Finite-size correction and bulk hole-excitations for special case of an open XXZ chain with nondiagonal boundary terms at roots of unity

Using our solution for the open spin-1/2 XXZ quantum spin chain with N spins and two arbitrary boundary parameters at roots of unity, the central charge and the conformal dimensions for bulk hole excitations are derived from the 1/N correction to the energy (Casimir energy).Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX, v2: minor changes and 3 references adde

How does the early life environment influence the oral microbiome and determine oral health outcomes in childhood?

The first 1000 days of life, from conception to 2 years, are a critical window for the influence of environmental exposures on the assembly of the oral microbiome, which is the precursor to dental caries (decay), one of the most prevalentmicrobially induced disorders worldwide. While it is known that the human microbiome is susceptible to environmental exposures, there is limited understanding of the impact of prenatal and early childhood exposures on the oral microbiome trajectory and oral health. A barrier has been the lack of technology to directly measure the foetal "exposome", which includes nutritional and toxic exposures crossing the placenta. Another barrier has been the lack of statistical methods to account for the high dimensional data generated by-omic assays. Through identifying which early life exposures influence the oral microbiome and modify oral health, these findings can be translated into interventions to reduce dental decay prevalence.Christina Jane Adler, Kim-Anh Lê Cao, Toby Hughes, Piyush Kumar, Christine Austi

Any-degrees-of-freedom (anyDOF) registration for the characterization of freeform surfaces

This paper presents an any-degrees-of-freedom (anyDOF) registration method for the characterization of freeform surfaces. The method attempts to fill the research gap regarding traditional surface registration methods which are normally dedicated to solving the global optimization problem with all DOF but they lack flexibility. The proposed anyDOF method is capable of registering surfaces with any specified combination of DOF. This is particularly useful when some of the DOF are known to be unchanged according to the a priori knowledge. The anyDOF surface registration method is regarded as a typical optimization problem of finding the minimum distance from target surface to the reference surface, with constraints of the unwanted DOF. The problem is solved by the Levenberg-Marquardt method. Simulated experiments for a two-dimensional (2D) profile and a three-dimensional (3D) surface were undertaken, together with three measurement experiments including a fluid-jet polished surface, a bonnet polished surface and a diamond machined freeform surface. Experimental results show that the anyDOF registration method is highly flexible in the characterization of freeform surfaces

Boundary energy of the general open XXZ chain at roots of unity

We have recently proposed a Bethe Ansatz solution of the open spin-1/2 XXZ quantum spin chain with general integrable boundary terms (containing six free boundary parameters) at roots of unity. We use this solution, together with an appropriate string hypothesis, to compute the boundary energy of the chain in the thermodynamic limit.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures; v2: some comments, a reference and a footnote adde

Some Findings Concerning Requirements in Agile Methodologies

gile methods have appeared as an attractive alternative to conventional methodologies. These methods try to reduce the time to market and, indirectly, the cost of the product through flexible development and deep customer involvement. The processes related to requirements have been extensively studied in literature, in most cases in the frame of conventional methods. However, conclusions of conventional methodologies could not be necessarily valid for Agile; in some issues, conventional and Agile processes are radically different. As recent surveys report, inadequate project requirements is one of the most conflictive issues in agile approaches and better understanding about this is needed. This paper describes some findings concerning requirements activities in a project developed under an agile methodology. The project intended to evolve an existing product and, therefore, some background information was available. The major difficulties encountered were related to non-functional needs and management of requirements dependencies

In Situ Observations of the Deformation Behavior and Fracture Mechanisms of Ti-45Al-2Nb-2Mn+0.8 vol pct TiB₂

