Emergent quantum phase transition of a Josephson junction coupled to a high-impedance multimode resonator

Understanding phase transitions of quantum systems non-perturbatively coupled to reservoirs is challenging. In particular, the physics of a single Josephson junction coupled to a resistive environment is a long-standing fundamental problem at the center of an intense debate, strongly revived by the advent of superconducting platforms with high-impedance multi-mode resonators. Here we investigate the emergent criticality of a junction coupled to a multimode resonator when the number of modes is increased. We demonstrate analytically how the multi-mode environment renormalizes the Josephson and capacitive energies of the junction: for a homogeneous transmission line, in the thermodynamic limit the ratio between the renormalized Josephson and capacitive energies diverges when the impedance is smaller than the resistance quantum and vanishes otherwise. The critical behavior is shown not to depend on the extended or compact nature of the Josephson junction phase. Via exact diagonalization, we find that the transition surprisingly stems from a level anticrossing involving not the ground state, but the first excited state, whose energy gap vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. We show that at the transition point the spectrum displays universality not only at low frequencies. In agreement with recent experiments, we reveal striking spectral signatures of the phase transition.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Bioinformatics and Data Mining Studies in Oral Genomics and Proteomics: New Trends and Challenges

Genomics and proteomics have promised to change the practice of dentistry and oral pathology, allowing the identification and the characterization of risk factors and therapeutic targets at a molecular level. However, mass-scale molecular genomics and proteomics suffer from some pitfalls: gene/protein expression are significant only if inserted in a detailed network of molecular pathways and gene/gene, gene/protein and protein/protein interactions

LCK, survivin and PI-3K in the molecular biomarker profiling of oral lichen planus and oral squamous cell carcinoma.

T cell signaling is critical in oral lichen planus (OLP) based on the pathogenesis of this chronic inflammatory autoimmune mucocutaneous lesion. Lck plays a key role in T cell signaling; ultimately this signaling affects other targets such as PI-3K. Excessive activity in PI-3K inhibits apoptosis and promotes uncontrolled cell growth. Molecular biomarker profiling in OLP, Chronic Interface Mucosities (CIM), Epithelial Dysplasia (EpD) and Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCCA) with application of the principle of biomarker voting may represent a new frontier in the diagnosis, assessment and the arguable debate of OLP transformation to cancer. The presence of Lck, PI-3K and Survivin, a cancer specific anti-apoptotic protein was assessed, using immunohistochemistry and tissue micro-array on patient samples, in OLP, SCCA, CIM and EpD. Lck expression was very high in 78.6 % of OLP patients compared to 3.7% in SCCA; PI-3K was high in 63% of SCCA, 100% of EpD, and 35.7% OLP cases. Survivin was high in 64.3% of OLP cases, 96.3% of SCCA, and 100% of EpD. CIM cases may be slightly different molecularly to OLP. Taken together, our data suggest that biomarker protein voting can be effectively used to isolate high-risk OLP cases. Specifically, we show data with four remarkable cases demonstrating that molecular factors are predictive of histopathology. We conclude that it is safer to treat OLP as premalignant lesions, to adopt aggressive treatment measure in histopathologic described well and moderately differentiated SCCA, and to monitor progress of these diseases molecularly using individualized auto-proteomic approach. The use of Lck inhibitors in OLP management needs to be investigated in the future

Il supporto dei sistemi informativi territoriali nella modellazione dei sistemi di trasporto regionali:la collaborazione tra CRiMM e CRS4 (settembre - dicembre 1998)

In questo rapporto si d a una sintesi delle attività svolte presso il CRS4 nell'ambito della collaborazione con il Centro di Ricerca Modelli Mobilità (CRiMM) dell'Università di Cagliari per lo studio propedeutico al Piano Pluriennale di Protezione Civile Regionale

Nuovi amminoacidi chirali contenenti nuclei eterociclici: mimesi di legami <i>cis</i>-ammidici

Il nostro obiettivo era quello di preparare amminoacidi otticamente attivi ed enantiopuri, contenenti nuclei eterociclici, che avrebbero potuto rivestire una certa importanza come possibili building blocks per la preparazione di peptidomimetici. In questo contesto, è stata messa a punto una metodologia generale di sintesi di α-amminoacidi chirali contenenti il nucleo pirazolico ed in particolare di due serie di α-amminoacidi bicarbossilici,4 possibili peptidomimetici, che simulino il legame peptidico

Clorurazione di ammine ed ammidi: l'acido tricloroisocianurico, un reattivo blando ma efficace

Durante le nostre ricerche sull’utilizzo dei derivati della [1, 3, 5] triazina, abbiamo studiato la possibilità di usare l’acido tricloroisocianurico nella clorurazione di ammine ed ammidi al posto della N-clorosuccinimmide