956 research outputs found
Local Alignment of the BABAR Silicon Vertex Tracking Detector
The BABAR Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT) is a five-layer double-sided silicon
detector designed to provide precise measurements of the position and direction
of primary tracks, and to fully reconstruct low-momentum tracks produced in
e+e- collisions at the PEP-II asymmetric collider at Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center. This paper describes the design, implementation,
performance, and validation of the local alignment procedure used to determine
the relative positions and orientations of the 340 SVT wafers. This procedure
uses a tuned mix of in-situ experimental data and complementary lab-bench
measurements to control systematic distortions. Wafer positions and
orientations are determined by minimizing a chisquared computed using these
data for each wafer individually, iterating to account for between-wafer
correlations. A correction for aplanar distortions of the silicon wafers is
measured and applied. The net effect of residual mis-alignments on relevant
physical variables is evaluated in special control samples. The BABAR
data-sample collected between November 1999 and April 2008 is used in the study
of the SVT stability.Comment: 21 pages, 20 figures, 3 tables, submitted to Nucl. Instrum. Meth.
Identification of sites phosphorylated by the vaccinia virus B1R kinase in viral protein H5R
Background: Vaccinia virus gene B1R encodes a erine/threonine protein kinase. In vitro this protein kinase phosphorylates ribosomal proteins Sa and S2 and vaccinia virus protein H5R, proteins that become phosphorylated during infection. Nothing is known about the sites phosphorylated on these proteins or the general substrate specificity of the kinase. The work described is the first to address these questions.
Results: Vaccinia virus protein H5R was phosphorylated by the B1R protein kinase in vitro, digested with V8 protease, and phosphopeptides separated by HPLC. The N-terminal sequence of one radioactively labelled phosphopeptide was determined and found to correspond to residues 81-87 of the protein, with Thr-84 and Thr-85 being phosphorylated. A synthetic peptide based on this region of the protein was shown to be a substrate for the B1R protein kinase, and the extent of phosphorylation was substantially decreased if either Thr residue was replaced by an Ala.
Conclusions: We have identified the first phosphorylation site for the vaccinia virus B1R protein kinase. This gives important information about the substrate-specificity of the enzyme, which differs from that of other known protein kinases. It remains to be seen whether the same site is phosphorylated in vivo
Novel fabrication technique for planar glass waveguides
A novel technique has been developed for the deposition of low-loss planar glass waveguides by directly spin coating from the liquid, thus overcoming the problems of reproducing glass stoichiometry when depositing from the vapour
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Extracting longitudinal shower development information from crystal calorimetry plus tracking
We present an approach to derive longitudinal shower development information from the longitudinally unsegmented BABAR electromagnetic calorimeter by using tracking information. Our algorithm takes advantage of the good three-dimensional tracking resolution of BABAR, which provides an independent geometric constraint on the shower as measured in the BABAR crystal calorimeter. We show that adding the derived longitudinal shower development information to standard particle identification algorithms significantly improves the low-momentum separation of pions from electrons and muons. We also verify that the energy dependence of the electromagnetic shower development we measure is consistent with the prediction of a standard electromagnetic shower model
Negative Kaons in Dense Baryonic Matter
Kaon polarization operator in dense baryonic matter of arbitrary isotopic
composition is calculated including s- and p-wave kaon-baryon interactions. The
regular part of the polarization operator is extracted from the realistic
kaon-nucleon interaction based on the chiral and 1/N_c expansion. Contributions
of the Lambda(1116), Sigma(1195), Sigma*(1385) resonances are taken explicitly
into account in the pole and regular terms with inclusion of mean-field
potentials. The baryon-baryon correlations are incorporated and fluctuation
contributions are estimated. Results are applied for K- in neutron star matter.
Within our model a second-order phase transition to the s-wave K- condensate
state occurs at rho_c \gsim 4 \rho_0 once the baryon-baryon correlations are
included. We show that the second-order phase transition to the p-wave
condensate state may occur at densities in
dependence on the parameter choice. We demonstrate that a first-order phase
transition to a proton-enriched (approximately isospin-symmetric) nucleon
matter with a p-wave K- condensate can occur at smaller densities, \rho\lsim 2
\rho_0. The transition is accompanied by the suppression of hyperon
concentrations.Comment: 41 pages, 24 figures, revtex4 styl
Polychromatic flow cytometry is more sensitive than microscopy in detecting small monoclonal plasma cell populations
Background
There is an emerging role for flow cytometry (FC) in the assessment of small populations of plasma cells (PC). However, FC's utility has been questioned due to consistent underestimation of the percentage of PC compared to microscopy.
