37,911 research outputs found
The size of the nucleosome
The structural origin of the size of the 11 nm nucleosomal disc is addressed.
On the nanometer length-scale the organization of DNA as chromatin in the
chromosomes involves a coiling of DNA around the histone core of the
nucleosome. We suggest that the size of the nucleosome core particle is
dictated by the fulfillment of two criteria: One is optimizing the volume
fraction of the DNA double helix; this requirement for close-packing has its
root in optimizing atomic and molecular interactions. The other criterion being
that of having a zero strain-twist coupling; being a zero-twist structure is a
necessity when allowing for transient tensile stresses during the
reorganization of DNA, e.g., during the reposition, or sliding, of a nucleosome
along the DNA double helix. The mathematical model we apply is based on a
tubular description of double helices assuming hard walls. When the base-pairs
of the linker-DNA is included the estimate of the size of an ideal nucleosome
is in close agreement with the experimental numbers. Interestingly, the size of
the nucleosome is shown to be a consequence of intrinsic properties of the DNA
double helix.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures; v2: minor modification
Emergency braking for free piston energy converters
Free piston energy converters are a potential technology for future hybrid vehicles, as well as stationary power generation applications. A candidate 2-stroke system comprises of two opposing combustion chambers with a common piston rod, and integrated with a tubular permanent magnet electrical machine for the conversion of mechanical to electrical energy. A key issue for the ultimate adoption of such systems, however, is their robustness in the event of a fault to enable a safe shutdown, with minimal mechanical or electrical damage. The paper considers system braking issues and the importance of early fault detection. Results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of passive and active braking techniques for a range of dc-link supply voltage and operating output power
Techniques for achieving magnetic cleanliness on deep-space missions
Techniques for obtaining magnetic cleanliness on deep space missions to allow interplanetary magnetic field mappin
Non-Perturbative Green's Functions in Theories with Extended Superconformal Symmetry
The multiplets that occur in four dimensional rigidly supersymmetric theories
can be described either by chiral superfields in Minkowski superspace or
analytic superfields in harmonic superspace. The superconformal Ward identities
for Green's functions of gauge invariant operators of these types are derived.
It is shown that there are no chiral superconformal invariants. It is further
shown that the Green's functions of analytic operators are severely restricted
by the superconformal Ward when analyticity is taken into account.Comment: 17 pages, plain tex. Some conjectures that were in the original paper
are clarifed in the light of more recent work to which we give references.
See Note added for detail
ESO 3060170 -- a massive fossil galaxy group with a heated gas core?
We present a detailed study of the ESO 3060170 galaxy group combining
Chandra, XMM and optical observations. The system is found to be a fossil
galaxy group. The group X-ray emission is composed of a central dense cool core
(10 kpc in radius) and an isothermal medium beyond the central 10 kpc. The
region between 10 and 50 kpc (the cooling radius) has the same temperature as
the gas from 50 kpc to 400 kpc although the gas cooling time between 10 and 50
kpc (2 - 6 Gyr) is shorter than the Hubble time. Thus, the ESO 3060170 group
does not have a group-sized cooling core. We suggest that the group cooling
core may have been heated by a central AGN outburst in the past and the small
dense cool core is the truncated relic of a previous cooling core. The Chandra
observations also reveal a variety of X-ray features in the central region,
including a ``finger'', an edge-like feature and a small ``tail'', all aligned
along a north-south axis, as are the galaxy light and group galaxy
distribution. The proposed AGN outburst may cause gas ``sloshing'' around the
center and produce these asymmetric features. The observed flat temperature
profile to 1/3 R_vir is not consistent with the predicted temperature profile
in recent numerical simulations. We compare the entropy profile of the ESO
3060170 group with those of three other groups and find a flatter relation than
that predicted by simulations involving only shock heating, S r. This is direct evidence for the importance of non-gravitational
processes in group centers. We derive the mass profiles within 1/3 R_vir and
find the ESO 3060170 group is the most massive fossil group known (1 - 2 X
10 M). The M/L ratio of the system, ~ 150 at 0.3 R_vir, is
normal.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, to appear in ApJ. A high-resolution version can
be downloaded from http://cxc.harvard.edu/~msun/esoa.p
The Principal Axis of the Virgo Cluster
Using accurate distances to individual Virgo cluster galaxies obtained by the
method of Surface Brightness Fluctuations, we show that Virgo's brightest
