1,406 research outputs found
Outbreak of encephalitic listeriosis in red-legged partridges (Alectoris rufa)
An outbreak of neurological disease was investigated in red-legged partridges between 8 and 28 days of age. Clinical signs included torticollis, head tilt and incoordination and over an initial eight day period approximately 30–40 fatalities occurred per day. No significant gross post mortem findings were detected. Histopathological examination of the brain and bacterial cultures followed by partial sequencing confirmed a diagnosis of encephalitis due to Listeria monocytogenes. Further isolates were obtained from follow-up carcasses, environmental samples and pooled tissue samples of newly imported day-old chicks prior to placement on farm. These isolates had the same antibiotic resistance pattern as the isolate of the initial post mortem submission and belonged to the same fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism (fAFLP) subtype. This suggested that the isolates were very closely related or identical and that the pathogen had entered the farm with the imported day-old chicks, resulting in disease manifestation in partridges between 8 and 28 days of age. Reports of outbreaks of encephalitic listeriosis in avian species are rare and this is to the best of our knowledge the first reported outbreak in red-legged partridges
Heat-kernels and functional determinants on the generalized cone
We consider zeta functions and heat-kernel expansions on the bounded,
generalized cone in arbitrary dimensions using an improved calculational
technique. The specific case of a global monopole is analysed in detail and
some restrictions thereby placed on the coefficient. The computation
of functional determinants is also addressed. General formulas are given and
known results are incidentally, and rapidly, reproduced.Comment: 26p,LaTeX.(Cosmetic changes and eqns (9.8),(11.2) corrected.
Non-extensive statistics and the stellar polytrope index
We use physical constrains imposed from the H-Theorem and from the negative
nature of the heat capacity of self-gravitating thermodynamically isolated
systems to investigate some possible limits on the stellar polytrope index
within the domain of a classical non-extensive kinetic theory.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, LaTe
The Uitkomst intrusion and Nkomati Ni-Cu-Cr-PGE deposit, South Africa: trace element geochemistry, Nd isotopes and high-precision geochronology
The Uitkomst intrusion is a tubular mafic-ultramafic layered body that hosts one of South Africa’s largest Ni-Cu-Cr-PGE deposits, Nkomati. The sulphide ore occurs in the form of massive lenses in the immediate quartzitic footwall and as disseminations within peridotite. The chromite ore forms an up to ∼10-m-thick layer in the lower portion of the intrusion. Uitkomst has generally been interpreted as a magma conduit, possibly related to the Bushveld event. Here, we present a new high-precision U-Pb zircon date of 2057.64 ± 0.69 Ma that overlaps with the age of the Merensky Reef of the Bushveld Complex and thus demonstrates a coeval relationship between the intrusions. Based on incompatible trace elements as well as O- and Nd isotope data (εNd −4.5 to −6.2), we show that the Uitkomst parent magmas were contaminated with up to 20% Archean upper crust prior to emplacement, and with up to 15% dolomitic country rock during emplacement. Ore formation at Nkomati was critically aided by substantial devolatisation and removal of dolomitic floor rocks leading to hydrodynamic concentration of sulphide and chromite during slumping of crystal mushes into the trough-like centre of the subsiding intrusion and its footwall
Chiral bag boundary conditions on the ball
Local boundary conditions for spinor fields are expressed in terms of a
1-parameter family of boundary operators, and find applications ranging from
(supersymmetric) quantum cosmology to the bag model in quantum chromodynamics.
