11,418 research outputs found
Competition of coarsening and shredding of clusters in a driven diffusive lattice gas
We investigate a driven diffusive lattice gas model with two oppositely
moving species of particles. The model is motivated by bi-directional traffic
of ants on a pre-existing trail. A third species, corresponding to pheromones
used by the ants for communication, is not conserved and mediates interactions
between the particles. Here we study the spatio-temporal organization of the
particles. In the uni-directional variant of this model it is known to be
determined by the formation and coarsening of ``loose clusters''. For our
bi-directional model, we show that the interaction of oppositely moving
clusters is essential. In the late stages of evolution the cluster size
oscillates because of a competition between their `shredding' during encounters
with oppositely moving counterparts and subsequent "coarsening" during
collision-free evolution. We also establish a nontrivial dependence of the
spatio-temporal organization on the system size
More security or less insecurity
We depart from the conventional quest for ‘Completely Secure Systems’ and ask ‘How can we be more Secure’. We draw heavily from the evolution of the Theory of Justice and the arguments against the institutional approach to Justice. Central to our argument is the identification of redressable insecurity, or weak links. Our contention is that secure systems engineering is not really about building perfectly secure systems but about redressing manifest insecurities.Final Accepted Versio
Dynamic instability of microtubules: effect of catastrophe-suppressing drugs
Microtubules are stiff filamentary proteins that constitute an important
component of the cytoskeleton of cells. These are known to exhibit a dynamic
instability. A steadily growing microtubule can suddenly start depolymerizing
very rapidly; this phenomenon is known as ``catastrophe''. However, often a
shrinking microtubule is ``rescued'' and starts polymerizing again. Here we
develope a model for the polymerization-depolymerization dynamics of
microtubules in the presence of {\it catastrophe-suppressing drugs}. Solving
the dynamical equations in the steady-state, we derive exact analytical
expressions for the length distributions of the microtubules tipped with
drug-bound tubulin subunits as well as those of the microtubules, in the
growing and shrinking phases, tipped with drug-free pure tubulin subunits. We
also examine the stability of the steady-state solutions.Comment: Minor corrections; final published versio
Collective traffic-like movement of ants on a trail: dynamical phases and phase transitions
The traffic-like collective movement of ants on a trail can be described by a
stochastic cellular automaton model. We have earlier investigated its unusual
flow-density relation by using various mean field approximations and computer
simulations. In this paper, we study the model following an alternative
approach based on the analogy with the zero range process, which is one of the
few known exactly solvable stochastic dynamical models. We show that our theory
can quantitatively account for the unusual non-monotonic dependence of the
average speed of the ants on their density for finite lattices with periodic
boundary conditions. Moreover, we argue that the model exhibits a continuous
phase transition at the critial density only in a limiting case. Furthermore,
we investigate the phase diagram of the model by replacing the periodic
boundary conditions by open boundary conditions.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Simulation of waste heat recovery system with fuzzy based evaporator model
The organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is one of the promising waste heat recovery (WHR) technologies used to improve the thermal efficiency, reduce the emissions and save the fuel costs of internal combustion engines. In the ORCWHR system, the evaporator is considered to be the most critical component as the heat transfer of this device influences the efficiency of the system. Although the conventional Finite Volume (FV) model can successfully capture the complex heat transfer process in the evaporator, the computation time for this model is high as it consists of many iterative loops. To reduce the computation time, a new evaporator model using the fuzzy inference technique is developed in this research. The developed fuzzy based model can predict the evaporator outputs with an accuracy of over 90% while it reduces the simulation time significantly. This model is then integrated with other components of the ORC to simulate a completed ORC-WHR system for internal combustion engines. The influence of operating parameters on the performance of the WHR system is investigated in this paper
Distribution of dwell times of a ribosome: effects of infidelity, kinetic proofreading and ribosome crowding
Ribosome is a molecular machine that polymerizes a protein where the sequence
of the amino acid residues, the monomers of the protein, is dictated by the
sequence of codons (triplets of nucleotides) on a messenger RNA (mRNA) that
serves as the template. The ribosome is a molecular motor that utilizes the
template mRNA strand also as the track. Thus, in each step the ribosome moves
forward by one codon and, simultaneously, elongates the protein by one amino
acid. We present a theoretical model that captures most of the main steps in
the mechano-chemical cycle of a ribosome. The stochastic movement of the
ribosome consists of an alternating sequence of pause and translocation; the
sum of the durations of a pause and the following translocation is the time of
dwell of the ribosome at the corresponding codon. We derive the analytical
expression for the distribution of the dwell times of a ribosome in our model.
Whereever experimental data are available, our theoretical predictions are
consistent with those results. We suggest appropriate experiments to test the
new predictions of our model, particularly, the effects of the quality control
mechanism of the ribosome and that of their crowding on the mRNA track.Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article
accepted for publication in Physical Biology. IOP Publishing Ltd is not
responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or
any version derived from it. The definitive publisher authenticated version
is available online at DOI:10.1088/1478-3975/8/2/02600
Micellar Aggregates of Gemini Surfactants: Monte Carlo Simulation of a Microscopic Model
We propose a "microscopic" model of gemini surfactants in aqueous solution.
Carrying out extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we study the variation of the
critical micellar concentration (CMC) of these model gemini surfactants with
the variation of the (a) length of the spacer connecting the two hydrophilic
heads, (b) length of the hydrophobic tail and (c) the bending rigidity of the
hydrocarbon chains forming the spacer and the tail; some of the trends of
variation are counter-intuitive but are in excellent agreement with the
available experimental results. Our simulations also elucidate the dependence
of the shapes of the micellar aggregates and the magnitude of the CMC on the
geometrical shape and size of the surfactant molecules and the electrical
charge on the hydrophilic heads
Calibrated quantum thermometry in cavity optomechanics
Cavity optomechanics has achieved the major breakthrough of the preparation
and observation of macroscopic mechanical oscillators in peculiarly quantum
states. The development of reliable indicators of the oscillator properties in
these conditions is important also for applications to quantum technologies. We
compare two procedures to infer the oscillator occupation number, minimizing
the necessity of system calibrations. The former starts from homodyne spectra,
the latter is based on the measurement of the motional sidebands asymmetry in
heterodyne spectra. Moreover, we describe and discuss a method to control the
cavity detuning, that is a crucial parameter for the accuracy of the latter,
intrinsically superior procedure
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