Slime Mold Vein Networks Give Hint To Cure Cancer

LQ13471  - Slime molds are omnipresent in nature. They feed on organic material and avoid direct sunlight. The typical damp-fresh smell in the woods is emanating from them. These slimy creatures appear primitive, yet they have developed a sophisticated strategy to transport food and deliver environmental information. They use an intricate system of veins organized in a network. Most unexpectedly, slime molds give us a hint to cure cancer. Their smart mechanism of network formation is so general that it can be applied to analyze the development of blood supply via vessel in tumors. Thus, the effectiveness of different therapies in hindering tumor growth could be tested. In order to arrive at this conclusion researchers have used exact mathematical tools from topology. This branch of mathematics deals with  the ways general objects are connected independent of their shape. 

Sorting out blood flow

LT13043 - Blood contains many different types of cells, each with specific functions in the body. As blood flows, these cells segregate, with the white blood cells (WBCs) and platelets preferentially found near blood vessel walls. This phenomenon, called margination, allows for efficient immune surveillance by the WBCs and rapid response to vessel wall injuries by platelets. Our work demonstrates how the physical properties of different cells lead to this important observation. As the stiff WBCs and platelets collide with the more flexible red blood cells during flow, they are pushed aside while having little effect on the motion of the red blood cells, a process that ultimately leads to the trapping of WBCs and platelets near the vessel walls. A simple model of blood flow that accounts only for these collisions and the flow-induced repulsion of the cells from the vessel walls is able to match results from detailed numerical simulations. The understanding provided by this study will be helpful in designing effective drug delivery particles that target the vascular walls for treatment of cancer or atherosclerosis. Margination has also been employed in biomimetic microfluidic devices to separate WBCs and platelets from whole blood, which could be helpful in treating leukemia or for platelet rich plasma therapy (used by athletes for healing injuries). The principles established in our study will aid the development of these devices.

Image processing of two photons

LT13248A - The where-about of two photons along a one-dimensional line can be generally described by the probability of the two photons to have a certain combination of positions along the line. This is a two-dimensional distribution, as is, for example, the intensity distribution that makes up a classical image. There are many ways in which an image can be processed and manipulated. Could such methods be used for controlling the spatial distribution of two photons, even if it represents a highly non-classical, quantum state of light?

In this work we show that one of the most frequently used image processing techniques, namely, spatial frequency shaping, or "Fourier processing", can be adapted for the spatial manipulation of highly non-classical states of photon pairs. As an example, we demonstrate the retrieval of the two-photon quantum phase using an analog of classical phase-contrast microscopy. As many more Fourier processing algorithms can be applied, we believe that this opens up a new avenue for the manipulation of non-classical light.      

New Quantum Computer Blueprint

Physical Review X - We develop a layered quantum-computer architecture, which is a systematic framework for tackling the individual challenges of developing a quantum computer while constructing a cohesive device design. We discuss many of the prominent techniques for implementing circuit-model quantum computing and introduce several new methods, with an emphasis on employing surface-code quantum error correction. In doing  so, we propose a new quantum-computer architecture based on optical control of quantum dots. The time scales of physical-hardware operations and logical, error-corrected quantum gates differ by several orders of magnitude. By dividing functionality into layers, we can design and analyze subsystems independently, demonstrating the value of our layered architectural approach. Using this concrete hardware platform, we provide resource analysis for executing fault-tolerant quantum algorithms for integer factoring and quantum simulation, finding that the quantum-dot architecture we study could solve such problems on the time scale of days.

Light-controlled metamaterial optics

LR13197 - We suggest and verify experimentally a novel practical approach for dynamic noncontact tuning of composite structures. This approach allows metamaterials to acquire almost any desirable spatially inhomogeneous properties by interacting with visual light patterns projected onto the metamaterial, which may lead to a new generation of electromagnetic composites whose local properties can be tuned continuously. More specifically, our approach works by applying a hand-crafted light profile to an array of light-tunable magnetic meta-atoms. The illumination affects the magnetic resonances of the meta-atoms individually. Thus, for the first time we achieve a practical design of a metamaterial in which the constitutive parameters may be changed at will and gradually within a material volume. We fabricate the first reconfigurable light-tunable metamaterial that under different illumination profiles can operate as a controllable beam deflector or/and focusing or defocusing reflector.

