Interactions of heavy-light mesons

The potential between static-light mesons forming a meson-meson or a meson-antimeson system is calculated in quenched and unquenched SU(3) gauge theory. We use the Sheikholeslami-Wohlert action and statistical estimators of light quark propagators with maximal variance reduction. The dependence of the potentials on the light quark spin and isospin and the effect of meson exchange is investigated. Our main motivation is exploration of bound states of two mesons and string breaking. The latter also involves the two-quark potential and the correlation between two-quark and two-meson states.Comment: Contribution to LATTICE99 (QCD spectrum). 3 pages, 4 eps figure

The impact of a high versus a low glycaemic index breakfast cereal meal on verbal episodic memory in healthy adolescents

In this study, healthy adolescents consumed a) a low glycaemic index (G.I.) breakfast cereal meal, or b) a high G.I. breakfast cereal meal, before completing a test of verbal episodic memory in which the memory materials were encoded under conditions of divided attention. Analysis of remembering/forgetting indices revealed that the High G.I. breakfast group remembered significantly more items relative to the Low G.I. breakfast group after a long delay. The superior performance observed in the High G.I. group, relative to the Low G.I. group, may be due to the additional glucose availability provided by the high G.I. meal at the time of memory encoding. This increased glucose availability may be necessary for effective encoding under dual task conditions

B_s meson excited states from the lattice

This is a follow-up to our earlier work [Phys. Rev. D 65, 014512 (2002); Eur. Phys. J. C 28, 79 (2003); Phys. Rev. D 69, 094505 (2004)] for the energies and the charge (vector) and matter (scalar) distributions for S-wave states in a heavy-light meson, where the heavy quark is static and the light quark has a mass about that of the strange quark. We study the radial distributions of higher angular momentum states, namely P- and D-wave states. In nature the closest equivalent of this heavy-light system is the B_s meson. The calculation is carried out with dynamical fermions on a 16^3 times 32 lattice with a lattice spacing of about 0.10 fm generated with the non-perturbatively improved clover action. It is shown that several features of the energies and radial distributions are in qualitative agreement with what one expects from a simple one-body Dirac equation interpretation.Comment: 6 pages, poster presented at Lattice 2005 (Heavy quarks

Biases incurred from non-random repeat testing of haemoglobin levels in blood donors

To help prevent anaemia, it is a requisite for blood donors to undergo a haemoglobin test to ensure levels are not too low before donation. It is therefore important to have an accurate testing device and strategy to ensure donors are not being inappropriately bled. A recent study in blood donors used a selective testing strategy where if a donor’s haemoglobin level is below the level required for donation, then another reading is taken and if this occurs again, a third and final reading is used. This strategy can reduce the average number of readings required per donor compared to taking three measurements for all donors. However, the final decision-making measurement will on average be higher than a single measurement. In this paper, a selective testing strategy is compared against other strategies. Individual-level biases are derived for the selective strategy and are shown to depend on how close a donor’s true haemoglobin level is to the donation threshold and the magnitude of error in the testing device. A simulation study was conducted using the distribution of haemoglobin levels from a large donor population to investigate the effects different strategies have on population performance. We consider scenarios based on varying the measurement device bias and error, including differential biases that depend on the underlying haemoglobin level. Discriminatory performance is shown to be affected when using the selective testing strategies, especially when measurement error is large and when differential bias is present in the device. We recommend that the average of a number of readings should be used in preference to selective testing strategies if multiple measurements are available

Algorithmic aspects of disjunctive domination in graphs

For a graph $G=(V,E)$, a set $D\subseteq V$ is called a \emph{disjunctive dominating set} of $G$ if for every vertex $v\in V\setminus D$, $v$ is either adjacent to a vertex of $D$ or has at least two vertices in $D$ at distance $2$ from it. The cardinality of a minimum disjunctive dominating set of $G$ is called the \emph{disjunctive domination number} of graph $G$, and is denoted by $\gamma_{2}^{d}(G)$. The \textsc{Minimum Disjunctive Domination Problem} (MDDP) is to find a disjunctive dominating set of cardinality $\gamma_{2}^{d}(G)$. Given a positive integer $k$ and a graph $G$, the \textsc{Disjunctive Domination Decision Problem} (DDDP) is to decide whether $G$ has a disjunctive dominating set of cardinality at most $k$. In this article, we first propose a linear time algorithm for MDDP in proper interval graphs. Next we tighten the NP-completeness of DDDP by showing that it remains NP-complete even in chordal graphs. We also propose a $(\ln(\Delta^{2}+\Delta+2)+1)$-approximation algorithm for MDDP in general graphs and prove that MDDP can not be approximated within $(1-\epsilon) \ln(|V|)$ for any $\epsilon>0$ unless NP $\subseteq$ DTIME$(|V|^{O(\log \log |V|)})$. Finally, we show that MDDP is APX-complete for bipartite graphs with maximum degree $3$

