244 research outputs found
Mussel eggs as indicators of mutagen exposure in coastal and estuarine environments
The aim of this study was to develop a short-term genotoxicity assay for monitoring the marine environment for mutagens. Based on the developing eggs and embryos of the marine mussel Mytilus edulis, an important pollution indicator species, the test employs the sensitive sister chromatid exchange (SCE) technique as its end-point, and exploits the potential of mussel eggs to accumulate mutagenic pollutants from the surrounding sea water. Mussel eggs take up to 6 months to develop while in the gonad, which provides scope for DNA damage to be accumulated over an extended time interval; chromosome damage is subsequently visualised as SCEs in 2-cell-stage embryos after these have been spawned in the laboratory. Methods which measure biological responses to pollutant exposure are able to integrate all the factors (internal and external) which contribute to the exposure. The new cytogenetic assay allows the effects of adult exposure to be interpreted in cells destined to become part of the next generation
Insect pests of wild cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, in Newfoundland and Labrador
La canneberge (Vaccinium macrocarpon) a été développée commercialement à Terre-Neuve à la fin des années '90. À ce moment là, les populations d'insectes indigènes dans les cannebergières sauvages étaient peu connues, même si ces lieux pouvaient servir de réservoir aux ravageurs, entraînant un déplacement de ces derniers vers les sites commerciaux. Pour aider les producteurs à faire face aux ravageurs, la présence et la distribution de ces insectes ont été évaluées dans les cannebergières sauvages. Des adultes de la pyrale des atocas, Acrobasis vaccinii ont été capturés dans des pièges à phéromone alors que des larves ont été trouvées dans les fruits. La pyrale des atocas est un ravageur commun et répandu. Des adultes de l'anneleur de la canneberge, Chrysoteuchia topiaria ont été capturés dans les pièges à phéromone mais aucune larve n'a été retrouvée dans les plants ni dans les échantillons de sol. Il n'y a pas d'évidence de la présence de la tordeuse des canneberges, Rhopobota naevana, du charançon des atocas, Anthonomus musculus, de l'altise à tête rouge, Systena frontalis, ou de la cécidomyie des atocas, Dasineura oxycoccana, lesquels sont retrouvés ailleurs. Cependant, une infestation par les larves de Grapholita libertina, a été observée dans la canneberge, sur un site en 1998. De toutes les espèces trouvées lors de cette étude, la pyrale des atocas est probablement la principale menace pour cette industrie.Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) has been commercially developed since the late 1990's in Newfoundland and Labrador. At that time, the insect fauna of the extensive stands of native, wild cranberry was not known, although these might provide a reservoir for pests to move to commercial sites. The occurrence and distribution of cranberry-feeding insects were assessed in wild stands to help cranberry growers prepare for the insect pests they might have to manage. Adults of the cranberry fruitworm, Acrobasis vaccinii were recovered in pheromone traps and larvae found in berries. The fruitworm was common and widespread. Moths of the cranberry girdler, Chrysoteuchia topiaria were caught in pheromone traps, but larvae were not recovered from plant or soil samples. There was no evidence of the black-headed fireworm, Rhopobota naevana, the cranberry weevil, Anthonomus musculus, the red-headed flea beetle, Systena frontalis, or the cranberry tipworm, Dasineura oxycoccana, serious cranberry pests in other areas. However, larvae of the lingonberry fruitworm, Grapholita libertina, were found infesting cranberry at one site in 1998. Of the species found in this study, A. vaccinii probably represents the most serious threat to the industry
MHV Rules for Higgs Plus Multi-Gluon Amplitudes
We use tree-level perturbation theory to show how non-supersymmetric one-loop
scattering amplitudes for a Higgs boson plus an arbitrary number of partons can
be constructed, in the limit of a heavy top quark, from a generalization of the
scalar graph approach of Cachazo, Svrcek and Witten. The Higgs boson couples to
gluons through a top quark loop which generates, for large top mass, a
dimension-5 operator H tr G^2. This effective interaction leads to amplitudes
which cannot be described by the standard MHV rules; for example, amplitudes
where all of the gluons have positive helicity. We split the effective
interaction into the sum of two terms, one holomorphic (selfdual) and one
anti-holomorphic (anti-selfdual). The holomorphic interactions give a new set
of MHV vertices -- identical in form to those of pure gauge theory, except for
momentum conservation -- that can be combined with pure gauge theory MHV
vertices to produce a tower of amplitudes with more than two negative
helicities. Similarly, the anti-holomorphic interactions give anti-MHV vertices
that can be combined with pure gauge theory anti-MHV vertices to produce a
tower of amplitudes with more than two positive helicities. A Higgs boson
amplitude is the sum of one MHV-tower amplitude and one anti-MHV-tower
amplitude. We present all MHV-tower amplitudes with up to four
negative-helicity gluons and any number of positive-helicity gluons (NNMHV).
