Semilinear response for the heating rate of cold atoms in vibrating traps

The calculation of the heating rate of cold atoms in vibrating traps requires a theory that goes beyond the Kubo linear response formulation. If a strong "quantum chaos" assumption does not hold, the analysis of transitions shows similarities with a percolation problem in energy space. We show how the texture and the sparsity of the perturbation matrix, as determined by the geometry of the system, dictate the result. An improved sparse random matrix model is introduced: it captures the essential ingredients of the problem, and leads to a generalized variable range hopping picture.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, improved version to be published in Europhysics Letter

Land Grant Application- Davidson, Alexander (Edgecomb)

Land grant application submitted to the Maine Land Office for Alexander Davidson for service in the Revolutionary War.https://digitalmaine.com/revolutionary_war_me_land_office/1233/thumbnail.jp

The Freedom of Speech in Public Forums on College Campuses: A Single-Site Case Study on Pushing the Boundaries of the Freedom of Speech

The purpose of this single-site study is to test how far speech can be pushed before it is no longer protected at the California Polytechnic State University. The purpose isn’t merely to push limitations for the sake of testing boundaries, but it is to see what types of speech truly add to the marketplace of ideas and what types simply do not. The main points of the study are to understand what speech is protected and what speech is not protected on California Polytechnic State University’s campus and to understand how the provocation that comes along with “negative speech” can be used to create “positive speech.” The methodology for this study includes a questionnaire based on research questions as well as an in-depth literature review that is intended to answer the questions posed by the study. The study found that speech that is constitutionally protected outside of public forums in college campuses is also applied to public forums in college campuses and that negative speech often promotes positive response within the community. Educational programs teaching inclusivity and diversity are encouraged to erase “negative speech” as a trigger for “positive speech,” as well as speaking up for what one believes in. Further research on other campuses is highly encouraged

Properties of the non-catalytic nucleotide site of the Ca²⁺-ATPase of sarcoplasmic reticulum

Properties of the regulatory nucleotide binding site of the Ca²⁺-ATPase of skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum have been investigated. Previously, several lines of evidence have indicated the existence of both catalytic and regulatory nucleotide binding sites on the same polypeptide species. The present study concentrates on the interaction of the ATP analogue, 2'-3'-0-(2,4,6-trinitrocyclohexadienylidine) adenosine 5'-triphosphate, (TNP-ATP), with sites on the non-phosphorylated and phosphorylated enzyme. In particular those conformational transitions linking TNP-ATP fluorescence to the phosphoenzyme subspecies have been sought. Previous studies have demonstrated a close relationship between TNP-ATP fluorescence and phosphoenzyme formed from ATP plus Ca²⁺, or from inorganic phosphate (Pi) in the absence of Ca²⁺, in the reverse direction of the cycle. However, the precise relationship of TNP-ATP fluorescence to the energy transducing conformations of the ATPase is controversial. TNP-ATP binding was investigated by spectrophotometric methods and by the synthesis of [ ¹⁴C] TNP-ATP. [ ¹⁴C] TNP-ATP bound to the ATPase site with high affinity ([TNP-ATP] 0. 5 = 0.12 uM), and · a stoichiometry of 5.4 nmol/mg. [ ¹⁴C] ATP binding stoichiometry was 6.1 nmol/mg, demonstrating that TNP-ATP binds to a single family of sites. The nature of the phosphoenzyme intermediate species that results in enhanced TNP-ATP fluorescence was investigated. NEM derivitization, Sr²⁺-transport and Ca²⁺-oxalate uptake have previously been found to alter the distribution or relative levels of phosphoenzyme intermediates. Modification of thiol groups responsible for phosphoenzyme decomposition (SHd), using N-ethylmaleimide (NEM) (0.4 mM) with 50 uM Ca²⁺, 1 mM AMP-PNP at pH 7.0, resulted in a 50% decrease in Ca²⁺-uptake, Ca²⁺-ATPase activity and ADP-insensitive E-P (E₂-P), while total EP (E₁-P + E₂-P = 3.2 nmol/mg), remained unaltered. ATP-dependent TNP-ATP enhanced fluorescence decreased by 50% under these conditions. Ca²⁺-oxalate induced turnover has previously been shown to decrease steady-state E₂-P levels by prevention of Ca²⁺ gradient formation. Oxalate (5 mM) caused a 40% decrease in ATP-induced TNP-ATP fluorescence levels while total EP levels remained relatively unaltered. Previous studies have shown that Sr²⁺-induced turnover favours higher levels of E₂-P by inhibiting the reverse reaction from E₂-P to E₁-P. Strontium-induced turnover increased TNP-ATP fluorescence by 10% as compared to that of Ca²⁺, without affecting steady-state E-P levels, consistent with an E₂-P conformation relationship to enhanced TNP-ATP fluorescence. The binding site for TNP-ATP on the enzyme was investigated by chase studies using millimolar concentrations of nucleotides. ATP and ADP diminished TNP-ATP fluorescence competitively, with apparent Km values of 1.25 and 0.54 mM respectively, consistent with their affinities of binding to the regulatory site. The rates of decrease of fluorescence (25 and 34 sec⁻¹ at 5 ᵒC, respectively), were of the same order of magnitude as the derived "off" rate of TNP-ATP from the site of enhanced fluorescence (33 sec⁻¹), consistent with TNP-ATP being bound to the regulatory site of the enzyme. Enhanced TNP-ATP fluorescence has previously been related to decreased water activity of the probe site. Alteration of water activity by structure- forming (Deuterium oxide) and structure-breaking solutes (KSCN) in relation to fluorescence were explored. Replacement of H₂O by D₂O altered the fluorescence of unbound TNP-ATP. The apparent for TNP-ATP binding to the E₂-P conformation of the regulatory site. The regulatory site appears to be a modified form of the phosphorylated catalytic site. It is proposed that TNP-ATP fluorescence monitors an enzyme conformation related to Ca²⁺ binding to an inward oriented site of low affinity. The mechanism of K⁺ fluorescence quenching appears to be via an acceleration of dephosphorylation, as opposed to a change in affinity of the enzyme for TNP-ATP, as previously suggested. The K⁺ sensitivity of TNP-ATP fluorescence has proved useful in demonstrating a direct interaction of valinomycin with the enzyme through the monovalent cation binding site. Valinomycin appears to bind directly to the enzyme and to selectively accelerate the "off" rate of K⁺ from this site