No Maxwell’s Demon at work in Ranque-Hilsch vortex tubes

PRL - The long-standing problem of how a vortex tube simultaneously produces hot and cold  air streams with nothing more than the injection of a high-speed peripheral air stream has been unravelled in this paper by simplification of the device to its lowest single element – a duct rotating about a central outlet delivering air from its periphery.  This simple case shows unequivocally that a pressure gradient driving air flow against a centrifugal gravitational field results in the air giving up kinetic and internal energy as angular propulsion, resulting in a temperature reduction at the central outlet.  The theory presented is based on thermodynamic principles and shows that the maximum temperature drop is a function of the velocity of the gas at the periphery of the tube.  The article also shows that the effect is easily scaled up.

Studying the Light Response of Living Photoreceptor Cells

LN12705 -  Eyes of living organisms represent advanced light harvesting systems, developed through hundreds of millions years of evolution. Some of their features are comparable or even superior to existing man-made photodetection devices. For example, rod photoreceptor cells of the retina, which are responsible for night vision and form the focus of the present study, represent miniaturized photodetectors containing a photosensitive element (rhodopsin pigment) along with a ‘‘built-in’’ chemical power supply (ATP produced by mitochondria). They have sensitivity down to single-photon level, and demonstrate a remarkable low noise operation. Understanding such properties of nature-given photodetectors stimulates considerable interest in interfacing them with sources of nonclassical light, such as light with a ‘‘fixed’’ number of photons, and ‘‘squeezed’’ light. We analyzed the electrophysiological response of an isolated rod photoreceptor of the  African Clawed Frog (Xenopus laevis) under stimulation by coherent and pseudothermal light sources. Using the suction-electrode technique for single cell recordings and a fiber optics setup for light delivery allowed measurements of the major statistical characteristics of the rod response. The results indicate differences in average responses of rod cells to coherent and pseudothermal light of the same intensity and also differences in signal-to-noise ratios and second-order intensity correlation functions. These findings should be relevant for interdisciplinary studies seeking applications of quantum optics in biology.

Proteins in cell membranes studied using string theory to help unravel the mystery of sneezing

LQ13362  - We see how forces arising from thermal fluctuations could affect proteins embedded in cellular membranes by applying conformal field theory methods originally developed by string theorists.  Our research is inspired by an astonishing recent discovery that cell membranes can separate into two fluid regions (the way oil and water separate, but in two dimensions), forming microscopic fractal puddles of each in the membranes of living cells. We find that fluctuations in this complicated two-dimensional soup lead to long-range attractive forces between proteins preferring the same type of puddle, and repulsion between proteins preferring dissimilar puddles. These forces could help explain many mysteries in the experimentally observed behavior of membrane proteins.  For example, they may be important in clumping together the proteins that detect and respond to allergens in pollen, initiating a complex sequence of events that eventually makes you sneeze.

Smooth change from liquid to solid in granular media

LQ13873 - A shaken confined granular system presents a very unusual solid-liquid-like phase transition; it occurs above a certain heating threshold and, as this paper shows, it can be either abrupt or continuous. For equilibrium systems it is believed that a liquid-solid transition is always abrupt: a disordered liquid state cannot change smoothly to an ordered solid state because of their different symmetries. However, recent studies show that confined equilibrium systems, like water nano-films, can behave differently. In this paper, we show that a shaken non-equilibrium confined granular system also differs from the classical image. The transition can be either abrupt or smooth depending on the vertical height and filling density, meaning that one can go smoothly from one state to the other by changing a control parameter. In the experiments, density fluctuations do not present strong variations at the transition, whereas the way grains are locally ordered varies strongly, either abruptly or continuously. In the second case, grains smoothly order in a square symmetry in highly fluctuating domains. The associated fluctuations, characteristic size and relaxation time seem to diverge at the transition in a way described by the non-equilibrium theory of phase transitions.

What will happen when a bubble is close to a flexible soft boundary?

ER10845 -The interaction between an oscillating bubble and a flexible soft boundary is an important phenomenon, which is commonly found in nature, marine industrial applications, and medical treatments. The behavior of an oscillating bubble is greatly dependent on the characteristics of a boundary that it is placed near to.  If the boundary is rigid, the bubble moves towards it; whereas if the boundary is a free surface, the bubble migrates away from it. The behavior of the bubble near a flexible soft boundary would fall in-between these mentioned limiting cases and is more complex.  We investigate the physical behavior of the interaction between a bubble and a flexible soft boundary numerically and experimentally. The results from this study may provide physical insights into the complex physics of bubble-rubber interaction. The understanding is possibly applicable in biomedicine for drug delivery to tissue, which is a soft material. It is also probably useful in the marine industry where ultrasonic bubbles are generated for the defouling of the ship surfaces which has been coated with an elastic material. There is also potential interest in underwater explosion near an elastic structure. 