ellipticals have a remarkably collinear arrangement in three dimensions. This
axis, which is inclined by 10 to 15 degrees from the line of sight, can be
traced to even larger scales where it appears to join a filamentary bridge of
galaxies connecting Virgo to the rich cluster Abell 1367. The orientations of
individual Virgo ellipticals also show some tendency to be aligned with the
cluster axis, as does the jet of the supergiant elliptical M87. These results
suggest that the formation of the Virgo cluster, and its brightest member
galaxies, have been driven by infall of material along the Virgo-A1367
filament.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
The neutron magnetic form factor G_M^n(Q^2) from Quasi-Elastic inclusive scattering data on D and 4He
We analyze cross sections for Quasi-Elastic inclusive scattering of electrons
on nuclei and show that the observed isolated peaks for relatively low
are unique for the lightest targets. Focusing in particular on D and He, we
investigate in two ways to what measure the above peaks can be allocated to
nucleon-elastic processes. We first compute approximate upper limits for the
nucleon-inelastic background in the Quasi-Elastic region due to inclusive
excitation, and find those to be small. Far more precise is a
semi-phenomenological approach, where the dominance of nucleon-elastic
processes is translated into a set of stringent requirements. We show that
those are very well fulfilled for recent D data, and to a somewhat lesser
extent for older D and He data. With knowledge of and
information on , we then extract and find agreement with values
obtained by alternative methods. We discuss the sensitivity of the extraction
method and mention future applications.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, revtex4, revised version, Phys. Rev. C, in pres
Dualisation of the D=7 Heterotic String
The dualisation and the first-order formulation of the D=7 abelian Yang-Mills
supergravity which is the low energy effective limit of the D=7 fully Higssed
heterotic string is discussed. The non-linear coset formulation of the scalars
is enlarged to include the entire bosonic sector by introducing dual fields and
by constructing the Lie superalgebra which generates the dualized coset
element.Comment: 20 page
On the relation between nuclear and nucleon Structure Functions and their moments
Calculations of nuclear Structure Functions (SF) F_k^A(x,Q^2) routinely
exploit a generalized convolution, involving the SF for nucleons F_k^N and the
linking SF f^{PN,A} of a fictitious nucleus, composed of point-particles, with
the latter usually expressed in terms of hadronic degrees of freedom. For
finite Q^2 the approach seemed to be lacking a solid justification and the same
is the case for recently proposed, effective nuclear parton distribution
functions (pdf), which exactly reproduce the above-mentioned hadronically
computed F_k^A. Many years ago Jaffe and West proved the above convolution in
the Plane Wave Impulse Approximation (PWIA) for the nuclear components in the
convolution. In the present note we extend the above proof to include classes
of nuclear Final State Interactions (FSI). One and the same function appears to
relate parton distribution functions (pdf) in nuclei and nucleons, and SF for
nuclear targets and for nucleons. That relation is the previously conjectured
one,with an entirely different interpretation of f^{PN,A}. We conclude with an
extensive analysis of moments of nuclear SF based on the generalized
convolution. Characteristics of those moments are shown to be quite similar to
the same for a nucleon. We conclude that the above evidences asymptotic freedom
of a nucleon in a medium and not of a composite nucleus.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure
Microwave absorption/reflection and magneto-transport experiments on high-mobility electron gas
We have performed simultaneous measurements of microwave
absorption/reflection and magneto-transport characteristics of a high mobility
two-dimensional electrons in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure in regime of
Microwave-Induced Resistance Oscillations (MIROs). It is shown that the
electrodynamic aspect of the problem is important in these experiments. In the
absorption experiments a broad cyclotron resonance line was observed due to a
large reflection from the highly conductive electron gas. There were no
additional features observed related to absorption at harmonics of the
cyclotron resonance. In near-field reflection experiments a very different
oscillation pattern was revealed when compared to MIROs. The oscillation
pattern observed in the reflection experiments is probably due to plasma
effects occurring in a finite-size sample. The whole microscopic picture of
MIROs is more complicated than simply a resonant absorption at harmonics of the
cyclotron resonance. Nevertheless, the experimental observations are in good
agreement with the model by Ryzhii et al. involving the photo-assisted
scattering in the presence of a crossed magnetic field and dc bias. The
observed damping factor of MIROs may be attributed to a change in the electron
mobility as a function of temperature.Comment: to be published in IEEE Transactions On Nanotechnolog
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