Actinide physics has seen a remarkable focus the last decade or so due to the combination of improved experimental diamond-anvil-cell techniques and the development of fast computers and more advanced theory. All f-electron systems are expected to have multiphase phase diagrams due to the sensitivity of the f-electron band to external influences such as pressure and temperature. For instance, compression of an f-electron metal generally causes the occupation of f-states to change due to the shift of these bands relative to others. This can in some cases, as in the Ce-Th system, cause the crystal to adopt a lower symmetry structure at elevated pressures. Here we study the phase stabilities of Ce, Th, and the Ce-Th system as a function of compression. Theoretically, both Ce and Th metals are rather well described within the DFT, although a proper treatment of the Ce-Th alloys has not yet been presented. In the present paper we revisit this problem by applying the modern theory of random alloys based on the coherent potential approximation (CPA).

In Escherichia coli DNA replication is carried out by the coordinated action of the proteins within a replisome. After replication initiation, the two bidirectionally oriented replisomes from a single origin are colocalized into higher-order structures termed replication factories. The factory model postulated that the two replisomes are also functionally coupled. We tested this hypothesis by using DNA combing and whole-genome microarrays. Nascent DNA surrounding oriC in single, combed chromosomes showed instead that one replisome, usually the leftward one, was significantly ahead of the other 70% of the time. We next used microarrays to follow replication throughout the genome by measuring DNA copy number. We found in multiple E. coli strains that the replisomes are independent, with the leftward replisome ahead of the rightward one. The size of the bias was strain-specific, varying from 50 to 130 kb in the array results. When we artificially blocked one replisome, the other continued unabated, again demonstrating independence. We suggest an improved version of the factory model that retains the advantages of threading DNA through colocalized replisomes at about equal rates, but allows the cell flexibility to overcome obstacles encountered during elongation.