1,331 research outputs found
Field theoretic calculation of the surface tension for a model electrolyte system
We carry out the calculation of the surface tension for a model electrolyte
to first order in a cumulant expansion about a free field theory equivalent to
the Debye-H\"uckel approximation. In contrast with previous calculations, the
surface tension is calculated directly without recourse to integrating
thermodynamic relations. The system considered is a monovalent electrolyte with
a region at the interface, of width h, from which the ionic species are
excluded. In the case where the external dielectric constant epsilon_0 is
smaller than the electrolyte solution's dielectric constant epsilon we show
that the calculation at this order can be fully regularized. In the case where
h is taken to be zero the Onsager-Samaras limiting law for the excess surface
tension of dilute electrolyte solutions is recovered, with corrections coming
from a non-zero value of epsilon_0/epsilon.Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
Serodiagnosis of leishmaniasis with recombinant ORFF antigen
The serodiagnostic potential of recombinant ORFF protein (rORFF) from Leishmania infantum was assessed by ELISA. Of 49 sera from confirmed cases of visceral leishmaniasis (VL), all were seropositive using 5 ng of rORFF and serum diluted 1:20, while only 38 were positive with 500 ng of soluble antigen (SA) and 44 were positive by a direct agglutination test. There was also a positive correlation between spleen size and level of seropositivity with rORFF or SA. The reciprocal endpoint titer with rORFF was 1,280 for sera from VL patients, but < 20 with sera from malaria, filariasis, and tuberculosis patients, as well as with sera from healthy individuals from endemic and non-endemic areas. Sera from 10 confirmed cutaneous leishmaniasis cases from Turkey were negative or only weakly positive with rORFF although 9 were positive with SA. Thus, rORFF protein appears useful as a sensitive reagent for the differential diagnosis of VL caused by the Leishmania donovani complex
GOODS-: identification of the individual galaxies responsible for the 80-290m cosmic infrared background
We propose a new method of pushing to its faintest detection
limits using universal trends in the redshift evolution of the far infrared
over 24m colours in the well-sampled GOODS-North field. An extension to
other fields with less multi-wavelength information is presented. This method
is applied here to raise the contribution of individually detected
sources to the cosmic infrared background (CIRB) by a factor 5 close to its
peak at 250m and more than 3 in the 350m and 500m bands. We
produce realistic mock images of the deep PACS and SPIRE images of
the GOODS-North field from the GOODS- Key Program and use them to
quantify the confusion noise at the position of individual sources, i.e.,
estimate a "local confusion noise". Two methods are used to identify sources
with reliable photometric accuracy extracted using 24m prior positions.
The clean index (CI), previously defined but validated here with simulations,
which measures the presence of bright 24m neighbours and the photometric
accuracy index (PAI) directly extracted from the mock images. After
correction for completeness, thanks to our mock images, individually
detected sources make up as much as 54% and 60% of the CIRB in the PACS bands
down to 1.1 mJy at 100m and 2.2 mJy at 160m and 55, 33, and 13% of
the CIRB in the SPIRE bands down to 2.5, 5, and 9 mJy at 250m, 350m,
and 500m, respectively. The latter depths improve the detection limits of
by factors of 5 at 250m, and 3 at 350m and 500m as
compared to the standard confusion limit. Interestingly, the dominant
contributors to the CIRB in all bands appear to be distant siblings
of the Milky Way (0.96 for 300m) with a stellar mass
of 910M.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication by Astronomy and
Astrophysic
Evidence for B- -> Ds+ K- l- nubar and search for B- -> Ds*+ K- l- nubar
We report measurements of the decays B- -> Ds(*)+ K- l- nubar in a data
sample containing 657x10^6 BBbar pairs collected with the Belle detector at the
KEKB asymmetric-energy e+e- collider. We observe a signal with a significance
of 6 sigma for the combined Ds and Ds* modes and find the first evidence of the
B- -> Ds+ K- l- nubar decay with a significance of 3.4 sigma. We measure the
following branching fractions: BF(B- -> Ds+ K- l nubar) = (0.30 +/- 0.09(stat)
+0.11 -0.08(syst)) x 10^-3 and BF(B- -> Ds*+ K- l- nubar) = (0.59 +/-
0.12(stat) +/- 0.15(syst)) x 10^-3 and set an upper limit BF(B- -> Ds*+ K- l-
nubar) < 0.56 x 10^-3 at the 90% confidence level. We also present the first
measurement of the Ds+K- invariant mass distribution in these decays, which is
dominated by a prominent peak around 2.6 GeV/c^2.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Submillimeter Number Counts From Statistical Analysis of BLAST Maps
We describe the application of a statistical method to estimate submillimeter
galaxy number counts from confusion limited observations by the Balloon-borne
Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST). Our method is based on a
maximum likelihood fit to the pixel histogram, sometimes called 'P(D)', an
approach which has been used before to probe faint counts, the difference being
that here we advocate its use even for sources with relatively high
signal-to-noise ratios. This method has an advantage over standard techniques
of source extraction in providing an unbiased estimate of the counts from the
bright end down to flux densities well below the confusion limit. We
specifically analyse BLAST observations of a roughly 10 sq. deg. map centered
on the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey South (GOODS-S) field. We
provide estimates of number counts at the three BLAST wavelengths, 250, 350,
and 500 microns; instead of counting sources in flux bins we estimate the
counts at several flux density nodes connected with power-laws. We observe a
generally very steep slope for the counts of about -3.7 at 250 microns and -4.5
at 350 and 500 microns, over the range ~0.02-0.5 Jy, breaking to a shallower
slope below about 0.015 Jy at all three wavelengths. We also describe how to
estimate the uncertainties and correlations in this method so that the results
can be used for model-fitting. This method should be well-suited for analysis
of data from the Herschel satellite.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal; see associated
data and other papers at http://blastexperiment.info
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