51,140 research outputs found
Critical Steps of Plasmodium falciparum Ookinete Maturation
The egress and fertilization of Plasmodium gametes and development of a motile ookinete are the first crucial steps that mediate the successful transmission of the malaria parasites from humans to the Anopheles vector. However, limited information exists about the cell biology and regulation of this process. Technical impediments in the establishment of in vitro conditions for ookinete maturation in Plasmodium falciparum and other human malaria parasites further constrain a detailed characterization of ookinete maturation. Here, using fluorescence microscopy and immunolabeling, we compared P. falciparum ookinete maturation in Anopheles coluzzii mosquitoes in vivo and in cell culture in vitro. Our results identified two critical steps in ookinete maturation that are regulated by distinct mosquito factors, thereby highlighting the role of the mosquito environment in the transmission efficiency of malaria parasites
A Dain Inequality with charge
We prove an upper bound for angular-momentum and charge in terms of the mass
for electro-vacuum asymptotically flat axisymmetric initial data sets with
simply connected orbit space
A percolation transition in Yang-Mills matter at finite number of colours
We examine baryonic matter at quark chemical potential of the order of the
confinement scale, \mu_q\sim \lqcd. In this regime, quarks are supposed to be
confined but baryons are close to the ``tightly packed limit'' where they
nearly overlap in configuration space. We show that this system will exhibit a
percolation phase transition {\em when varied in the number of colours} :
at high , large distance correlations at quark level are possible even if
the quarks are essentially confined. At low , this does not happen. We
discuss the relevance of this for dense nuclear matter, and argue that our
results suggest a new ``phase transition'', varying at constant .Comment: Accepted for publication, Physical Review Letters. Title changed from
original, "Quarkyonic percolation at finite number of colors", at the request
of the edito
Effective restoration of chiral and axial symmetries at finite temperature and density
The effective restoration of chiral and axial symmetries is investigated
within the framework of the SU(3) Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. The topological
susceptibility, modeled from lattice data at finite temperature, is used to
extract the temperature dependence of the coupling strength of the anomaly. The
study of the scalar and pseudoscalar mixing angles is performed in order to
discuss the evolution of the flavor combinations of pairs and its
consequences for the degeneracy of chiral partners. A similar study at zero
temperature and finite density is also realized.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Talk given at Strange Quark Matter 2004, Cape
Town, South Africa, 15-20 September, 200
Slow and fast components in the X-ray light curves of Gamma-Ray Bursts
Gamma-ray burst light curves show quite different patterns: from very simple
to extremely complex. We present a temporal and spectral study of the light
curves in three energy bands (2-5, 5-10, 10-26 keV) of ten GRBs detected by the
Wide Field Cameras on board BeppoSAX. For some events the time profiles are
characterized by peaks superposed on a slowly evolving pedestal, which in some
cases becomes less apparent at higher energies. We describe this behaviour with
the presence of two components (slow and fast) having different variability
time scales. We modelled the time evolution of slow components by means of an
analytical function able to describe asymmetric rising and decaying profiles.
The residual light curves, after the subtraction of the slow components,
generally show structures more similar to the original curves in the highest
energy band. Spectral study of these two components was performed evaluating
their hardness ratios, used also to derive photon indices. Slow components are
found generally softer than the fast ones suggesting that their origin is
likely different. Being typical photon indices lower than those of the
afterglows there is no evidence that the emission processes are similar.
Another interesting possibility is that slow components can be related to the
presence of a hot photosphere having a thermal spectrum with kT around a few
keV superposed to a rapid variable non-thermal emission of the fast component.Comment: 16 pages, 20 figures (18 color, 2 B&W), accepted for publication in
Astronomy and Astrophysic
Reconstruction of Quark Mass Matrices with Weak Basis Texture Zeroes from Experimental Input
All quark mass matrices with texture zeroes obtained through weak basis
transformations are confronted with the experimental data. The reconstruction
of the quark mass matrices M_u and M_d at the electroweak scale is performed in
a weak basis where the matrices are Hermitian and have a maximum of three
vanishing elements. The same procedure is also accomplished for the Yukawa
coupling matrices at the grand unification scale in the context of the Standard
Model and its minimal supersymmetric extension as well as of the two Higgs
doublet model. The analysis of all viable power structures on the quark Yukawa
coupling matrices that could naturally appear from a Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism
is also presented.Comment: RevTeX4, 3 tables, 21 pages; misprints corrected and one reference
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