445 research outputs found
Blurred pictures from the crime scene: the growing case for a function of Chlamydiales in plastid endosymbiosis.
A number of recent papers have brought suggestive evidence for an active role of Chlamydiales in the establishment of the plastid. Chlamydiales define a very ancient group of obligate intracellular bacterial pathogens that multiply in vesicles within eukaryotic phagotrophic host cells such as animals, amoebae or other protists, possibly including the hypothetical phagotroph that internalized the cyanobacterial ancestor of the plastid over a billion years ago. We briefly survey the case for an active role of these ancient pathogens in plastid endosymbiosis. We argue that a good understanding of the Chlamydiales infection cycle and diversity may help to shed light on the process of metabolic integration of the evolving plastid
Orientability and energy minimization in liquid crystal models
Uniaxial nematic liquid crystals are modelled in the Oseen-Frank theory
through a unit vector field . This theory has the apparent drawback that it
does not respect the head-to-tail symmetry in which should be equivalent to
-. This symmetry is preserved in the constrained Landau-de Gennes theory
that works with the tensor .We study
the differences and the overlaps between the two theories. These depend on the
regularity class used as well as on the topology of the underlying domain. We
show that for simply-connected domains and in the natural energy class
the two theories coincide, but otherwise there can be differences
between the two theories, which we identify. In the case of planar domains we
completely characterise the instances in which the predictions of the
constrained Landau-de Gennes theory differ from those of the Oseen-Frank
theory
The central limit problem for random vectors with symmetries
Motivated by the central limit problem for convex bodies, we study normal
approximation of linear functionals of high-dimensional random vectors with
various types of symmetries. In particular, we obtain results for distributions
which are coordinatewise symmetric, uniform in a regular simplex, or
spherically symmetric. Our proofs are based on Stein's method of exchangeable
pairs; as far as we know, this approach has not previously been used in convex
geometry and we give a brief introduction to the classical method. The
spherically symmetric case is treated by a variation of Stein's method which is
adapted for continuous symmetries.Comment: AMS-LaTeX, uses xy-pic, 23 pages; v3: added new corollary to Theorem
Scale setting for alpha_s beyond leading order
We present a general procedure for incorporating higher-order information
into the scale-setting prescription of Brodsky, Lepage and Mackenzie. In
particular, we show how to apply this prescription when the leading coefficient
or coefficients in a series in the strong coupling alpha_s are anomalously
small and the original prescription can give an unphysical scale. We give a
general method for computing an optimum scale numerically, within dimensional
regularization, and in cases when the coefficients of a series are known. We
apply it to the heavy quark mass and energy renormalization in lattice NRQCD,
and to a variety of known series. Among the latter, we find significant
corrections to the scales for the ratio of e+e- to hadrons over muons, the
ratio of the quark pole to MSbar mass, the semi-leptonic B-meson decay width,
and the top decay width. Scales for the latter two decay widths, expressed in
terms of MSbar masses, increase by factors of five and thirteen, respectively,
substantially reducing the size of radiative corrections.Comment: 39 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, LaTeX2
Study of and from and Decays
We use the decay modes and to
study the scalar mesons and within perturbative QCD
framework. For , we perform our calculation in two
scenarios of the scalar meson spectrum. The results indicate that scenario II
is more favored by experimental data than scenario I. The important
contribution from annihilation diagrams can enhance the branching ratios about
50% in scenario I, and about 30% in scenario II. The predicted branching ratio
of in scenario I is also less favored by the experiments.
The direct CP asymmetries in are small, which are
consistent with the present experiments.Comment: More references are added. Published Versio
Characterization of function of the GlgA2 glycogen/starch synthase in Cyanobacterium sp. Clg1 highlights convergent evolution of glycogen metabolism into starch granule aggregation
At variance with the starch-accumulating plants and most of the glycogen-accumulating cyanobacteria, Cyanobacterium sp. CLg1 synthesizes both glycogen and starch. We now report the selection of a starchless mutant of this cyanobacterium that retains wild-type amounts of glycogen. Unlike other mutants of this type found in plants and cyanobacteria, this mutant proved to be selectively defective for one of the two types of glycogen/starch synthase: GlgA2. This enzyme is phylogenetically related to the previously reported SSIII/SSIV starch synthase that is thought to be involved in starch granule seeding in plants. This suggests that, in addition to the selective polysaccharide debranching demonstrated to be responsible for starch rather than glycogen synthesis, the nature and properties of the elongation enzyme define a novel determinant of starch versus glycogen accumulation. We show that the phylogenies of GlgA2 and of 16S ribosomal RNA display significant congruence. This suggests that this enzyme evolved together with cyanobacteria when they diversified over 2 billion years ago. However, cyanobacteria can be ruled out as direct progenitors of the SSIII/SSIV ancestral gene found in Archaeplastida. Hence, both cyanobacteria and plants recruited similar enzymes independently to perform analogous tasks, further emphasizing the importance of convergent evolution in the appearance of starch from a preexisting glycogen metabolism network.Peer Reviewe
Study of the radiative decay with CMD-2 detector
Using the of data collected with the CMD-2 detector at VEPP-2M
the decay mode , has been
studied. The obtained branching ratio is B(.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, LaTex2e, to be published in Phys. Lett.
On the Behavior of the Effective QCD Coupling alpha_tau(s) at Low Scales
The hadronic decays of the tau lepton can be used to determine the effective
charge alpha_tau(m^2_tau') for a hypothetical tau-lepton with mass in the range
0 < m_tau' < m_tau. This definition provides a fundamental definition of the
QCD coupling at low mass scales. We study the behavior of alpha_tau at low mass
scales directly from first principles and without any renormalization-scheme
dependence by looking at the experimental data from the OPAL Collaboration. The
results are consistent with the freezing of the physical coupling at mass
scales s = m^2_tau' of order 1 GeV^2 with a magnitude alpha_tau ~ 0.9 +/- 0.1.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review D, added
references, some text added, no results nor figures change
The Determination of alpha_s from Tau Decays Revisited
We revisit the determination of alpha_s(m_tau) using a fit to inclusive tau
hadronic spectral moments in light of (1) the recent calculation of the
fourth-order perturbative coefficient K_4 in the expansion of the Adler
function, (2) new precision measurements from BABAR of e+e- annihilation cross
sections, which decrease the uncertainty in the separation of vector and
axial-vector spectral functions, and (3) improved results from BABAR and Belle
on tau branching fractions involving kaons. We estimate that the fourth-order
perturbative prediction reduces the theoretical uncertainty, introduced by the
truncation of the series, by 20% with respect to earlier determinations. We
discuss to some detail the perturbative prediction and show that the effect of
the incomplete knowledge of the series is reduced by using the so-called
contour-improved calculation, as opposed to fixed-order perturbation theory
which manifests convergence problems. The corresponding theoretical
uncertainties are studied at the tau and Z mass scales. Nonperturbative
contributions extracted from the most inclusive fit are small, in agreement
with earlier determinations. Systematic effects from quark-hadron duality
violation are estimated with simple models and found to be within the quoted
systematic errors. The fit gives alpha_s(m_tau) = 0.344 +- 0.005 +- 0.007,
where the first error is experimental and the second theoretical. After
evolution to M_Z we obtain alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1212 +- 0.0005 +- 0.0008 +- 0.0005,
where the errors are respectively experimental, theoretical and due to the
evolution. The result is in agreement with the corresponding NNNLO value
derived from essentially the Z width in the global electroweak fit. The
alpha_s(M_Z) determination from tau decays is the most precise one to date.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure
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