Search results for " Thermodynamics"
showing 10 items of 288 documents
Self-consistent GW calculations of electronic transport in thiol- and amine-linked molecular junctions
2011
The electronic conductance of a benzene molecule connected to gold electrodes via thiol, thiolate, or amino anchoring groups is calculated using nonequilibrium Green functions in combination with the fully self-consistent GW approximation for exchange and correlation. The calculated conductance of benzenedithiol and benzenediamine is one-fifth that predicted by standard density functional theory (DFT), in very good agreement with experiments. In contrast, the widely studied benzenedithiolate structure is found to have a significantly higher conductance due to the unsaturated sulfur bonds. These findings suggest that more complex gold-thiolate structures where the thiolate anchors are chemic…
Photo-thermal effects in gold nanorods/DNA complexes
2015
An ingenious combination of plasmonic nanomaterials and one of the most relevant biological systems, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is achieved by bioconjugating gold nanorods (GNRs) with DNA via electrostatic interaction between positively charged GNRs and negatively charged short DNA. The obtained system is investigated as a function of DNA concentration by means of gel electrophoresis, zeta-potential, DNA melting and morphological analysis. It turns out that the obtained bioconjugated systems present both effective electric charge and aggregate size that are particularly amenable for gene therapy and nanomedicine applications. Finally, the effect of the localized (photo-thermal heating) and…
On the divide between animate and inanimate
2015
Vitalism was abandoned already for a long time ago, yet the impression that animate beings differ in some fundamental way from inanimate objects continues to thrive. Here, we argue that scale free patterns, found throughout nature, present convincing evidence that this demarcation is only imaginary. Therefore, all systems ought to be regarded alike, i.e., all are consuming free energy in least time. This way evolutionary processes can be understood as a series of changes from one state to another, so that flows of energy themselves naturally select those ways and means, such as species and societies or gadgets and galaxies to consume free energy in the least time in quest of attaining therm…
Thermodynamics of computation and linear stability limits of superfluid refrigeration of a model computing array
2019
We analyze the stability of the temperature profile of an array of computing nanodevices refrigerated by flowing superfluid helium, under variations in temperature, computing rate, and barycentric velocity of helium. It turns out that if the variation in dissipated energy per bit with respect to temperature variations is higher than some critical values, proportional to the effective thermal conductivity of the array, then the steady-state temperature profiles become unstable and refrigeration efficiency is lost. Furthermore, a restriction on the maximum rate of variation in the local computation rate is found.
Dynamical Casimir-Polder force between an excited atom and a conducting wall
2016
We consider the dynamical atom-surface Casimir-Polder force in the non-equilibrium configuration of an atom near a perfectly conducting wall, initially prepared in an excited state with the field in its vacuum state. We evaluate the time-dependent Casimir-Polder force on the atom, and find that it shows an oscillatory behavior from attractive to repulsive both in time and in space. We also investigate the asymptotic behavior in time of the dynamical force and of related local field quantities, showing that the static value of the force, as obtained by a time-independent approach, is recovered for times much larger than the timescale of the atomic self-dressing, but smaller than the atomic d…
Transcription in bacteriophage f1-infected Escherichia coli: RNA synthesized on DNA of deletion mutant PII shows the existence of a two-site terminat…
1984
Two different transcripts are synthesized on the DNA of deletion mutant PII of bacteriophage f1 in E. coli cells infected with this miniphage. Both RNA species appear to be primary transcripts and differ by about 100 nucleotides at their 3'OH end. Mapping of these molecules on the miniphage genome suggests that a two-site terminator is active at the end of the I region of transcription of bacteriophage f1.
Energy-Residual-Based approach to gradient plasticity
2008
The “energy-residual-based approach” mentioned in the title consists in a thermodynamically consistent procedure for the formulation of a phenomenological plasticity model of either strain gradient, or nonlocal (integral) type. The authors have developed this procedure on the last ten years. It seem therefore appropriate to present an update of this theory at this forum. For brevity we shell limit ourselves to strain gradient plasticity.
Kaluza–Klein theory, AdS/CFT correspondence and black hole entropy
2001
The asymptotic symmetries of the near-horizon geometry of a lifted (near-extremal) Reissner-Nordstrom black hole, obtained by inverting the Kaluza-Klein reduction, explain the deviation of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy from extremality. We point out the fact that the extra dimension allows us to justify the use of a Virasoro mode decomposition along the time-like boundary of the near-horizon geometry, AdS$_2\times$S$^n$, of the lower-dimensional (Reissner-Nordstrom) spacetime.
Black Hole Entropy Quantization
2006
Ever since the pioneer works of Bekenstein and Hawking, black hole entropy has been known to have a quantum origin. Furthermore, it has long been argued by Bekenstein that entropy should be quantized in discrete (equidistant) steps given its identification with horizon area in (semi-)classical general relativity and the properties of area as an adiabatic invariant. This lead to the suggestion that black hole area should also be quantized in equidistant steps to account for the discrete black hole entropy. Here we shall show that loop quantum gravity, in which area is {\it not} quantized in equidistant steps can nevertheless be consistent with Bekenstein's equidistant entropy proposal in a s…
Computing black hole entropy in loop quantum gravity from a conformal field theory perspective
2009
Motivated by the analogy proposed by Witten between Chern-Simons and conformal field theories, we explore an alternative way of computing the entropy of a black hole starting from the isolated horizon framework in loop quantum gravity. The consistency of the result opens a window for the interplay between conformal field theory and the description of black holes in loop quantum gravity.