Complete Renormalization Group Improvement-Avoiding Factorization and Renormalization Scale Dependence in QCD Predictions

For moments of leptoproduction structure functions we show that all dependence on the renormalization and factorization scales disappears, provided that all the ultraviolet logarithms involving the physical energy scale Q are completely resummed. The approach is closely related to Grunberg's method of Effective Charges. A direct and simple method for extracting the universal dimensional transmutation parameter of QCD from experimental data is advocated.Comment: 16 pages, no figure

Informing Primary School Nutritional Policy: Effects of Mid-Morning Snacks on Appetite and Energy Control

The purpose of this research was to inform primary school nutritional policy by identifying which mid-morning snack would be more beneficial to consume from an appetite control perspective. During morning break 14 girls and 11 boys were provided with 160 ml of semi-skimmed milk or 153 g of apple in a randomised crossover manner. Visual analogue scales were used to record hunger, prospective food consumption and fullness, immediately before and after breakfast, immediately before and after the mid-morning snack, and every 60 min until 21:00 on each day. School dinner/packed lunch energy intakes were assessed 90 min following the mid-morning snacks, in addition to evening energy intake. Children felt less hungry and could eat less when apple was consumed, however lunch and evening energy intakes were not different. Fluctuations in appetite did not translate into differences in energy intake therefore both milk and fruit should be promoted as mid-morning snacks in primary schools

Novel bi- and trifunctional inhibitors of tumor-associated proteolytic systems

Serine proteases, cysteine proteases, and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are involved in cancer cell invasion and metastasis. Recently, a recombinant bifunctional inhibitor (chCysuPA(19-31)) directed against cysteine proteases and the urokinasetype plasminogen activator (uPA)/plasmin serine protease system was generated by introducing the uPA receptor (uPAR)binding site of uPA into chicken cystatin (chCysWT). In the present study, we designed and recombinantly produced multifunctional inhibitors also targeting MMPs. The inhibitors comprise the Nterminal inhibitory domain of human TIMP-1 (tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase-1) or TIMP-3, fused to chCysuPA(19-31) or chCysWT. As demonstrated by various techniques, these fusion proteins effectively interfere with all three targeted protease systems. In in vitro Matrigel invasion assays, the addition of recombinant inhibitors strongly reduced invasion of ovarian cancer cells (OVMZ-6\#8). Additionally, OVMZ 6\#8 cells were stably transfected with expression plasmids encoding the various inhibitors. Synthesis and secretion of the inhibitors was verified by a newly developed ELISA, which selectively detects the recombinant proteins. Invasive capacity of inhibitorproducing cells was significantly reduced compared to vectortransfected control cells. Thus, these novel, compact, and smallsize inhibitors directed against up to three different tumorassociated proteolytic systems may represent promising agents for prevention of tumor cell migration and metastasis

RS-invariant all-orders renormalon resummations for some QCD observables

We propose a renormalon-inspired resummation of QCD perturbation theory based on approximating the renormalization scheme (RS) invariant effective charge beta-function coefficients by the portion containing the highest power of $b$=$\frac{1}{6}(11N$--$2N_{f})$, for SU($N$) QCD with $N_{f}$ quark flavours. This can be accomplished using exact large-$N_{f}$ all-orders results. The resulting resummation is RS-invariant and the exact next-to-leading order (NLO) and next-to-NLO (NNLO) coefficients in any RS are included. This improves on a previously employed naive resummation of the leading-$b$ piece of the perturbative coefficients which is RS-dependent, making its comparison with fixed-order perturbative results ambiguous. The RS-invariant resummation is used to assess the reliability of fixed-order perturbation theory for the $e^{+}e^{-}$ $R$-ratio, the analogous $\tau$-lepton decay ratio $R_{\tau}$, and Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) sum rules, by comparing it with the exact NNLO results in the effective charge RS. For the $R$-ratio and $R_{\tau}$, where large-order perturbative behaviour is dominated by a leading ultra-violet renormalon singularity, the comparison indicates fixed-order perturbation theory to be very reliable. For DIS sum rules, which have a leading infra-red renormalon singularity, the performance is rather poor. In this way we estimate that at LEP/SLD energies ideal data on the $R$-ratio could determine $\alpha_{s}(M_{Z})$ to three-significant figures, and for the $R_{\tau}$ we estimate a theoretical uncertainty $\delta\alpha_{s}(m_{\tau})\simeq0.008$ corresponding to $\delta\alpha_{s}(M_{Z})\simeq0.001$. This encouragingly small uncertainty is much less than has recently been deduced from comparison with the ambiguous naive resummation.Comment: 25 pages, uses LaTeX, 12 Postscript figures, epsfig.sty 'elsart.sty' and 'elsart12.sty' are available via anonymous-ftp at ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/supported/elsevie

