How does a living cell deal with basic concepts of physics such as length and force? The cell has to measure distances and regulate forces to dynamically organize its interior. This is to a large extent based on microtubules (MTs) and motor proteins. Two concepts are emerging from recent studies as key to the positioning of cell components: preferred disassembly of longer MTs and preferred deta...

We have studied the structure of K−pp comprehensively by solving this threebody system in a variational method, starting from the Ansatz that the Λ(1405) resonance (≡ Λ∗) is a K−p bound state. The structure of K−pp reveals a molecular feature, namely, the K− in Λ∗ as an “atomic center” plays a key role in producing strong covalent bonding with the other proton. We point out that strongly bound ...

Mitochondrial-nuclear incompatibility has a major role in reproductive isolation between species. However, the underlying mechanism and driving force of mitochondrial-nuclear incompatibility remain elusive. Here, we report a pentatricopeptide repeat-containing (PPR) protein, Ccm1, and its interacting partner, 15S rRNA, to be involved in hybrid incompatibility between two yeast species, Saccharo...

We report achieving enhanced nuclear magnetization in a magnetic resonance force microscope experiment at 0.6 tesla and 4.2 kelvin using the dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) effect. In our experiments a microwire coplanar waveguide delivered radiowaves to excite nuclear spins and microwaves to excite electron spins in a 250 nm thick nitroxide-doped polystyrene sample. Both electron and proton...

The properties of pairing correlation in nuclear matter are investigated by using various versions of Skyrme forces. Truncation of states involving pairing correlation, necessary due to zero range nature of the Skyrme force, is discussed in detail. A plateau appears in pairing gap versus cutoff for each force. We propose to choose the cutoff parameter in the middle of the plateau so that the pa...

Chiral perturbation theory supplemented by the Omnes function is employed to study the strength of the isoscalar central nuclear interaction, GS , in the chiral limit vs the physical case. A very large modification is seen , i.e. ηs = GS chiral/GS physical = 1.37 ± 0.10. This large effect is seen to arise dominantly at low energy from the extra contributions made by massless pions at energies n...

We outline the structure of the nuclear force in the framework of chiral effective field theory of QCD and review recent applications to processes involving few nucleons.

Langevin approach is proposed as an intuitive phenomenological framework to describe nuclear dissipative phenomena such as heavy ion reactions and fission decay. We present a method to integrate Langevin equation directly with the computer-simulated langevin force. Examples are given for a free motion of Brownian particle and for nuclear fission as a diffusion over a barrier.