726 research outputs found
Synthesis and characterization of oligonucleotides containing an O6 -deoxyguanosine-alkyl-O6 -deoxyguanosine interstrand cross-link
Studies have shown that resistance to bifunctional alkylating agents used in the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia can result in diminished effectiveness of these therapeutics. To further understand this process we have developed clinically relevant models of cross-linked DNA duplexes to study the structure and repair of lesions induced by the bifunctional alkylating agents: busulfan and hepsulfam. To emulate the known deoxyguanosine- N 7 -alkyl- N 7 -deoxyguanosine lesion formed by hepsulfam and the unidentified lesion(s) formed by busulfan, we have designed three synthetic approaches leading to the synthesis of six stable deoxyguanosine dimers. General mono, bi and tripartite syntheses were developed for the preparation of 1,1 and l,3-deoxyguanosine- O 6 -alkyl- O 6 -deoxyguanosine cross-links employing 'fast-deprotecting' phenoxyacetyl protection at the N 2 position for facile removal. The O 6 -alkyl couplings are performed via a Mitsunobu reaction between a nucleoside and a mono-protected diol. The phosphoramidites of synthesized dimers were incorporated into one helical turn and 'sticky-end' DNA duplexes via solid-phase synthesis employing a DNA synthesizer. All duplexes were of defined structure and sequence for the purpose of further conformational analysis and enzymatic repair studies. Sequence composition was confirmed via enzymatic digestion and purity by subsequent HPLC analysis. A variety of methods including ultraviolet transition thermal denaturation (T m ), circular dichroism (CD) and gel electrophoretic studies were employed to characterize the cross-linked duplexes. CD and T m studies suggest little deformation from native B-form conformation for the hepsulfam mimics. Sufficient quantities of the mono and bipartate heptyl cross-linked duplexes were obtained for various structural studies with required quantities for biological investigations obtained for the monopartate synthesis
Pair creation of anti-de Sitter black holes on a cosmic string background
We analyze the quantum process in which a cosmic string breaks in an anti-de
Sitter (AdS) background, and a pair of charged or neutral black holes is
produced at the ends of the strings. The energy to materialize and accelerate
the pair comes from the strings tension. In an AdS background this is the only
study done in the process of production of a pair of correlated black holes
with spherical topology. The acceleration of the produced black holes is
necessarily greater than (|L|/3)^(1/2), where L<0 is the cosmological constant.
Only in this case the virtual pair of black holes can overcome the attractive
background AdS potential well and become real. The instantons that describe
this process are constructed through the analytical continuation of the AdS
C-metric. Then, we explicitly compute the pair creation rate of the process,
and we verify that (as occurs with pair creation in other backgrounds) the pair
production of nonextreme black holes is enhanced relative to the pair creation
of extreme black holes by a factor of exp(Area/4), where Area is the black hole
horizon area. We also conclude that the general behavior of the pair creation
rate with the mass and acceleration of the black holes is similar in the AdS,
flat and de Sitter cases, and our AdS results reduce to the ones of the flat
case when L=0.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, ReVTeX
Localization by disorder in the infrared conductivity of (Y,Pr)Ba2Cu3O7 films
The ab-plane reflectivity of (Y{1-x}Prx)Ba2Cu3O7 thin films was measured in
the 30-30000 cm-1 range for samples with x = 0 (Tc = 90 K), x = 0.4 (Tc = 35 K)
and x = 0.5 (Tc = 19 K) as a function of temperature in the normal state. The
effective charge density obtained from the integrated spectral weight decreases
with increasing x. The variation is consistent with the higher dc resistivity
for x = 0.4, but is one order of magnitude smaller than what would be expected
for x = 0.5. In the latter sample, the conductivity is dominated at all
temperatures by a large localization peak. Its magnitude increases as the
temperature decreases. We relate this peak to the dc resistivity enhancement. A
simple localization-by-disorder model accounts for the optical conductivity of
the x = 0.5 sample.Comment: 7 pages with (4) figures include
The extremal limits of the C-metric: Nariai, Bertotti-Robinson and anti-Nariai C-metrics
In two previous papers we have analyzed the C-metric in a background with a
cosmological constant, namely the de Sitter (dS) C-metric, and the anti-de
Sitter (AdS) C-metric, following the work of Kinnersley and Walker for the flat
C-metric. These exact solutions describe a pair of accelerated black holes in
the flat or cosmological constant background, with the acceleration A being
provided by a strut in-between that pushes away the two black holes. In this
paper we analyze the extremal limits of the C-metric in a background with
generic cosmological constant. We follow a procedure first introduced by
Ginsparg and Perry in which the Nariai solution, a spacetime which is the
direct topological product of the 2-dimensional dS and a 2-sphere, is generated
from the four-dimensional dS-Schwarzschild solution by taking an appropriate
limit, where the black hole event horizon approaches the cosmological horizon.