Mass Distributions Beyond TDHF

The mass distributions for giant dipole resonances in 32S and 132Sn decaying through particle emission and for deep-inelastic collisions between 16O nuclei have been investigated by implementing the Balian-Veneroni variational technique based upon a three-dimensional time-dependent Hartree-Fock code with realistic Skyrme interactions. The mass distributions obtained have been shown to be significantly larger than the standard TDHF results.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, Based on talk by J. M. A. Broomfield at the FUSION08 Conference, Chicago, September 22-26, 2008. Conference proceedings to be published by AI

Searching for planet-driven dust spirals in ALMA visibilities

Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) observations of the thermal emission from protoplanetary disc dust have revealed a wealth of substructures that could evidence embedded planets, but planet-driven spirals, one of the more compelling lines of evidence, remain relatively rare. Existing works have focused on detecting these spirals using methods that operate in image space. Here, we explore the planet detection capabilities of fitting planet-driven spirals to disc observations directly in visibility space. We test our method on synthetic ALMA observations of planet-containing model discs for a range of disc/observational parameters, finding it significantly outperforms image residuals in identifying spirals in these observations and is able to identify spirals in regions of the parameter space in which no gaps are detected. These tests suggest that a visibility-space fitting approach warrants further investigation and may be able to find planet-driven spirals in observations that have not yet been found with existing approaches. We also test our method on six discs in the Taurus molecular cloud observed with ALMA at 1.33 mm, but find no evidence for planet-driven spirals. We find that the minimum planet masses necessary to drive detectable spirals range from ≈0.03 to 0.5 MJup over orbital radii of 10–100 au, with planet masses below these thresholds potentially hiding in such disc observations. Conversely, we suggest that planets ≳0.5–1 MJup can likely be ruled out over orbital radii of ≈20–60 au on the grounds that we would have detected them if they were present

Natural selection promotes antigenic evolvability

The hypothesis that evolvability - the capacity to evolve by natural selection - is itself the object of natural selection is highly intriguing but remains controversial due in large part to a paucity of direct experimental evidence. The antigenic variation mechanisms of microbial pathogens provide an experimentally tractable system to test whether natural selection has favored mechanisms that increase evolvability. Many antigenic variation systems consist of paralogous unexpressed ‘cassettes’ that recombine into an expression site to rapidly alter the expressed protein. Importantly, the magnitude of antigenic change is a function of the genetic diversity among the unexpressed cassettes. Thus, evidence that selection favors among-cassette diversity is direct evidence that natural selection promotes antigenic evolvability. We used the Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, as a model to test the prediction that natural selection favors amino acid diversity among unexpressed vls cassettes and thereby promotes evolvability in a primary surface antigen, VlsE. The hypothesis that diversity among vls cassettes is favored by natural selection was supported in each B. burgdorferi strain analyzed using both classical (dN/dS ratios) and Bayesian population genetic analyses of genetic sequence data. This hypothesis was also supported by the conservation of highly mutable tandem-repeat structures across B. burgdorferi strains despite a near complete absence of sequence conservation. Diversification among vls cassettes due to natural selection and mutable repeat structures promotes long-term antigenic evolvability of VlsE. These findings provide a direct demonstration that molecular mechanisms that enhance evolvability of surface antigens are an evolutionary adaptation. The molecular evolutionary processes identified here can serve as a model for the evolution of antigenic evolvability in many pathogens which utilize similar strategies to establish chronic infections