... CLASS="sans">ORAC .0.1
The ORAC program has been copyrighted (C) by Massimo Marchi and Piero Procacci 1995-2008. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU for more details. A general version of the GPL may be requested at: Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

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... Procacci0.2
Author to whom comments and bug reports should be sent.
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... approximation1.1
Of course SPME is itself an approximation of the true electrostatic energy. This approximation is however totally under control since the energy can be determined to any given accuracy and the effect of finite accuracy can be easily controlled on any computed property of the system. The approximation is not uncontrolled.
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... bounds.1.2
The explicit (i.e. atomistic) solvent introduced in the MD cell is in fact the minimum amount required such that the distance between any two portion of different solute replicas is sufficiently large so as to assume negligible interprotein interactions. Also the shape of the MD cell is usually chosen so as to minimize the amount of explicit solvent whose sole role, at an extremely demanding computational cost, is to provide the correct dielectric medium for the biomolecule (including microsolvation effects) .For example, globular (i.e. quasi-spherical) proteins are usually simulated in a dodecahedric box. Such a system, single solvated protein in PBC, is thus representative of dilute solution of biomolecules since the solute molecules in the periodic systems can never come close to each other, thereby interacting
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... equations.2.1
Symplectic means ``intertwined'' in Greek and refers to the interlaced role of coordinate and momenta in Hamilton's equations.
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... macro-step2.2
When the large step size at which the intermittent impulses are computed matches the period of natural oscillations in the system, one can detect instabilities of the numerical integration due to resonance effects. Resonances occurs for pathological systems such as fast harmonic oscillators in presence of strong, albeit slowly varying, forces [70] and can be cured easily by tuning the time steps in the multilevel integration. However, for large and complex molecules it is unlikely that an artificial resonance could sustain for any length of time [70]
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... micro-steps.2.3
In the original force breakup [19,20], the energy is not generally conserved during the unperturbed motion of the inner reference systems but only at the end of the full macro-step. Force breakup and potential breakup have been proved to produce identical trajectories [23]. With respect to the force the breakup, implementation of the potential breakup is slightly more complicated when dealing with intermolecular potential separation, but the energy conservation requirement in any defined reference system makes the debugging process easier.
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... system.2.4
For example, our conclusions on the effect of SHAKE onto torsional motions for highly flexible systems differs form the results published by Watanabe and Karplus [82] for another flexible system. i.e. met-enkephalin in vacuo. They compared SHAKE on $ X-H$ against full flexibility and found that the power spectrum of torsional degrees of freedom differs significantly. For met-enkephalin their spectrum, evaluated on a 10 ps time span, shows a single strong peak at 10 or 40 wavenumbers, with and without constraints, respectively. The different behavior of the constrained and totally flexible system might be ascribed in their case to the the specificity of the system and/or the potential, although this seems unlikely [24]. In their study, on the other hand, we must remark the unusual shape of the spectral torsional profile with virtually no frequencies above 100 wavenumbers and with strong peaks suspiciously close the minimum detectable frequency according to their spectral resolution.
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... PT3.1
When P is not in boldface, we imply that the stress is isotropic
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... groups3.2
For large molecules it may be convenient to further subdivide the molecule into groups. A group, therefore encompasses a conveniently chosen subset of the atoms of the molecule
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... respectively3.3
$ W$ has actually the dimension of a mass, while $ Q$ has the dimension of a mass time a length squared
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...#tex2html_wrap_inline34340#3.4
This allows to maintain Verlet-like breakup while integrating the equation of motions [26].
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... as3.5
In presence of bond constraints and if the scaling is group-based instead of molecular based, these expression should contain a contribution from the constraints forces. Complications due to the constraints can be avoided altogether by defining groups so that no two groups are connected through a constrained bond [27]. In that case $ {\boldmath\overleftrightarrow{\mathcal{V}}}$ does not include any constraint contribution.
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... barostat3.6
The thermostat degree of freedom must be included [86,91] in the count when working in virtual coordinates. Indeed in Eq. (3.13) we have $ g = N_f
+ 1$
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....3.7
Actually in ref. [91,27] is pointed out that the virial theorem implied by the distribution (3.33) is slightly different from the exact virial in the NPT ensemble. Martyna et al. [91] proposed an improved set of equations of motion that generates a distribution satisfying exactly the virial theorem.
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... zero3.8
The statement the molecule of group does not dissociate is even too restrictive. It is enough to say that the quantity (3.52) remains bound.
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... term3.9
Similar considerations hold for the thermostat coordinate which in principle depends on the kinetic energy of all degrees of freedom, modulated hence by the fast motion also. In this case, however, the value of the thermostat inertia parameter $ Q$ can be chosen to slow down the time scale of the $ \eta$ coordinates without reducing considerably the sampling efficiency.
