Globally disruptive events include asteroid/comet impacts, large igneous provinces and glaciations, all of which have been considered as contributors to mass extinctions. Understanding the overall relationship between the timings of the largest extinctions and their potential proximal causes remains one of science's great unsolved mysteries. Cycles of about 60 million years in both fossil diver...

In this paper, the analytical form of the quasilinear diffusion coefficients is modified from the Kennel-Engelmann diffusion coefficients to guarantee the positive definiteness of its bounce average in a toroidal geometry. By evaluating the parallel inhomogeneity of plasmas and magnetic fields in the trajectory integral, we can ensure the positive definiteness and help illuminate some non-reson...

Turbulent transport in the scrape-off layer of TCV has been investigated by probe measurements and direct comparison with two-dimensional fluid simulations of interchange motions at the outer midplane. The experiments demonstrate that the fluctuation statistics in the region where plasma profiles are broad are invariant with respect to changes in the line-averaged core plasma density. Good agre...

A coarse-grain method for simulations of the dynamics of active protein inclusions in lipid bilayers is described. It combines the previously proposed hybrid simulations of bilayers [M.-J. Huang, R. Kapral, A. S. Mikhailov, and H.-Y. Chen, J. Chem. Phys. 137, 055101 (2012)], based on molecular dynamics for the lipids and multi-particle collision dynamics for the solvent, with an elastic-network...

We present Monte Carlo simulations of the Diffuse Hα Galactic Background. Our models comprise direct and multiply scattered Hα radiation from the kpc scaleheight Warm Ionized Medium and midplane H II regions. The scattering is off dust that is assumed to be well mixed with the gas, with an axisymmetric density distribution taken from the literature. The results of our simulations are all-sky Hα...

Detailed comparison between fluctuation characteristics at high-field-side (HFS) and low-fieldside (LFS) scrape off layers (SOLs) has been made, for the first time, in the L mode plasma of JT-60U tokamak using reciprocating Langumuir probes. Statistical analysis based on probability distribution function (PDF) was employed to describe intermittent (non-diffusion) transport in SOL plasma fluctua...

The hypotheses that the chest wall insertion (CW) is displaced laterally during inspiration and that this displacement is essential in maintaining muscle curvature of the costal diaphragmatic muscle fibers were tested. With the use of data from three dogs, caudal, lateral, and ventral displacements of CW during both quiet, spontaneous inspiration and during inspiratory efforts against an occlud...

Optical emission lines observed in the gaseous halo of the Milky Way and other galaxies suggest the existence of a supplemental heat source—in addition to photoionization—that increases the electron temperature in regions of low density. Such heat sources are in fact predicted to exit in the interstellar medium. For example, both the dissipation of turbulence through ion-neutral dampening and p...

Although statistical evidence is not overwhelming, possible support for an approximately 35×106  yr periodicity in the crater record on Earth could indicate a nonrandom underlying enhancement of meteorite impacts at regular intervals. A proposed explanation in terms of tidal effects on Oort cloud comet perturbations as the Solar System passes through the galactic midplane is hampered by lack of...

We examine a physical process that leads to the efficient formation of gas giant planets around intermediate mass stars. In the gaseous protoplanetary disks surrounding rapidly-accreting intermediate-mass stars we show that the midplane temperature (heated primarily by turbulent dissipation) can reach &1000 K out to 1 AU. Thermal ionization of this hot gas couples the disk to the magnetic field...