379 research outputs found
Developing a model of limited-access nicotine consumption in C57Bl/6J mice
Although United States smoking rates have been on the decline over the past few decades, cigarette smoking still poses a critical health and economic threat. Very few treatment options for smoking exist, and many of them do not lead to long-term abstinence. Preclinical models are necessary for understanding the effects of nicotine and developing treatments. Current self-administration models of nicotine intake may require surgical procedures and often result in low levels of intake. Further, they do not lend themselves to investigating treatments. The current study sought to develop a limited-access model of nicotine intake using the Drinking-in-the-Dark paradigm, which results in high levels of binge-like ethanol consumption that can be pharmacologically manipulated. The present study found that mice will consume nicotine under a range of parameters. Intakes under the preferred condition of 0.14 mg/ml nicotine in 0.2% saccharin reached over 6 mg/kg in two hours and were reduced by an injection of R(+)-baclofen. Mecamylamine did not significantly affect nicotine consumption. As nicotine and ethanol are often co-abused, nicotine intake was also tested in the presence of ethanol. When presented in the same bottle, mice altered nicotine intake under various concentrations to maintain consistent levels of ethanol intake. When nicotine and ethanol were presented in separate bottles, mice greatly reduced their nicotine intake while maintaining ethanol intake. In conclusion, these studies characterize a novel model of limited-access nicotine intake that can be pharmacologically manipulated
D-Brane Chemistry
We study several different kinds of bound states built from D-branes and
orientifolds. These states are to atoms what branonium - the bound state of a
brane and its anti-brane - is to positronium, inasmuch as they typically
involve a light brane bound to a much heavier object with conserved charges
which forbid the system's decay. We find the fully relativistic motion of a
probe Dp'-brane in the presence of source Dp-branes is integrable by
quadratures. Keplerian conic sections are obtained for special choices for p
and p' and the systems are shown to be equivalent to nonrelativistic systems.
Their quantum behaviour is also equivalent to the corresponding
non-relativistic limit. In particular the p=6, p'=0 case is equivalent to a
non-relativistic dyon in a magnetic monopole background, with the trajectories
in the surface of a cone. We also show that the motion of the probe branes
about D6-branes in IIA theory is equivalent to the motion of the corresponding
probes in the uplift to M-theory in 11 dimensions, for which there are no
D6-branes but their fields are replaced by a particular Taub-NUT geometry. We
further discuss the interactions of D-branes and orientifold planes having the
same dimension. this system behaves at large distances as a brane-brane system
but at shorter distances it does not have the tachyon instability.Comment: ref. added and typos correcte
Extrinsic CPT Violation in Neutrino Oscillations in Matter
We investigate matter-induced (or extrinsic) CPT violation effects in
neutrino oscillations in matter. Especially, we present approximate analytical
formulas for the CPT-violating probability differences for three flavor
neutrino oscillations in matter with an arbitrary matter density profile. Note
that we assume that the CPT invariance theorem holds, which means that the CPT
violation effects arise entirely because of the presence of matter. As special
cases of matter density profiles, we consider constant and step-function matter
density profiles, which are relevant for neutrino oscillation physics in
accelerator and reactor long baseline experiments as well as neutrino
factories. Finally, the implications of extrinsic CPT violation on neutrino
oscillations in matter for several past, present, and future long baseline
experiments are estimated.Comment: 47 pages, 7 figures, RevTeX4. Final version to be published in Phys.
Rev.
Annihilation vs. Decay: Constraining dark matter properties from a gamma-ray detection
Most proposed dark matter candidates are stable and are produced thermally in
the early Universe. However, there is also the possibility of unstable (but
long-lived) dark matter, produced thermally or otherwise. We propose a strategy
to distinguish between dark matter annihilation and/or decay in the case that a
clear signal is detected in gamma-ray observations of Milky Way dwarf
spheroidal galaxies with gamma-ray experiments. The sole measurement of the
energy spectrum of an indirect signal would render the discrimination between
these cases impossible. We show that by examining the dependence of the
intensity and energy spectrum on the angular distribution of the emission, the
origin could be identified as decay, annihilation, or both. In addition, once
the type of signal is established, we show how these measurements could help to
extract information about the dark matter properties, including mass,
annihilation cross section, lifetime, dominant annihilation and decay channels,
and the presence of substructure. Although an application of the approach
presented here would likely be feasible with current experiments only for very
optimistic dark matter scenarios, the improved sensitivity of upcoming
experiments could enable this technique to be used to study a wider range of
dark matter models.Comment: 29 pp, 8 figs; replaced to match published version (minor changes and
some new references
Quasi-energy-independent solar neutrino transitions
Current solar, atmospheric, and reactor neutrino data still allow oscillation
scenarios where the squared mass differences are all close to 10^-3 eV^2,
rather than being hierarchically separated. For solar neutrinos, this situation
(realized in the upper part of the so-called large-mixing angle solution)
implies adiabatic transitions which depend weakly on the neutrino energy and on
the matter density, as well as on the ``atmospheric'' squared mass difference.
