Theoretical studies of 63Cu Knight shifts of the normal state of YBa2Cu3O7

The 63Cu Knight shifts and g factors for the normal state of YBa2Cu3O7 in tetragonal phase are theoretically studied in a uniform way from the high (fourth-) order perturbation formulas of these parameters for a 3d9 ion under tetragonally elongated octahedra. The calculations are quantitatively correlated with the local structure of the Cu2+(2) site in YBa2Cu3O7. The theoretical results show good agreement with the observed values, and the improvements are achieved by adopting fewer adjustable parameters as compared to the previous works. It is found that the significant anisotropy of the Knight shifts is mainly attributed to the anisotropy of the g factors due to the orbital interactions.Comment: 5 page

L-Monomethyl-arginine decreases apoptosis of chondrocytes by altering Bax and Bcl-2 expression in osteoarthritis of rabbit knee

Previous studies found that NG-monomethyl-L-arginine (L-NMMA) treatment inhibits progression of osteoarthritis. Here, we aimed to explore the effects of L-NMMA on chondrocyte apoptosis and Bax and Bcl-2 mRNA expression in rabbits with knee osteoarthritis. Knee osteoarthritis was induced in 24 healthy rabbits by Hulth method, and rabbits were randomly divided into control (n = 12) and experimental (n = 12) groups. Once weekly, knee joints of control rabbits were injected with saline solution, while knees of experimental rabbits were injected with L-NMMA. Knee joint samples were collected after 6 weeks of treatment. Apoptosis of chondrocytes was detected by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL), and Bax and Bcl-2 mRNA expression by in situ hybridization. The results show that the mean rate of chondrocyte apoptosis in knees of the experimental rabbits was significantly lower than that of the control rabbits (P<0.05). Additionally, Bax expression decreased and Bcl-2 expression increased in the experimental group (P<0.05). In brief, LNMMA can inhibit apoptosis of joint chondrocytes through changes in the expression of apoptosisrelated genes. Thus, this molecule offers the potential for treating osteoarthritis.Key words: NG-Monomethyl-L-arginine, knee osteoarthritis, chondrocyte, apoptosis-related regulatory gene

Investigations of the EPR parameters for the tetrahedral [FeX_4]^- clusters in AgX (X=Cl, Br)

The EPR parameters g factors and the superhyperfine parameters for the tetrahedral [FeX_4]^- clusters in AgX (X=Cl, Br) are theoretically investigated from the perturbation formulas of these parameters for a 3d^5 ion under tetrahedra by considering both the crystal-field and charge transfer contributions. The related model parameters are quantitatively determined from the cluster approach in a uniform way. The g-shift \Delta g (=g-g_s, where g_s\approx 2.0023 is the spin only value) from the charge transfer contribution is opposite (positive) in sign and much larger in magnitude as compared with that from the crystal-field one. The importance of the charge transfer contribution increases rapidly with increasing the covalency and the spin-orbit coupling coefficient of the ligand and thus exhibits the order of AgCl<AgBr. The unpaired spin densities of the halogen ns, np\sigma\ and np\pi\ orbitals are quantitatively determined from the related molecular orbital coefficients based on the cluster approach.Comment: 8 page

New Insights into Traffic Dynamics: A Weighted Probabilistic Cellular Automaton Model

From the macroscopic viewpoint for describing the acceleration behavior of drivers, this letter presents a weighted probabilistic cellular automaton model (the WP model, for short) by introducing a kind of random acceleration probabilistic distribution function. The fundamental diagrams, the spatio-temporal pattern are analyzed in detail. It is shown that the presented model leads to the results consistent with the empirical data rather well, nonlinear velocity-density relationship exists in lower density region, and a new kind of traffic phenomenon called neo-synchronized flow is resulted. Furthermore, we give the criterion for distinguishing the high-speed and low-speed neo-synchronized flows and clarify the mechanism of this kind of traffic phenomena. In addition, the result that the time evolution of distribution of headways is displayed as a normal distribution further validates the reasonability of the neo-synchronized flow. These findings suggest that the diversity and randomicity of drivers and vehicles has indeed remarkable effect on traffic dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Europhysics Letter

