2,362 research outputs found
Finite-volume two-pion energies and scattering in the quenched approximation
We investigate how L\"uscher's relation between the finite-volume energy of
two pions at rest and pion scattering lengths has to be modified in quenched
QCD. We find that this relation changes drastically, and in particular, that
``enhanced finite-volume corrections" of order and occur at
one loop ( is the linear size of the box), due to the special properties of
the in the quenched approximation. We define quenched pion scattering
lengths, and show that they are linearly divergent in the chiral limit. We
estimate the size of these various effects in some numerical examples, and find
that they can be substantial.Comment: 22 pages, uuencoded, compressed postscript fil
Heavy-light and light-light weak matrix elements on the lattice
I review recent developments in lattice weak matrix element calculations. I
focus on on (both with propagating quarks and in the static limit for the
quark), semi-leptonic form factors for meson decay, form factors for , and . [Review presented at Lattice '93]Comment: 16 pages. (latex; 7 postscript figures included; 7 other figures are
reproduced from work by others and are not available here. Some hardcopies of
the talk will be available; send e-mail to [email protected].
Gene rearrangement analysis and ancestral order inference from chloroplast genomes with inverted repeat
Background Genome evolution is shaped not only by nucleotide substitutions, but also by structural changes including gene and genome duplications, insertions, deletions and gene order rearrangements. The most popular methods for reconstructing phylogeny from genome rearrangements include GRAPPA and MGR. However these methods are limited to cases where equal gene content or few deletions can be assumed. Since conserved duplicated regions are present in many chloroplast genomes, the inference of inverted repeats is needed in chloroplast phylogeny analysis and ancestral genome reconstruction.
Results We extend GRAPPA and develop a new method GRAPPA-IR to handle chloroplast genomes. A test of GRAPPA-IR using divergent chloroplast genomes from land plants and green algae recovers the phylogeny congruent with prior studies, while analysis that do not consider IR structure fail to obtain the accepted topology. Our extensive simulation study also confirms that GRAPPA has better accuracy then the existing methods.
Conclusions Tests on a biological and simulated dataset show GRAPPA-IR can accurately recover the genome phylogeny as well as ancestral gene orders. Close analysis of the ancestral genome structure suggests that genome rearrangement in chloroplasts is probably limited by inverted repeats with a conserved core region. In addition, the boundaries of inverted repeats are hot spots for gene duplications or deletions. The new GRAPPA-IR is available from http://phylo.cse.sc.ed
Granulocyte Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor: A New Putative Therapeutic Target in Multiple Sclerosis
Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a model for multiple sclerosis, can be induced by immunization with a number of myelin antigens. In particular, myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein, a central nervous system (CNS)-specific antigen expressed on the myelin surface, is able to induce a paralytic MS-like disease with extensive CNS inflammation and demyelination in several strains of animals. Although not well understood, the egress of immune cells into the CNS in EAE is governed by a complex interplay between pro and antiinflammatory cytokines and chemokines. The hematopoietic growth factor, granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), is considered to play a central role in maintaining chronic inflammation. The present study was designed to investigate the previously unexplored role of GM-CSF in autoimmune-mediated demyelination. GM-CSF−/− mice are resistant to EAE, display decreased antigen-specific proliferation of splenocytes, and fail to sustain immune cell infiltrates in the CNS, thus revealing key activities for GM-CSF in the development of inflammatory demyelinating lesions and control of migration and/or proliferation of leukocytes within the CNS. These results hold implications for the pathogenesis of inflammatory and demyelinating diseases and may provide the basis for more effective therapies for inflammatory diseases, and more specifically for multiple sclerosis
Auxiliary fields and hadron dynamics
The relations existing between the auxiliary field (einbein field) formalism
and the spinless Salpeter equation are studied in the case of two particles
with the same mass, interacting via a confining potential. The problem of
non-orthogonality for radial excited states in the auxiliary field formalism is
discussed and found to be non-crucial. It is shown that the classical equations
of motion of the rotating string model, derived from the QCD lagrangian, reduce
exactly to the classical equations of motion of the phenomenological
semirelativistic flux tube model, provided all auxiliary fields are eliminated
correctly from the rotating string hamiltonian
The QCD spectrum with three quark flavors
We present results from a lattice hadron spectrum calculation using three
flavors of dynamical quarks - two light and one strange, and quenched
simulations for comparison. These simulations were done using a one-loop
Symanzik improved gauge action and an improved Kogut-Susskind quark action. The
lattice spacings, and hence also the physical volumes, were tuned to be the
same in all the runs to better expose differences due to flavor number. Lattice
spacings were tuned using the static quark potential, so as a byproduct we
obtain updated results for the effect of sea quarks on the static quark
potential. We find indications that the full QCD meson spectrum is in better
agreement with experiment than the quenched spectrum. For the 0++ (a0) meson we
see a coupling to two pseudoscalar mesons, or a meson decay on the lattice.Comment: 38 pages, 20 figures, uses epsf. 5/29/01 revision responds to
referee's Comments, changes pion fits and tables, and corrects Fig. 10 and
some minor error
Baryon Density Correlations in High Temperature Hadronic Matter
As part of an ongoing effort to characterize the high temperature phase of
QCD, in a numerical simulation using the staggered fermion scheme, we measure
the quark baryon density in the vicinity of a fixed test quark at high
temperature and compare it with similar measurements at low temperature and at
the crossover temperature. We find an extremely weak correlation at high
temperature, suggesting that small color singlet clusters are unimportant in
the thermal ensemble. We also find that at the total induced
quark number shows a surprisingly large component attributable to baryonic
screening. A companion simulation of a simple flux tube model produces similar
results and also suggests a plausible phenomenological scenario: As the
crossover temperature is approached from below, baryonic states proliferate.
Above the crossover temperature the mean size of color singlet clusters grows
explosively, resulting in an effective electrostatic deconfinement.Comment: 26 pp, RevTeX, 12 postscript figures, combined in a single shell
archive file. (Also available in 13 postscript files by anonymous ftp from
einstein.physics.utah.edu, /pub/milc/paper.sh.Z.
Two-Flavor Staggered Fermion Thermodynamics at N_t = 12
We present results of an ongoing study of the nature of the high temperature
crossover in QCD with two light fermion flavors. These results are obtained
with the conventional staggered fermion action at the smallest lattice spacing
to date---approximately 0.1 fm. Of particular interest are a study of the
temperature of the crossover a determination of the induced baryon charge and
baryon susceptibility, the scalar susceptibility, and the chiral order
parameter, used to test models of critical behavior associated with chiral
symmetry restoration. From our new data and published results for N_t = 4, 6,
and 8, we determine the QCD magnetic equation of state from the chiral order
parameter using O(4) and mean field critical exponents and compare it with the
corresponding equation of state obtained from an O(4) spin model and mean field
theory. We also present a scaling analysis of the Polyakov loop, suggesting a
temperature dependent ``constituent quark free energy.''Comment: LaTeX 25 pages, 15 Postscript figure
Quenched hadron spectroscopy with improved staggered quark action
We investigate light hadron spectroscopy with an improved quenched staggered
quark action. We compare the results obtained with an improved gauge plus an
improved quark action, an improved gauge plus standard quark action, and the
standard gauge plus standard quark action. Most of the improvement in the
spectroscopy results is due to the improved gauge sector. However, the improved
quark action substantially reduces violations of Lorentz invariance, as
evidenced by the meson dispersion relations.Comment: New references adde
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