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We review the non-trivial issue of the relativistic description of a quantum mechanical system that, contrary to a common belief, kept theoreticians busy from the end of 1920s to (at least) mid 1940s. Starting by the well-known wo...
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We review the non-trivial issue of the relativistic description of a quantum mechanical system that, contrary to a common belief, kept theoreticians busy from the end of 1920s to (at least) mid 1940s. Starting by the well-known works by Klein-Gordon and Dirac, we then give an account of the main results achieved by a variety of different authors, ranging from de Broglie to Proca, Majorana, Fierz-Pauli, Kemmer, Rarita-Schwinger and many others.A particular interest comes out for the general problem of the description of particles with. arbitrary spin, introduced (and solved) by Majorana as early as 1932, and later reconsidered, within a different approach, by Dirac in 1936 and by Fierz-Pauli in 1939. The final settlement of the problem in 1945 by Bhabha, who came back to the general ideas introduced by Majorana in 1932, is discussed as well, and, by making recourse also to unpublished documents by Majorana, we are able to reconstruct the line of reasoning behind the Majorana and the Bhabha equations, as well as its evolution. Intriguingly enough, such an evolution was. identical in the two authors, the difference being just the period of time required for that: probably few weeks in one case (Majorana), while more than ten years in the other one (Bhabha), with the contribution of several intermediate authors.The important unpublished contributions by Majorana anticipated later results obtained, in a more involved way, by de Broglie (1934) and by Duffin and Kemmer (1938-9), and testify the intermediate steps in the line of reasoning that led to the paper published in 1932 by Majorana, while Bhabha took benefit of the corresponding (later) published literature. Majorana's paper of 1932, in fact, contrary to the more complicated Dirac-Fierz-Pauli formalism, resulted to be very difficult to fully understand (probably for its pregnant meaning and latent physical and mathematical content): as is clear from his letters, even Pauli (who suggested its reading to Bhabha) took about one year in 1940-1 to understand it. This just testifies for the difficulty of the problem, and for the depth of Majorana's reasoning and results.The relevance for present day research of the issue here reviewed is outlined as well.
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The two-electron atom is the simplest nontrivial quantum system not amenable to exact solutions. Today, its relevance in the development of quantum mechanics and its pedagogical value within the realm of atomic physics are widely ...
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The two-electron atom is the simplest nontrivial quantum system not amenable to exact solutions. Today, its relevance in the development of quantum mechanics and its pedagogical value within the realm of atomic physics are widely recognized. In this work, an historical review of the known different methods and results devised to study such a problem is presented, with an emphasis to the calculations of the ground state energy of helium. Then we discuss several, related, unpublished results obtained around the same years by Ettore Majorana, which remained unknown till recent times. Among them a general variant of the variational method appears to be particularly interesting, even for current research in atomic and nuclear physics: it takes directly into account, already in the trial wavefunction, the action of the full Hamiltonian operator of a given quantum system. Further relevant contributions, specialized to the two-electron problem, include the introduction of the remarkable concept of an effective nuclear charge different for the two electrons (thus generalizing previous known results) and an application of the perturbative method, where the atomic number Z was treated effectively as a continuous variable. Finally a survey of results, relevant mainly for pedagogical reasons, is given; in particular we focus on simple broad range estimates of the helium ionization potential, obtained by suitable choices for the wavefunction, as well as on a simple alternative to Hylleraas' method, which led Majorana to first order calculations comparable in accuracy with well-known order 11 results derived, in turn, by Hylleraas.
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Tuberculosis (TB) is still the world's second most frequent cause of death due to infectious diseases after HIV infection, and this has aroused greater interest in identifying and managing exposed subjects, whether they are simply...
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Tuberculosis (TB) is still the world's second most frequent cause of death due to infectious diseases after HIV infection, and this has aroused greater interest in identifying and managing exposed subjects, whether they are simply infected or have developed one of the clinical variants of the disease. Unfortunately, not even the latest laboratory techniques are always successful in identifying affected children because they are more likely to have negative cultures and tuberculin skin test results, equivocal chest X-ray findings, and atypical clinical manifestations than adults. Furthermore, they are at greater risk of progressing from infection to active disease, particularly if they are very young. Consequently, pediatricians have to use different diagnostic strategies that specifically address the needs of children. This document describes the recommendations of a group of scientific societies concerning the signs and symptoms suggesting pediatric TB, and the diagnostic approach towards children with suspected disease.
