3,421 research outputs found
Dynamical Autler-Townes control of a phase qubit
Routers, switches, and repeaters are essential components of modern
information-processing systems. Similar devices will be needed in future
superconducting quantum computers. In this work we investigate experimentally
the time evolution of Autler-Townes splitting in a superconducting phase qubit
under the application of a control tone resonantly coupled to the second
transition. A three-level model that includes independently determined
parameters for relaxation and dephasing gives excellent agreement with the
experiment. The results demonstrate that the qubit can be used as a ON/OFF
switch with 100 ns operating time-scale for the reflection/transmission of
photons coming from an applied probe microwave tone. The ON state is realized
when the control tone is sufficiently strong to generate an Autler-Townes
doublet, suppressing the absorption of the probe tone photons and resulting in
a maximum of transmission.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
The elastic constants of MgSiO3 perovskite at pressures and temperatures of the Earth's mantle
The temperature anomalies in the Earth's mantle associated with thermal
convection1 can be inferred from seismic tomography, provided that the elastic
properties of mantle minerals are known as a function of temperature at mantle
pressures. At present, however, such information is difficult to obtain
directly through laboratory experiments. We have therefore taken advantage of
recent advances in computer technology, and have performed finite-temperature
ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of the elastic properties of MgSiO3
perovskite, the major mineral of the lower mantle, at relevant thermodynamic
conditions. When combined with the results from tomographic images of the
mantle, our results indicate that the lower mantle is either significantly
anelastic or compositionally heterogeneous on large scales. We found the
temperature contrast between the coldest and hottest regions of the mantle, at
a given depth, to be about 800K at 1000 km, 1500K at 2000 km, and possibly over
2000K at the core-mantle boundary.Comment: Published in: Nature 411, 934-937 (2001
Rheumatoid synovial fluid interleukin-17-producing CD4 T cells have abundant tumor necrosis factor-alpha co-expression, but little interleukin-22 and interleukin-23R expression
Introduction\ud
Th17 cells have been implicated in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The aim of this study was to systematically analyse the phenotype, cytokine profile and frequency of interleukin-17 (IL-17) producing CD4-positive T cells in mononuclear cells isolated from peripheral blood, synovial fluid and synovial tissue of RA patients with established disease, and to correlate cell frequencies with disease activity. \ud
\ud
Methods\ud
Flow cytometry was used to analyse the phenotype and cytokine production of mononuclear cells isolated from peripheral blood (PBMC) (n = 44), synovial fluid (SFMC) (n = 14) and synovium (SVMC) (n = 10) of RA patients and PBMC of healthy controls (n = 13). \ud
\ud
Results\ud
The frequency of IL-17-producing CD4 T cells was elevated in RA SFMC compared with RA PBMC (P = 0.04). However, the frequency of this population in RA SVMC was comparable to that in paired RA PBMC. The percentage of IL-17-producing CD4 T cells coexpressing tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) was significantly increased in SFMC (P = 0.0068). The frequency of IFNγ-producing CD4 T cells was also significantly higher in SFMC than paired PBMC (P = 0.042). The majority of IL-17-producing CD4 T cells coexpressed IFNγ. IL-17-producing CD4 T cells in RA PBMC and SFMC exhibited very little IL-22 or IL-23R coexpression. \ud
\ud
Conclusions\ud
These findings demonstrate a modest enrichment of IL-17-producing CD4 T cells in RA SFMC compared to PBMC. Th17 cells in SFMC produce more TNFα than their PBMC counterparts, but are not a significant source of IL-22 and do not express IL-23R. However, the percentage of CD4 T cells which produce IL-17 in the rheumatoid joint is low, suggesting that other cells may be alternative sources of IL-17 within the joints of RA patients. \ud
\u
BRCA1: linking HOX to breast cancer suppression
Homeobox (HOX) genes play key roles in embryogenesis and tissue differentiation. Recently, a number of groups have reported altered HOX gene expression in breast cancer. However, the mechanism of HOX gene regulation and the search for direct targets of its transcriptional regulatory function have been minimally fruitful. Recently, Gilbert and colleagues reported that HOXA9 restrains breast cancer progression by upregulation of BRCA1, a tumor suppressor. This finding raises our hope that more, rather elusive targets of HOX genes important in tumor progression or suppression will be found in the future
Yeast axial-element protein, Red1, binds SUMO chains to promote meiotic interhomologue recombination and chromosome synapsis
