high performance parallel computer composed
of PC components, as well as the performance test in lattice QCD.Comment: Lattice 2001 (Algorithms and Machines) 3 page
Quantum secure communication scheme with W state
Recently, Cao et al. proposed a new quantum secure direct communication
scheme using W state. In their scheme, the error rate introduced by an
eavesdropper who takes intercept-resend attack, is only 8.3%. Actually, their
scheme is just a quantum key distribution scheme because the communication
parties first create a shared key and then encrypt the secret message using
one-time pad. We then present a quantum secure communication scheme using
three-qubit W state. In our scheme, the error rate is raised to 25% and it is
not necessary for the present scheme to use alternative measurement or Bell
basis measurement. We also show our scheme is unconditionally secure.Comment: Comments are welcom
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