1,824 research outputs found
Re-entrant ferroelectricity in liquid crystals
The ferroelectric (Sm C) -- antiferroelectric (Sm C) -- reentrant
ferroelectric (re Sm C) phase temperature sequence was observed for system
with competing synclinic - anticlinic interactions. The basic properties of
this system are as follows (1) the Sm C phase is metastable in temperature
range of the Sm C stability (2) the double inversions of the helix
handedness at Sm C -- Sm C and Sm C% -- re-Sm C phase
transitions were found (3) the threshold electric field that is necessary to
induce synclinic ordering in the Sm C phase decreases near both Sm
C -- Sm C and Sm C -- re-Sm C phase boundaries, and it has
maximum in the middle of the Sm C stability region. All these properties
are properly described by simple Landau model that accounts for nearest
neighboring layer steric interactions and quadrupolar ordering only.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PR
Robustness and epistasis in mutation-selection models
We investigate the fitness advantage associated with the robustness of a
phenotype against deleterious mutations using deterministic mutation-selection
models of quasispecies type equipped with a mesa shaped fitness landscape. We
obtain analytic results for the robustness effect which become exact in the
limit of infinite sequence length. Thereby, we are able to clarify a seeming
contradiction between recent rigorous work and an earlier heuristic treatment
based on a mapping to a Schr\"odinger equation. We exploit the quantum
mechanical analogy to calculate a correction term for finite sequence lengths
and verify our analytic results by numerical studies. In addition, we
investigate the occurrence of an error threshold for a general class of
epistatic landscape and show that diminishing epistasis is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for error threshold behavior.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure
GARIMAS 1 - GAlapagos RIft MAssive Sulphides : Cruise 32 of MS SONNE, 09.05.-09.07.1984 ; cruise report
Scattering of rare-gas atoms at a metal surface: evidence of anticorrugation of the helium-atom potential-energy surface and the surface electron density
Recent measurements of the scattering of He and Ne atoms at Rh(110) suggest
that these two rare-gas atoms measure a qualitatively different surface
corrugation: While Ne atom scattering seemingly reflects the electron-density
undulation of the substrate surface, the scattering potential of He atoms
appears to be anticorrugated. An understanding of this perplexing result is
lacking. In this paper we present density functional theory calculations of the
interaction potentials of He and Ne with Rh(110). We find that, and explain
why, the nature of the interaction of the two probe particles is qualitatively
different, which implies that the topographies of their scattering potentials
are indeed anticorrugated.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 10 figure
Current correlations and quantum localization in 2D disordered systems with broken time-reversal invariance
We study long-range correlations of equilibrium current densities in a
two-dimensional mesoscopic system with the time reversal invariance broken by a
random or homogeneous magnetic field. Our result is universal, i.e. it does not
depend on the type (random potential or random magnetic field) or correlation
length of disorder. This contradicts recent sigma-model calculations of
Taras-Semchuk and Efetov (TS&E) for the current correlation function, as well
as for the renormalization of the conductivity. We show explicitly that the new
term in the sigma-model derived by TS&E and claimed to lead to delocalization
does not exist. The error in the derivation of TS&E is traced to an incorrect
ultraviolet regularization procedure violating current conservation and gauge
invariance.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
BRIGEP—the BRIDGE-based genome–transcriptome–proteome browser
The growing amount of information resulting from the increasing number of publicly available genomes and experimental results thereof necessitates the development of comprehensive systems for data processing and analysis. In this paper, we describe the current state and latest developments of our BRIGEP bioinformatics software system consisting of three web-based applications: GenDB, EMMA and ProDB. These applications facilitate the processing and analysis of bacterial genome, transcriptome and proteome data and are actively used by numerous international groups. We are currently in the process of extensively interconnecting these applications. BRIGEP was developed in the Bioinformatics Resource Facility of the Center for Biotechnology at Bielefeld University and is freely available. A demo project with sample data and access to all three tools is available at . Code bundles for these and other tools developed in our group are accessible on our FTP server at
