106 research outputs found

    The classical phase space for quantum dots

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    この論文は国立情報学研究所の電子図書館事業により電子化されました。We numerically integrate Hamilton's equations for the classical phase space trajectories of electrons confined in a closed quantum dot. The dot potential contour is obtained numerically via full, 3D spin density functional calculations of a realistic, GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructure based device. We show that the phase space of the dot is mixed and, as a function of increasing energy, becomes increasingly chaotic. We show that this is related to the well-screened, symmetric shape of the potential at low energies and the un-screened, irregular perimeter shape at the Fermi surface. We employ an iterative method to search for periodic orbits in the dot, employing the computed matrizant

    The spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency in social anxiety

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    [Clark, D. M., & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In: R. G. Heimberg, M. R. Liebowitz, D. A. Hope, & F. R. Schneier (Eds.), Social phobia: diagnosis, assessment, and treatment (pp. 69–93). New York: Guildford Press] cognitive model of social phobia suggests that both public and private sources of information contribute to the construction of the self as a social object, which is thought to maintain the disorder. This study used two concepts developed in social psychology that might help to explain the processes that contribute to the development of this constructed self. These two concepts are the spotlight effect [Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one’s own actions and appearance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 211–222] and the illusion of transparency [Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (1998). The Illusion of transparency: biased assessments of others’ ability to read one’s own emotional states. Journal of personality and social psychology, 75(2), 332–346]. Participants performed a memory task under either a low or a high social-evaluative condition. In the high social-evaluative condition, participants reported higher levels of the spotlight effect and more negative evaluation of task performance, compared to participants in the low social-evaluative condition. There were no differences between the two conditions in levels of the illusion of transparency. Surprisingly, however, in the low socialevaluative condition, participants reported higher levels of the illusion of transparency than the spotlight effect, whereas, in the high social-evaluative condition, they reported the opposite. Results suggest that the spotlight effect may be specific to social-evaluative concerns, whereas, the illusion of transparency may represent more general features of social anxiety concerns. Implications of the results for Clark and Wells’ cognitive model of social phobia model are discussed

    Anion Stabilization in Electrostatic Environments

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    Excess charge stabilization of molecules in metallic environments is of particular importance for fields such as molecular electronics and surface chemistry. We study the energetics of benzene and its anion between two metallic plates. We observe that orientational effects are important at small inter-plate separation. This leads to benzene oriented perpendicular to the gates being more stable than the parallel case due to induced dipole effects. We find that the benzene anion, known for being unstable in the gas-phase, is stabilized by the plates at zero bias and an inter-plate distance of 21 Å. We also observe the effect of benzene under a voltage bias generated by the plates; under a negative bias, the anion becomes destabilized. We use the electron localization function to analyze the changes in electron density due to the bias. These findings suggest that image effects such as those present in nanoscale devices, are able to stabilize excess charge and should be important to consider when modeling molecular transport junctions and charge-transfer effects.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog

    Recognizing Families In the Wild: White Paper for the 4th Edition Data Challenge

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    Recognizing Families In the Wild (RFIW): an annual large-scale, multi-track automatic kinship recognition evaluation that supports various visual kin-based problems on scales much higher than ever before. Organized in conjunction with the 15th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG) as a Challenge, RFIW provides a platform for publishing original work and the gathering of experts for a discussion of the next steps. This paper summarizes the supported tasks (i.e., kinship verification, tri-subject verification, and search & retrieval of missing children) in the evaluation protocols, which include the practical motivation, technical background, data splits, metrics, and benchmark results. Furthermore, top submissions (i.e., leader-board stats) are listed and reviewed as a high-level analysis on the state of the problem. In the end, the purpose of this paper is to describe the 2020 RFIW challenge, end-to-end, along with forecasts in promising future directions.Comment: White Paper for challenge in conjunction with 15th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2020

    Targeting choroid plexus epithelia and ventricular ependyma for drug delivery to the central nervous system

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    Background: Because the choroid plexus (CP) is uniquely suited to control the composition of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), there may be therapeutic benefits to increasing the levels of biologically active proteins in CSF to modulate central nervous system (CNS) functions. To this end, we sought to identify peptides capable of ligand-mediated targeting to CP epithelial cells reasoning that they could be exploited to deliver drugs, biotherapeutics and genes to the CNS.Methods: A peptide library displayed on M13 bacteriophage was screened for ligands capable of internalizing into CP epithelial cells by incubating phage with CP explants for 2 hours at 37C and recovering particles with targeting capacity.Results: Three peptides, identified after four rounds of screening, were analyzed for specific and dose dependant binding and internalization. Binding was deemed specific because internalization was prevented by co-incubation with cognate synthetic peptides. Furthermore, after i.c.v. injection into rat brains, each peptide was found to target phage to epithelial cells in CP and to ependyma lining the ventricles.Conclusion: These data demonstrate that ligand-mediated targeting can be used as a strategy for drug delivery to the central nervous system and opens the possibility of using the choroid plexus as a portal of entry into the brain

    Epidermal growth factor targeting of bacteriophage to the choroid plexus for gene delivery to the central nervous system via cerebrospinal fluid

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    Because the choroid plexus normally controls the production and composition of cerebrospinal fluid and, as such, its many functions of the central nervous system, we investigated whether ligand-mediated targeting could deliver genes to its secretory epithelium. We show here that when bacteriophages are targeted with epidermal growth factor, they acquire the ability to enter choroid epithelial cells grown in vitro as cell cultures, ex vivo as tissue explants or in vivo by intracerebroventricular injection. The binding and internalization of these particles activate EGF receptors on targeted cells, and the dose- and time-dependent internalization of particles is inhibited by the presence of excess ligand. When the phage genome is further reengineered to contain like green fluorescent protein or firefly luciferase under control of the cytomegalovirus promoter, gene expression is detectable in the choroid plexus and ependymal epithelium by immunohistochemistry or by noninvasive imaging, respectively. Taken together, these data support the hypothesis that reengineered ligand-mediated gene delivery should be considered a viable strategy to increase the specificity of gene delivery to the central nervous system and bypass the blood-brain barrier so as to exploit the biological effectiveness of the choroid plexus as a portal of entry into the brain

    On the chemical bonding effects in the Raman response: Benzenethiol adsorbed on silver clusters

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    We study the effects of chemical bonding on Raman scattering from benzenethiol chemisorbed on silver clusters using time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). Raman scattering cross sections are computed using a formalism that employs analytical derivatives of frequency-dependent electronic polarizabilities, which treats both off-resonant and resonant enhancement within the same scheme. In the off-resonant regime, Raman scattering into molecular vibrational modes is enhanced by one order of magnitude and shows pronounced dependence on the orientation and the local symmetry of the molecule. Additional strong enhancement of the order of 10210^2 arises from resonant transitions to mixed metal--molecular electronic states. The Raman enhancement is analyzed using Raman excitation profiles (REPs) for the range of excitation energies 1.63.01.6-3.0 eV, in which isolated benzenethiol does not have electronic transitions. The computed vibrational frequency shifts and relative Raman scattering cross sections of the metal--molecular complexes are in good agreement with experimental data on surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) for benzenethiol adsorbed on silver surfaces. Characterization and understanding of these effects, associated with chemical enhancement mechanism, may be used to improve the detection sensitivity in molecular Raman scattering.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. in pres
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