869 research outputs found
New Analyses of Double-Bang Events in the Atmosphere
We use CORSIKA+Herwig simulation code to produce ultra-high energy neutrino
interactions in the atmosphere. Our aim is to reproduce extensive air showers
originated by extragalactic tau-neutrinos. For charged current tau-neutrino
interactions in the atmosphere, beside the air shower originated from the
neutrino interaction, it is expected that a tau is created and may decay before
reaching the ground. That phenomenon makes possible the generation of two
related extensive air showers, the so called Double-Bang event. We make an
analysis of the main characteristics of Double-Bang events in the atmosphere
for mean values of the parameters involved in such phenomenon, like the
inelasticity and tau decay length. We discuss what may happen for the ``out of
the average'' cases and conclude that it may be possible to observe this kind
of event in ultra-high energy cosmic ray observatories such as Pierre Auger or
Telescope Array.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, final version to appear in BJ
Rigorous Born Approximation and beyond for the Spin-Boson Model
Within the lowest-order Born approximation, we present an exact calculation
of the time dynamics of the spin-boson model in the ohmic regime. We observe
non-Markovian effects at zero temperature that scale with the system-bath
coupling strength and cause qualitative changes in the evolution of coherence
at intermediate times of order of the oscillation period. These changes could
significantly affect the performance of these systems as qubits. In the biased
case, we find a prompt loss of coherence at these intermediate times, whose
decay rate is set by , where is the coupling strength
to the environment. We also explore the calculation of the next order Born
approximation: we show that, at the expense of very large computational
complexity, interesting physical quantities can be rigorously computed at
fourth order using computer algebra, presented completely in an accompanying
Mathematica file. We compute the corrections to the long time
behavior of the system density matrix; the result is identical to the reduced
density matrix of the equilibrium state to the same order in . All
these calculations indicate precision experimental tests that could confirm or
refute the validity of the spin-boson model in a variety of systems.Comment: Greatly extended version of short paper cond-mat/0304118.
Accompanying Mathematica notebook fop5.nb, available in Source, is an
essential part of this work; it gives full details of the fourth-order Born
calculation summarized in the text. fop5.nb is prepared in arXiv style
(available from Wolfram Research
The Impact of Transcriptomics on the Fight against Tuberculosis: Focus on Biomarkers, BCG Vaccination, and Immunotherapy
In 1882 Robert Koch identified Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), a disease as ancient as humanity. Although there has been more than 125 years of scientific effort aimed at understanding the disease, serious problems in TB persist that contribute to the estimated 1/3 of the world population infected with this pathogen. Nonetheless, during the first decade of the 21st century, there were new advances in the fight against TB. The development of high-throughput technologies is one of the major contributors to this advance, because it allows for a global vision of the biological phenomenon. This paper analyzes how transcriptomics are supporting the translation of basic research into therapies by resolving three key issues in the fight against TB: (a) the discovery of biomarkers, (b) the explanation of the variability of protection conferred by BCG vaccination, and (c) the development of new immunotherapeutic strategies to treat TB
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