Sintered diamond compacts using metallic cobalt binders

Method is developed for sintering diamond powder which uses metallic cobalt as binder. Present samples show maximum microhardness of over 3000 kg/sq mm on Knoop scale. Material may be used as hard surface coating or may compete with cubic boron nitride as abrasive grain

The support of local cohomology modules

We describe the support of F-finite F-modules over polynomial rings R of prime characteristic. Our description yields an algorithm to compute the support of such modules; the complexity of our algorithm is also analysed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first algorithm to avoid extensive use of Gröbner bases and hence of substantial practical value. We also use the idea behind this algorithm to prove that the support of HjI(S) is Zariski closed for each ideal I of S where R is noetherian commutative ring of prime characteristic with finitely many isolated singular points and S=R/gR (⁠g∈R⁠)

Multiplicity bounds in prime characteristic

We extend a result by Huneke and Watanabe bounding the multiplicity of F-pure local rings of prime characteristic in terms of their dimension and embedding dimensions to the case of F-injective, generalized Cohen–Macaulay rings. We then produce an upper bound for the multiplicity of any local Cohen–Macaulay ring of prime characteristic in terms of their dimensions, embedding dimensions and HSL numbers. Finally, we extend the upper bounds for the multiplicity of generalized Cohen–Macaulay rings in characteristic zero which have dense F-injective type

Global parameter test ideals

This paper shows the existence of ideals whose localizations and completions at prime ideals are parameter test ideals of the localized and completed rings. We do this for Cohen-Macaulay localizations (resp., completions) of non-local rings, for generalized Cohen-Macaulay rings, and for non-local rings with isolated non Cohen-Macaulay points, each being an isolated non $F$-rational point. The tools used to prove this results are constructive in nature and as a consequence our results yield algorithms for the computation of these global parameter test ideals. Finally, we illustrate the power of our methods by analyzing the HSL numbers of local cohomology modules with support at any prime ideal

A Model-Based Analysis of GC-Biased Gene Conversion in the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes

GC-biased gene conversion (gBGC) is a recombination-associated process that favors the fixation of G/C alleles over A/T alleles. In mammals, gBGC is hypothesized to contribute to variation in GC content, rapidly evolving sequences, and the fixation of deleterious mutations, but its prevalence and general functional consequences remain poorly understood. gBGC is difficult to incorporate into models of molecular evolution and so far has primarily been studied using summary statistics from genomic comparisons. Here, we introduce a new probabilistic model that captures the joint effects of natural selection and gBGC on nucleotide substitution patterns, while allowing for correlations along the genome in these effects. We implemented our model in a computer program, called phastBias, that can accurately detect gBGC tracts about 1 kilobase or longer in simulated sequence alignments. When applied to real primate genome sequences, phastBias predicts gBGC tracts that cover roughly 0.3% of the human and chimpanzee genomes and account for 1.2% of human-chimpanzee nucleotide differences. These tracts fall in clusters, particularly in subtelomeric regions; they are enriched for recombination hotspots and fast-evolving sequences; and they display an ongoing fixation preference for G and C alleles. They are also significantly enriched for disease-associated polymorphisms, suggesting that they contribute to the fixation of deleterious alleles. The gBGC tracts provide a unique window into historical recombination processes along the human and chimpanzee lineages. They supply additional evidence of long-term conservation of megabase-scale recombination rates accompanied by rapid turnover of hotspots. Together, these findings shed new light on the evolutionary, functional, and disease implications of gBGC. The phastBias program and our predicted tracts are freely available. © 2013 Capra et al

Lower bounds for the query complexity of equilibria in Lipschitz games

Nearly a decade ago, Azrieli and Shmaya introduced the class of λ-Lipschitz games in which every player's payoff function is λ-Lipschitz with respect to the actions of the other players. They showed that such games admit ϵ-approximate pure Nash equilibria for certain settings of ϵ and λ. They left open, however, the question of how hard it is to find such an equilibrium. In this work, we develop a query-efficient reduction from more general games to Lipschitz games. We use this reduction to show a query lower bound for any randomized algorithm finding ϵ-approximate pure Nash equilibria of n-player, binary-action, λ-Lipschitz games that is exponential in nλ/ϵ. In addition, we introduce “Multi-Lipschitz games,” a generalization involving player-specific Lipschitz values, and provide a reduction from finding equilibria of these games to finding equilibria of Lipschitz games, showing that the value of interest is the average of the individual Lipschitz parameters. Finally, we provide an exponential lower bound on the deterministic query complexity of finding ϵ-approximate Nash equilibria of n-player, m-action, λ-Lipschitz games for strong values of ϵ, motivating the consideration of explicitly randomized algorithms in the above results

Purifying Selection in Deeply Conserved Human Enhancers Is More Consistent than in Coding Sequences

(c) 2014 De Silva et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Implications For The Origin Of GRB 051103 From LIGO Observations

We present the results of a LIGO search for gravitational waves (GWs) associated with GRB 051103, a short-duration hard-spectrum gamma-ray burst (GRB) whose electromagnetically determined sky position is coincident with the spiral galaxy M81, which is 3.6 Mpc from Earth. Possible progenitors for short-hard GRBs include compact object mergers and soft gamma repeater (SGR) giant flares. A merger progenitor would produce a characteristic GW signal that should be detectable at the distance of M81, while GW emission from an SGR is not expected to be detectable at that distance. We found no evidence of a GW signal associated with GRB 051103. Assuming weakly beamed gamma-ray emission with a jet semi-angle of 30 deg we exclude a binary neutron star merger in M81 as the progenitor with a confidence of 98%. Neutron star-black hole mergers are excluded with > 99% confidence. If the event occurred in M81 our findings support the the hypothesis that GRB 051103 was due to an SGR giant flare, making it the most distant extragalactic magnetar observed to date.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. For a repository of data used in the publication, go to: https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=15166 . Also see the announcement for this paper on ligo.org at: http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-GRB051103/index.ph

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

Spinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signalto- noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far