With whom do you want to share rumors, a blabbermouth or a person of few words?

EG10922 - On a social network, it seems better to transfer information preferentially toward those who have many social links ("blabbermouths") because they have larger impact on the network.  However, at the same time they can be bottlenecks for spreading information since information tends to concentrate on these blabbermouths and becomes redundant.  This paper shows that to achieve a faster spread over the network, it is indeed better to spread information preferentially toward those who have few social links (reverse preferential).

The Abraham force: the end of a century in hiding?

ASJ1069 - A century after Abraham predicted his elusive force we propose a conceptually simple way to see it in the laboratory. The rival theories of Abraham and Minkowski, both presented around 1910, seemed to give slightly different predictions for the physics of light travelling inside, say, glass or water. In particular, Abraham says that fields that change with time will give a little extra push to the material compared to what Minkowski predicts: the Abraham force. It's proved very hard to think of ways to detect this force, however, it existence is still in question. Using a series of intense and very short laser pulses, we show theoretically that the Abraham force could be detected in a way that is, at least conceptually, very simple. When a light pulse enters an optical fiber, the Abraham force would give a small "kick", setting the fiber in motion. As the pulse exits, a "kick" in the opposite direction makes it stop, but in the meantime the fiber has moved a tiny distance. Repeat this process enough times, and the distance becomes measurable. By winding a long fiber onto a cylinder and using a rapid repetition of short laser pulses, the Abraham force makes the cylinder rotate if it hangs by a thin thread. The rotation could be made so large as to be visible to the naked eye. And if the Abraham force isn't there, the cylinder will rotate in the opposite direction.

Quantum wires: prime numbers make the difference

LP12825 - Imagine a bunch of people forming a line. By talking to each of the their neighbours, they help Alice, at one end, in passing a message to Bob, at the other end. Like a sort of bucket brigade. If all do their job correctly, the message should reach Bob independently of the number of people in line. However, if we substitute people with (interacting) “talking” quantum particles, a new analysis shows that this is not the case, and that the number of people is crucial. Lines of this type are called quantum wires: they model the transfer of information between quantum particles and appear in a variety of nanodevices engineered and natural. It is known since a decade that perfect communication in quantum wires is impossible beyond three particles. But now we know that if we include an arbitrarily small imperfection, and if we wait long enough, then the message is very likely to reach Bob, exactly when the length of the wire is very special: a power of two, a prime or twice a prime. This peculiar phenomenon is due to interference effects. So, if the wire is composed by 9 particles, which is not one of these numbers, Alice better invites an extra particle to join the line and then get to 10 – which is twice a prime. The result opens up the possibility of employing quantum dynamics to design “natural algorithms” for probing the arithmetic structure of numbers

Asymmetric Higgsino Dark Matter

LP12845 - In the supersymmetric framework, prior to the electroweak phase transition, the existence of a baryon asymmetry implies the existence of a higgsino asymmetry. We investigate whether the higgsino could be a viable asymmetric dark matter candidate. We find that this is indeed possible. Thus, supersymmetry can provide the observed dark matter abundance and, furthermore, relate it with the baryon asymmetry, in which case the puzzle of why the baryonic and dark matter mass densities are similar would be explained. To accomplish this task, two conditions are required. First, the gauginos, squarks and sleptons must all be very heavy, such that the only electroweak-scale superpartners are the higgsinos. With this spectrum, supersymmetry does not solve the fi ne-tuning problem. Second, the temperature of the electroweak phase transition must be low, in the (1-10) GeV range. This condition requires an extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model.

