218 research outputs found
Constraints upon the CKM angle phi_2 (alpha) from Belle and BaBar
The Belle and BaBar experiments have measured branching fractions and CP
asymmetries in the charmless decay modes B0->pi+pi-, B0->rho+pi-/rho-pi+, and
B0->rho+rho-. From these measurements, constraints upon the CKM angle phi_2 can
be obtained. These constraints consistently indicate that phi_2 is around 100
degrees.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, contribution to the 6th International
Conference on Hyperons, Charm and Beauty Hadrons (BEACH 2004), Illinois
Institute of Technology, 27 June - 3 July 2004. Final version with notation
correction
Neural mechanisms of social influence in adolescence
During the transformative period of adolescence, social influence plays a prominent role in shaping young peopleâs emerging social identities, and can impact their propensity to engage in prosocial or risky behaviors. In this study, we examine the neural correlates of social influence from both parents and peers, two important sources of influence. Nineteen adolescents (age 16â18 years) completed a social influence task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. Social influence from both sources evoked activity in brain regions implicated in mentalizing (medial prefrontal cortex, left temporoparietal junction, right temporoparietal junction), reward (ventromedial prefrontal cortex), and self-control (right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). These results suggest that mental state reasoning, social reward and self-control processes may help adolescents to evaluate othersâ perspectives and overcome the prepotent force of their own antecedent attitudes to shift their attitudes toward those of others. Findings suggest common neural networks involved in social influence from both parents and peers
Elastic and inelastic SU(3)-breaking final-state interactions in B decays to pseudoscalar mesons
We discuss all contributions from Zweig-rule-satisfying SU(3)-breaking final
state interactions (FSIs)in the B -> PP decays (neglecting charmed intermediate
states), where PP=pi pi, pi K, KK, pi eta (eta'), and K eta (eta'). First,
effects of SU(3) breaking in rescattering through Pomeron exchange are studied.
Then, after making a plausible assumption concerning the pattern of SU(3)
breaking in non-Pomeron FSIs, we give general formulas for how the latter
modify short-distance (SD) amplitudes. In the SU(3) limit, these formulas
depend on three effective parameters characterizing the strength of all
non-Pomeron rescattering effects. We point out that the experimental bounds on
the B -> K^+K^- branching ratio may limit the value of only one of these FSI
parameters. Thus, the smallness of the B -> K^+K^- decay rate does not imply
negligible rescattering effects in other decays. Assuming a vanishing value of
this parameter, we perform various fits to the available B -> PP branching
ratios. The fits determine the quark-diagram SD amplitudes, the two remaining
FSI parameters and the weak angle gamma. While the set of all B -> PP branching
ratios is well described with gamma around its expected SM value, the fits
permit other values of gamma as well. For a couple of such good fits, we
predict asymmetries for the B -> K pi, pi^+ eta (eta'), K^+ eta (eta') decays
as well as the values of the CP-violating parameters S_{pi pi} and C_{pi pi}
for the time-dependent rate of B^0(t) -> pi^+ pi^-. Apart from a problem with
the recent B^+ -> pi^+ eta asymmetry measurement, comparison with the data
seems to favour the values of gamma in accordance with SM expectations.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figure
Measurement of the inclusive semileptonic branching fraction of B mesons and |Vcb|
We present a measurement of the electron spectrum from inclusive semileptonic
{\it B} decay, using 5.1 fb of data collected with the
Belle detector. A high-momentum lepton tag was used to separate the
semileptonic {\it B} decay electrons from secondary decay electrons. We
obtained the branching fraction, , with minimal model dependence.
From this measurement, we derive a value for the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa
matrix element .Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 3 table
MAKING ANIMALS ALCOHOLIC: SHIFTING LABORATORY MODELS OF ADDICTION
The use of animals as experimental organisms has been critical to the development of addiction research from the nineteenth century. They have been used as a means of generating reliable data regarding the processes of addiction that was not available from the study of human subjects. Their use, however, has been far from straightforward. Through focusing on the study of alcoholism, where the nonhuman animal proved a most reluctant collaborator, this paper will analyze the ways in which scientists attempted to deal with its determined sobriety and account for their consistent failure to replicate the volitional consumption of ethanol to the point of physical dependency. In doing so, we will see how the animal model not only served as a means of interrogating a complex pathology, but also came to embody competing definitions of alcoholism as a disease process, and alternative visions for the very structure and purpose of a research field
The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment
The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in
operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from
this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release
Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first
two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14
is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all
data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14
is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation
Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the
Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2),
including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine
learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes
from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous
release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of
the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the
important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both
targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS
website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to
data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is
planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be
followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14
happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov
2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections
only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected
Spin Correlation in tt-bar Production from pp-bar Collisions at sqrt(s)=1.8 TeV
The D0 collaboration has performed a study of spin correlation in tt-bar
production for the process tt-bar to bb-bar W^+W^-, where the W bosons decay to
e-nu or mu-nu. A sample of six events was collected during an exposure of the
D0 detector to an integrated luminosity of approximately 125 pb^-1 of
sqrt{s}=1.8 TeV pp-bar collisions. The standard model (SM) predicts that the
short lifetime of the top quark ensures the transmission of any spin
information at production to the tt-bar decay products.
The degree of spin correlation is characterized by a correlation coefficient
k. We find that k>-0.25 at the 68% confidence level, in agreement with the SM
prediction of k=0.88.Comment: Submitted to PRL, Added references, minor changes to tex
Measurement of spin correlation in ttbar production using dilepton final states
We measure the correlation between the spin of the top quark and the spin of
the anti-top quark in (ttbar -> W+ W- b bbar -> l+ nu b l- nubar bbar) final
states produced in ppbar collisions at a center of mass energy sqrt(s)=1.96
TeV, where l is an electron or muon. The data correspond to an integrated
luminosity of 5.4 fb-1 and were collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab
Tevatron collider. The correlation is extracted from the angles of the two
leptons in the t and tbar rest frames, yielding a correlation strength C=
0.10^{+0.45}_{-0.45}, in agreement with the NLO QCD prediction within two
standard deviations, but also in agreement with the no correlation hypothesis.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PL
The Effect of Opioid Receptor Blockade on the Neural Processing of Thermal Stimuli
The endogenous opioid system represents one of the principal systems in the modulation of pain. This has been demonstrated in studies of placebo analgesia and stress-induced analgesia, where anti-nociceptive activity triggered by pain itself or by cognitive states is blocked by opioid antagonists. The aim of this study was to characterize the effect of opioid receptor blockade on the physiological processing of painful thermal stimulation in the absence of cognitive manipulation. We therefore measured BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) signal responses and intensity ratings to non-painful and painful thermal stimuli in a double-blind, cross-over design using the opioid receptor antagonist naloxone. On the behavioral level, we observed an increase in intensity ratings under naloxone due mainly to a difference in the non-painful stimuli. On the neural level, painful thermal stimulation was associated with a negative BOLD signal within the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, and this deactivation was abolished by naloxone
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