Effects of air temperature on physiology and productive performance of pigs during growing and finishing phases

Thirty-six castrated male pigs were used to determine the influence of thermal environment and reduction of consumption on performance and carcass composition. Animals were housed in two climate chambers. In one, animals were in thermal comfort (TN) (22 °C), and in the other, pigs were under heat stress (HS) (34 °C). Animals were distributed in a randomized block design, making three treatments (TN, HS and animals in thermal comfort with food consumption paired with that observed in HS (PFTN)), with six replicates and two animals per experimental unit. Data were obtained on performance and carcass composition. The weight gains of HS and PFTN animals were reduced by 40.5% and 34.7%, respectively, reflecting a reduction of 13.2% in the final weight of PFTN animals. Triiodothyronine concentration was not affected by heat, but there was an increase in lymphocyte numbers in PFTN animals. The HS and PFTN animals showed lower hot carcass weight. However, there were no effects on hot carcass yield and relative weights of heart, lung and spleen. Heat stress compromised performance. The negative effects of high temperature on pigs include reduction in feed intake and changes in physiology.Keywords: Environment, heat stress, pair feed, pig growth, pig productio

Hadron multiplicity induced by top quark decays at the LHC

The average charged hadron multiplicities induced by top quark decays are calculated in pQCD at LHC energies. Different modes of top production are considered. Proposed measurements can be used as an additional test of pQCD calculations independent on a fragmentation model.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, to be published elsewher

Effective Action for QED with Fermion Self-Interaction in D=2 and D=3 Dimensions

In this work we discuss the effect of the quartic fermion self-interaction of Thirring type in QED in D=2 and D=3 dimensions. This is done through the computation of the effective action up to quadratic terms in the photon field. We analyze the corresponding nonlocal photon propagators nonperturbatively in % \frac{k}{m}, where k is the photon momentum and m the fermion mass. The poles of the propagators were determined numerically by using the Mathematica software. In D=2 there is always a massless pole whereas for strong enough Thirring coupling a massive pole may appear . For D=3 there are three regions in parameters space. We may have one or two massive poles or even no pole at all. The inter-quark static potential is computed analytically in D=2. We notice that the Thirring interaction contributes with a screening term to the confining linear potential of massive QED_{2}. In D=3 the static potential must be calculated numerically. The screening nature of the massive QED$_{3}$ prevails at any distance, indicating that this is a universal feature of % D=3 electromagnetic interaction. Our results become exact for an infinite number of fermion flavors.Comment: Latex, 13 pages, 3 figure

Bose-Einstein Correlations and Color Reconnection in W-pair production

We propose a systematic study of Bose-Einstein correlations between identical hadrons coming from different W decays. Experimentally accessible signatures of these correlations as well as of possible color reconnection effects are discussed on the basis of two-particle inclusive densities.Comment: 24 pages, 9 eps figures, submitted to Eur. J. Phys.

New hadrons as ultra-high energy cosmic rays

Ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) protons produced by uniformly distributed astrophysical sources contradict the energy spectrum measured by both the AGASA and HiRes experiments, assuming the small scale clustering of UHECR observed by AGASA is caused by point-like sources. In that case, the small number of sources leads to a sharp exponential cutoff at the energy E<10^{20} eV in the UHECR spectrum. New hadrons with mass 1.5-3 GeV can solve this cutoff problem. For the first time we discuss the production of such hadrons in proton collisions with infrared/optical photons in astrophysical sources. This production mechanism, in contrast to proton-proton collisions, requires the acceleration of protons only to energies E<10^{21} eV. The diffuse gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes in this model obey all existing experimental limits. We predict large UHE neutrino fluxes well above the sensitivity of the next generation of high-energy neutrino experiments. As an example we study hadrons containing a light bottom squark. These models can be tested by accelerator experiments, UHECR observatories and neutrino telescopes.Comment: 17 pages, revtex style; v2: shortened, as to appear in PR

Quantizing N=2 Multicenter Solutions

N=2 supergravity in four dimensions, or equivalently N=1 supergravity in five dimensions, has an interesting set of BPS solutions that each correspond to a number of charged centers. This set contains black holes, black rings and their bound states, as well as many smooth solutions. Moduli spaces of such solutions carry a natural symplectic form which we determine, and which allows us to study their quantization. By counting the resulting wavefunctions we come to an independent derivation of some of the wall-crossing formulae. Knowledge of the explicit form of these wavefunctions allows us to find quantum resolutions to some apparent classical paradoxes such as solutions with barely bound centers and those with an infinitely deep throat. We show that quantum effects seem to cap off the throat at a finite depth and we give an estimate for the corresponding mass gap in the dual CFT. This is an interesting example of a system where quantum effects cannot be neglected at macroscopic scales even though the curvature is everywhere small.Comment: 49 pages + appendice

Study of the ϕ\phi decays into π0π0γ\pi^0\pi^0\gamma and ηπ0γ\eta\pi^0\gamma final states

Radiative decays of the $\phi$ meson have been studied using a data sample of about 19 million $\phi$ decays collected by the CMD-2 detector at VEPP-2M collider in Novosibirsk. From selected $e^+e^-\to\pi^{0}\pi^{0}\gamma$ and $e^+e^-\to\eta\pi^{0}\gamma$ events the following model independent results have been obtained: \par $Br(\phi\to\pi^{0}\pi^{0}\gamma) = (0.92\pm 0.08\pm0.06)\times10^{-4}$ for $M_{\pi^{0}\pi^{0}}>700$ MeV, \par $Br(\phi\to\eta\pi^{0}\gamma) = (0.90\pm 0.24\pm 0.10)\times10^{-4}$. It is shown that the intermediate mechanism $f_{0}(980)\gamma$ dominates in the $\phi\to\pi^{0}\pi^{0}\gamma$ decay and the corresponding branching ratio is \par $Br(\phi\to f_{0}(980)\gamma)=(2.90\pm 0.21\pm1.54)\times10^{-4}$. The systematic error is dominated by the possible model uncertainty. \par Using the same data sample the upper limit has been obtained for the P- and CP-violating decay of $\eta$ at 90% CL: \par $Br(\eta\to\pi^{0}\pi^{0}) < 4.3\times10^{-4}$ >.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to Phys. Lett.

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02