We show that there are universal positive constants c and C such the mixing time τmix for the fifteen puzzle in an n× n torus satisfies cn logn ≤ τmix ≤ Cn log n.

Modern processing techniques for turkey involve rapid chilling to slow microbial growth and early deboning of the economically important breast meat. This paper shows that these 2 processes lead to significantly tougher meat with higher cooking losses. The toughening appears to be due to less extensive proteolysis and shortening of the sarcomeres. Calpains I and II and their inhibitor, calpasta...

Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is an angioproliferative neoplasm that develops as multifocal lesions, often involving the skin, accompanied by the accumulation of perivascular and interstitial spindle-shaped cells (1). The nature of the proliferating spindle-shaped cells in KS has been a "riddle within a puzzle" for the past century [reviewed in (2) ]. While the endothelial cell has been linked to the s...

Three experiments investigated young children’s ability to use a causal property, making a machine light up and play music, to sort objects together (sorting task), and then to predict how to make the machine work (action task). The results show that the performance of 30-month-old children is guided in both tasks by the causal properties of the objects. This suggests that causal information is...

Theoretical and empirical studies have suggested that an underestimate of the ENSO asymmetry may be accompanied by a climatologically smaller and warmer western Pacific warm pool. In light of this suggestion, simulations of the tropical Pacific climate by 19 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) climate models that do not use flux adjustment were evaluated. Our evaluation reveal...

The cytomatrix at the active zone (CAZ) has been implicated in defining the site of Ca2+-dependent exocytosis of neurotransmitter. We have identified here a novel CAZ protein of approximately 120 kD from rat brain and named it CAST (CAZ-associated structural protein). CAST had no transmembrane segment, but had four coiled-coil domains and a putative COOH-terminal consensus motif for binding to ...

A novel molecular chromophore, p-SIDT(FBTThCA8)2, is introduced as an electron-donor material for bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells with broad absorption and near ideal energy levels for the use in combination with common acceptor materials. It is found that films cast from chlorobenzene yield devices with strongly s-shaped current-voltage curves, drastically limiting performance. We find t...