Similarly, one can generate the Bertotti-Robinson metric from the
Reissner-Nordstrom metric by taking the limit of the Cauchy horizon going into
the event horizon of the black hole, as well as the anti-Nariai by taking an
appropriate solution and limit. Using these methods we generate the C-metric
counterparts of the Nariai, Bertotti-Robinson and anti-Nariai solutions, among
others. One expects that the solutions found in this paper are unstable and
decay into a slightly non-extreme black hole pair accelerated by a strut or by
strings. Moreover, the Euclidean version of these solutions mediate the quantum
process of black hole pair creation, that accompanies the decay of the dS and
AdS spaces
Parental occupational exposure to pesticides, animals and organic dust and risk of childhood leukemia and central nervous system tumors:Findings from the International Childhood Cancer Cohort Consortium (I4C)
Significance testing testate amoeba water table reconstructions
Transfer functions are valuable tools in palaeoecology, but their output may not always be meaningful. A recently-developed statistical test ('randomTF') offers the potential to distinguish among reconstructions which are more likely to be useful, and those less so. We applied this test to a large number of reconstructions of peatland water table depth based on testate amoebae. Contrary to our expectations, a substantial majority (25 of 30) of these reconstructions gave non-significant results (P > 0.05). The underlying reasons for this outcome are unclear. We found no significant correlation between randomTF P-value and transfer function performance, the properties of the training set and reconstruction, or measures of transfer function fit. These results give cause for concern but we believe it would be extremely premature to discount the results of non-significant reconstructions. We stress the need for more critical assessment of transfer function output, replication of results and ecologically-informed interpretation of palaeoecological data
Strong Decays of Strange Quarkonia
In this paper we evaluate strong decay amplitudes and partial widths of
strange mesons (strangeonia and kaonia) in the 3P0 decay model. We give
numerical results for all energetically allowed open-flavor two-body decay
modes of all nsbar and ssbar strange mesons in the 1S, 2S, 3S, 1P, 2P, 1D and
1F multiplets, comprising strong decays of a total of 43 resonances into 525
two-body modes, with 891 numerically evaluated amplitudes. This set of
resonances includes all strange qqbar states with allowed strong decays
expected in the quark model up to ca. 2.2 GeV. We use standard nonrelativistic
quark model SHO wavefunctions to evaluate these amplitudes, and quote numerical
results for all amplitudes present in each decay mode. We also discuss the
status of the associated experimental candidates, and note which states and
decay modes would be especially interesting for future experimental study at
hadronic, e+e- and photoproduction facilities. These results should also be
useful in distinguishing conventional quark model mesons from exotica such as
glueballs and hybrids through their strong decays.Comment: 69 pages, 5 figures, 39 table
Effective Lagrangian Approach to the Theory of Eta Photoproduction in the Region
We investigate eta photoproduction in the resonance region
within the effective Lagrangian approach (ELA), wherein leading contributions
to the amplitude at the tree level are taken into account. These include the
nucleon Born terms and the leading -channel vector meson exchanges as the
non-resonant pieces. In addition, we consider five resonance contributions in
the - and - channel; besides the dominant , these are:
and . The amplitudes for the
and the photoproduction near threshold have significant
differences, even as they share common contributions, such as those of the
nucleon Born terms. Among these differences, the contribution to the
photoproduction of the -channel excitation of the is the most
significant. We find the off-shell properties of the spin-3/2 resonances to be
important in determining the background contributions. Fitting our effective
amplitude to the available data base allows us to extract the quantity
, characteristic of the
photoexcitation of the resonance and its decay into the
-nucleon channel, of interest to precise tests of hadron models. At the
photon point, we determine it to be from
the old data base, and from a
combination of old data base and new Bates data. We obtain the helicity
amplitude for to be from the old data base, and from the combination of the old data base and new Bates
data, compared with the results of the analysis of pion photoproduction
yielding , in the same units.Comment: 43 pages, RevTeX, 9 figures available upon request, to appear in
Phys. Rev.
P-wave excited baryons from pion- and photo-induced hyperon production
We report evidence for , , ,
, , and , and find
indications that might have a companion state at 1970\,MeV. The
controversial is not seen. The evidence is derived from a
study of data on pion- and photo-induced hyperon production, but other data are
included as well. Most of the resonances reported here were found in the
Karlsruhe-Helsinki (KH84) and the Carnegie-Mellon (CM) analyses but were
challenged recently by the Data Analysis Center at GWU. Our analysis is
constrained by the energy independent scattering amplitudes from either
KH84 or GWU. The two amplitudes from KH84 or GWU, respectively, lead to
slightly different branching ratios of contributing resonances but the
debated resonances are required in both series of fits.Comment: 22 pages, 28 figures. Some additional sets of data are adde
Leptonic and Semileptonic Decays of Charm and Bottom Hadrons
We review the experimental measurements and theoretical descriptions of
leptonic and semileptonic decays of particles containing a single heavy quark,
either charm or bottom. Measurements of bottom semileptonic decays are used to
determine the magnitudes of two fundamental parameters of the standard model,
the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements and . These
parameters are connected with the physics of quark flavor and mass, and they
have important implications for the breakdown of CP symmetry. To extract
precise values of and from measurements, however,
requires a good understanding of the decay dynamics. Measurements of both charm
and bottom decay distributions provide information on the interactions
governing these processes. The underlying weak transition in each case is
relatively simple, but the strong interactions that bind the quarks into
hadrons introduce complications. We also discuss new theoretical approaches,
especially heavy-quark effective theory and lattice QCD, which are providing
insights and predictions now being tested by experiment. An international
effort at many laboratories will rapidly advance knowledge of this physics
during the next decade.Comment: This review article will be published in Reviews of Modern Physics in
the fall, 1995. This file contains only the abstract and the table of
contents. The full 168-page document including 47 figures is available at
http://charm.physics.ucsb.edu/papers/slrevtex.p
- …