In-medium two-nucleon properties in high electric fields

The quantum mechanical two - particle problem is considered in hot dense nuclear matter under the influence of a strong electric field such as the field of the residual nucleus in heavy - ion reactions. A generalized Galitskii-Bethe-Salpeter equation is derived and solved which includes retardation and field effects. Compared with the in-medium properties in the zero-field case, bound states are turned into resonances and the scattering phase shifts are modified. Four effects are observed due to the applied field: (i) A suppression of the Pauli-blocking below nuclear matter densities, (ii) the onset of pairing occurs already at higher temperatures due to the field, (iii) a field dependent finite lifetime of deuterons and (iv) the imaginary part of the quasiparticle self-energy changes its sign for special values of density and temperatures indicating a phase instability. The latter effect may influence the fragmentation processes. The lifetime of deuterons in a strong Coulomb field is given explicitly.Comment: ps file + 7 figures (eps

Transverse momentum dependence of semi-inclusive pion production

Cross sections for semi-inclusive electroproduction of charged pions ($\pi^{\pm}$) from both proton and deuteron targets were measured for $0.2<x<0.5$, $2<Q^2<4$ GeV$^2$, $0.3<z<1$, and $P_t^2<0.2$ GeV$^2$. For $P_t<0.1$ GeV, we find the azimuthal dependence to be small, as expected theoretically. For both $\pi^+$ and $\pi^-$, the $P_t$ dependence from the deuteron is found to be slightly weaker than from the proton. In the context of a simple model, this implies that the initial transverse momenta width of $d$ quarks is larger than for $u$ quarks and, contrary to expectations, the transverse momentum width of the favored fragmentation function is larger than the unfavored one.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. Fit form changed to include Cahn effect Minor revisions. Added one new figur

The Onset of Quark-Hadron Duality in Pion Electroproduction

A large data set of charged-pion electroproduction from both hydrogen and deuterium targets has been obtained spanning the low-energy residual-mass region. These data conclusively show the onset of the quark-hadron duality phenomenon, as predicted for high-energy hadron electroproduction. We construct several ratios from these data to exhibit the relation of this phenomenon to the high-energy factorization ansatz of electron-quark scattering and subsequent quark-to- pion production mechanisms.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. Lett. Tables adde

In-cell NMR characterization of the secondary structure populations of a disordered conformation of α-Synuclein within E. coli cells

α-Synuclein is a small protein strongly implicated in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders. We report here the use of in-cell NMR spectroscopy to observe directly the structure and dynamics of this protein within E. coli cells. To improve the accuracy in the measurement of backbone chemical shifts within crowded in-cell NMR spectra, we have developed a deconvolution method to reduce inhomogeneous line broadening within cellular samples. The resulting chemical shift values were then used to evaluate the distribution of secondary structure populations which, in the absence of stable tertiary contacts, are a most effective way to describe the conformational fluctuations of disordered proteins. The results indicate that, at least within the bacterial cytosol, α-synuclein populates a highly dynamic state that, despite the highly crowded environment, has the same characteristics as the disordered monomeric form observed in aqueous solution

Atomic force microscopy based nanoassay: A new method to study \u3b1-Synuclein-dopamine bioaffinity interactions

Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDPs) are characterized by the lack of well-defined 3-D structure and show high conformational plasticity. For this reason, they are a strong challenge for the traditional characterization of structure, supramolecular assembly and biorecognition phenomena. We show here how the fine tuning of protein orientation on a surface turns useful in the reliable testing of biorecognition interactions of IDPs, in particular \u3b1-Synuclein. We exploited atomic force microscopy (AFM) for the selective, nanoscale confinement of \u3b1-Synuclein on gold to study the early stages of \u3b1-Synuclein aggregation and the effect of small molecules, like dopamine, on the aggregation process. Capitalizing on the high sensitivity of AFM topographic height measurements we determined, for the first time in the literature, the dissociation constant of dopamine-\u3b1-Synuclein adducts

Making Muscle Elastic: The Structural Basis of Myomesin Stretching

The muscle M-band protein myomesin comprises a 36-nm long filament made of repetitive immunoglobulin–helix modules that can stretch to 2.5-fold this length, demonstrating substantial molecular elasticity

Electroproduction of Eta Mesons in the S11(1535) Resonance Region at High Momentum Transfer

The differential cross-section for the process p(e,e'p)eta has been measured at Q2 ~ 5.7 and 7.0 (GeV/c)2 for centre-of-mass energies from threshold to 1.8 GeV, encompassing the S11(1535) resonance, which dominates the channel. This is the highest momentum transfer measurement of this exclusive process to date. The helicity-conserving transition amplitude A_1/2, for the production of the S11(1535) resonance, is extracted from the data. Within the limited Q2 now measured, this quantity appears to begin scaling as 1/Q3 - a predicted, but not definitive, signal of the dominance of perturbative QCD, at Q2 ~ 5 (GeV/c)2.Comment: LaTeX, 30 pages, 29 figures, uses longtable.sty, slashbox.sty, ifthen.sty; (v2) corrected figure inclusions; (v3) changes in filenames for prc and added Report-no; (v4) correction based on comments from referee {small changes to abstract and conclusion, inserted figure 9, other small changes to the text} (v5) very minor additions to improve clarit