These rules reproduce all of the available analytic formulae for Higgs +
n-gluon scattering (n<=5) at tree level, in some cases yielding considerably
shorter expressions.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures; v2, references correcte
Non-invasive detection of the evolution of the charge states of a double dot system
Coupled quantum dots are potential candidates for qubit systems in quantum
computing. We use a non-invasive voltage probe to study the evolution of a
coupled dot system from a situation where the dots are coupled to the leads to
a situation where they are isolated from the leads. Our measurements allow us
to identify the movement of electrons between the dots and we can also identify
the presence of a charge trap in our system by detecting the movement of
electrons between the dots and the charge trap. The data also reveals evidence
of electrons moving between the dots via excited states of either the single
dots or the double dot molecule.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B. 4 pages, 4 figure
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A multilevel neo-institutional analysis of infection prevention and control in English hospitals: coerced safety culture change?
Despite committed policy, regulative and professional efforts on healthcare safety, little is known about how such macro-interventions permeate organisations and shape culture over time. Informed by neo-institutional theory, we examined how inter-organisational influences shaped safety practices and inter-subjective meanings following efforts for coerced culture change. We traced macro-influences from 2000 to 2015 in infection prevention and control (IPC). Safety perceptions and meanings were inductively analysed from 130 in-depth qualitative interviews with senior- and middle-level managers from 30 English hospitals. A total of 869 institutional interventions were identified; 69% had a regulative component. In this context of forced implementation of safety practices, staff experienced inherent tensions concerning the scope of safety, their ability to be open and prioritisation of external mandates over local need. These tensions stemmed from conflicts among three co-existing institutional logics prevalent in the NHS. In response to requests for change, staff flexibly drew from a repertoire of cognitive, material and symbolic resources within and outside their organisations. They crafted 'strategies of action', guided by a situated assessment of first-hand practice experiences complementing collective evaluations of interventions such as 'pragmatic', 'sensible' and also 'legitimate'. Macro-institutional forces exerted influence either directly on individuals or indirectly by enriching the organisational cultural repertoire
On the Bohr inequality
The Bohr inequality, first introduced by Harald Bohr in 1914, deals with
finding the largest radius , , such that holds whenever in the unit disk
of the complex plane. The exact value of this largest radius,
known as the \emph{Bohr radius}, has been established to be This paper
surveys recent advances and generalizations on the Bohr inequality. It
discusses the Bohr radius for certain power series in as well as
for analytic functions from into particular domains. These domains
include the punctured unit disk, the exterior of the closed unit disk, and
concave wedge-domains. The analogous Bohr radius is also studied for harmonic
and starlike logharmonic mappings in The Bohr phenomenon which is
described in terms of the Euclidean distance is further investigated using the
spherical chordal metric and the hyperbolic metric. The exposition concludes
with a discussion on the -dimensional Bohr radius
CDMS, Supersymmetry and Extra Dimensions
The CDMS experiment aims to directly detect massive, cold dark matter
particles originating from the Milky Way halo. Charge and lattice excitations
are detected after a particle scatters in a Ge or Si crystal kept at ~30 mK,
allowing to separate nuclear recoils from the dominating electromagnetic
background. The operation of 12 detectors in the Soudan mine for 75 live days
in 2004 delivered no evidence for a signal, yielding stringent limits on dark
matter candidates from supersymmetry and universal extra dimensions. Thirty Ge
and Si detectors are presently installed in the Soudan cryostat, and operating
at base temperature. The run scheduled to start in 2006 is expected to yield a