Zippy harmonic oscillators

LT13019 AND LT13077 - How fast can one transport a particle in a harmonic well from one place to another and come to a dead stop? With precise control, the particle can be transported arbitrarily fast and still return to its initial quantum mechanical state. So far, most experiments have been performed adiabatically, on time-scales much longer than one oscillation period. Now two research groups have cooled trapped ions to their quantum mechanical ground state and transported them over hundreds of micrometers (10,000s of  times the extent of the particle wave packet), in as few as 5 oscillation cycles. The rapid acceleration leads to excitation during transport, but the experiments show that the deceleration can be controlled well enough to return the ions to their ground state. Besides exploring a new regime of quantum transport, this work also has practical implications: Some proposals for scaling quantum information processing with trapped ions require ion transport inside a complicated array structure. So far, transport durations were long compared to those of quantum logic operations on the ions. The recent diabatic experiments  put these time scales on the same level, thereby significantly reducing the processing overhead.

Spread of microorganisms in the soil labyrinth

A network of soil pore space.

LQ13682 - Soil hosts a stunning wealth of biological activity of microbes -bacteria, fungi, protozoa...- that plays an essential role in processes such as plant growth, climate change, or soil-borne epidemics. Such microorganisms inhabit the soil pore space which is a complex maze-like network of interconnected microchannels of different shapes and lengths (see the attached figure). Despite the qualitative insight provided by experiments dealing with 2D thin sections of soil, the effect of soil structure on microbial spread is nowadays poorly understood. For instance, it is not known to what an extent the soil structural heterogeneity affects the ability of microbes to invade large portions of soil . In our Letter, we use 3D radiographs of soil and mathematical network models to show that the extreme complexity of the soil labyrinth has a prominent effect on microbial invasion. One of the most remarkable results is that neglecting the structural complexity of soil would typically lead to a substantial underestimation of microbial invasion. Invasions in complex soil labyrinths are typically larger than in more homogeneous habitats because of the presence of relatively long channels that may act as bridges for microbial transmission between distant parts of soil.

The weakest link

LR12838 - How do arches break under vibration? It turns out that arches sporting a neat, clean shape resist better than those with geometrical imperfections. In a recent experiment, physicists first create arches in a vertical layer of small spheres and then submit them to controlled perturbations. After considering several geometrical features of the arches such as size or aspect ratio, they conclude that the danger is concentrated at places where the arch departs from a perfect, uniform shape. Worse still, if one of the beads is hanging from its neighbors due to friction, odds are high that the arch will break just there, as observed in high-speed recordings. Moreover, the more prominent the defect, the easier it is to shatter the arch. Other variables, such as the number of beads, only affect the robustness to the extent that they influence the probability of finding a defect. The researchers also point to the forces between the spheres and the friction coefficient of the material as issues deserving a closer look. Apart from the obvious hits for designing stronger structures, this could also help in getting weaker ones - which could be interesting, for instance, to avoid clogging in particulate flows.

Acoustic mirage: Do you believe what you hear?

BJ12067 - In China, there is a famous saying "Words are but wind, but seeing is believing." This means that only the eyes see that is the fact while the ear heard is not the truth. Here, an intriguing acoustic mirage is present by using an acoustic concentrator, in which what you hear is not the actual, but an illusion. We design the acoustic concentrator made of gradient negative-refraction medium, which is a class of composite materials with anomalous acoustic properties varying along the radial direction. The concentrator shell functions as a magnifying superlens for sound, and projects zoom-in acoustic image at a shifted position. Thus the human auditory system will be misled and we cannot identify the location or origin of a heard sound. Based on the mirage effect, we go a step further and describe how to acoustically transform a particular object into another: the object can be made heard as another object at will. Then, do you believe what you hear?

Uncovering the Source of Epidemics, Influence, and Ideas

LN12765 - How can we localize the source of a virus, a contamination, or even an idea  in a complex network? Due to the tremendous size of many real networks---such  as the Internet or the human social graph---it is usually infeasible to observe  the state of all nodes in a network. In this paper, we demonstrate why and how  it is fundamentally possible to infer the location of the source   by observing  the information flow at only  a few nodes in the network. We find that  the proposed  technique can perform source localization in a remarkable variety of real networks,  such as the Thukela river basin in South Africa, which was affected by a large cholera outbreak in 2000.

Tracking down the source of swirl patterns on the moon

We present in-situ satellite data, theory and laboratory validation that show how small scale collisionless shocks and mini-magnetospheres can form on the electron inertial scale length. The resulting retardation and detection of the solar wind ions could be responsible for the unusual "lunar swirl" patterns seen on the surface of the Moon.

