246 research outputs found
Effects of maturity at harvest and ripening on the eating quality of papaw fruit
Papaw fruit, (Carica papaya L.), derived from an experimental breeding programme, were harvested from 2 locations at 8 maturities, ranging from small, dark green fruit to fully-coloured, tree-ripened fruit. Dark green fruit developed yellow skin colour during ripening at the same rate as pale green `breaker' fruit, but did not have the same extent of skin-colour development at eating ripe as more mature fruit. Overall, unripe fruit which had reached or closely approached full maturity on the tree, had better eating quality when ripened than immature fruit. Therefore, papaw fruit should not be harvested before reaching full maturity (pale green to tinge of colour). There were low correlation coeff. for all maturities (even mature fruit) between `greenlife' and skin colour, flesh colour, aroma, flavour and texture of ripened fruit. This indicated that, even with fruit selected from a post-harvest plant improvement programme relationships were poor between maturity at harvest and ripe fruit quality
First Direct Measurement of Jets in GeV Heavy Ion Collisions by STAR
We present the first measurement of reconstructed jets in ultra-relativistic
heavy ion collisions. Utilizing the large coverage of the STAR Time Projection
Chamber and Electromagnetic Calorimeter, we apply several modern jet
reconstruction algorithms and background subtraction techniques and explore
their systematic uncertainties in heavy ion events. The differential spectrum
for inclusive jet production in central Au+Au collisions at GeV is presented. In order to assess the jet reconstruction biases, this
spectrum is compared with the jet cross section measured in GeV
p+p collisions scaled by the number of binary N-N collisions to account for
nuclear geometric effects.Comment: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Hard and Electro-
Magnetic Probes of High-Energy Nuclear Collisions 8-14 June 2008, Illa da
Toxa (Galicia-Spain
Diversity of a wall-associated kinase gene in wild and cultivated barley
Domestication of barley and other cereals was accompanied by an increase in seed size which has been ascribed to human selection, large seeds being preferred by early farmers or favoured by cultivation practices such as deep sowing. An alternative suggestion is that the increase in seed size was an indirect consequence of selection for plants with more vigorous growth. To begin to address the latter hypothesis we studied the diversity of HvWAK1, a wall-associated kinase gene involved in root proliferation, in 220 wild barley accessions and 200 domesticated landraces. A 3655-bp sequence comprising the gene and upstream region contained 69 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), one indel and four short tandem repeats. A network of 50 haplotypes revealed a complex evolutionary relationship, but with landraces largely restricted to two parts of the topology. SNPs in the HvWAK1 coding region resulted in nonsynonymous substitutions at nine positions in the translation product, but none of these changes were predicted to have a significant effect on the protein structure. In contrast, the region upstream of the coding sequence contained five SNPs that were invariant in the domesticated population, fixation of these SNPs decreasing the likelihood that the upstream of a pair of TATA boxes and transcription start sites would be used to promote transcription of HvWAK1. The sequence diversity therefore suggests that the cis-regulatory region of HvWAK1 might have been subject to selection during barley domestication. The extent of root proliferation has been linked with traits such as above-ground biomass, so selection for particular cis-regulatory variants of HvWAK1 would be consistent with the hypothesis that seed size increases during domestication were the indirect consequence of selection for plants with increased growth vigour
A Short Review on Jet Identification
Jets can be used to probe the physical properties of the high energy density
matter created in collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).