one order of magnitude increase in dark matter sensitivity.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of the 7th UCLA symposium on
sources and detection of dark matter and dark energy in the universe, Marina
del Rey, Feb 22-24, 200
Exclusion limits on the WIMP-nucleon cross-section from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) employs low-temperature Ge and Si
detectors to search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) via their
elastic-scattering interactions with nuclei while discriminating against
interactions of background particles. For recoil energies above 10 keV, events
due to background photons are rejected with >99.9% efficiency, and surface
events are rejected with >95% efficiency. The estimate of the background due to
neutrons is based primarily on the observation of multiple-scatter events that
should all be neutrons. Data selection is determined primarily by examining
calibration data and vetoed events. Resulting efficiencies should be accurate
to about 10%. Results of CDMS data from 1998 and 1999 with a relaxed
fiducial-volume cut (resulting in 15.8 kg-days exposure on Ge) are consistent
with an earlier analysis with a more restrictive fiducial-volume cut.
Twenty-three WIMP candidate events are observed, but these events are
consistent with a background from neutrons in all ways tested. Resulting limits
on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon elastic-scattering cross-section exclude
unexplored parameter space for WIMPs with masses between 10-70 GeV c^{-2}.
These limits border, but do not exclude, parameter space allowed by
supersymmetry models and accelerator constraints. Results are compatible with
some regions reported as allowed at 3-sigma by the annual-modulation
measurement of the DAMA collaboration. However, under the assumptions of
standard WIMP interactions and a standard halo, the results are incompatible
with the DAMA most likely value at >99.9% CL, and are incompatible with the
model-independent annual-modulation signal of DAMA at 99.99% CL in the
asymptotic limit.Comment: 40 pages, 49 figures (4 in color), submitted to Phys. Rev. D;
v.2:clarified conclusions, added content and references based on referee's
and readers' comments; v.3: clarified introductory sections, added figure
based on referee's comment
Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events
The - oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of
23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II
asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B
mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the
flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference
distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives ps.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter
The ultra-violet question in maximally supersymmetric field theories
We discuss various approaches to the problem of determining which
supersymmetric invariants are permitted as counterterms in maximally
supersymmetric super Yang--Mills and supergravity theories in various
dimensions. We review the superspace non-renormalisation theorems based on
conventional, light-cone, harmonic and certain non-Lorentz covariant
superspaces, and we write down explicitly the relevant invariants. While the
first two types of superspace admit the possibility of one-half BPS
counterterms, of the form and respectively, the last two do not.
This suggests that UV divergences begin with one-quarter BPS counterterms, i.e.
and , and this is supported by an entirely different
approach based on algebraic renormalisation. The algebraic formalism is
discussed for non-renormalisable theories and it is shown how the allowable
supersymmetric counterterms can be determined via cohomological methods. These
results are in agreement with all the explicit computations that have been
carried out to date. In particular, they suggest that maximal supergravity is
likely to diverge at four loops in D=5 and at five loops in D=4, unless other
infinity suppression mechanisms not involving supersymmetry or gauge invariance
are at work.Comment: 56 pages, 1 figure, uses youngtab.sty. Contribution to the
proceedings of the W.E. Heraeus Workhop "Quantum Gravity: Challenges and
Perspectives", Bad Honnef, 14-16 April 2008. References and clarifying
comments adde
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