The deformation and fracture mechanisms of a nearly lamellar Ti-45Al-2Nb-2Mn (at. pct) + 0.8 vol pct TiB₂ intermetallic, processed into an actual low-pressure turbine blade, were examined by means of in situ tensile and tensile-creep experiments performed inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Low elongation-to-failure and brittle fracture were observed at room temperature, while the larger elongations-to-failure at high temperature facilitated the observation of the onset and propagation of damage. It was found that the dominant damage mechanisms at high temperature depended on the applied stress level. Interlamellar cracking was observed only above 390 MPa, which suggests that there is a threshold below which this mechanism is inhibited. Failure during creep tests at 250 MPa was controlled by intercolony cracking. The in situ observations demonstrated that the colony boundaries are damage nucleation and propagation sites during tensile creep, and they seem to be the weakest link in the microstructure for the tertiary creep stage. Therefore, it is proposed that interlamellar areas are critical zones for fracture at higher stresses, whereas lower stress, high-temperature creep conditions lead to intercolony cracking and fracture.The authors are grateful to Industria de Turbo Propulsores, S.A. for supplying the intermetallic blades. Funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through projects MAT2009-14547-C02-01 and MAT2009-14547-C02-02 is acknowledged. The Madrid Regional Government supported this project partially through the ESTRUMAT grant P2009/MAT-1585. C.J.B. acknowledges the support from Grant SAB2009-0045 from the Spanish Ministry of Education for his sabbatical stage in Madrid.Publicad

Non-Markovian dynamics in a spin star system: The failure of thermalization

In most cases, a small system weakly interacting with a thermal bath will finally reach the thermal state with the temperature of the bath. We show that this intuitive picture is not always true by a spin star model where non-Markov effect predominates in the whole dynamical process. The spin star system consists a central spin homogeneously interacting with an ensemble of identical noninteracting spins. We find that the correlation time of the bath is infinite, which implies that the bath has a perfect memory, and that the dynamical evolution of the central spin must be non- Markovian. A direct consequence is that the final state of the central spin is not the thermal state equilibrium with the bath, but a steady state which depends on its initial state.Comment: 8 page

Dark matter search results from the complete exposure of the PICO-60 C3F8 bubble chamber