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Future large adaptive telescopes will trigger new constraints for the calibration of adaptive optics (AO) systems equipped with pre-focal deformable mirrors (DMs). The image of the DM actuator grid, as seen by the wavefront sensor...
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Future large adaptive telescopes will trigger new constraints for the calibration of adaptive optics (AO) systems equipped with pre-focal deformable mirrors (DMs). The image of the DM actuator grid, as seen by the wavefront sensor (WFS), may evolve during the operations because of the flexures of the opto-mechanical components present in the optical path. This will result in a degraded AO performance that will affect the scientific operation. To overcome this challenge, it will be necessary to regularly monitor and compensate for these DM/WFS mis-registrations, either by physically realigning some optical components or by updating the control matrix of the system. In this paper, we present a new strategy to track mis-registrations using a pseudo-synthetic model of the AO system. The method is based on an invasive approach where signals are acquired on-sky, before or during the scientific operations, and fed to the model to extract the mis-registration parameters. We introduce a method to compute the most sensitive modes to these mis-registrations that allows us to reduce the number of degrees of freedom required by the algorithm and to minimize the effect on the scientific performance. We demonstrate that, by using only a few of these well-selected signals, the method provides very good accuracy for parameter estimation, well under the targeted accuracy, and has a negligible effect on the scientific path. In addition, the method appears to be very robust to varying operating conditions of noise and atmospheric turbulence and it performs equally for both pyramid and Shack-Hartmann WFSs.
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An exhaustive analysis of the leaky tank car problem is presented, pointing out its intriguing physical properties, which also well serve to students and teachers for illustrating standard Newtonian mechanics in a highly nonstanda...
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An exhaustive analysis of the leaky tank car problem is presented, pointing out its intriguing physical properties, which also well serve to students and teachers for illustrating standard Newtonian mechanics in a highly nonstandard fashion. Calculus is effectively required only to examine some details concerning the solution of the equation of motion and interesting limiting cases, while we unveil all the physical content of the problem, within a proper simple model and its generalization, ranging from the motion of the leaky tank car to that of the water flowing from the car with their peculiarities. Generalizations of the problem to more than one draining hole (even with different sizes), as well as to "two-dimensional" geometries, reveal further intriguing results, culminating into a no-rotation theorem and its corollaries.
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Animal experiments are necessary for a better understanding of diseases and for developing new therapeutic strategies. The mouse (Mus musculus) is currently the most popular laboratory animal in biomedical research. Experimental p...
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Animal experiments are necessary for a better understanding of diseases and for developing new therapeutic strategies. The mouse (Mus musculus) is currently the most popular laboratory animal in biomedical research. Experimental procedures on animals often require anesthesia and/or analgesia to obtain adequate immobilization and to reduce stress or pain. Mice anesthesia is challenging for several reasons including the animals' size, metabolic rate, and the high risk of hypothermia and hypoglycemia. Moreover, anesthetic agents influence physiological parameters, further interfering with experimental results. Small animal imaging procedures are increasingly used in biomedical research both because the animals allow in vivo monitoring and because they are readily available for longitudinal and noninvasive studies as well as investigations into the evolution of diseases and the effects of new therapies. Anesthesia must adapt to the imaging technique, the procedure length, and the aim of the study. The purpose of this article is to review the existing literature on anesthetic protocols adopted in mice for molecular imaging studies and to report our experience.Digital Object Identifier http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ilar.53.1.55
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The increasing use of titanium alloys in a wider range of applications requires the development of new techniques and processes capable to decrease production costs and manufacturing times. In this regard welding and other joining...
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The increasing use of titanium alloys in a wider range of applications requires the development of new techniques and processes capable to decrease production costs and manufacturing times. In this regard welding and other joining techniques play an important role. Today, solid state friction joining processes, such as friction stir welding, friction spot welding, inertia friction welding, continuous-drive friction welding and linear friction welding (LFW), represent promising methods for part manufacturing. They allow for joining at temperature essentially below the melting point of the base materials being joined, without the addition of filler metal.
