Ground--state energies and widths of 5^5He and 5^5Li

We extract energies and widths of the ground states of $^5$He and $^5$Li from recent single--level R--matrix fits to the spectra of the $^3$H$({\rm d},\gamma$)$^5$He and the $^3$He$({\rm d},\gamma$)$^5$Li reactions. The widths obtained differ significantly from the formal R--matrix values but they are close to those measured as full widths at half maxima of the spectra in various experiments. The energies are somewhat lower than those given by usual estimates of the peak positions. The extracted values are close to the S--matrix poles calculated previously from the multi--term analyses of the N-$^4$He elastic scattering data.Comment: 3 pages, no figures, uses revtex.sty, accepted for publication in PRC, uuencoded postscript and tex-files available at ftp://is1.kph.tuwien.ac.at/pub/ohu/fwidth.u

Bounds from Primordial Black Holes with a Near Critical Collapse Initial Mass Function

Recent numerical evidence suggests that a mass spectrum of primordial black holes (PBHs) is produced as a consequence of near critical gravitational collapse. Assuming that these holes formed from the initial density perturbations seeded by inflation, we calculate model independent upper bounds on the mass variance at the reheating temperature by requiring the mass density not exceed the critical density and the photon emission not exceed current diffuse gamma-ray measurements. We then translate these results into bounds on the spectral index n by utilizing the COBE data to normalize the mass variance at large scales, assuming a constant power law, then scaling this result to the reheating temperature. We find that our bounds on n differ substantially (\delta n > 0.05) from those calculated using initial mass functions derived under the assumption that the black hole mass is proportional to the horizon mass at the collapse epoch. We also find a change in the shape of the diffuse gamma-ray spectrum which results from the Hawking radiation. Finally, we study the impact of a nonzero cosmological constant and find that the bounds on n are strengthened considerably if the universe is indeed vacuum-energy dominated today.Comment: 24 pages, REVTeX, 5 figures; minor typos fixed, two refs added, version to be published in PR

Determinants of flammability in savanna grass species

1. Tropical grasses fuel the majority of fires on Earth. In fire-prone landscapes, enhanced flammabil-ity may be adaptive for grasses via the maintenance of an open canopy and an increase in spa-tiotemporal opportunities for recruitment and regeneration. In addit ion, by burning intensely butbriefly, high flammability may protect resprouting buds from lethal temperatures. Despite thesepotential benefits of high flammability to fire-prone grasses, variation in flammability among grassspecies, and how trait differences underpin this variation, remains unknown.2. By burning leaves and plant parts, we experimentally determined how five plant traits (biomassquantity, biomass density, biomass moisture content, leaf surface-area-to-volume ratio and leaf effec-tive heat of combustion) combined to determine the three components of flammability (ignitability,sustainability and combustibility) at the leaf and plant scales in 25 grass species of fire-pr one SouthAfrican grasslands at a time of peak fire occurrence. The influence of evolutionary history onflammability was assessed based on a phylogeny built here for the study species.3. Grass speci es differed significantly in all components of flammability. Accounting for evolution-ary history helped to explain patterns in leaf-scale combustibility and sustainability. The five mea-sured plant traits predicted components of flammability, particularly leaf ignitability and plantcombustibility in which 70% and 58% of variation, respectively, could be explained by a combina-tion of the traits. Total above-ground biomass was a key drive r o f combustibility and sustainabi litywith high biomass species burning more intensely and for longer, and producing the highest pre-dicted fire spread rates. Moisture content was the main influence on ignitability, where speci es withhigher moisture conten ts took longer to ignite and once alight burnt at a slower rate. Bioma ss den-sity, leaf surface-area-to-volume ratio and leaf effective heat of combustion were weaker predictorsof flammability components.4. Synthesis. We demonstrate that grass flammability is predicted from easily measurable plant func-tional traits and is influenced by evolutionary history with some components showing phylogeneticsignal. Grasses are not homogenous fuels to fire. Rather, species differ in functional traits that inturn demonstrably influence flammability. This diver sity is consistent with the idea that flammabilitymay be an adaptive trait for grasses of fire-prone ecosystems

Effect of halo modelling on WIMP exclusion limits

WIMP direct detection experiments are just reaching the sensitivity required to detect galactic dark matter in the form of neutralinos. Data from these experiments are usually analysed under the simplifying assumption that the Milky Way halo is an isothermal sphere with maxwellian velocity distribution. Observations and numerical simulations indicate that galaxy halos are in fact triaxial and anisotropic. Furthermore, in the cold dark matter paradigm galactic halos form via the merger of smaller subhalos, and at least some residual substructure survives. We examine the effect of halo modelling on WIMP exclusion limits, taking into account the detector response. Triaxial and anisotropic halo models, with parameters motivated by observations and numerical simulations, lead to significant changes which are different for different experiments, while if the local WIMP distribution is dominated by small scale clumps then the exclusion limits are changed dramatically.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, version to appear in Phys. Rev. D, minor change

The Sachs-Wolfe Effect: Gauge Independence and a General Expression

In this paper we address two points concerning the Sachs-Wolfe effect: (i) the gauge independence of the observable temperature anisotropy, and (ii) a gauge-invariant expression of the effect considering the most general situation of hydrodynamic perturbations. The first result follows because the gauge transformation of the temperature fluctuation at the observation event only contributes to the isotropic temperature change which, in practice, is absorbed into the definition of the background temperature. Thus, we proceed without fixing the gauge condition, and express the Sachs-Wolfe effect using the gauge-invariant variables.Comment: 5 pages, closer to published versio

Guidelines for incorporating scientific knowledge and practice on rare diseases into higher education: neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses as a model disorder model disorder.