[EN] Final results are reported from operation of the PICO-60 C3F8 dark matter detector, a bubble chamber filled with 52 kg of C3F8 located in the SNOLAB underground laboratory. The chamber was operated at thermodynamic thresholds as low as 1.2 keV without loss of stability. A new blind 1404-kg-day exposure at 2.45 keV threshold was acquired with approximately the same expected total background rate as the previous 1167-kg-day exposure at 3.3 keV. This increased exposure is enabled in part by a new optical tracking analysis to better identify events near detector walls, permitting a larger fiducial volume. These results set the most stringent direct-detection constraint to date on the weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP)-proton spin-dependent cross section at 3.2 x 10(-41) cm(2) for a 25 GeV WIMP, improving on previous PICO results for 3-5 GeV WIMPs by an order of magnitude.The PICO Collaboration wishes to thank SNOLAB and its staff for support through underground space, logistical and technical services. SNOLAB operations are supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Province of Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, with underground access provided by Vale at the Creighton mine site. We are grateful to Genevieve Belanger and Alexander Pukhov of the Universit e de Savoie for their useful correspondence regarding the interpretation of PICO results. We wish to acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for funding. We acknowledge the support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Grants No. 0919526, No. 1506337, No. 1242637, No. 1205987, and No. 1806722). We acknowledge that this work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics (under Award No. DE-SC-0012161), by the DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award, by DGAPA-UNAM (PAPIIT No. IA100118) and Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACyT, Mexico, Grants No. 252167 and No. A1-S-8960), by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Government of India, under the Centre for AstroParticle Physics II project (CAPP-II) at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP), European Regional Development FundProject "Engineering applications of microworld physics" (No. CZ. 02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000766), and the Spanish (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities) Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (Red Consolider MultiDark, FPA2017-90566-REDC). This work is partially supported by the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago through NSF Grant No. 1125897, and an endowment from the Kavli Foundation and its founder Fred Kavli. We also wish to acknowledge the support from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359, and from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-76RL01830. We also thank Compute Canada (www.computecanada.ca) and the Centre for Advanced Computing, ACENET, Calcul Quebec, Compute Ontario and WestGrid for computational support.Amole, C.; Ardid Ramírez, M.; Arnquist, I.; Asner, DM.; Baxter, D.; Behnke, E.; Bressler, M.... (2019). Dark matter search results from the complete exposure of the PICO-60 C3F8 bubble chamber. Physical Review D: covering particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology. 100(2):1-9. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.100.022001191002Olive, K. A. (2014). Review of Particle Physics. Chinese Physics C, 38(9), 090001. doi:10.1088/1674-1137/38/9/090001Komatsu, E., Dunkley, J., Nolta, M. R., Bennett, C. L., Gold, B., Hinshaw, G., … Wright, E. L. (2009). FIVE-YEAR WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE OBSERVATIONS: COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 180(2), 330-376. doi:10.1088/0067-0049/180/2/330Jungman, G., Kamionkowski, M., & Griest, K. (1996). Supersymmetric dark matter. Physics Reports, 267(5-6), 195-373. doi:10.1016/0370-1573(95)00058-5Goodman, M. W., & Witten, E. (1985). Detectability of certain dark-matter candidates. Physical Review D, 31(12), 3059-3063. doi:10.1103/physrevd.31.3059Amole, C., Ardid, M., Arnquist, I. J., Asner, D. M., Baxter, D., Behnke, E., … Campion, P. (2017). Dark Matter Search Results from the PICO−60 C3F8 Bubble Chamber. Physical Review Letters, 118(25). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.251301Amole, C., Ardid, M., Asner, D. M., Baxter, D., Behnke, E., Bhattacharjee, P., … Broemmelsiek, D. (2016). Dark matter search results from the PICO-60CF3Ibubble chamber. Physical Review D, 93(5). doi:10.1103/physrevd.93.052014McLure, I. A., Soares, V. A. M., & Edmonds, B. (1982). Surface tension of perfluoropropane, perfluoro-n-butane, perfluoro-n-hexane, perfluoro-octane, perfluorotributylamine and n-pentane. Application of the principle of corresponding states to the surface tension of perfluoroalkanes. Journal of the Chemical Society, Faraday Transactions 1: Physical Chemistry in Condensed Phases, 78(7), 2251. doi:10.1039/f19827802251Baxter, D., Chen, C. J., Crisler, M., Cwiok, T., Dahl, C. E., Grimsted, A., … Zhang, J. (2017). First Demonstration of a Scintillating Xenon Bubble Chamber for Detecting Dark Matter and Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering. Physical Review Letters, 118(23). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.231301Aubin, F., Auger, M., Genest, M.-H., Giroux, G., Gornea, R., Faust, R., … Storey, C. (2008). Discrimination of nuclear recoils from alpha particles with superheated liquids. New Journal of Physics, 10(10), 103017. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/10/10/103017Amole, C., Ardid, M., Asner, D. M., Baxter, D., Behnke, E., Bhattacharjee, P., … Broemmelsiek, D. (2015). Dark Matter Search Results from the PICO-2LC3F8Bubble Chamber. Physical Review Letters, 114(23). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.114.231302Pozzi, S. A., Padovani, E., & Marseguerra, M. (2003). MCNP-PoliMi: a Monte-Carlo code for correlation measurements. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 513(3), 550-558. doi:10.1016/j.nima.2003.06.012Agostinelli, S., Allison, J., Amako, K., Apostolakis, J., Araujo, H., Arce, P., … Barrand, G. (2003). Geant4—a simulation toolkit. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 506(3), 250-303. doi:10.1016/s0168-9002(03)01368-8Allison, J., Amako, K., Apostolakis, J., Araujo, H., Arce Dubois, P., Asai, M., … Chytracek, R. (2006). Geant4 developments and applications. IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, 53(1), 270-278. doi:10.1109/tns.2006.869826Robinson, A. E. (2014). New libraries for simulating neutron scattering in dark matter detector calibrations. Physical Review C, 89(3). doi:10.1103/physrevc.89.032801Foreman-Mackey, D., Hogg, D. W., Lang, D., & Goodman, J. (2013). emcee: The MCMC Hammer. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 125(925), 306-312. doi:10.1086/670067Amaudruz, P.-A., Baldwin, M., Batygov, M., Beltran, B., Bina, C. E., Bishop, D., … Broerman, B. (2018). First Results from the DEAP-3600 Dark Matter Search with Argon at SNOLAB. Physical Review Letters, 121(7). