Search results for "force"
showing 10 items of 3423 documents
Hydroxypropylcellulose as a novel green reservoir for the synthesis, stabilization, and storage of silver nanoparticles
2015
Muhammad Ajaz Hussain,1 Abdullah Shah,1 Ibrahim Jantan,2 Muhammad Raza Shah,3 Muhammad Nawaz Tahir,4 Riaz Ahmad,5 Syed Nasir Abbas Bukhari2 1Department of Chemistry, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan; 2Drug and Herbal Research Centre, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; 3International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan; 4Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, Johannes Guttenberg University, Duesbergweg, Mainz, Germany; 5Centre for Advanced Studies in Physics (CASP), GC University, Lahore, Pakistan Abstract: Polysaccharides are attracting the vigil eye of…
Effect of Cholesterol on Electrostatics in Lipid−Protein Films of a Pulmonary Surfactant
2010
We report the changes in the electrical properties of the lipid-protein film of pulmonary surfactant produced by excess cholesterol. Pulmonary surfactant (PS) is a complex lipid-protein mixture that forms a molecular film at the interface of the lung's epithelia. The defined molecular arrangement of the lipids and proteins of the surfactant film gives rise to the locally highly variable electrical surface potential of the interface, which becomes considerably altered in the presence of cholesterol. With frequency modulation Kelvin probe force microscopy (FM-KPFM) and force measurements, complemented by theoretical analysis, we showed that excess cholesterol significantly changes the electri…
Non-Gaussian probability density function of SDOF linear structures under wind actions
1998
Abstract Wind velocity is usually analytically described adding a static mean term to a zero mean fluctuation stationary process. The corresponding aerodynamic alongwind force acting on a single degree of freedom (SDOF) structure can be considered as a sum of three terms proportional to the mean wind velocity, to the product between mean and fluctuating part of the wind velocity and to the square power of the fluctuating wind velocity, respectively. The latter term, often neglected in the literature, is responsible for the non-Gaussian behaviour of the response. In this paper a method for the evaluation of the stationary probability density function of SDOF structures subjected to non-Gauss…
Hunting active Brownian particles: Learning optimal behavior
2021
We numerically study active Brownian particles that can respond to environmental cues through a small set of actions (switching their motility and turning left or right with respect to some direction) which are motivated by recent experiments with colloidal self-propelled Janus particles. We employ reinforcement learning to find optimal mappings between the state of particles and these actions. Specifically, we first consider a predator-prey situation in which prey particles try to avoid a predator. Using as reward the squared distance from the predator, we discuss the merits of three state-action sets and show that turning away from the predator is the most successful strategy. We then rem…
Productivity, R&D Spillovers and Educational Attainment*
2012
Economists have long agreed that the local availability of a more qualified workforce generates significant spillovers. This study suggests that these externalities may arise because plants by having access to a more qualified workforce at a regional level, can benefit more from R&D spillovers than those located in areas with less qualified workforce. This hypothesis is tested on a sample of British establishments drawn from the Annual Business Inquiry over the period 1997–2002. The main results are consistent with our expectations that the regional differences in the industry-level educational attainment of the workforce available to a plant will condition its capability of absorbing R&D s…
The Age Structure of Human Capital and Economic Growth
2018
This paper shows that the age structure of human capital is a relevant characteristic to take into account when analysing the role of human capital in economic growth. The effect of an increase in the education of the population aged 40–49 years is found to be an order of magnitude larger than an increase in the education attained by any other age cohort. The results are unlikely to be driven by the age structure of the population, as we find that the effects on growth of the age structure of education and the age structure of population are distinct. The findings are robust across specifications and remain unchanged when we control for long‐delayed effects in human capital or for the exper…
Casimir-Polder forces, boundary conditions and fluctuations
2008
We review different aspects of the atom-atom and atom-wall Casimir-Polder forces. We first discuss the role of a boundary condition on the interatomic Casimir-Polder potential between two ground-state atoms, and give a physically transparent interpretation of the results in terms of vacuum fluctuations and image atomic dipoles. We then discuss the known atom-wall Casimir-Polder force for ground- and excited-state atoms, using a different method which is also suited for extension to time-dependent situations. Finally, we consider the fluctuation of the Casimir-Polder force between a ground-state atom and a conducting wall, and discuss possible observation of this force fluctuation.
Thermalization of Random Motion in Weakly Confining Potentials
2010
We show that in weakly confining conservative force fields, a subclass of diffusion-type (Smoluchowski) processes, admits a family of "heavy-tailed" non-Gaussian equilibrium probability density functions (pdfs), with none or a finite number of moments. These pdfs, in the standard Gibbs-Boltzmann form, can be also inferred directly from an extremum principle, set for Shannon entropy under a constraint that the mean value of the force potential has been a priori prescribed. That enforces the corresponding Lagrange multiplier to play the role of inverse temperature. Weak confining properties of the potentials are manifested in a thermodynamical peculiarity that thermal equilibria can be approa…
Global stability of protein folding from an empirical free energy function
2013
The principles governing protein folding stand as one of the biggest challenges of Biophysics. Modeling the global stability of proteins and predicting their tertiary structure are hard tasks, due in part to the variety and large number of forces involved and the difficulties to describe them with sufficient accuracy. We have developed a fast, physics-based empirical potential, intended to be used in global structure prediction methods. This model considers four main contributions: Two entropic factors, the hydrophobic effect and configurational entropy, and two terms resulting from a decomposition of close-packing interactions, namely the balance of the dispersive interactions of folded an…
Nonlinear parametric quantile models
2020
Quantile regression is widely used to estimate conditional quantiles of an outcome variable of interest given covariates. This method can estimate one quantile at a time without imposing any constraints on the quantile process other than the linear combination of covariates and parameters specified by the regression model. While this is a flexible modeling tool, it generally yields erratic estimates of conditional quantiles and regression coefficients. Recently, parametric models for the regression coefficients have been proposed that can help balance bias and sampling variability. So far, however, only models that are linear in the parameters and covariates have been explored. This paper …