Nematic liquid crystals possess three different phases: isotropic, uniaxial, and biaxial. The ground state of most nematics is either isotropic or uniaxial, depending on the external temperature. Nevertheless, biaxial domains have been frequently identified, especially close to defects or external surfaces. In this paper we show that any spatially varying director pattern may be a source of bia...

Cognitive neuroscience and discourse processing are both young fields, yet their intersection has already produced a surprisingly rich body of results. In this chapter, we outline the major findings of past work and then describe some exciting new directions in discourse processing research. We begin with a discussion of the evolutionary origins of discourse processing, follow this with a discu...

We discuss the spectroscopy of the recently discovered exotic baryons as pentaquark qq̄ configurations. The ground state pentaquark configuration depends on the interplay between spin-flavor and orbital contributions to the mass operator. A simple calculation in an algebraic model gives a ground state antidecuplet pentaquark with isospin I = 0 and negative parity. The lowest pentaquark with posi...

For a large class of finite-range quantum spin models with half-integer spins, we prove that uniqueness of the ground state implies the existence of a low-lying excited state. For systems of linear size L, of arbitrary finite dimension, we obtain an upper bound on the excitation energy (i.e., the gap above the ground state) of the form (C logL)/L. This result can be regarded as a multi-dimensio...

For a large class of finite-range quantum spin models with half-integer spins, we prove that uniqueness of the ground state implies the existence of a low-lying excited state. For systems of linear size L, of arbitrary finite dimension, we obtain an upper bound on the excitation energy (i.e., the gap above the ground state) of the form (C log L)/L. This result can be regarded as a multi-dimensi...

Surfaced enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanotags operating with 1280 nm excitation were constructed from reporter molecules selected from a library of 14 chalcogenopyrylium dyes containing phenyl, 2-thienyl, and 2-selenophenyl substituents and a surface of hollow gold nanoshells (HGNs). These 1280 SERS nanotags are unique as they have multiple chalcogen atoms available which allow them to ads...