In such a regime of ``quasi-energy-independent'' (QEI) transitions,
intermediate between the more familiar ``Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein'' (MSW)
and energy-independent (EI) regimes, we first perform analytical calculations
of the solar nu_e survival probability at first order in the matter density,
beyond the usual hierarchical approximations. We then provide accurate,
generalized expressions for the solar neutrino mixing angles in matter, which
reduce to those valid in the MSW, QEI and EI regimes in appropriate limits.
Finally, a representative QEI scenario is discussed in some detail.Comment: Title changed; text and acronyms revised; results unchanged. To
appear in PR
Neutrino hierarchy from CP-blind observables with high density magnetized detectors
High density magnetized detectors are well suited to exploit the outstanding
purity and intensities of novel neutrino sources like Neutrino Factories and
Beta Beams. They can also provide independent measurements of leptonic mixing
parameters through the observation of atmospheric muon-neutrinos. In this
paper, we discuss the combination of these observables from a multi-kton iron
detector and a high energy Beta Beam; in particular, we demonstrate that even
with moderate detector granularities the neutrino mass hierarchy can be
determined for values greater than 4.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. Added a new section discussing systematic errors
(sec 5.2); sec.5.1 and 4 have been extended. Version to appear in EPJ
Small Scale Structure Formation in Chameleon Cosmology
Chameleon fields are scalar fields whose mass depends on the ambient matter
density. We investigate the effects of these fields on the growth of density
perturbations on sub-galactic scales and the formation of the first dark matter
halos. Density perturbations on comoving scales go non--linear
and collapse to form structure much earlier than in standard CDM
cosmology. The resulting mini-halos are hence more dense and resilient to
disruption. We therefore expect (provided that the density perturbations on
these scales have not been erased by damping processes) that the dark matter
distribution on small scales would be more clumpy in chameleon cosmology than
in the CDM model.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure
Status of a Supersymmetric Flavour Violating Solution to the Solar Neutrino Puzzle with Three Generations
We present a general study of a three neutrino flavour transition model based
on the supersymmetric interactions which violate R-parity. These interactions
induce flavour violating scattering reactions between solar matter and
neutrinos. The model does not contain any vacuum mass or mixing angle for the
first generation neutrino. Instead, the effective mixing in the first
generation is induced via the new interactions. The model provides a natural
interpretation of the atmospheric neutrino anomaly, and is consistent with
reactor experiments. We determine all R-parity violating couplings which can
contribute to the effective neutrino oscillations, and summarize the present
laboratory bounds. Independent of the specific nature of the (supersymmetric)
flavour violating model, the experimental data on the solar neutrino rates and
the recoil electron energy spectrum are inconsistent with the theoretical
predictions. The confidence level of the -analysis ranges between and . The incompatibility, is due to the new SNO
results, and excludes the present model. We conclude that a non-vanishing
vacuum mixing angle for the first generation neutrino is necessary in our
model. We expect this also to apply to the solutions based on other flavour
violating interactions having constraints of the same order of magnitude.Comment: 17 pages, Latex fil
Constraining neutrino oscillation parameters with current solar and atmospheric data
We analyze the impact of recent solar, atmospheric and reactor data in the
determination of the neutrino oscillation parameters, taking into account that
both the solar nu_e and the atmospheric nu_mu may convert to a mixture of
active and sterile neutrinos. We use the most recent global solar neutrino
data, including the 1496-day Super-K neutrino data sample, and we investigate
in detail the impact of the SNO neutral current, spectral and day/night data by
performing also an analysis using only the charged current rate from SNO. The
implications of the first 145.1 days of KamLAND data on the determination of
the solar neutrino parameters are also discussed in detail. We confirm the
clear preference of solar+reactor data for the pure active LMA-MSW solution of
the solar neutrino problem, and obtain that the LOW, VAC, SMA and Just-So^2
solutions are disfavored with a Delta_chi^2 = 22, 22, 36, 44, respectively.
Furthermore, we find that the global solar data constrains the admixture of a
sterile neutrino to be less than 43% at 99% CL. By performing an improved fit
of the atmospheric data, we also update the corresponding regions of
oscillation parameters. We find that the recent atmospheric Super-K (1489-day)
and MACRO data have a strong impact on constraining a sterile component in
atmospheric oscillations: if the nu_mu is restricted to the atmospheric mass
states only a sterile admixture of 16% is allowed at 99% CL, while a bound of
35% is obtained in the unconstrained case. Pure sterile oscillations are
disfavored with a Delta_chi^2 = 34.6 compared to the pure active case.Comment: 28 pages, LaTeX file using RevTEX4, 12 figures and 3 tables included.
Improved version including the new KamLAND dat
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