Surfactant effects in monodisperse magnetite nanoparticles of controlled size

Monodisperse magnetite Fe3O4 nanoparticles of controlled size within 6 and 20 nm in diameter were synthesized by thermal decomposition of an iron organic precursor in an organic medium. Particles were coated with oleic acid. For all samples studied, saturation magnetization Ms reaches the expected value for bulk magnetite, in contrast to results in small particle systems for which Ms is usually much smaller due to surface spin disorder. The coercive field for the 6 nm particles is also similar to that of bulk magnetite. Both results suggest that the oleic acid molecules covalently bonded to the nanoparticle surface yield a strong reduction in the surface spin disorder. However, although the saturated state may be similar, the approach to saturation is different and, in particular, the high-field differential susceptibility is one order of magnitude larger than in bulk materials. The relevance of these results in biomedical applications is discussed.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures. Presented at JEMS 2006 (San Sebastian, Spain). Submitted to JMM

Study of a Dynamic Cooperative Trading Queue Routing Control Scheme for Freeways and Facilities with Parallel Queues

This article explores the coalitional stability of a new cooperative control policy for freeways and parallel queuing facilities with multiple servers. Based on predicted future delays per queue or lane, a VOT-heterogeneous population of agents can agree to switch lanes or queues and transfer payments to each other in order to minimize the total cost of the incoming platoon. The strategic interaction is captured by an n-level Stackelberg model with coalitions, while the cooperative structure is formulated as a partition function game (PFG). The stability concept explored is the strong-core for PFGs which we found appropiate given the nature of the problem. This concept ensures that the efficient allocation is individually rational and coalitionally stable. We analyze this control mechanism for two settings: a static vertical queue and a dynamic horizontal queue. For the former, we first characterize the properties of the underlying cooperative game. Our simulation results suggest that the setting is always strong-core stable. For the latter, we propose a new relaxation program for the strong-core concept. Our simulation results on a freeway bottleneck with constant outflow using Newell's car-following model show the imputations to be generally strong-core stable and the coalitional instabilities to remain small with regard to users' costs.Comment: 3 figures. Presented at Annual Meeting Transportation Research Board 2018, Washington DC. Proof of conjecture 1 pendin

Regulation of BCL6: p38 MAPK signalling and CTCF transcriptional regulation converge at exon 1

BCL6 is a zinc finger transcriptional repressor, which is highly expressed in germinal centre B-cells, and is essential for germinal centre formation and T-dependent antibody responses. Deregulated BCL6 expression is associated with certain non- Hodgkin’s lymphomas. High expression is observed in breast cancer. Tight lineage and temporal regulation of BCL6 is, therefore, required for normal immunity and abnormal regulation occurs in cancer. Regulatory mechanisms have been analysed in two settings. Firstly, BCL6 is strongly induced by the tyrosine kinase inhibitor, Imatinib, in chronic myeloid leukaemia lymphoid blast crisis cell lines, and this effect was used in order to study the effects of phospho-protein signalling on BCL6 expression and a major finding is that p38 MAPK induced BCL6. Also, p38 is, at least in part, responsible for BCL6 expression in basal conditions in the germinal centre representative Burkitt’s lymphoma cell lines and that qualitatively different CD40 stimuli can either induce or repress BCL6 expression. Luciferase assays showed that p38 acts at a 300bp sequence immediately 5’ of exon 1, and probably also at more distal sequences. Overall it appears that the balance between positive and negative regulatory controls BCL6 expression with inhibitory signalling pathways being predominant in most circumstances. Focusing on BCL6 exon 1, a binding site for the multifunctional regulator CTCF was identified. CTCF interacts in vitro and in vivo with this sequence. Reduced expression of CTCF in germinal centre cells caused a moderate reduction of BCL6 expression. Finally, although no clear differences were observed in the methylation status of the CTCF binding site on exon 1, a significant enrichment of active histone modifications at this site was observed in BCL6 expressing cells, suggesting that CTCF may have a role in the epigenetic regulation of BCL6

Canonical Realization of (2+1)-dimensional Bondi-Metzner-Sachs symmetry

We construct canonical realizations of the $\mathfrak{bms}_3$ algebra as symmetry algebras of a free Klein-Gordon (KG) field in $2+1$ dimensions, for both the massive and massless case. We consider two types of realizations, one on-shell, written in terms of the Fourier modes of the scalar field, and the other one off-shell with non-local transformations written in terms of the KG field and its momenta. These realizations contain both supertranslations and superrotations, for which we construct the corresponding Noether charges.Comment: Version accepted for publication in PRD. Expanded title and expanded discussion about superrotations in the massive cas

Modelling exchange bias in core/shell nanoparticles

We present an atomistic model of a single nanoparticle with core/shell structure that takes into account its lattice strucutre and spherical geometry, and in which the values of microscopic parameters such as anisotropy and exchange constants can be tuned in the core, shell and interfacial regions. By means of Monte Carlo simulations of the hysteresis loops based on this model, we have determined the range of microscopic parameters for which loop shifts after field cooling can be observed. The study of the magnetic order of the interfacial spins for different particles sizes and values of the interfacial exchange coupling have allowed us to correlate the appearance of loop asymmetries and vertical displacements to the existence of a fraction of uncompensated spins at the shell interface that remain pinned during field cycling, offering new insight on the microscopic origin of the experimental phenomenology.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Contribution presented at HMM 2007 held at Napoli 4-6 June 2007. To be published in J. Phys. Condens. Matte

Extended Galilean symmetries of non-relativistic strings

We consider two non-relativistic strings and their Galilean symmetries. These strings are obtained as the two possible non-relativistic (NR) limits of a relativistic string. One of them is non-vibrating and represents a continuum of non-relativistic massless particles, and the other one is a non-relativistic vibrating string. For both cases we write the generator of the most general point transformation and impose the condition of Noether symmetry. As a result we obtain two sets of non-relativistic Killing equations for the vector fields that generate the symmetry transformations. Solving these equations shows that NR strings exhibit two extended, infinite dimensional space-time symmetries which contain, as a subset, the Galilean symmetries. For each case, we compute the associated conserved charges and discuss the existence of non-central extensions.Postprint (author's final draft

Dynamical sectors for a spinning particle in AdS_3

We consider the dynamics of the motion of a particle of mass M and spin J in AdS_3. The study reveals the presence of different dynamical sectors depending on the relative values of M, J and the AdS_3 radius R. For the subcritical M^2 R^2-J^2 >0 and supercritical M^2 R^2-J^2<0 cases, it is seen that the equations of motion give the geodesics of AdS_3. For the critical case M^2R^2=J^2 there exist extra gauge transformations which further reduce the physical degrees of freedom, and the motion corresponds to the geodesics of AdS_2. This result should be useful in the holographic interpretation of the entanglement entropy for 2d conformal field theories with gravitational anomalies.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, Some comments, references and formulas are adde