The synaptonemal complex (SC) is a tripartite protein structure consisting of two parallel axial elements (AEs) and a central region. During meiosis, the SC connects paired homologous chromosomes, promoting interhomologue (IH) recombination. Here, we report that, like the CE component Zip1, Saccharomyces cerevisiae axial-element structural protein, Red1, can bind small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) polymeric chains. The Red1–SUMO chain interaction is dispensable for the initiation of meiotic DNA recombination, but it is essential for Tel1- and Mec1-dependent Hop1 phosphorylation, which ensures IH recombination by preventing the inter-sister chromatid DNA repair pathway. Our results also indicate that Red1 and Zip1 may directly sandwich the SUMO chains to mediate SC assembly. We suggest that Red1 and SUMO chains function together to couple homologous recombination and Mec1–Tel1 kinase activation with chromosome synapsis during yeast meiosis
Clustering daily patterns of human activities in the city
Data mining and statistical learning techniques are powerful analysis tools yet to be incorporated in the domain of urban studies and transportation research. In this work, we analyze an activity-based travel survey conducted in the Chicago metropolitan area over a demographic representative sample of its population. Detailed data on activities by time of day were collected from more than 30,000 individuals (and 10,552 households) who participated in a 1-day or 2-day survey implemented from January 2007 to February 2008. We examine this large-scale data in order to explore three critical issues: (1) the inherent daily activity structure of individuals in a metropolitan area, (2) the variation of individual daily activities—how they grow and fade over time, and (3) clusters of individual behaviors and the revelation of their related socio-demographic information. We find that the population can be clustered into 8 and 7 representative groups according to their activities during weekdays and weekends, respectively. Our results enrich the traditional divisions consisting of only three groups (workers, students and non-workers) and provide clusters based on activities of different time of day. The generated clusters combined with social demographic information provide a new perspective for urban and transportation planning as well as for emergency response and spreading dynamics, by addressing when, where, and how individuals interact with places in metropolitan areas.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and PlanningUnited States. Dept. of Transportation (Region One University Transportation Center)Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technolog
Wall roughness induces asymptotic ultimate turbulence
Turbulence is omnipresent in Nature and technology, governing the transport
of heat, mass, and momentum on multiple scales. For real-world applications of
wall-bounded turbulence, the underlying surfaces are virtually always rough;
yet characterizing and understanding the effects of wall roughness for
turbulence remains a challenge, especially for rotating and thermally driven
turbulence. By combining extensive experiments and numerical simulations, here,
taking as example the paradigmatic Taylor-Couette system (the closed flow
between two independently rotating coaxial cylinders), we show how wall
roughness greatly enhances the overall transport properties and the
corresponding scaling exponents. If only one of the walls is rough, we reveal
that the bulk velocity is slaved to the rough side, due to the much stronger
coupling to that wall by the detaching flow structures. If both walls are
rough, the viscosity dependence is thoroughly eliminated in the boundary layers
and we thus achieve asymptotic ultimate turbulence, i.e. the upper limit of
transport, whose existence had been predicted by Robert Kraichnan in 1962
(Phys. Fluids {\bf 5}, 1374 (1962)) and in which the scalings laws can be
extrapolated to arbitrarily large Reynolds numbers
The stellar orbit distribution in present-day galaxies inferred from the CALIFA survey
Galaxy formation entails the hierarchical assembly of mass, along with the condensation of baryons and the ensuing, self-regulating star formation. The stars form a collisionless system whose orbit distribution retains dynamical memory that can constrain a galaxy's formation history. The ordered-rotation dominated orbits with near maximum circularity and the random-motion dominated orbits with low circularity are called kinematically cold and kinematically hot, respectively. The fraction of stars on `cold' orbits, compared to the fraction of stars on `hot' orbits, speaks directly to the quiescence or violence of the galaxies' formation histories. Here we present such orbit distributions, derived from stellar kinematic maps via orbit-based modelling for a well defined, large sample of 300 nearby galaxies. The sample, drawn from the CALIFA survey, includes the main morphological galaxy types and spans the total stellar mass range from to solar masses. Our analysis derives the orbit-circularity distribution as a function of galaxy mass, , and its volume-averaged total distribution, . We find that across most of the considered mass range and across morphological types, there are more stars on `warm' orbits defined as than on either `cold' or `hot' orbits. This orbit-based "Hubble diagram" provides a benchmark for galaxy formation simulations in a cosmological context
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