Time-resolved wake structure and kinematics of bat flight

We present synchronized time-resolved measurements of the wing kinematics and wake velocities for a medium sized bat, Cynopterus brachyotis, flying at low-medium speed in a closed-return wind tunnel. Measurements of the motion of the body and wing joints, as well as the resultant wake velocities in the Trefftz plane are recorded at 200 Hz (approximately 28–31 measurements per wing beat). Circulation profiles are found to be quite repeatable although variations in the flight profile are visible in the wake vortex structures. The circulation has almost constant strength over the middle half of the wing beat (defined according the vertical motion of the wrist, beginning with the downstroke). A strong streamwise vortex is observed to be shed from the wingtip, growing in strength during the downstroke, and persisting during much of the upstroke. At relatively low flight speeds (4.3 m/s), a closed vortex structure behind the bat is postulated.     

Local Analysis of Heterogeneous Intracellular Transport: Slow and Fast Moving Endosomes

Trajectories of endosomes inside living eukaryotic cells are highly heterogeneous in space and time and diffuse anomalously due to a combination of viscoelasticity, caging, aggregation and active transport. Some of the trajectories display switching between persistent and anti-persistent motion, while others jiggle around in one position for the whole measurement time. By splitting the ensemble of endosome trajectories into slow moving subdiffusive and fast moving superdiffusive endosomes, we analyzed them separately. The mean squared displacements and velocity auto-correlation functions confirm the effectiveness of the splitting methods. Applying the local analysis, we show that both ensembles are characterized by a spectrum of local anomalous exponents and local generalized diffusion coefficients. Slow and fast endosomes have exponential distributions of local anomalous exponents and power law distributions of generalized diffusion coefficients. This suggests that heterogeneous fractional Brownian motion is an appropriate model for both fast and slow moving endosomes. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: “Recent Advances In Single-Particle Tracking: Experiment and Analysis” edited by Janusz Szwabiński and Aleksander Weron.     

Magnetically gated microelectrodes

Microelectrodes fabricated in the center of single-coil microelectromagnetic traps are described. Magnetic particles are then used to reversibly gate transport of an electroactive species to the surface of the electrode or as a means to produce an ON/OFF bioelectrocatalytic glucose sensor.     

Efficient disc on pillar substrates for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy

In this work, geometrical optimizations of Ag disc on pillar (DOP) hybrid plasmonic nanostructures were conducted and allowed us to achieve reproducible average enhancement factors of 1 × 10(9) and greater.     

Independent component analysis of nanomechanical responses of cantilever arrays

The ability to detect and identify chemical and biological elements in air or liquid environments is of far reaching importance. Performing this task using technology that minimally impacts the perceived environment is the ultimate goal. The development of functionalized cantilever arrays with nanomechanical sensing is an important step towards this goal. This report couples the feature extraction abilities of independent component analysis (ICA) and the classification techniques of neural networks to analyze the signals produced by microcantilever-array-based nanomechanical sensors. The unique capabilities of this analysis unleash the potential of this sensing technology to accurately identify chemical mixtures and concentrations. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the knowledge of how the sensor array reacts to individual analytes in isolation is sufficient information to decode mixtures of analytes—a substantial benefit, significantly increasing the analytical utility of these sensing devices.     

A spin-3/2 Ising model on a square lattice

The spin-3/2 Ising model described by the most general Hamiltonian with up-down symmetry, −βH=Σ_〈ij〉{JS _i S _j +KS ₂ ⁱ S ₂ ^j +LS ₃ ⁱ S ₃ ^j +M/2(S _i S ₃ ^j +S _j S ₃ ⁱ )}−ΔΣ_i S ₂ ⁱ , is investigated on a square lattice. It is shown that this model is reducible to an eight-vertex model on a surface in the parameter space spanned by the coupling constants J, K, L, and M. It is shown that this model is equivalent to an exactly solvable free fermion model along two lines in the parameter space. Consequently, the critical behavior and, in particular, the critical temperature for the second-order phase transitions of the model is found exactly. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 63, No. 4, 270–275 (25 February 1996) Published in English in the original Russian journal. Edited by Steve Torstveit.     

On lattice points in polyhedral cross-sections

(a) We prove that the convex hull of anyk ^d +1 points of ad-dimensional lattice containsk+1 collinear lattice points. (b) For a convex polyhedron we consider the numbers of its lattice points in consecutive parallel lattice hyperplanes (levels). We prove that if a polyhedron spans no more than 2 ^d−1 levels, then this string of numbers may be arbitrary. On the other hand, we give an example of a string of 2 ^d−1+1 numbers to which no convex polyhedron corresponds inR ^d .     

Coupled oscillators with power-law interaction and their fractional dynamics analogues

A one-dimensional chain of coupled oscillators with the long-range power-law interactions is considered. Equations of motion in the infrared limit are mapped onto the continuum equation with the Riesz fractional derivative of order α, when 0 < α < 2. The evolution of soliton-like and breather-like structures is obtained numerically and compared for two types of simulations: using the chain of oscillators and using the continuous medium equation with the fractional derivative.     

Analysis of a Recurrence Related to Critical Nonhomogeneous Branching Processes

Abstract

Some classes of controlled branching processes (with nonhomo-geneous migration or with nonhomo-geneous state-dependent immigration) lead in the critical case to a recurrence for the extinction probabilities. Under some additional conditions it is known that this recurrence depends on some parameter β and converges for 0 < β < 1. Now we show that the recurrence does converge for all positive values of the parameter β, which leads to an extension of some limit theorems for the corresponding branching processes. We also give a generalization of the recurrence and an asymptotic analysis of its behavior.