A Toy Invisibility Cloak

LR13453 - We present the first experimental demonstration of a D. C. electric cloak for steady current fields. Using the analogy between electrically conducting materials and resistor networks, a D. C. invisibility cloak is designed, fabricated and tested using the circuit theory. We show that the D. C. cloak can guide electric currents around the cloaked region smoothly and keep perturbations only inside the cloak. Outside the cloak, the current lines return to their original directions as if nothing happens. The measurement data agree exceptionally well with the theoretical prediction and simulation result, with nearly perfect cloaking performance. The proposed method can be directly used to realize other D. C. electric devices with anisotropic conductivities designed by the transformation optics. Manipulation of steady currents with the control of anisotropic conductivities has a lot of potential applications, such as electric impedance tomography, graphene, natural resource exploration, and military hiding. The described invisibility cloak can be fabricated and measured easily in an ordinary university lab, which makes the device particularly suitable for the education of young students, besides its value in science.

Gold nanoparticles may help producing greener and faster LCD

LQ13486 - Can liquid crystal displays (LCD) be greener and faster? Physicists are now developing a new approach to do both. In a LCD, LC molecules are well aligned, with the first layer of LC molecules anchored on a substrate. Strong anchoring is important for high contrast display, but higher voltage is necessary to get the display to work, and the display responds slowly. People used to believe that anchoring strength is fixed once a device is packaged. Physicists have now found that, by placing gold nanoparticles on substrate and using an effect called localized surface plasmon resonance, it is possible to manipulate the anchoring by orders of magnitude with a weak light beam, because the light excites gold nanoparticles and boosts the light intensity in its neighborhood. The strong local field effectively lowers the anchoring strength at will. The dynamic reduction of anchoring strength also helps in speeding-up the response of LC display.

Water jets always break with the same conical shape

LQ13656E - Water trickling from a faucet, drops splashing from a puddle, the fringe of a breaking wave or the jet squirted by the archer fish: all involve a stream of water which breaks into drops. It turns out that underlying this process is a fascinating curiosity of nature. The precise conical shape of the liquid thread just before it breaks, whatever its origin and history, is always exactly the same, with an angle of 36 degrees. This phenomenon is known as self-similarity, and the angle was predicted theoretically in 1998. Now for the first time researchers have measured that angle in accurate experiments, for a wide range of starting conditions, and have found that the theory is indeed correct. They used a high-speed camera to study what happens in the last few millionths of a second before the jet breaks, and studied the behavior for both water and alcohol (ethanol). They also verified another prediction of the theory, about the speed with which the threads thins down. Theories for the behavior of liquid jets and drops are vital for improved technologies from ink-jet printing to crop spraying, and this new experimental work proves how accurate the current theories are.

Flow hydrodynamics revealed by MRI

LP13351 - In this work, new advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are used to give fresh insight into the complex behavior of multiphase flows, such as the reason bubbles wobble from side to side as they rise. Physicists have long sought to understand the complex dynamics of these systems, which are of fundamental importance throughout physics and engineering, in establishing predictive models for systems as diverse as bubbles of gas rising in a glass of beer, to oil droplets rising from the sea floor. While conventional MRI is too slow to image these rapidly changing systems, MRI acquisitions are here accelerated using the science behind image compression to allow the measurement of effectively instantaneous velocity fields around rising single bubbles and swarms of bubbles. These measurements, which have not been previously possible, reveal that vortices generated in the horizontal plane behind rising bubbles are coupled with oscillations of the bubble rise path, and instigate the generation of turbulence in multi-bubble systems.

Liquid projections originate in bubble distortion

LM12997 - Liquid projections and bubbles are often intimately linked, as witnessed by our everyday experience: tiny jets from sparkling wines, moisturizing droplets from ocean spray, and splashes from boiling soup.  Occurring in very ordinary situations, liquid projections also play a key role in the gaseous balance between ocean and atmosphere, in the fabrication process of glassy or metallic melts and even in aroma diffusion from champagne fizz. Although of prime importance for this wide variety of applications, projections are still poorly understood and their occurrence appears somewhat erratic and random. In this paper, we have been able to track down the origin of large projections to the very initial formation and distortion of large bubbles. Studying the formation process of such bubbles, we have uncovered a surprisingly violent deformation of bubbles just after detachment that systematically sparks a fast liquid jet, possible prelude of a liquid projection. This dramatic experimental observation appears to exhibit an unexpected dynamics, and is likely to trigger new research in the field.

Fast liquid jet forming inside a large disconnecting bubble