Related papers: Bistable equilibrium points of mercury body burden
We make a number of small changes, including correcting an error in our heavy-neutrino decay rate. None of our analysis is changed, either in substance or detail.
Because the solar luminosity increases over geological timescales, Earth climate is expected to warm, increasing water evaporation which, in turn, enhances the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Above a certain critical insolation, this…
The abundance and biological role of potassium suggest that its unstable nuclide was present in all stages of terrestrial biogenesis. With its enhanced isotopic ratio in the Archean eon, $^{40}$K may have contributed to the special, perhaps…
Heat conduction is investigated on three levels: equilibrium, Fourier, and Cattaneo. The Fourier level is either the point of departure for investigating the approach to equilibrium or the final stage in the investigation of the approach…
Planets with 2 $R_{\oplus}$ < $R$ < 3 $R_{\oplus}$ and orbital period $<$100 d are abundant; these sub-Neptune exoplanets are not well understood. For example, $Kepler$ sub-Neptunes are likely to have deep magma oceans in contact with their…
We revisit the process of gravitational sedimentation of helium and heavy elements in the intra-cluster medium. We find that helium applies an inward drag force on heavy elements, boosting their sedimentation speed to nearly half its own.…
Because obesity is a risk factor for many serious illnesses such as diabetes, better understandings of obesity and eating disorders have been attracting attention in neurobiology, psychiatry, and neuroeconomics. This paper presents future…
At present, cosmological observations set the most stringent bound on the neutrino mass scale. Within the standard cosmological model ($\Lambda$CDM), the Planck collaboration reports $\sum m_\nu < 0.12\,\text{eV}$ at 95% CL. This bound,…
A many-body Green's function approach to the microscopic theory of surface-enhanced Raman scattering is presented. Interaction effects between a general molecular system and a spatially anisotropic metal particle supporting plasmon…
Autophagy is a conserved biological stress response in mammalian cells that is responsible for clearing damaged proteins and organelles from the cytoplasm and recycling their contents via the lysosomal pathway. In cases of mild stress,…
We study the stability of the hydrogen molecule interacting with the environment according to the balanced gain and loss energy scheme. We determined the properties of the molecule taking into account all electronic interactions, where the…
The quest for life in the Universe is often affected by the free use of extrapolations of our phenomenological geocentric knowledge. We point out that the existence of a living organism, and a population of organisms, requires the existence…
Biological nanomachines are nanometer-size macromolecular complexes that catalyze chemical reactions in the presence of substrate molecules. The catalytic functions carried out by such nanomachines in the cytoplasm, and biological membranes…
We discuss how the thermalization of an elementary quantum system is modified when the system is placed in an environment out of thermal equilibrium. To this aim we provide a detailed investigation of the dynamics of an atomic system placed…
The interplay between electron correlation and nuclear quantum effects makes our understanding of elemental hydrogen a formidable challenge. Here, we present the phase diagram of hydrogen and deuterium at low temperatures and high-pressure…
The process of evolution by natural selection leads to phenotypes of increasing fitness. For cellular chemical reaction networks, this means optimising a variety of fitness functions such as robustness, precision, or sensitivity to external…
Metallic hydrogen is expected to exhibit remarkable physics. Examples include high-temperature superconductivity and possible novel types of quantum fluids. These could have revolutionary practical applications. The pressures required to…
The exciton dynamics in a molecular heterodimer is studied as a function of differences in excitation and reorganization energies, asymmetry in transition dipole moments and excited state lifetimes. The heterodimer is composed of two…
With an eye on plasma walls we investigate, within an effective model for the two active electrons involved in the process, secondary electron emission due to Auger de-excitation of metastable nitrogen $N_2(^3\sigma^+_u)$ molecules at…
I review arguments for the existence of a critical point E in the QCD phase diagram as a function of temperature T and baryon chemical potential \mu. I describe how heavy ion collision experiments at the SPS and RHIC can discover the…