Exobiology: The NASA program

The goal of NASA's Exobiology Program is to understand the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe. To do this, the Exobiology Program seeks to provide a critical framework and some key research to allow NASA to bear the combined talents and capabilities of the agency and the scientific community, and the unique opportunities afforded by space exploration. To provide structure and direction to the quest for answers, the Exobiology Program has instituted a comprehensive research program divided into four elements which are being implemented at several of NASA's research centers and in the university community. These program elements correspond to the four major epochs in the evolution of living systems: (1) cosmic evolution of the biogenic compounds; (2) prebiotic evolution; (3) origin and early evolution of life; and (4) evolution of advanced life. The overall research program is designed to trace the pathways leading from the origin of the universe through the major epochs in the story of life

Markovian Monte Carlo program EvolFMC v.2 for solving QCD evolution equations

We present the program EvolFMC v.2 that solves the evolution equations in QCD for the parton momentum distributions by means of the Monte Carlo technique based on the Markovian process. The program solves the DGLAP-type evolution as well as modified-DGLAP ones. In both cases the evolution can be performed in the LO or NLO approximation. The quarks are treated as massless. The overall technical precision of the code has been established at 0.05% precision level. This way, for the first time ever, we demonstrate that with the Monte Carlo method one can solve the evolution equations with precision comparable to the other numerical methods.Comment: 38 pages, 9 Postscript figure

A Framework for Datatype Transformation

We study one dimension in program evolution, namely the evolution of the datatype declarations in a program. To this end, a suite of basic transformation operators is designed. We cover structure-preserving refactorings, but also structure-extending and -reducing adaptations. Both the object programs that are subject to datatype transformations, and the meta programs that encode datatype transformations are functional programs.Comment: Minor revision; now accepted at LDTA 200

The CCFM Monte Carlo generator CASCADE

CASCADE is a full hadron level Monte Carlo event generator for e-p, gamma-p and p-p_bar processes, which uses the CCFM evolution equation for the initial state cascade in a backward evolution approach supplemented with off-shell matrix elements for the hard scattering. A detailed program description is given, with emphasis on parameters the user wants to change and common block variables which completely specify the generated events.Comment: Program manual, 14 page

Numerical solution of Q^2 evolution equation for the transversity distribution Delta_T q

We investigate numerical solution of the Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli- Parisi (DGLAP) Q^2 evolution equation for the transversity distribution Delta_T q or the structure function h_1. The leading-order (LO) and next-to- leading-order (NLO) evolution equations are studied. The renormalization scheme is MS or overline{MS} in the NLO case. Dividing the variables x and Q^2 into small steps, we solve the integrodifferential equations by the Euler method in the variable Q^2 and by the Simpson method in the variable x. Numerical results indicate that accuracy is better than 1% in the region 10^{-5}<x<0.8 if more than fifty Q^2 steps and more than five hundred x steps are taken. We provide a FORTRAN program for the Q^2 evolution and devolution of the transversity distribution Delta_T q or h_1. Using the program, we show the LO and NLO evolution results of the valence-quark distribution Delta_T u_v + Delta_T d_v, the singlet distribution sum_i (Delta_T q_i + Delta_T qbar_i), and the flavor asymmetric distribution Delta_T ubar - Delta_T dbar.They are also compared with the longitudinal evolution results.Comment: 1+29 pages, LaTeX2e, epsfig.sty, amsmath.sty, 6 eps figures. Submitted for publication. Complete postscript file is available at ftp://ftp.cc.saga-u.ac.jp/pub/paper/riko/quantum1 or at http://www.cc.saga-u.ac.jp/saga-u/riko/physics/quantum1/structure.html Our evolution program may be obtained upon email request. (See the WWW home page for the details.) Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

EvolveAGene 3: A DNA coding sequence evolution simulation program

EvolveAGene 3 is a realistic coding sequence simulation program that separates mutation from selection and allows the user to set selection conditions, including variable regions of selection intensity within the sequence and variation in intensity of selection over branches. Variation includes base substitutions, insertions and deletions. Output includes a log file, the true tree and both unaligned coding sequence and protein sequences and the true DNA and protein alignments