GenDet: Meta Learning to Generate Detectors From Few Shots

Object detection has made enormous progress and has been widely used in many applications. However, it performs poorly when only limited training data is available for novel classes that the model has never seen before. Most existing approaches solve few-shot detection tasks implicitly without directly modeling the detectors for novel classes. In this article, we propose GenDet, a new meta-learning-based framework that can effectively generate object detectors for novel classes from few shots and, thus, conducts few-shot detection tasks explicitly. The detector generator is trained by numerous few-shot detection tasks sampled from base classes each with sufficient samples, and thus, it is expected to generalize well on novel classes. An adaptive pooling module is further introduced to suppress distracting samples and aggregate the detectors generated from multiple shots. Moreover, we propose to train a reference detector for each base class in the conventional way, with which to guide the training of the detector generator. The reference detectors and the detector generator can be trained simultaneously. Finally, the generated detectors of different classes are encouraged to be orthogonal to each other for better generalization. The proposed approach is extensively evaluated on the ImageNet, VOC, and COCO data sets under various few-shot detection settings, and it achieves new state-of-the-art results

Constructing a precipitable water vapor map from regional GNSS network observations without collocated meteorological data for weather forecasting

Surface pressure (Ps) and weighted mean temperature (Tm) are two necessary variables for the accurate retrieval of precipitable water vapor (PWV) from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) zenith total delay (ZTD) estimates. The lack of Ps or Tm information is a concern for those GNSS sites that are not collocated with meteorological sensors. This paper investigates an alternative method of inferring accurate Ps and Tm at the GNSS station using nearby synoptic observations. Ps and Tm obtained at the nearby synoptic sites are interpolated onto the location of the GNSS station by performing both vertical and horizontal adjustments, in which the parameters involved in Ps and Tm calculation are estimated from ERA-Interim reanalysis profiles. In addition, we present a method of constructing high-quality PWV maps through vertical reduction and horizontal interpolation of the retrieved GNSS PWVs. To evaluate the performances of the Ps and Tm retrieval, and the PWV map construction, GNSS data collected from 58 stations of the Hunan GNSS network and synoptic observations from 20 nearby sites in 2015 were processed to extract the PWV so as to subsequently generate the PWV maps. The retrieved Ps and Tm and constructed PWV maps were assessed by the results derived from radiosonde and the ERA-Interim reanalysis. The results show that (1) accuracies of Ps and Tm derived by synoptic interpolation are within the range of 1.7–3.0&thinsp;hPa and 2.5–3.0&thinsp;K, respectively, which are much better than the GPT2w model; (2) the constructed PWV maps have good agreements with radiosonde and ERA-Interim reanalysis data with the overall accuracy being better than 3&thinsp;mm; and (3) PWV maps can well reveal the moisture advection, transportation and convergence during heavy rainfall.</p

On electromagnetic contributions in WIMP quests

The effect pointed out by A. B. Migdal in the 40's (hereafter named Migdal effect) has so far been usually neglected in the direct searches for WIMP Dark Matter candidates. This effect consists in the ionization and the excitation of bound atomic electrons induced by the recoiling atomic nucleus. In the present paper the related theoretical arguments are developed and some consequences of the proper accounting for this effect are discussed by some examples of practical interest.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A (in publication

Investigating pseudoscalar and scalar dark matter

In this paper another class of Dark Matter candidate particles: the pseudoscalar and scalar light bosonic candidates, is discussed. Particular care is devoted to the study of the processes for their detection (which only involves electrons and photons/X-rays) in a suitable underground experimental set-up. For this purpose the needed calculations are developed and various related aspects and phenomenologies are discussed. In particular, it is shown that - in addition to the WIMP cases already discussed elsewhere - there is also possibility for a bosonic candidate to account for the 6.3 sigma C.L. model independent evidence for the presence of a particle DM component in the galactic halo observed by DAMA/NaI. Allowed regions in these scenarios are presented also paying particular care on the cosmological interest of the bosonic candidate.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A (in press