Kleene Algebras and Semimodules for Energy Problems
With the purpose of unifying a number of approaches to energy problems found
in the literature, we introduce generalized energy automata. These are finite
automata whose edges are labeled with energy functions that define how energy
levels evolve during transitions. Uncovering a close connection between energy
problems and reachability and B\"uchi acceptance for semiring-weighted
automata, we show that these generalized energy problems are decidable. We also
provide complexity results for important special cases
Precise determination of the bond percolation thresholds and finite-size scaling corrections for the s.c., f.c.c., and b.c.c. lattices
Extensive Monte-Carlo simulations were performed to study bond percolation on
the simple cubic (s.c.), face-centered cubic (f.c.c.), and body-centered cubic
(b.c.c.) lattices, using an epidemic kind of approach. These simulations
provide very precise values of the critical thresholds for each of the
lattices: pc(s.c.) = 0.248 812 6(5), pc(f.c.c.) = 0.120 163 5(10), and
pc(b.c.c.) = 0.180 287 5(10). For p close to pc, the results follow the
expected finite-size and scaling behavior, with values for the Fisher exponent
(2.189(2)), the finite-size correction exponent (0.64(2)), and
the scaling function exponent (0.445(1)) confirmed to be universal.Comment: 16 pgs, 7 figures, LaTeX, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Why highly expressed proteins evolve slowly
Much recent work has explored molecular and population-genetic constraints on
the rate of protein sequence evolution. The best predictor of evolutionary rate
is expression level, for reasons which have remained unexplained. Here, we
hypothesize that selection to reduce the burden of protein misfolding will
favor protein sequences with increased robustness to translational missense
errors. Pressure for translational robustness increases with expression level
and constrains sequence evolution. Using several sequenced yeast genomes,
global expression and protein abundance data, and sets of paralogs traceable to
an ancient whole-genome duplication in yeast, we rule out several confounding
effects and show that expression level explains roughly half the variation in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae protein evolutionary rates. We examine causes for
expression's dominant role and find that genome-wide tests favor the
translational robustness explanation over existing hypotheses that invoke
constraints on function or translational efficiency. Our results suggest that
proteins evolve at rates largely unrelated to their functions, and can explain
why highly expressed proteins evolve slowly across the tree of life.Comment: 40 pages, 3 figures, with supporting informatio
High-resolution x-ray telescopes
High-energy astrophysics is a relatively young scientific field, made
possible by space-borne telescopes. During the half-century history of x-ray
astronomy, the sensitivity of focusing x-ray telescopes-through finer angular
resolution and increased effective area-has improved by a factor of a 100
million. This technological advance has enabled numerous exciting discoveries
and increasingly detailed study of the high-energy universe-including accreting
(stellar-mass and super-massive) black holes, accreting and isolated neutron
stars, pulsar-wind nebulae, shocked plasma in supernova remnants, and hot
thermal plasma in clusters of galaxies. As the largest structures in the
universe, galaxy clusters constitute a unique laboratory for measuring the
gravitational effects of dark matter and of dark energy. Here, we review the
history of high-resolution x-ray telescopes and highlight some of the
scientific results enabled by these telescopes. Next, we describe the planned
next-generation x-ray-astronomy facility-the International X-ray Observatory
(IXO). We conclude with an overview of a concept for the next next-generation
facility-Generation X. The scientific objectives of such a mission will require
very large areas (about 10000 m2) of highly-nested lightweight
grazing-incidence mirrors with exceptional (about 0.1-arcsecond) angular
resolution. Achieving this angular resolution with lightweight mirrors will
likely require on-orbit adjustment of alignment and figure.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, SPIE Conference 7803 "Adaptive X-ray Optics",
part of SPIE Optics+Photonics 2010, San Diego CA, 2010 August 2-
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