Methods
A retrospective study was performed on bone marrow samples analysed by 8-colour FC. Plasma cell populations were classified as polyclonal or monoclonal based on FC analysis. FC findings were compared with microscopy of aspirates, histology and immunohistochemistry of trephine biopsies, and immunofixation (IFX) of serum and/or urine.
Results
FC underestimated PC compared to aspirate and trephine microscopy. The 10% diagnostic cutoff for MM on aspirate microscopy corresponded to a 3.5% cutoff on FC. Abnormal plasma cell morphology by aspirate microscopy and clonality by FC correlated in 229 of 294 cases (78%). However, in 50 cases, FC demonstrated a monoclonal population but microscopy reported no abnormality. In 15 cases, abnormalities were reported by microscopy but not by FC. Clonality assessment by trephine microscopy and FC agreed in 251/280 cases (90%), but all 29 discordant cases were monoclonal by FC and not monoclonal by microscopy. These cases had fewer PC and proportionally more polyclonal PC, and when IFX detected a paraprotein, it had the same light chain as in the PC determined by FC.
Conclusions
FC was more sensitive in detecting monoclonal populations that were small or accompanied by polyclonal PC. This study supports the inclusion of FC in the evaluation of PC, especially in the assessment of small population
Experimental observation of nonclassical effects on single-photon detection rates
It is often asserted that quantum effects can be observed in coincidence
detection rates or other correlations, but never in the rate of single-photon
detection. We observe nonclassical interference in a singles rate, thanks to
the intrinsic nonlinearity of photon counters. This is due to a dependence of
the effective detection efficiency on the quantum statistics of the light beam.
Such measurements of detector response to photon pairs promise to shed light on
the microscopic aspects of silicon photodetectors, and on general issues of
quantum measurement and decoherence.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Neutrino Cooling of Neutron Stars. Medium effects
This review demonstrates that neutrino emission from dense hadronic component
in neutron stars is subject of strong modifications due to collective effects
in the nuclear matter. With the most important in-medium processes incorporated
in the cooling code an overall agreement with available soft X ray data can be
easily achieved. With these findings so called "standard" and "non-standard"
cooling scenarios are replaced by one general "nuclear medium cooling scenario"
which relates slow and rapid neutron star coolings to the star masses (interior
densities). In-medium effects take important part also at early hot stage of
neutron star evolution decreasing the neutrino opacity for less massive and
increasing for more massive neutron stars. A formalism for calculation of
neutrino radiation from nuclear matter is presented that treats on equal
footing one-nucleon and multiple-nucleon processes as well as reactions with
resonance bosons and condensates. Cooling history of neutron stars with quark
cores is also discussed.Comment: To be published in "Physics of Neutron Star Interiors", Eds. D.
Blaschke, N.K. Glendenning, A. Sedrakian, Springer, Heidelberg (2001
On the alpha activity of natural tungsten isotopes
The indication for the alpha decay of 180-W with a half-life
T1/2=1.1+0.8-0.4(stat)+-0.3(syst)x10^18 yr has been observed for the first time
with the help of the super-low background 116-CdWO_4 crystal scintillators. In
conservative approach the lower limit on half-life of 180-W has been
established as T1/2>0.7x10^18 yr at 90% C.L. Besides, new T1/2 bounds were set
for alpha decay of 182-W, 183-W, 184-W and 186-W at the level of 10^20 yr.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.
Vacuum polarization in two-dimensional static spacetimes and dimensional reduction
We obtain an analytic approximation for the effective action of a quantum
scalar field in a general static two-dimensional spacetime. We apply this to
the dilaton gravity model resulting from the spherical reduction of a massive,
non-minimally coupled scalar field in the four-dimensional Schwarzschild
geometry. Careful analysis near the event horizon shows the resulting
two-dimensional system to be regular in the Hartle-Hawking state for general
values of the field mass, coupling, and angular momentum, while at spatial
infinity it reduces to a thermal gas at the black-hole temperature.Comment: REVTeX 4, 23 pages. Accepted by PRD. Minor modifications from
original versio
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