While communication networks show the small-world property of short paths, the spreading dynamics in them turns out slow. Here, the time evolution of information propagation is followed through communication networks by using empirical data on contact sequences and the susceptible-infected model. Introducing null models where event sequences are appropriately shuffled, we are able to distinguis...

In a former study in patients with severe chronic airflow obstruction (CAO), (forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) ranging from 350-910 ml), we concluded that daily oral corticosteroids might slow down the progression of disease. The results of the present long-term (14-20 yr) study on 139 non-allergic patients with less severe CAO (FEV1 greater than or equal to 1200 ml, FEV1 as a perc...

The uniquely human ability to use language not only allows for effective communication but may also provide necessary grounding for certain cognitive activities (e. Researchers have suggested that words may make abstract notions more tangible, allowing for the formation of concepts that are easier to interpret and manipulate (Clark, 2006), or that words provide additional processing power while...

Herbivore effects on diversity and succession were often studied in plants, but not in cryptogams. Besides direct herbivore effects on cryptogams, we expected indirect effects by changes in competitive interactions among cryptogams. Therefore, we conducted a long-term gastropod exclusion experiment testing for grazing effects on epiphytic cryptogam communities. We estimated the grazing damage, ...

It is well-known experimentally and theoretically that surface ligands provide additional pathways for energy relaxation in colloidal semiconductor quantum dots (QDs). They increase the rate of inelastic charge-phonon scattering and provide trap sites for the charges. We show that, surprisingly, ligands have the opposite effect on elastic electron-phonon scattering. Our simulations demonstrate ...

Observers commonly report that time seems to have moved in slow motion during a life-threatening event. It is unknown whether this is a function of increased time resolution during the event, or instead an illusion of remembering an emotionally salient event. Using a hand-held device to measure speed of visual perception, participants experienced free fall for 31 m before landing safely in a ne...

Tandem Jackson networks, and more sophisticated variants, have found widespread application in various domains. One such a variant is the tandem queue with server slow-down, in which the server of the upstream queue reduces its service speed as soon as the downstream queue exceeds some prespecified threshold, to provide the downstream queue some sort of ‘protection’. This paper focuses on the o...

We study entropic slowing down in a decorated bond system. Though it is commonly known that complicate energy landscape in random spin systems causes slow relaxations, we find that the slowing down also appears due to an entropic effect even if the energy barrier between the stable and the metastable states is very small. The concept of the entropic slowing down is proposed by using a decorated...

Protein homeostasis, or proteostasis, refers to a proper balance between synthesis, maturation, and degradation of cellular proteins. A growing body of evidence suggests that the ribosome serves as a hub for co-translational folding, chaperone interaction, degradation, and stress response. Accordingly, in addition to the chaperone network and proteasome system, the ribosome has emerged as a maj...