A weakly non-adiabatic one-zone model of stellar pulsations: application to Mira stars

There is growing observational evidence that the irregular changes in the light curves of certain variable stars might be due to deterministic chaos. Supporting these conclusions, several simple models of non-linear oscillators have been shown to be capable of reproducing the observed complex behaviour. In this work, we introduce a non-linear, non-adiabatic one-zone model intended to reveal the factors leading to irregular luminosity variations in some pulsating stars. We have studied and characterized the dynamical behaviour of the oscillator as the input parameters are varied. The parametric study implied values corresponding to stellar models in the family of Long Period Variables and in particular of Mira-type stars. We draw the attention on certain solutions that reproduce with reasonable accuracy the observed behaviour of some peculiar Mira variables.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures; accepted for publication in MNRA

A unified design space of synthetic stripe-forming networks

Synthetic biology is a promising tool to study the function and properties of gene regulatory networks. Gene circuits with predefined behaviours have been successfully built and modelled, but largely on a case-by-case basis. Here we go beyond individual networks and explore both computationally and synthetically the design space of possible dynamical mechanisms for 3-node stripe-forming networks. First, we computationally test every possible 3-node network for stripe formation in a morphogen gradient. We discover four different dynamical mechanisms to form a stripe and identify the minimal network of each group. Next, with the help of newly established engineering criteria we build these four networks synthetically and show that they indeed operate with four fundamentally distinct mechanisms. Finally, this close match between theory and experiment allows us to infer and subsequently build a 2-node network that represents the archetype of the explored design space

A Note on Doubly Warped Product Contact CR-Submanifolds in trans-Sasakian Manifolds

Warped product CR-submanifolds in Kaehlerian manifolds were intensively studied only since 2001 after the impulse given by B.Y. Chen. Immediately after, another line of research, similar to that concerning Sasakian geometry as the odd dimensional version of Kaehlerian geometry, was developed, namely warped product contact CR-submanifolds in Sasakian manifolds. In this note we proved that there exists no proper doubly warped product contact CR-submanifolds in trans-Sasakian manifolds.Comment: 5 Latex page

Tribological characterisation of magnetron sputtered Ti(C, O, N) thin films

Ti(C, O, N) thin films were prepared by magnetron sputtering and analysed in terms of their tribological properties. Surface and tribological parameters were analysed and discussed as a function of the films composition and structural features, as well as their thickness. The evolution of friction coefficient values was in concordance with the wear behaviour of the films. According to the atomic composition of the films, an increasing of the carbon percentage and a compound chemical formula closed to the stoichiometric TiC lead to a very good wear behaviour. This aspect is also directly correlated with the friction behaviour.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) SFRH/BPD/27114/2006 e PTDC/CTM/69362/200

COUGER-co-factors associated with uniquely-bound genomic regions

Most transcription factors (TFs) belong to protein families that share a common DNA binding domain and have very similar DNA binding preferences. However, many paralogous TFs (i.e. members of the same TF family) perform different regulatory functions and interact with different genomic regions in the cell. A potential mechanism for achieving this differential in vivo specificity is through interactions with protein co-factors. Computational tools for studying the genomic binding profiles of paralogous TFs and identifying their putative co-factors are currently lacking. Here, we present an interactive web implementation of COUGER, a classification-based framework for identifying protein co-factors that might provide specificity to paralogous TFs. COUGER takes as input two sets of genomic regions bound by paralogous TFs, and it identifies a small set of putative co-factors that best distinguish the two sets of sequences. To achieve this task, COUGER uses a classification approach, with features that reflect the DNA-binding specificities of the putative co-factors. The identified co-factors are presented in a user-friendly output page, together with information that allows the user to understand and to explore the contributions of individual co-factor features. COUGER can be run as a stand-alone tool or through a web interface: http://couger.oit.duke.edu

SSMART: Sequence-structure motif identification for RNA-binding proteins

MOTIVATION: RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) regulate every aspect of RNA metabolism and function. There are hundreds of RBPs encoded in the eukaryotic genomes, and each recognize its RNA targets through a specific mixture of RNA sequence and structure properties. For most RBPs, however, only a primary sequence motif has been determined, while the structure of the binding sites is uncharacterized. RESULTS: We developed SSMART, an RNA motif finder that simultaneously models the primary sequence and the structural properties of the RNA targets sites. The sequence-structure motifs are represented as consensus strings over a degenerate alphabet, extending the IUPAC codes for nucleotides to account for secondary structure preferences. Evaluation on synthetic data showed that SSMART is able to recover both sequence and structure motifs implanted into 3'UTR-like sequences, for various degrees of structured/unstructured binding sites. In addition, we successfully used SSMART on high-throughput in vivo and in vitro data, showing that we not only recover the known sequence motif, but also gain insight into the structural preferences of the RBP. AVAILABILITY: SSMART is freely available at https://ohlerlab.mdc-berlin.de/software/SSMART 137

Photoluminescence Detected Doublet Structure in the Integer and Fractional Quantum Hall Regime

We present here the results of polarized magneto-photoluminescence measurements on a high mobility single-heterojunction. The presence of a doublet structure over a large magnetic field range (2>nu>1/6) is interpreted as possible evidence for the existence of a magneto-roton minima of the charged density waves. This is understood as an indication of strong electronic correlation even in the case of the IQHE limit.Comment: submitted to Solid State Communication