We present a kinetic model for the sequence-dependent motion of RNA polymerase (RNAP) during transcription elongation. For each NTP incorporation, RNAP has a net forward translocation of one base-pair along the DNA template. However, this process may involve the exploration of back-tracked and forward-tracked translocation modes. In our model, the kinetic rates for the reaction pathway, calculated based on the stabilities of the transcription elongation complex (TEC), necessarily lead to sequence-dependent NTP incorporation rates.

Studies of insect flight have focused on aerodynamic lift, both in quasi-steady and unsteady regimes. This is partly influenced by the choice of hovering motions along a horizontal stroke plane, where aerodynamic drag makes no contribution to the vertical force. In contrast, some of the best hoverers - dragonflies and hoverflies - employ inclined stroke planes, where the drag in the down- and upstrokes does not cancel each other. Here, computation of an idealized dragonfly wing motion shows that a dragonfly uses drag to support about three quarters of its weight.

The shear plasticity of charge density waves (CDW) in NbSe3 single crystals with cross sections having a single microfabricated thickness step was investigated. Thickness-dependent CDW pinning was found to be responsible for the origin of shear stresses along the step. The CDW depinned elastically at the volume average depinning field for small thickness differences, whereas the weak pinned side depinned first through plastic shear, for large thickness differences. Shear plasticity contributed substantial dissipation above the depinning field in large thickness differences.

The motion of Charge-Density Waves (CDWs) shows many similarities with transport in superconductors with the role of voltage and current reversed. Submicron superconducting devices are very important in both fundamental studies and applications of superconductivity. For CDWs, reliable fabrication methods for making similar devices are not as advanced and are still being developed. In search for new mesoscopic CDW physics, we have fabricated insulating longitudinal point contacts and weak links in the CDW conductor NbSe 3.

The most efficient known method for solving certain computational problems is to construct an iterated map whose fixed points are by design the problem's solution. Although the origins of this idea go back at least to Newton, the clearest expression of its logical basis is an example due to Mermin. A contemporary application in image recovery demonstrates the power of the method.

We identify the shortcomings of existing ab initio quantum chemistry calculations for the hyperfine couplings in the recently characterized azafullerene, C59N. Standard gaussian basis sets in the context of all-electron calculations are insufficient to resolve the spin density near the cores of the atoms. Using the projector augmented wave (PAW) method implemented on top of a standard pseudo-potential plane-wave density-functional framework, we compute significantly more accurate values for the Fermi contact interaction. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Under certain circumstances, decreasing the dimensions of a material may lead to elastic or anelastic properties that diverge from bulk behavior. A distinction is made between elastic deformation, for which bond rearrangements are not required, and anelastic behavior, which involves reversible deformation due to defect motion. Elastic deformation (due to bond stretching) remains structure-insensitive down to near-atomic length scales, and only small deviations are expected (of the order of 10%).

We present experimental results on the snap-off dynamics of a drop with viscosity λη dripping through a fluid of viscosity η. This paper focuses on the Stokes regime where both the inner and outer fluid viscous stresses are balanced by the pressure gradients arising from the interfacial curvature. We track the time dependence of the drop profiles near snap-off and find that successive profiles can be rescaled onto a single curve. We explore the dependence of this scaling on the nozzle diameter, surface tension, density mismatch, and viscosity ratio λ.

The level set of an elliptic function is a doubly periodic point set in ℂ. To obtain a wider spectrum of point sets, we consider, more generally, a Riemann surface S immersed in ℂ2 and its sections ("cuts") by ℂ. More specifically, we consider surfaces S defined in terms of a fundamental surface element obtained as a conformai map of triangular domains in ℂ. The discrete group of isometries of ℂ2 generated by reflections in the triangle edges leaves S invariant and generalizes double-periodicity.

The Peierls stress for a [111]-screw dislocation in bcc Tantalum is calculated using an embedded atom potential. More importantly, a method is presented which allows accurate calculations of the Peierls stress in the smallest periodic cells. This method can be easily applied to ab initio calculations, where only the smallest unit cells capable of containing a dislocation can be conviently used. The calculation specifically focuses on the case where the maximum resolved shear stress is along a 110-plane.