News
EPJ E - New complex offers potentially safer alternative for gene therapy delivery
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- Published on 02 September 2011
Spontaneous ordering of DNA fragments in a special matrix holds the key to creating non-toxic gene therapy delivery vectors, according to a study recently published in the European Physical Journal E.
Scientists from the CNRS Paul Pascal Research Centre, an institute of the University of Bordeaux, France, and colleagues from the Institute of Physics at the University of Sao Paolo, have created a complex system designed to hold DNA fragments in solution between the hydrophilic layers of a matrix of fatty substances (also known as lipids) combined with a surfactant (used to soften the layers’ rigidity). One possible application that has yet to be tested is gene therapy.EPJ Plus - The twin paradox in a cosmological context
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- Published on 26 August 2011
The twin paradox has been a source of debate since it was discovered by Einstein. It can be analytically verified assuming the existence of global nonrotating inertial frames.
The natural nonrotating frame and its identification with "fixed stars" is an aspect of Mach's Principle, which holds that the totality of matter in the universe determines the inertial frames.EPJ Plus - Discovering Technicolor
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- Published on 24 August 2011
At present there are no known elementary scalar fields. A possible candidate is the as yet undiscovered Higgs particle; however it could well be that this elusive particle is instead composite. This possibility is exhaustively examined in this article, which is both tutorial and extensive review, classifying the diverse technicolor models as extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics.
EPJ B – Online activity grows in a similar pattern to those of real-life networks
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- Published on 24 August 2011
The activity of online communities does not grow in line with the number of users, according to a model recently published in the European Physical Journal B.
The Internet has given rise to its own sorting devices. Among these, tagging consists in assigning user-chosen keywords to a piece of information (such as a digital image) to facilitate searches. Lingfei Wu, a researcher at the City University of Hong Kong’s Department of Media and Communication, used the tagging behaviour of social media application users to study the growth of online communities’ activity.EPJ E - Embryo development obeys the laws of hydrodynamics
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- Published on 22 August 2011
The law of hydrodynamics can contribute to our understanding of how a cluster of embryonic cells can transform into an animal within the first 36 hours of development, according to research recently published in European Physical Journal E.
Vincent Fleury, a researcher at the Paris Diderot University, studied the early stage of development when embryonic cells first form a flat sheet of cells before folding into a U-shape, resembling a folded pancake. He demonstrated that the formation of a chicken’s head is a consequence of the collision between both sides of the embryo flowing at constant speed towards each other.
EPJ B - Atomistic details over longer time scales
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- Published on 22 August 2011
The conventional method for atomistic simulation, namely molecular dynamics (MD), is not well suited to resolve slow dynamical processes, that is processes associated with a system that gets trapped from time to time in deep local energy minima.
In a Colloquium paper in the European Physical Journal B, A. Kushima, J. Eapen, Ju Li, S. Yip and T. Zhu review the capabilities of biased molecular simulation methods such as metadynamics, autonomous basin climbing (ABC), strain-boost and adaptive boost simulations – methods designed to probe at the atomic level mechanisms that drive system-level behavior observable on macroscopic time scales.
EPJ B - Disordered networks synchronise faster than small world networks
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- Published on 22 August 2011
A study recently published in European Physical Journal B presents observations of how complex systems synchronise over time.
Synchronisation occurs when individual elements in a complex network behave in line with each other. This applies to real-life examples such as the way neurons fire during an epileptic seizure or the phenomenon of crickets falling into step with one another.
EPJ Plus – New analytic method to solve 2-d Helmholtz equation for irregular boundaries
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- Published on 17 August 2011
To date the most successful efforts to solve the irregular boundary Helmholtz equation with Neumann boundary conditions have been computational, but even this general method has its drawbacks. Panda et al. provide a new analytic approach which solves the irregular boundary problem via a perturbative series. As the authors show by working out several nontrivial examples, the benefits of this approach include a precise understanding of the behavior of the solution as the amplitude of the boundary distortion is increased, as well as the control over the analytic precision in the terms computed and its corresponding analytic error estimates. more
EPJ Plus – Focus on Hadron Therapy in Europe
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- Published on 10 August 2011
Oncological hadron therapy was first proposed 65 years ago by Robert R. Wilson, and it took more than 40 years to build the first dedicated facility, in Loma Linda in the nineties. The growth of new facilities since then has been exponential, and thousands of patients are now treated every year. Close collaboration between research institutes, clinical centers and industry is the basis and the future of this field. This EPJ Plus focus issue spotlights the status of hadron therapy in Europe, where different centers are already in operation, some are just now ready to start patient treatments, and new ones are being planned. more
EPJ Impact Factors on the rise
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- Published on 25 July 2011
The release of the 2010 ISI Impact Factors is cause for celebrations for all EPJ journals. The growing figures underline the commitment of the Editors and Publishers to uphold high standards of scientific quality in physics publishing. A special word of thanks goes to all referees and authors who support the journals and help us make them successful.
- EPJ A IF: 2.592 (was 1.968)
- EPJ B IF: 1.575 (was 1.466)
- EPJ C IF: 3.248 (was 2.746)
- EPJ D IF: 1.513 (was 1.420)
- EPJ E IF: 2.096 (was 2.019)
- EPJ AP IF: 0.899 (was 0.756)
- EPJ ST IF: 0.838 (was 0.840)
Moreover we are delighted to announce that the most recent additions to the EPJ series, EPJ H – Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Physics and EPJ Plus, are both already accepted for ISI indexation.
