Combustion at reduced gravitational conditions

The theoretical structures needed for the predictive analyses and interpretations for flame propagation and extinction for clouds of porous particulates are presented. Related combustion theories of significance to reduced gravitational studies of combustible media are presented. Nonadiabatic boundaries are required for both autoignition theory and for extinction theory. Processes that were considered include, pyrolysis and vaporization of particulates, heterogeneous and homogeneous chemical kinetics, molecular transport of heat and mass, radiative coupling of the medium to its environment, and radiative coupling among particles and volume elements of the combustible medium

Privacy and Truthful Equilibrium Selection for Aggregative Games

We study a very general class of games --- multi-dimensional aggregative games --- which in particular generalize both anonymous games and weighted congestion games. For any such game that is also large, we solve the equilibrium selection problem in a strong sense. In particular, we give an efficient weak mediator: a mechanism which has only the power to listen to reported types and provide non-binding suggested actions, such that (a) it is an asymptotic Nash equilibrium for every player to truthfully report their type to the mediator, and then follow its suggested action; and (b) that when players do so, they end up coordinating on a particular asymptotic pure strategy Nash equilibrium of the induced complete information game. In fact, truthful reporting is an ex-post Nash equilibrium of the mediated game, so our solution applies even in settings of incomplete information, and even when player types are arbitrary or worst-case (i.e. not drawn from a common prior). We achieve this by giving an efficient differentially private algorithm for computing a Nash equilibrium in such games. The rates of convergence to equilibrium in all of our results are inverse polynomial in the number of players $n$. We also apply our main results to a multi-dimensional market game. Our results can be viewed as giving, for a rich class of games, a more robust version of the Revelation Principle, in that we work with weaker informational assumptions (no common prior), yet provide a stronger solution concept (ex-post Nash versus Bayes Nash equilibrium). In comparison to previous work, our main conceptual contribution is showing that weak mediators are a game theoretic object that exist in a wide variety of games -- previously, they were only known to exist in traffic routing games

Zero Temperature Insulator-Metal Transition in Doped Manganites

We study the transition at T=0 from a ferromagnetic insulating to a ferromagnetic metallic phase in manganites as a function of hole doping using an effective low-energy model Hamiltonian proposed by us recently. The model incorporates the quantum nature of the dynamic Jahn-Teller(JT) phonons strongly coupled to orbitally degenerate electrons as well as strong Coulomb correlation effects and leads naturally to the coexistence of localized (JT polaronic) and band-like electronic states. We study the insulator-metal transition as a function of doping as well as of the correlation strength U and JT gain in energy E_{JT}, and find, for realistic values of parameters, a ground state phase diagram in agreement with experiments. We also discuss how several other features of manganites as well as differences in behaviour among manganites can be understood in terms of our model.Comment: To be published in Europhysics Letter

Theory of Insulator Metal Transition and Colossal Magnetoresistance in Doped Manganites

The persistent proximity of insulating and metallic phases, a puzzling characterestic of manganites, is argued to arise from the self organization of the twofold degenerate e_g orbitals of Mn into localized Jahn-Teller(JT) polaronic levels and broad band states due to the large electron - JT phonon coupling present in them. We describe a new two band model with strong correlations and a dynamical mean-field theory calculation of equilibrium and transport properties. These explain the insulator metal transition and colossal magnetoresistance quantitatively, as well as other consequences of two state coexistence

Singular value decomposition in parametrised tests of post-Newtonian theory

Various coefficients of the 3.5 post-Newtonian (PN) phasing formula of non-spinning compact binaries moving in circular orbits is fully characterized by the two component masses. If two of these coefficients are independently measured, the masses can be estimated. Future gravitational wave observations could measure many of the 8 independent PN coefficients calculated to date. These additional measurements can be used to test the PN predictions of the underlying theory of gravity. Since all of these parameters are functions of the two component masses, there is strong correlation between the parameters when treated independently. Using Singular Value Decomposition of the Fisher information matrix, we remove this correlations and obtain a new set of parameters which are linear combinations of the original phasing coefficients. We show that the new set of parameters can be estimated with significantly improved accuracies which has implications for the ongoing efforts to implement parametrised tests of PN theory in the data analysis pipelines.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravity (Matches with the published version

Femtosecond laser treatment enhances DNA transfection efficiency in vivo

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Gene therapy with plasmid DNA is emerging as a promising strategy for the treatment of many diseases. One of the major obstacles to such therapy is the poor transfection efficiency of DNA <it>in vivo</it>.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this report, we employed a very low power, near-infrared femtosecond laser technique to enhance the transfection efficiency of intradermally and intratumorally administered DNA plasmid.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that femtosecond laser treatment can significantly enhance the delivery of DNA into the skin and into established tumors in mice. In addition, we found that both laser power density as well as duration of laser treatment are critical parameters for augmenting DNA transfection efficiency. The femtosecond laser technique employs a relatively unfocused laser beam that maximizes the transfected area, minimizes damage to tissue and simplifies its implementation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This femtosecond new laser technology represents a safe and innovative technology for enhancing DNA gene transfer in vivo.</p

cardiovascular manifestations in patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus

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