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.071801Cowan, G., Cranmer, K., Gross, E., & Vitells, O. (2011). Asymptotic formulae for likelihood-based tests of new physics. The European Physical Journal C, 71(2). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1554-0Lewin, J. D., & Smith, P. F. (1996). Review of mathematics, numerical factors, and corrections for dark matter experiments based on elastic nuclear recoil. Astroparticle Physics, 6(1), 87-112. doi:10.1016/s0927-6505(96)00047-3Fitzpatrick, A. L., Haxton, W., Katz, E., Lubbers, N., & Xu, Y. (2013). The effective field theory of dark matter direct detection. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2013(02), 004-004. doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2013/02/004Anand, N., Fitzpatrick, A. L., & Haxton, W. C. (2014). Weakly interacting massive particle-nucleus elastic scattering response. Physical Review C, 89(6). doi:10.1103/physrevc.89.065501Gresham, M. I., & Zurek, K. M. (2014). Effect of nuclear response functions in dark matter direct detection. Physical Review D, 89(12). doi:10.1103/physrevd.89.123521Gluscevic, V., Gresham, M. I., McDermott, S. D., Peter, A. H. G., & Zurek, K. M. (2015). Identifying the theory of dark matter with direct detection. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2015(12), 057-057. doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2015/12/057Amole, C., Ardid, M., Arnquist, I. J., Asner, D. M., Baxter, D., Behnke, E., … Brice, S. J. (2016). Improved dark matter search results from PICO-2L Run 2. Physical Review D, 93(6). doi:10.1103/physrevd.93.061101Behnke, E., Besnier, M., Bhattacharjee, P., Dai, X., Das, M., Davour, A., … Zacek, V. (2017). Final results of the PICASSO dark matter search experiment. Astroparticle Physics, 90, 85-92. doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2017.02.005Felizardo, M., Girard, T. A., Morlat, T., Fernandes, A. C., Ramos, A. R., Marques, J. G., … Marques, R. (2014). The SIMPLE Phase II dark matter search. Physical Review D, 89(7). doi:10.1103/physrevd.89.072013Aprile, E., Aalbers, J., Agostini, F., Alfonsi, M., Althueser, L., Amaro, F. D., … Baudis, L. (2019). Constraining the Spin-Dependent WIMP-Nucleon Cross Sections with XENON1T. Physical Review Letters, 122(14). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.122.141301Fu, C., Cui, X., Zhou, X., Chen, X., Chen, Y., … Fang, D. (2017). Spin-Dependent Weakly-Interacting-Massive-Particle–Nucleon Cross Section Limits from First Data of PandaX-II Experiment. Physical Review Letters, 118(7). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.071301Aartsen, M. G., Ackermann, M., Adams, J., Aguilar, J. A., Ahlers, M., Ahrens, M., … Ansseau, I. (2017). Search for annihilating dark matter in the Sun with 3 years of IceCube data. The European Physical Journal C, 77(3). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4689-9Tanaka, T., Abe, K., Hayato, Y., Iida, T., Kameda, J., Koshio, Y., … Nakahata, M. (2011). AN INDIRECT SEARCH FOR WEAKLY INTERACTING MASSIVE PARTICLES IN THE SUN USING 3109.6 DAYS OF UPWARD-GOING MUONS IN SUPER-KAMIOKANDE. The Astrophysical Journal, 742(2), 78. doi:10.1088/0004-637x/742/2/78Choi, K., Abe, K., Haga, Y., Hayato, Y., Iyogi, K., Kameda, J., … Nakahata, M. (2015). Search for Neutrinos from Annihilation of Captured Low-Mass Dark Matter Particles in the Sun by Super-Kamiokande. Physical Review Letters, 114(14). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.114.141301Akerib, D. S., Araújo, H. M., Bai, X., Bailey, A. J., Balajthy, J., Beltrame, P., … Boulton, E. M. (2016). Results on the Spin-Dependent Scattering of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles on Nucleons from the Run 3 Data of the LUX Experiment. Physical Review Letters, 116(16). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.116.161302Adrián-Martínez, S., Albert, A., André, M., Anton, G., Ardid, M., Aubert, J.-J., … Basa, S. (2016). Limits on dark matter annihilation in the sun using the ANTARES neutrino telescope. Physics Letters B, 759, 69-74. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2016.05.019Adrián-Martínez, S., Albert, A., André, M., Anton, G., Ardid, M., Aubert, J.-J., … Basa, S. (2016). A search for Secluded Dark Matter in the Sun with the ANTARES neutrino telescope. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2016(05), 016-016. doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2016/05/016Agnes, P., Albuquerque, I. F. M., Alexander, T., Alton, A. K., Araujo, G. R., Asner, D. M., … Batignani, G. (2018). Low-Mass Dark Matter Search with the DarkSide-50 Experiment. Physical Review Letters, 121(8). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.081307Aprile, E., Aalbers, J., Agostini, F., Alfonsi, M., Althueser, L., Amaro, F. D., … Bauermeister, B. (2018). Dark Matter Search Results from a One Ton-Year Exposure of XENON1T. Physical Review Letters, 121(11). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.111302Akerib, D. S., Alsum, S., Araújo, H. M., Bai, X., Bailey, A. J., Balajthy, J., … Biesiadzinski, T. P. (2017). Results from a Search for Dark Matter in the Complete LUX Exposure. Physical Review Letters, 118(2). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.021303Tan, A., Xiao, M., Cui, X., Chen, X., Chen, Y., Fang, D., … Gong, H. (2016). Dark Matter Results from First 98.7 Days of Data from the PandaX-II Experiment. Physical Review Letters, 117(12). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.117.121303Agnese, R., Anderson, A. J., Aramaki, T., Asai, M., Baker, W., Balakishiyeva, D., … Billard, J. (2016). New Results from the Search for Low-Mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with the CDMS Low Ionization Threshold Experiment. Physical Review Letters, 116(7). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.116.071301Angloher, G., Bento, A., Bucci, C., Canonica, L., Defay, X., Erb, A., … Zöller, A. (2016). Results on light dark matter particles with a low-threshold CRESST-II detector. The European Physical Journal C, 76(1). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-3877-3Aprile, E., Aalbers, J., Agostini, F., Alfonsi, M., Amaro, F. D., Anthony, M., … Bauermeister, B. (2016). XENON100 dark matter results from a combination of 477 live days. Physical Review D, 94(12). doi:10.1103/physrevd.94.122001Agnese, R., Anderson, A. J., Asai, M., Balakishiyeva, D., Basu Thakur, R., Bauer, D. A., … Bowles, M. A. (2014). Search for Low-Mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with SuperCDMS. Physical Review Letters, 112(24). doi:10.1103/physrevlett.112.241302Agnese, R., Anderson, A. J., Asai, M., Balakishiyeva, D., Barker, D., Basu Thakur, R., … Bowles, M. A. (2015). Improved WIMP-search reach of the CDMS II germanium data. Physical Review D, 92(7). doi:10.1103/physrevd.92.072003Hehn, L., Armengaud, E., Arnaud, Q., Augier, C., Benoît, A., Bergé, L., … Yakushev, E. (2016). Improved EDELWEISS-III sensitivity for low-mass WIMPs using a profile likelihood approach. The European Physical Journal C, 76(10). doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4388-