The present paper proves that, for massless spinor fields on the Euclidean ball
in dimensions d=2,4,6, the resulting zeta(0) value is independent of such a
theta parameter, while the various heat-kernel coefficients exhibit a
theta-dependence which is eventually expressed in a simple way through
hyperbolic functions and their integer powers.Comment: 30 pages, REVTe
SALT observations of the Chromospheric Activity of Transiting Planet Hosts: Mass Loss and Star Planet Interactions
We measured the chromospheric activity of the four hot Jupiter hosts WASP-43, WASP-51/HAT-P-30, WASP-72 & WASP-103 to search for anomalous values caused by the close-in companions. The Mount Wilson Ca II H&K S-index was calculated for each star using observations taken with the Robert Stobie Spectrograph at the Southern African Large Telescope. The activity level of WASP-43 is anomalously high relative to its age and falls among the highest values of all known main sequence stars. We found marginal evidence that the activity of WASP-103 is also higher than expected from the system age. We suggest that for WASP-43 and WASP-103 star-planet interactions (SPI) may enhance the Ca II H&K core emission. The activity levels of WASP-51/HAT-P-30 and WASP-72 are anomalously low, with the latter falling below the basal envelope for both main sequence and evolved stars. This can be attributed to circumstellar absorption due to planetary mass loss, though absorption in the ISM may contribute. A quarter of known short period planet hosts exhibit anomalously low activity levels, including systems with hot Jupiters and low mass companions. Since SPI can elevate and absorption can suppress the observed chromospheric activity of stars with close-in planets, their Ca II H&K activity levels are an unreliable age indicator. Systems where the activity is depressed by absorption from planetary mass loss are key targets for examining planet compositions through transmission spectroscopy
Second quantization approach to composite hadron interactions in quark models
Starting from the Fock space representation of hadron bound states in a quark
model, a change of representation is implemented by a unitary transformation
such that the composite hadrons are redescribed by elementary-particle field
operators. Application of the unitary transformation to the microscopic quark
Hamiltonian gives rise to effective hadron-hadron, hadron-quark, and
quark-quark Hamiltonians. An effective baryon Hamiltonian is derived using a
simple quark model. The baryon Hamiltonian is free of the post-prior
discrepancy which usually plagues composite-particle effective interactions.Comment: Correction on titl
Spectral analysis and zeta determinant on the deformed spheres
We consider a class of singular Riemannian manifolds, the deformed spheres
, defined as the classical spheres with a one parameter family of
singular Riemannian structures, that reduces for to the classical metric.
After giving explicit formulas for the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the
metric Laplacian , we study the associated zeta functions
. We introduce a general method to deal with some
classes of simple and double abstract zeta functions, generalizing the ones
appearing in . An application of this method allows to
obtain the main zeta invariants for these zeta functions in all dimensions, and
in particular and . We give
explicit formulas for the zeta regularized determinant in the low dimensional
cases, , thus generalizing a result of Dowker \cite{Dow1}, and we
compute the first coefficients in the expansion of these determinants in powers
of the deformation parameter .Comment: 1 figur
Quantum railroads and directed localization at the juncture of quantum Hall systems
The integer quantum Hall effect (QHE) and one-dimensional Anderson
localization (AL) are limiting special cases of a more general phenomenon,
directed localization (DL), predicted to occur in disordered one-dimensional
wave guides called "quantum railroads" (QRR). Here we explain the surprising
results of recent measurements by Kang et al. [Nature 403, 59 (2000)] of
electron transfer between edges of two-dimensional electron systems and
identify experimental evidence of QRR's in the general, but until now entirely
theoretical, DL regime that unifies the QHE and AL. We propose direct
experimental tests of our theory.Comment: 11 pages revtex + 3 jpeg figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Kaon-Nucleon Scattering Amplitudes and Z-Enhancements from Quark Born Diagrams
We derive closed form kaon-nucleon scattering amplitudes using the ``quark
Born diagram" formalism, which describes the scattering as a single interaction
(here the OGE spin-spin term) followed by quark line rearrangement. The low
energy I=0 and I=1 S-wave KN phase shifts are in reasonably good agreement with
experiment given conventional quark model parameters. For Gev
however the I=1 elastic phase shift is larger than predicted by Gaussian
wavefunctions, and we suggest possible reasons for this discrepancy. Equivalent
low energy KN potentials for S-wave scattering are also derived. Finally we
consider OGE forces in the related channels K, KN and K,
and determine which have attractive interactions and might therefore exhibit
strong threshold enhancements or ``Z-molecule" meson-baryon bound states.
We find that the minimum-spin, minimum-isospin channels and two additional
K channels are most conducive to the formation of bound states.
Related interesting topics for future experimental and theoretical studies of
KN interactions are also discussed.Comment: 34 pages, figures available from the authors, revte
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