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... integration.3.10
There are also other less material reasons to prefer molecular scaling: atomic scaling and molecular scaling yield different dynamical properties because the equations of motions are different. Dynamical data computed via extended system simulations should always be taken with caution. With respect to pure Newtonian dynamics, however, the $ N{\bf P}T$ dynamical evolution is slightly modified by a barostat coupled to the molecular center of mass [26] but is brutally damaged when the barostat is coupled to the fast degrees of freedom. For example in liquid flexible nitrogen at normal pressure and 100 K, atomic scaling changes the internal frequency by 20 cm$ ^{-1}$ while no changes are detected when the barostat is coupled to the centers of mass.
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... infinity3.11
The value of $ W$ which works as ``infinity'' depends on the ``force'' that is acting on barostat coordinate expressed by the Eq. (3.25), i.e. on how far the system is from the thermodynamic equilibrium. For a system near the thermodynamic equilibrium with $ N_{f} \simeq 10000$ a value of $ W=10^{20}$ a.m.u. is sufficient to prevent cell fluctuations.
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... contacts4.1
By excluded contacts we mean interactions between charges on atoms connected by bonds or two bonds apart.
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... as:4.2
The scaled fractional coordinate is related to the scaled coordinates in Eqs (3.1,3.34) by the relation $ s_{i\alpha} = 2 u_{i\alpha}/K_{\alpha}$.
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...procacci954.3
Here, the word group has a different meaning that in Sec. 3 and stands for sub ensemble of contiguous atoms defined as having a total charge of approximately zero.
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... interactions4.4
Note that $ \lim_{k \rightarrow 0} \chi(r,k,\alpha) = {\rm erf}(\alpha r)/r$.
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....5.1
In the latter equation $ c$ is a constant that depends on the density of states of the $ N$ harmonic oscillators and $ c^2 N = C_v $ with $ C_v$ being the constant volume heat capacity of the system.
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... solute.5.2
With this definition, $ V_{\rm (Slt)} (X_n)$ may also depend on the coordinate of few solvent atoms. Being the definition of the solute atom based rather than potential based, it may be necessary to include in $ V_{\rm slt}^{bd} (X_n)$, e.g., torsional terms that involve boundary solvent atoms.
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... microstate6.1
In Monte Carlo generalized-ensemble simulations, momenta are dropped out.
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...#tex2html_wrap_inline36468#6.2
Here, we assume implicitly that the indexes $ n$ and $ m$ belong to an ordered list such that $ T_1 < T_2 < \dots < T_N$ or $ \lambda_1 < \lambda_2 < \dots < \lambda_N$.
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... as7.1
Lucy's function can be defined for a generic order $ n$ such that it has $ n-1$ continuous derivative everywhere[139]. The original definition[138] was given for $ n=3$; here it is employed with $ n=2$.
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... (PMF)8.1
The potential of mean force is defined as $ {\cal W}(z) = -k_B T \ln P(z)$, where $ P(z)= <\delta (z-z({\bf r})>$ is the probability to find the system at the value of the reaction coordinate $ z({\bf r}) =z$ independently on all the other coordinates.
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....8.2
The Hamiltonian $ H(z=z_t)$ may be imposed practically in steered molecular dynamics using constraints or adding a stiff harmonic potential that keeps the system at $ z=z_t$. Both these methods requires small corrections when reconstructing the PMF. In particular, the use of constraints on $ z$ sets also $ \dot z=0$, a condition that is not present in the definition of the PMF (see previous footnote). The correction to the PMF due this extra artificial condition imposed through a generic constraint is discussed in Ref. [147]. Stiff harmonic potentials, in the sense that the associated stretching motion is decoupled from the degrees of freedom of the system, behaves essentially like constraints.[148] The depuration of the the PMF from the non stiff harmonic driving potential in AFM experiments has bee proposed bu Hummer and Szabo.[65]
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... bath8.3
During the non equilibrium experiment, the instantaneous ``temperature'' of the system as measured by the kinetic energy may well exceed that of the thermal bath. Actually the ``temperature'' cannot even be defined for a system that is not at equilibrium as part of it, near the reaction path, can be warmer than other parts that are far from the reaction coordinate. This has clearly no consequences whatsoever on the CT, since the temperature in Eq. 8.2 that of the system at the initial points which are drawn by hypothesis at equilibrium
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...bennett768.4
Bennett was the first researcher to clearly recognize and formalize through the BAR the superiority of bidirectional methods in the computation of free energy differences. We cite verbatim form his paper[118]: ``The best estimate of the free energy difference is usually obtained by dividing the available computer time approximately equally between the two ensembles; its efficiency (variance x computer time) is never less, and may be several orders of magnitude greater, than that obtained by sampling only one ensemble, as is done in perturbation theory.''
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.... 9.1
This last term does not contribute to the atomic forces but only to the alchemical work and is constant for all non alchemical species. The work done by an alchemical species through this term is simply given by $ W=\pm \frac{\alpha}{\pi^{1/2}}\sum_i q_i^2$, depending whether the alchemical species has been charged or discharged.
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