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We previously reported that the combination of two safe proteostasis regulators, cysteamine and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), can be used to improve deficient expression of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulato...
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We previously reported that the combination of two safe proteostasis regulators, cysteamine and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), can be used to improve deficient expression of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) in patients homozygous for the CFTR Phe508del mutation. Here we provide the proof-of-concept that this combination treatment restored CFTR function and reduced lung inflammation (P<0.001) in Phe508del/Phe508del or Phe508del/null-Cftr (but not in Cftr-null mice), provided that such mice were autophagy-competent. Primary nasal cells from patients bearing different class II CFTR mutations, either in homozygous or compound heterozygous form, responded to the treatment in vitro. We assessed individual responses to cysteamine plus EGCG in a single-centre, open-label phase-2 trial. The combination treatment decreased sweat chloride from baseline, increased both CFTR protein and function in nasal cells, restored autophagy in such cells, decreased CXCL8 and TNF-alpha in the sputum, and tended to improve respiratory function. These positive effects were particularly strong in patients carrying Phe508del CFTR mutations in homozygosity or heterozygosity. However, a fraction of patients bearing other CFTR mutations failed to respond to therapy. Importantly, the same patients whose primary nasal brushed cells did not respond to cysteamine plus EGCG in vitro also exhibited deficient therapeutic responses in vivo. Altogether, these results suggest that the combination treatment of cysteamine plus EGCG acts 'on-target' because it can only rescue CFTR function when autophagy is functional (in mice) and improves CFTR function when a rescuable protein is expressed (in mice and men). These results should spur the further clinical development of the combination treatment.
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The effects of heavy metals, both toxic (Pb, Cd) and essential (Cu, Zn) on the ultrastructure and the induction of Heat Shock Protein 70 (HSP70) have been studied in the aquatic moss Leptodictyum riparium Hedw. In vitro cultured L...
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The effects of heavy metals, both toxic (Pb, Cd) and essential (Cu, Zn) on the ultrastructure and the induction of Heat Shock Protein 70 (HSP70) have been studied in the aquatic moss Leptodictyum riparium Hedw. In vitro cultured L. riparium was treated with different heavy metals, both toxic, as cadmium or lead; and essential microelements such as Copper or Zinc concentrations ranging from 10-3 to 10-6 M to investigate both ultrastructural damage and HSP induction. TEM observations showed that sub-lethal concentrations of heavy metals caused only slight changes, largely localized in the chloroplasts. Among all the heavy metals tested, cadmium caused the most severe modifications. Heavy metals caused the decrease of the soluble protein content and the enhancement of proteins reacting versus HSP70 antibodies, suggesting that molecular chaperons might be involved in the resistance to toxic effects of lead, cadmium, copper and zinc. Therefore, the induction of HSP70 in L. riparium would confer a higher resistance to pollutants under stressful conditions lethal for other mosses and higher plant species. These results suggest that the moss L. riparium can tolerate heavy metals stress without incurring severe cellular/subcellular damage. Therefore it can be used as a useful indicator of heavy metals accumulation.
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We study the unconventional transmission properties of a wave packet through a PT symmetric potential region as describing the actual electromagnetic wave propagation along a waveguide filled with gain and loss media. The nontrivi...
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We study the unconventional transmission properties of a wave packet through a PT symmetric potential region as describing the actual electromagnetic wave propagation along a waveguide filled with gain and loss media. The nontrivial behavior of the transmission probability manifests in the giant amplification of the incident electromagnetic signal of given wavelengths for well-defined configurations, depending on the gain/loss contrast. Maximum transmission peaks are related to spectral singularities and a strict correlation exists between the "resonant" wavelengths and the gain/loss contrast. The transit times are as well calculated, showing their surprising vanishing in the opaque barrier limit, independently of the gain/loss contrast, which is reminiscent of some sort of Hartman effect. Also, nonlocal effects manifest in the presence of negative delay times for given configurations, while a correlation is apparent between maximum delay times and transmission probability peaks, though appreciably depending on the gain/loss contrast.
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