Pregnane X receptor activation constrains mucosal NF-κB activity in active inflammatory bowel disease

Background The Pregnane X Receptor (PXR) is a principal signal transducer in mucosal responses to xenobiotic stress. It is well-recognized that inflammatory bowel disease is accompanied by xenobiotic stress, but the importance of the PXR in limiting inflammatory responses in inflammatory bowel disease remains obscure at best. Methods We stimulate a total of 106 colonic biopsies from 19 Crohn’s disease patients with active disease, 36 colonic biopsies from 8 control patients, colonic organo

Tri-meson-mixing of π\pi-η\eta-η′\eta' and ρ\rho-ω\omega-ϕ\phi in the light-cone quark model

The radiative transition form factors of the pseudoscalar mesons {$\pi$, $\eta$, $\eta'$} and the vector mesons {$\rho$, $\omega$, $\phi$} are restudied with $\pi$-$\eta$-$\eta'$ and $\rho$-$\omega$-$\phi$ in tri-meson-mixing pattern, which is described by tri-mixing matrices in the light-cone constituent quark model. The experimental transition decay widths are better reproduced with tri-meson-mixing than previous results in a two-mixing-angle scenario of only two-meson $\eta$-$\eta'$ mixing and $\omega$-$\phi$ mixing.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, final version to appear in EPJ