28,872 research outputs found
Review on the epidemiology and dynamics of BSE epidemics
The paper describes how the comprehensive surveillance of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and studies carried out on these data has enhanced our knowledge of the epidemiology of BSE. Around 7 000 BSE cases were detected through the screening of about 50 million cattle with rapid tests in Europe. It confirmed that the clinical surveillance had a poor capacity to detect cases, and also showed the discrepancy of this passive surveillance efficiency between regions and production types (dairy/beef). Other risk factors for BSE were being in a dairy herd (three times more than beef), having a young age at first calving (for dairy cattle), being autumn-born (dairy and beef), and being in a herd with a very high milk yield. These findings focus the risk on the feeding regimen of calves/heifers. Several epidemiological studies across countries suggest that the feedborne source related to meat and bone meal (MBM) is the only substantiated route of infection ¿ even after the feed ban ¿, while it is not possible to exclude maternal transmission or milk replacers as a source of some infections. In most European countries, the average age of the cases is increasing over time and the prevalence decreasing, which reflects the effectiveness of control measures. Consistent results on the trend of the epidemic were obtained using back-calculation modelling, the R0 approach and Age-Period-Cohort models. Furthermore, active surveillance also resulted in the finding of atypical cases. These are distinct from previously found BSE and classified in two different forms based on biochemical characteristics; their prevalence is very low (36 cases up to 1st September 2007), affected animals were old and some of them displayed clinical signs. The origin and possibility of natural transmission is unknown
Selective decay by Casimir dissipation in fluids
The problem of parameterizing the interactions of larger scales and smaller
scales in fluid flows is addressed by considering a property of two-dimensional
incompressible turbulence. The property we consider is selective decay, in
which a Casimir of the ideal formulation (enstrophy in 2D flows, helicity in 3D
flows) decays in time, while the energy stays essentially constant. This paper
introduces a mechanism that produces selective decay by enforcing Casimir
dissipation in fluid dynamics. This mechanism turns out to be related in
certain cases to the numerical method of anticipated vorticity discussed in
\cite{SaBa1981,SaBa1985}. Several examples are given and a general theory of
selective decay is developed that uses the Lie-Poisson structure of the ideal
theory. A scale-selection operator allows the resulting modifications of the
fluid motion equations to be interpreted in several examples as parameterizing
the nonlinear, dynamical interactions between disparate scales. The type of
modified fluid equation systems derived here may be useful in modelling
turbulent geophysical flows where it is computationally prohibitive to rely on
the slower, indirect effects of a realistic viscosity, such as in large-scale,
coherent, oceanic flows interacting with much smaller eddies
Transport Coefficients of Gluon Plasma
Transport coefficients of gluon plasma are calculated for a SU(3) pure gauge
model by lattice QCD simulations on and
lattices. Simulations are carried out at a slightly above the deconfinement
transition temperature , where a new state of matter is currently being
pursued in RHIC experiments. Our results show that the ratio of the shear
viscosity to the entropy is less than one and the bulk viscosity is consistent
with zero in the region, .Comment: 10 pages, Late
Spaces of finite element differential forms
We discuss the construction of finite element spaces of differential forms
which satisfy the crucial assumptions of the finite element exterior calculus,
namely that they can be assembled into subcomplexes of the de Rham complex
which admit commuting projections. We present two families of spaces in the
case of simplicial meshes, and two other families in the case of cubical
meshes. We make use of the exterior calculus and the Koszul complex to define
and understand the spaces. These tools allow us to treat a wide variety of
situations, which are often treated separately, in a unified fashion.Comment: To appear in: Analysis and Numerics of Partial Differential
Equations, U. Gianazza, F. Brezzi, P. Colli Franzone, and G. Gilardi, eds.,
Springer 2013. v2: a few minor typos corrected. v3: a few more typo
correction
Generalized Boltzmann equations for on-shell particle production in a hot plasma
A novel refinement of the conventional treatment of Kadanoff--Baym equations
is suggested. Besides the Boltzmann equation another differential equation is
used for calculating the evolution of the non-equilibrium two-point function.
Although it was usually interpreted as a constraint on the solution of the
Boltzmann equation, we argue that its dynamics is relevant to the determination
and resummation of the particle production cut contributions. The differential
equation for this new contribution is illustrated in the example of the cubic
scalar model. The analogue of the relaxation time approximation is suggested.
It results in the shift of the threshold location and in smearing out of the
non-analytic threshold behaviour of the spectral function. Possible
consequences for the dilepton production are discussed.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 2 ps figure
Detecting phonons and persistent currents in toroidal Bose-Einstein condensates by means of pattern formation
We theoretically investigate the dynamic properties of a Bose-Einstein
condensate in a toroidal trap. A periodic modulation of the transverse
confinement is shown to produce a density pattern due to parametric
amplification of phonon pairs. By imaging the density distribution after free
expansion one obtains i) a precise determination of the Bogoliubov spectrum and
ii) a sensitive detection of quantized circulation in the torus. The parametric
amplification is also sensitive to thermal and quantum fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; new figures, revised version to appear as a Rapid
Communication in Physical Review
Investigation of double beta decay with the NEMO-3 detector
The double beta decay experiment NEMO~3 has been taking data since February
2003. The aim of this experiment is to search for neutrinoless
() decay and investigate two neutrino double beta decay in
seven different isotopically enriched samples (Mo, Se,
Ca, Zr, Cd, Te and Nd). After analysis of
the data corresponding to 3.75 y, no evidence for decay in the
Mo and Se samples was found. The half-life limits at the 90%
C.L. are y and y, respectively.
Additionally for decay the following limits at the 90% C.L.
were obtained, y for Ca, y
for Zr and y for Nd. The
decay half-life values were precisely measured for all investigated isotopes.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 5 tables; talk at conference on "Fundamental
Interactions Physics" (ITEP, Moscow, November 23-27, 2009
Using mutual information to measure order in model glass-formers
Whether or not there is growing static order accompanying the dynamical
heterogeneity and increasing relaxation times seen in glassy systems is a
matter of dispute. An obstacle to resolving this issue is that the order is
expected to be amorphous and so not amenable to simple order parameters. We use
mutual information to provide a general measurement of order that is sensitive
to multi-particle correlations. We apply this to two glass-forming systems (2D
binary mixtures of hard disks with different size ratios to give varying
amounts of hexatic order) and show that there is little growth of amorphous
order in the system without crystalline order. In both cases we measure the
dynamical length with a four-point correlation function and find that it
increases significantly faster than the static lengths in the system as density
is increased. We further show that we can recover the known scaling of the
dynamic correlation length in a kinetically constrained model, the 2-TLG.Comment: 10 pages, 12 Figure
Adaptable-radius, time-orbiting magnetic ring trap for Bose-Einstein condensates
We theoretically investigate an adjustable-radius magnetic storage ring for
laser-cooled and Bose-condensed atoms. Additionally, we discuss a novel
time-dependent variant of this and other ring traps. Time-orbiting ring traps
provide a high optical access method for spin-flip loss prevention near a
storage ring's circular magnetic field zero. Our scalable storage ring will
allow one to probe the fundamental limits of condensate Sagnac interferometry.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. accepted in J Phys
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