The Propoganda of Endurance: Identity, Survival, and British Trench Newspapers in the First World War

This study explores the newspapers produced by British officers and men on the Western Front during the First World War. Although subject to censorship, significant scope was granted to the writers and editors of trench journals to express a seemingly strange combination of piety, humor, anger, and sadness concerning the course of the war. Trench newspapers therefore functioned as a cultural space in which the privations and competing desires of military life could be mediated. Through the juxtaposition of varying tones and views of the war, trench newspapers ultimately served to reinforce the hegemonic culture and values of the British Army by functioning as a propaganda of identity and endurance on the Western Front. British trench newspapers both implicitly and explicitly compare the identities and experiences of soldiers and civilians, men and women, and officer and other ranks as British soldier-writers perceived them. In this way, British trench newspapers were able to examine the conflicts and privations of military life while ultimately reinforcing a common identity for British soldiers. Although civilians could be depicted as foolish or myopic concerning the course of the war, the trench journals could also express gratitude for gifts sent from Britain. Soldier-writers depict women much more favorably, though often simplistically as symbols of home or as objects of sexual desire. Within censorship, the trench newspapers express considerable skepticism, through humor, of the General Staff and the course of the war, but the necessity of fighting the war is never explicitly questioned. Finally, by addressing both violence and technology, trench newspapers obscure the agency of individual British soldiers in killing the enemy and dream of a swift conclusion to the war. Trench newspapers, therefore, are an invaluable resource for understanding the cultural history of the First World War

An Efficient Toolkit for Computing Private Set Operations

Private set operation (PSO) protocols provide a natural way of securely performing operations on data sets, such that crucial details of the input sets are not revealed. Such protocols have an ever-increasing number of practical applications, particularly when implementing privacy-preserving data mining schemes. Protocols for computing private set operations have been prevalent in multi-party computation literature over the past decade, and in the case of private set intersection (PSI), have become practically feasible to run in real applications. In contrast, other set operations such as union have received less attention from the research community, and the few existing designs are often limited in their feasibility. In this work we aim to fill this gap, and present a new technique using Bloom filter data structures and additive homomorphic encryption to develop the first private set union protocol with both linear computation and communication complexities. Moreover, we show how to adapt this protocol to give novel ways of computing PSI and private set intersection/union cardinality with only minor changes to the protocol computation. Our work resembles therefore a toolkit for scalable private set computation with linear complexities, and we provide a thorough experimental analysis that shows that the online phase of our designs is practical up to large set sizes

NPI Intervention: Crosslinguistic Data

It has been claimed that negative polarity items (NPIs) such as “any” and “ever” are blocked in factive environments in Romance languages, despite being licensed in English. We test this claim in a judgment study in English, Italian, and French, comparing NPIs in factive and non-factive environments. We find that, consistent with previous claims, this effect seems to exist in Italian and not English, but that, against expectation, French does not pattern with either language