2,624 research outputs found
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
Evaluation of vaccination strategies for SIR epidemics on random networks incorporating household structure
This paper is concerned with the analysis of vaccination strategies in a stochastic SIR (susceptible â infected â removed) model for the spread of an epidemic amongst a population of individuals with a random network of social contacts that is also partitioned into households. Under various vaccine action models, we consider both household-based vaccination schemes, in which the way in which individuals are chosen for vaccination depends on the size of the households in which they reside, and acquaintance vaccination, which targets individuals of high degree in the social network. For both types of vaccination scheme, assuming a large population with few initial infectives, we derive a threshold parameter which determines whether or not a large outbreak can occur and also the probability and fraction of the population infected by such an outbreak. The performance of these schemes is studied numerically, focusing on the influence of the household size distribution and the degree distribution of the social network. We find that acquaintance vaccination can significantly outperform the best household-based scheme if the degree distribution of the social network is heavy-tailed. For household-based schemes, when the vaccine coverage is insufficient to prevent a major outbreak and the vaccine is imperfect, we find situations in which both the probability and size of a major outbreak under the scheme which minimises the threshold parameter are \emph{larger} than in the scheme which maximises the threshold parameter
The scientific impact of the Structural Genomics Consortium: a protein family and ligand-centered approach to medically-relevant human proteins
As many of the structural genomics centers have ended their first phase of operation, it is a good point to evaluate the scientific impact of this endeavour. The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), operating from three centers across the Atlantic, investigates human proteins involved in disease processes and proteins from Plasmodium falciparum and related organisms. We present here some of the scientific output of the Oxford node of the SGC, where the target areas include protein kinases, phosphatases, oxidoreductases and other metabolic enzymes, as well as signal transduction proteins. The SGC has aimed to achieve extensive coverage of human gene families with a focus on proteinâligand interactions. The methods employed for effective protein expression, crystallization and structure determination by X-ray crystallography are summarized. In addition to the cumulative impact of accelerated delivery of protein structures, we demonstrate how family coverage, generic screening methodology, and the availability of abundant purified protein samples, allow a level of discovery that is difficult to achieve otherwise. The contribution of NMR to structure determination and protein characterization is discussed. To make this information available to a wide scientific audience, a new tool for disseminating annotated structural information was created that also represents an interactive platform allowing for a continuous update of the annotation by the scientific community
Constraints on R-parity violating supersymmetry from leptonic and semileptonic tau, B_d and B_s decays
We put constraints on several products of R-parity violating lambda lambda'
and lambda' lambda' type couplings from leptonic and semileptonic tau, B_d and
B_s decays. Most of them are one to two orders of magnitude better than the
existing bounds, and almost free from theoretical uncertainties. A significant
improvement of these bounds can be made in high luminosity tau-charm or B
factories.Comment: 14 pages, latex. A few references added, two typos corrected. Version
to be published in Physical Review
The analytic structure of heavy quark propagators
The renormalised quark Dyson-Schwinger equation is studied in the limit of
the renormalised current heavy quark mass m_R --> infinity. We are particularly
interested in the analytic pole structure of the heavy quark propagator in the
complex momentum plane. Approximations in which the quark-gluon vertex is
modelled by either the bare vertex or the Ball-Chiu Ansatz, and the Landau
gauge gluon propagator takes either a gaussian form or a gaussian form with an
ultraviolet asymptotic tail are used.Comment: 21 pages Latex and 5 postscript figures. The original version of this
paper has been considerably extended to include a formalism dealing with the
renormalised heavy quark Dyson-Schwinger equation and uses a more realistic
Ansatz for the gluon propagator
Off Mass Shell Effects in Hadron Electric Dipole Moments
We note that off the quark mass shell the operators
and , both of which reduce to
in the non-relativistic limit, are no longer
identical. In this paper we explore the effects of this difference in the
contribution of these quark electric moments to hadronic electric moments.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure, Revtex, uses psfi
Exclusive diffractive processes and the quark substructure of mesons
Exclusive diffractive processes on the nucleon are investigated within a
model in which the quark-nucleon interaction is mediated by Pomeron exchange
and the quark substructure of mesons is described within a framework based on
the Dyson-Schwinger equations of QCD. The model quark-nucleon interaction has
four parameters which are completely determined by high-energy and elastic scattering data. The model is then used to predict vector-meson
electroproduction observables. The obtained - and -meson
electroproduction cross sections are in excellent agreement with experimental
data. The predicted dependence of -meson electroproduction also
agrees with experimental data. It is shown that confined-quark dynamics play a
central role in determining the behavior of the diffractive, vector-meson
electroproduction cross section. In particular, the onset of the asymptotic
behavior of the cross section is determined by a momentum scale that is
set by the current-quark masses of the quark and antiquark inside the vector
meson. This is the origin of the striking differences between the
dependence of -, - and -meson electroproduction cross
sections observed in recent experiments.Comment: 53 pages, 23 figures, revtex and epsfig. Minor additions to tex
Left-right symmetry at LHC and precise 1-loop low energy data
Despite many tests, even the Minimal Manifest Left-Right Symmetric Model
(MLRSM) has never been ultimately confirmed or falsified. LHC gives a new
possibility to test directly the most conservative version of left-right
symmetric models at so far not reachable energy scales. If we take into account
precise limits on the model which come from low energy processes, like the muon
decay, possible LHC signals are strongly limited through the correlations of
parameters among heavy neutrinos, heavy gauge bosons and heavy Higgs particles.
To illustrate the situation in the context of LHC, we consider the "golden"
process . For instance, in a case of degenerate heavy neutrinos
and heavy Higgs masses at 15 TeV (in agreement with FCNC bounds) we get
fb at TeV which is consistent with muon
decay data for a very limited masses in the range (3008 GeV, 3040 GeV).
Without restrictions coming from the muon data, masses would be in the
range (1.0 TeV, 3.5 TeV). Influence of heavy Higgs particles themselves on the
considered LHC process is negligible (the same is true for the light, SM
neutral Higgs scalar analog). In the paper decay modes of the right-handed
heavy gauge bosons and heavy neutrinos are also discussed. Both scenarios with
typical see-saw light-heavy neutrino mixings and the mixings which are
independent of heavy neutrino masses are considered. In the second case heavy
neutrino decays to the heavy charged gauge bosons not necessarily dominate over
decay modes which include only light, SM-like particles.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figs, KL-KS and new ATLAS limits taken into accoun
The , , and electromagnetic form factors
The rainbow truncation of the quark Dyson-Schwinger equation is combined with
the ladder Bethe-Salpeter equation for the meson amplitudes and the dressed
quark-photon vertex in a self-consistent Poincar\'e-invariant study of the pion
and kaon electromagnetic form factors in impulse approximation. We demonstrate
explicitly that the current is conserved in this approach and that the obtained
results are independent of the momentum partitioning in the Bethe-Salpeter
amplitudes. With model gluon parameters previously fixed by the condensate, the
pion mass and decay constant, and the kaon mass, the charge radii and spacelike
form factors are found to be in good agreement with the experimental data.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, Revte
What happens if you single out? An experiment
We present an experiment investigating the effects of singling out an individual on trust and trustworthiness. We find that (a) trustworthiness falls if there is a singled out subject; (b) non-singled out subjects discriminate against the singled out subject when they are not responsible of the distinct status of this person; (c) under a negative frame, the singled out subject returns significantly less; (d) under a positive frame, the singled out subject behaves bimodally, either selecting very low or very high return rates. Overall, singling out induces a negligible effect on trust but is potentially disruptive for trustworthiness
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