This article addresses the educational issues associated with rare diseases (RD) and in particular the Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses (NCLs, or CLN diseases) in the curricula of Health Sciences and Professional's Training Programs. Our aim is to develop guidelines for improving scientific knowledge and practice in higher education and continuous learning programs. Rare diseases (RD) are collectively common in the general populationwith 1 in 17 people affected by a RDin their lifetime. Inherited defects in genes involved in metabolism are the commonest group of RD with over 8000 known inborn errors of metabolism. The majority of these diseases are neurodegenerative including the NCLs. Any professional training program on NCL must take into account the medical, social and economic burdens related to RDs. To address these challenges and find solutions to themit is necessary that individuals in the government and administrative authorities, academia, teaching hospitals and medical schools, the pharmaceutical industry, investment community and patient advocacy groups all work together to achieve these goals. The logistical issues of including RD lectures in university curricula and in continuing medical education should reflect its complex nature. To evaluate the state of education in the RD field, a summary should be periodically up dated in order to assess the progress achieved in each country that signed up to the international conventions addressing RD issues in society. It is anticipated that auditing current practice will lead to higher standards and provide a framework for those educators involved in establishing RD teaching programs world-wide.publishedVersio

Kinetics of active surface-mediated diffusion in spherically symmetric domains

We present an exact calculation of the mean first-passage time to a target on the surface of a 2D or 3D spherical domain, for a molecule alternating phases of surface diffusion on the domain boundary and phases of bulk diffusion. We generalize the results of [J. Stat. Phys. {\bf 142}, 657 (2011)] and consider a biased diffusion in a general annulus with an arbitrary number of regularly spaced targets on a partially reflecting surface. The presented approach is based on an integral equation which can be solved analytically. Numerically validated approximation schemes, which provide more tractable expressions of the mean first-passage time are also proposed. In the framework of this minimal model of surface-mediated reactions, we show analytically that the mean reaction time can be minimized as a function of the desorption rate from the surface.Comment: Published online in J. Stat. Phy

BotSwindler: Tamper Resistant Injection of Believable Decoys in VM-Based Hosts for Crimeware Detection

We introduce BotSwindler, a bait injection system designed to delude and detect crimeware by forcing it to reveal during the exploitation of monitored information. The implementation of BotSwindler relies upon an out-of-host software agent that drives user-like interactions in a virtual machine, seeking to convince malware residing within the guest OS that it has captured legitimate credentials. To aid in the accuracy and realism of the simulations, we propose a low overhead approach, called virtual machine verification, for verifying whether the guest OS is in one of a predefined set of states. We present results from experiments with real credential-collecting malware that demonstrate the injection of monitored financial bait for detecting compromises. Additionally, using a computational analysis and a user study, we illustrate the believability of the simulations and we demonstrate that they are sufficiently human-like. Finally, we provide results from performance measurements to show our approach does not impose a performance burden

Hubble expansion and structure formation in the "running FLRW model" of the cosmic evolution

A new class of FLRW cosmological models with time-evolving fundamental parameters should emerge naturally from a description of the expansion of the universe based on the first principles of quantum field theory and string theory. Within this general paradigm, one expects that both the gravitational Newton's coupling, G, and the cosmological term, Lambda, should not be strictly constant but appear rather as smooth functions of the Hubble rate. This scenario ("running FLRW model") predicts, in a natural way, the existence of dynamical dark energy without invoking the participation of extraneous scalar fields. In this paper, we perform a detailed study of these models in the light of the latest cosmological data, which serves to illustrate the phenomenological viability of the new dark energy paradigm as a serious alternative to the traditional scalar field approaches. By performing a joint likelihood analysis of the recent SNIa data, the CMB shift parameter, and the BAOs traced by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we put tight constraints on the main cosmological parameters. Furthermore, we derive the theoretically predicted dark-matter halo mass function and the corresponding redshift distribution of cluster-size halos for the "running" models studied. Despite the fact that these models closely reproduce the standard LCDM Hubble expansion, their normalization of the perturbation's power-spectrum varies, imposing, in many cases, a significantly different cluster-size halo redshift distribution. This fact indicates that it should be relatively easy to distinguish between the "running" models and the LCDM cosmology using realistic future X-ray and Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster surveys.Comment: Version published in JCAP 08 (2011) 007: 1+41 pages, 6 Figures, 1 Table. Typos corrected. Extended discussion on the computation of the linearly extrapolated density threshold above which structures collapse in time-varying vacuum models. One appendix, a few references and one figure adde

VERITAS: the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System

The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) represents an important step forward in the study of extreme astrophysical processes in the universe. It combines the power of the atmospheric Cherenkov imaging technique using a large optical reflector with the power of stereoscopic observatories using arrays of separated telescopes looking at the same shower. The seven identical telescopes in VERITAS, each of aperture 10 m, will be deployed in a filled hexagonal pattern of side 80 m; each telescope will have a camera consisting of 499 pixels with a field of view of 3.5 deg VERITAS will substantially increase the catalog of very high energy (E > 100GeV) gamma-ray sources and greatly improve measurements of established sources.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figure