Measurements of strong suppression of inclusive hadron distributions and
di-hadron correlations at high have already provided evidence for
partonic energy loss. However, these measurements suffer from well-known
geometric biases due to the competition of energy loss and fragmentation. These
biases can be avoided if the jets are reconstructed independently of their
fragmentation details - quenched or unquenched. In this paper, we discuss
modern jet reconstruction algorithms (cone and sequential recombination) and
their corresponding background subtraction techniques required by the high
multiplicities of heavy ion collisions. We review recent results from the STAR
experiment at RHIC on direct jet reconstruction in central Au+Au collisions at
GeV.Comment: Proceedings for the invited talk of Hot Quarks 2008, Estes Park, CO
18-23 August 200
Peculiarities of the stochastic motion in antiferromagnetic nanoparticles
Antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials are widely used in spintronic devices as
passive elements (for stabilization of ferromangetic layers) and as active
elements (for information coding). In both cases switching between the
different AFM states depends in a great extent from the environmental noise. In
the present paper we derive the stochastic Langevin equations for an AFM vector
and corresponding Fokker-Planck equation for distribution function in the phase
space of generalised coordinate and momentum. Thermal noise is modeled by a
random delta-correlated magnetic field that interacts with the dynamic
magnetisation of AFM particle. We analyse in details a particular case of the
collinear compensated AFM in the presence of spin-polarised current. The energy
distribution function for normal modes in the vicinity of two equilibrium
states (static and stationary) in sub- and super-critical regimes is found. It
is shown that the noise-induced dynamics of AFM vector has pecuilarities
compared to that of magnetisation vector in ferromagnets.Comment: Submitted to EPJ ST, presented at the 4-th Conference on Statistical
Physics, Lviv, Ukraine, 201
Spectral Statistics of the Two-Body Random Ensemble Revisited
Using longer spectra we re-analyze spectral properties of the two-body random
ensemble studied thirty years ago. At the center of the spectra the old results
are largely confirmed, and we show that the non-ergodicity is essentially due
to the variance of the lowest moments of the spectra. The longer spectra allow
to test and reach the limits of validity of French's correction for the number
variance. At the edge of the spectra we discuss the problems of unfolding in
more detail. With a Gaussian unfolding of each spectrum the nearest neighbour
spacing distribution between ground state and first exited state is shown to be
stable. Using such an unfolding the distribution tends toward a semi-Poisson
distribution for longer spectra. For comparison with the nuclear table ensemble
we could use such unfolding obtaining similar results as in the early papers,
but an ensemble with realistic splitting gives reasonable results if we just
normalize the spacings in accordance with the procedure used for the data.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure
Thermal fluctuations of gauge fields and first order phase transitions in color superconductivity
We study the effects of thermal fluctuations of gluons and the diquark
pairing field on the superconducting-to-normal state phase transition in a
three-flavor color superconductor, using the Ginzburg-Landau free energy. At
high baryon densities, where the system is a type I superconductor, gluonic
fluctuations, which dominate over diquark fluctuations, induce a cubic term in
the Ginzburg-Landau free energy, as well as large corrections to quadratic and
quartic terms of the order parameter. The cubic term leads to a relatively
strong first order transition, in contrast with the very weak first order
transitions in metallic type I superconductors. The strength of the first order
transition decreases with increasing baryon density. In addition gluonic
fluctuations lower the critical temperature of the first order transition. We
derive explicit formulas for the critical temperature and the discontinuity of
the order parameter at the critical point. The validity of the first order
transition obtained in the one-loop approximation is also examined by
estimating the size of the critical region.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, final version published in Phys. Rev.
Edge effects in a frustrated Josephson junction array with modulated couplings
A square array of Josephson junctions with modulated strength in a magnetic
field with half a flux quantum per plaquette is studied by analytic arguments
and dynamical simulations. The modulation is such that alternate columns of
junctions are of different strength to the rest. Previous work has shown that
this system undergoes an XY followed by an Ising-like vortex lattice
disordering transition at a lower temperature. We argue that resistance
measurements are a possible probe of the vortex lattice disordering transition
as the linear resistance with
at intermediate temperatures due to dissipation at the array
edges for a particular geometry and vanishes for other geometries. Extensive
dynamical simulations are performed which support the qualitative physical
arguments.Comment: 8 pages with figs, RevTeX, to appear in Phys. Rev.
News from the Muon (g-2) Experiment at BNL
The magnetic moment anomaly a_mu = (g_mu - 2) / 2 of the positive muon has
been measured at the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron with an
uncertainty of 0.7 ppm. The new result, based on data taken in 2000, agrees
well with previous measurements. Standard Model evaluations currently differ
from the experimental result by 1.6 to 3.0 standard deviations.Comment: Talk presented at RADCOR - Loops and Legs 2002, Kloster Banz,
Germany, September 8-13 2002, to be published in Nuclear Physics B (Proc.
Suppl.); 5 pages, 3 figure
Study of KS KL Coupled Decays and KL -Be Interactions with the CMD-2 Detector at VEPP-2M Collider
The integrated luminosity about 4000 inverse nanobarn of around phi meson
mass ( 5 millions of phi mesons) has been collected with the CMD-2 detector at
the VEPP-2M collider. A latest analysis of the KS KL coupled decays based on 30
% of available data is presented in this paper.
The KS KL pairs from phi meson decays were reconstructed in the drift chamber
when both kaons decayed into two charged particles. From a sample of 1423
coupled decays a selection of candidates to the CP violating KL into pi+ pi-
decay was performed. CP violating decays were not identified because of the
domination of events with a KL regenerating at the Be beam pipe into KS and a
background from KL semileptonic decays.
The regeneration cross section of 110 MeV/c KL mesons was found to be 53 +-
17 mb in agreement with theoretical expectations. The angular distribution of
KS mesons after regeneration and the total cross section of KL for Be have been
measured.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure
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