Shapes of a single, long DNA molecule condensed in a confinement of a virus capsid are described as conformations optimizing a model free energy functional accounting for the interplay between the bending energy of the DNA and the surface energy of the DNA bundled in a "rope". The rope is formed by bundled DNA brought together by (self-)attractive interactions. The conformations predicted by th...

The conformation of polymer chains under confinement is investigated in intercalated polymer/layered silicate nanocomposites. Hydrophilic poly(ethylene oxide)/sodium montmorillonite, PEO/Na+-MMT, hybrids were prepared utilizing melt intercalation with compositions where the polymer chains are mostly within the ~1 nm galleries of the inorganic material. The polymer chains are completely amorphou...

Structure of exact solutions modelling confinement is discussed for SU(3)-Yang-Mills equations and uniqueness of such confining solutions is proved in a certain sense. Relationship of the obtained results to QCD and the confinement mechanism is considered. Incidentally the Wilson confinement criterion for the found solutions is verified and also numerical estimates for strength of magnetic colo...

The objective of this study was to investigate piglet mortality in a commercial setting where sows were accommodated in a loose-housed system with an option to confine the sow for a few days around farrowing and during early lactation. The study was conducted in a Danish piggery where records were obtained from 2,139 farrowings. Sows were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 treatments: loose–loose (LL...

A survey of internal parasites in Oklahoma swine herds indicates that most of the internal parasites common to swine are widespread in the state, although numbers are somewhat lower than those reported in surveys of states with a greater concentration of swine. A total of90 growing-finishing swine were used to study the effect of anthelmintic treatment regimes and management systems on pig perf...

Little is known about how mitotic cells round against epithelial confinement. Here, we engineer micropillar arrays that subject cells to lateral mechanical confinement similar to that experienced in epithelia. If generating sufficient force to deform the pillars, rounding epithelial (MDCK) cells can create space to divide. However, if mitotic cells cannot create sufficient space, their rounding...

We consider possible dynamical models for a light fermion confined by a potential field. With the Dirac equation only Lorentz scalar confinement yields normalizable wavefunctions, while with the “no pair” variant of the Dirac equation only Lorentz vector confinement has normal Regge behaviour. A systematic investigation of Regge properties and phenomenological properties is carried out, includi...

Plasmon lasers are a new class of coherent optical amplifiers that generate and sustain light well below its diffraction limit. Their intense, coherent and confined optical fields can enhance significantly light-matter interactions and bring fundamentally new capabilities to bio-sensing, data storage, photolithography and optical communications. However, metallic plasmon laser cavities generall...