The Charge and Matter radial distributions of Heavy-Light mesons calculated on a lattice with dynamical fermions

A knowledge of the radial distributions of quarks inside hadrons could lead to a better understanding of the QCD description of these hadrons and possibly suggest forms for phenomenological models. As a step in this direction, in an earlier work, the charge (vector) and matter (scalar) radial distributions of heavy-light mesons were measured in the quenched approximation on a 16^3x24 lattice with a lattice spacing of 'a' approx. 0.17 fm, and a hopping parameter corresponding to a light quark mass about that of the strange quark. Here several improvements are now made: 1) The configurations are generated using dynamical fermions with a approx 0.14 fm; 2) Many more gauge configurations areincluded; 3) The distributions at many off-axis, in addition to on-axis, points are measured; 4) The data analysis is much more complete. In particular, distributions involving excited states are extracted. The exponential decay of the charge and matter distributions can be described by mesons of mass 0.9 +- 0.1 and 1.5 +- 0.1 GeV respectively -- values that are consistent with those of vector and scalar $q\bar{q}$-states calculated directly with the same lattice parameters

Comparison of three microarray probe annotation pipelines: differences in strategies and their effect on downstream analysis

Background - Reliable annotation linking oligonucleotide probes to target genes is essential for functional biological analysis of microarray experiments. We used the IMAD, OligoRAP and sigReannot pipelines to update the annotation for the ARK-Genomics Chicken 20 K array as part of a joined EADGENE/SABRE workshop. In this manuscript we compare their annotation strategies and results. Furthermore, we analyse the effect of differences in updated annotation on functional analysis for an experiment involving Eimeria infected chickens and finally we propose guidelines for optimal annotation strategies. Results - IMAD, OligoRAP and sigReannot update both annotation and estimated target specificity. The 3 pipelines can assign oligos to target specificity categories although with varying degrees of resolution. Target specificity is judged based on the amount and type of oligo versus target-gene alignments (hits), which are determined by filter thresholds that users can adjust based on their experimental conditions. Linking oligos to annotation on the other hand is based on rigid rules, which differ between pipelines. For 52.7% of the oligos from a subset selected for in depth comparison all pipelines linked to one or more Ensembl genes with consensus on 44.0%. In 31.0% of the cases none of the pipelines could assign an Ensembl gene to an oligo and for the remaining 16.3% the coverage differed between pipelines. Differences in updated annotation were mainly due to different thresholds for hybridisation potential filtering of oligo versus target-gene alignments and different policies for expanding annotation using indirect links. The differences in updated annotation packages had a significant effect on GO term enrichment analysis with consensus on only 67.2% of the enriched terms. Conclusion - In addition to flexible thresholds to determine target specificity, annotation tools should provide metadata describing the relationships between oligos and the annotation assigned to them. These relationships can then be used to judge the varying degrees of reliability allowing users to fine-tune the balance between reliability and coverage. This is important as it can have a significant effect on functional microarray analysis as exemplified by the lack of consensus on almost one third of the terms found with GO term enrichment analysis based on updated IMAD, OligoRAP or sigReannot annotatio

The continuum limit of the static-light meson spectrum

We investigate the continuum limit of the low lying static-light meson spectrum using Wilson twisted mass lattice QCD with N_f = 2 dynamical quark flavours. We consider three values of the lattice spacing a ~ 0.051 fm, 0.064 fm, 0.080 fm and various values of the pion mass in the range 280 MeV < m_PS < 640 MeV. We present results in the continuum limit for light cloud angular momentum j = 1/2, 3/2, 5/2 and for parity P = +, -. We extrapolate our results to physical quark masses, make predictions regarding the spectrum of B and B_s mesons and compare with available experimental results.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure