836 research outputs found
Phase separation in mixtures of colloids and long ideal polymer coils
Colloidal suspensions with free polymer coils which are larger than the
colloidal particles are considered. The polymer-colloid interaction is modeled
by an extension of the Asakura-Oosawa model. Phase separation occurs into
dilute and dense fluid phases of colloidal particles when polymer is added. The
critical density of this transition tends to zero as the size of the polymer
coils diverges.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Centre-specific bacterial pathogen typing affects infection-control decision making
Whole-genome sequencing is becoming the de facto standard for bacterial outbreak surveillance and infection prevention. This is accompanied by a variety of bioinformatic tools and needs bioinformatics expertise for implementation. However, little is known about the concordance of reported outbreaks when using different bioinformatic workflows. In this multi-centre proficiency testing among 13 major Dutch healthcare-affiliated centres, bacterial whole-genome outbreak analysis was assessed. Centres who participated obtained two randomized bacterial datasets of Illumina sequences, a Klebsiella pneumoniae and a Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, and were asked to apply their bioinformatic workflows. Centres reported back on antimicrobial resistance, multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), and outbreak clusters. The reported clusters were analysed using a method to compare landscapes of phylogenetic trees and calculating Kendall–Colijn distances. Furthermore, fasta files were analysed by state-of-the-art single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis to mitigate the differences introduced by each centre and determine standardized SNP cut-offs. Thirteen centres participated in this study. The reported outbreak clusters revealed discrepancies between centres, even when almost identical bioinformatic workflows were used. Due to stringent filtering, some centres failed to detect extended-spectrum beta-lactamase genes and MLST loci. Applying a standardized method to determine outbreak clusters on the reported de novo assemblies, did not result in uniformity of outbreak-cluster composition among centres
Effect of Finite Impurity Mass on the Anderson Orthogonality Catastrophe in One Dimension
A one-dimensional tight-binding Hamiltonian describes the evolution of a
single impurity interacting locally with electrons. The impurity spectral
function has a power-law singularity
with the same exponent
that characterizes the logarithmic decay of the quasiparticle weight
with the number of electrons , . The exponent
is computed by (1) perturbation theory in the interaction strength and
(2) numerical evaluations with exact results for small systems and variational
results for larger systems. A nonanalytical behavior of is observed in
the limit of infinite impurity mass. For large interaction strength, the
exponent depends strongly on the mass of the impurity in contrast to the
perturbative result.Comment: 26 pages, RevTeX, 7 figures included, to be published in Phys. Rev.
A Local Moment Approach to magnetic impurities in gapless Fermi systems
A local moment approach is developed for the single-particle excitations of a
symmetric Anderson impurity model (AIM), with a soft-gap hybridization
vanishing at the Fermi level with a power law r > 0. Local moments are
introduced explicitly from the outset, and a two-self-energy description is
employed in which the single-particle excitations are coupled dynamically to
low-energy transverse spin fluctuations. The resultant theory is applicable on
all energy scales, and captures both the spin-fluctuation regime of strong
coupling (large-U), as well as the weak coupling regime. While the primary
emphasis is on single particle dynamics, the quantum phase transition between
strong coupling (SC) and (LM) phases can also be addressed directly; for the
spin-fluctuation regime in particular a number of asymptotically exact results
are thereby obtained. Results for both single-particle spectra and SC/LM phase
boundaries are found to agree well with recent numerical renormalization group
(NRG) studies. A number of further testable predictions are made; in
particular, for r < 1/2, spectra characteristic of the SC state are predicted
to exhibit an r-dependent universal scaling form as the SC/LM phase boundary is
approached and the Kondo scale vanishes. Results for the `normal' r = 0 AIM are
moreover recovered smoothly from the limit r -> 0, where the resultant
description of single-particle dynamics includes recovery of Doniach-Sunjic
tails in the Kondo resonance, as well as characteristic low-energy Fermi liquid
behaviour.Comment: 52 pages, 19 figures, submitted to Journal of Physics: Condensed
Matte
Random-effects substitution models for phylogenetics via scalable gradient approximations
Phylogenetic and discrete-trait evolutionary inference depend heavily on an
appropriate characterization of the underlying character substitution process.
In this paper, we present random-effects substitution models that extend common
continuous-time Markov chain models into a richer class of processes capable of
capturing a wider variety of substitution dynamics. As these random-effects
substitution models often require many more parameters than their usual
counterparts, inference can be both statistically and computationally
challenging. Thus, we also propose an efficient approach to compute an
approximation to the gradient of the data likelihood with respect to all
unknown substitution model parameters. We demonstrate that this approximate
gradient enables scaling of sampling-based inference, namely Bayesian inference
via Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, under random-effects substitution models across
large trees and state-spaces. Applied to a dataset of 583 SARS-CoV-2 sequences,
an HKY model with random-effects shows strong signals of nonreversibility in
the substitution process, and posterior predictive model checks clearly show
that it is a more adequate model than a reversible model. When analyzing the
pattern of phylogeographic spread of 1441 influenza A virus (H3N2) sequences
between 14 regions, a random-effects phylogeographic substitution model infers
that air travel volume adequately predicts almost all dispersal rates. A
random-effects state-dependent substitution model reveals no evidence for an
effect of arboreality on the swimming mode in the tree frog subfamily Hylinae.
Simulations reveal that random-effects substitution models can accommodate both
negligible and radical departures from the underlying base substitution model.
We show that our gradient-based inference approach is over an order of
magnitude more time efficient than conventional approaches
Ordering of droplets and light scattering in polymer dispersed liquid crystal films
We study the effects of droplet ordering in initial optical transmittance
through polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films prepared in the presence
of an electrical field. The experimental data are interpreted by using a
theoretical approach to light scattering in PDLC films that explicitly relates
optical transmittance and the order parameters characterizing both the
orientational structures inside bipolar droplets and orientational distribution
of the droplets. The theory relies on the Rayleigh-Gans approximation and uses
the Percus-Yevick approximation to take into account the effects due to droplet
positional correlations.Comment: revtex4, 18 pages, 8 figure
Ninth and Tenth Order Virial Coefficients for Hard Spheres in D Dimensions
We evaluate the virial coefficients B_k for k<=10 for hard spheres in
dimensions D=2,...,8. Virial coefficients with k even are found to be negative
when D>=5. This provides strong evidence that the leading singularity for the
virial series lies away from the positive real axis when D>=5. Further analysis
provides evidence that negative virial coefficients will be seen for some k>10
for D=4, and there is a distinct possibility that negative virial coefficients
will also eventually occur for D=3.Comment: 33 pages, 12 figure
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