Propagation of Love waves in layers with irregular boundaries

Propagation of Love waves in layers with irregular boundaries studied by earth model in which half space is elasti

Viking lander camera geometry calibration report. Volume 1: Test methods and data reduction techniques

The determination and removal of instrument signature from Viking Lander camera geometric data are described. All tests conducted as well as a listing of the final database (calibration constants) used to remove instrument signature from Viking Lander flight images are included. The theory of the geometric aberrations inherent in the Viking Lander camera is explored

PEO/CHCl3: Crystallinity of the polymer and vapor pressure of the solvent - Equilibrium and non-equilibrium phenomena -

Vapor pressures were measured for the system chloroform/polyethylene oxide (peo, weight average molar mass = 1000 kg/mol) at 25 degrees centigrade as a function of the weight fraction w of the polymer by means of a combination of head space sampling and gas chromatography. The establishment of thermodynamic equilibria was assisted by employing thin polymer films. The degrees of crystallinity alpha of the pure peo and of the solid polymer contained in the mixtures were determined via dsc. An analogous degree of polymer insolubility, beta, was calculated from the vapor pressures measured in this composition range. The experiments demonstrate that both quantities and their concentration dependence are markedly affected by the particular mode of film preparation. These non-equilibrium phenomena are discussed in terms of frozen local and temporal equilibria, where differences between alpha and beta are attributed to the occlusion of amorphous material within crystalline domains. Equilibrium information was obtained from two sources, namely from the vapor pressures in the absence of crystalline material (gas/liquid) and from the saturation concentration of peo (liquid/solid). The thermodynamic consistency of these data is demonstrated using a new approach that enables the modeling of composition dependent interaction parameters by means of two adjustable parameters only

Averting the magnetic braking catastrophe on small scales: disk formation due to Ohmic dissipation

We perform axisymmetric resistive MHD calculations that demonstrate that centrifugal disks can indeed form around Class 0 objects despite magnetic braking. We follow the evolution of a prestellar core all the way to near-stellar densities and stellar radii. Under flux-freezing, the core is braked and disk formation is inhibited, while Ohmic dissipation renders magnetic braking ineffective within the first core. In agreement with observations that do not show evidence for large disks around Class 0 objects, the resultant disk forms in close proximity to the second core and has a radius of only $\approx 10~R_{\odot}$ early on. Disk formation does not require enhanced resistivity. We speculate that the disks can grow to the sizes observed around Class II stars over time under the influence of both Ohmic dissipation and ambipolar diffusion, as well as internal angular momentum redistribution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted by A&A Letter

The antigenic index: a novel algorithm for predicting antigenic determinants

In this paper, we introduce a computer algorithm which can be used to predict the topological features of a protein directly from its primary amino acid sequence. The computer program generates values for surface accessibility parameters and combines these values with those obtained for regional backbone flexibility and predicted secondary structure. The output of this algorithm, the antigenic index, is used to create a linear surface contour profile of the protein. Because most, if not all, antigenic sites are located within surface exposed regions of a protein, the program offers a reliable means of predicting potential antigenic determinants. We have tested the ability of this program to generate accurate surface contour profiles and predict antigenic sites from the linear amino acid sequences of well-characterized proteins and found a strong correlation between the predictions of the antigenic index and known structural and biological data

Action Potential Onset Dynamics and the Response Speed of Neuronal Populations

The result of computational operations performed at the single cell level are coded into sequences of action potentials (APs). In the cerebral cortex, due to its columnar organization, large number of neurons are involved in any individual processing task. It is therefore important to understand how the properties of coding at the level of neuronal populations are determined by the dynamics of single neuron AP generation. Here we analyze how the AP generating mechanism determines the speed with which an ensemble of neurons can represent transient stochastic input signals. We analyze a generalization of the $\theta$-neuron, the normal form of the dynamics of Type-I excitable membranes. Using a novel sparse matrix representation of the Fokker-Planck equation, which describes the ensemble dynamics, we calculate the transmission functions for small modulations of the mean current and noise noise amplitude. In the high-frequency limit the transmission function decays as $\omega^{-\gamma}$, where $\gamma$ surprisingly depends on the phase $\theta_{s}$ at which APs are emitted. In a physiologically plausible regime up to 1kHz the typical response speed is, however, independent of the high-frequency limit and is set by the rapidness of the AP onset, as revealed by the full transmission function. In this regime modulations of the noise amplitude can be transmitted faithfully up to much higher frequencies than modulations in the mean input current. We finally show that the linear response approach used is valid for a large regime of stimulus amplitudes.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of Computational Neuroscienc