Modeling the Longitudinal Asymmetry in Sunspot Emergence -- the Role of the Wilson Depression

The distributions of sunspot longitude at first appearance and at disappearance display an east-west asymmetry that results from a reduction in visibility as one moves from disk centre to the limb. To first order, this is explicable in terms of simple geometrical foreshortening. However, the centre-to-limb visibility variation is much larger than that predicted by foreshortening. Sunspot visibility is also known to be affected by the Wilson effect: the apparent dish shape of the sunspot photosphere caused by the temperature-dependent variation of the geometrical position of the tau=1 layer. In this article we investigate the role of the Wilson effect on the sunspot appearance distributions, deducing a mean depth for the umbral tau=1 layer of 500 to 1500 km. This is based on the comparison of observations of sunspot longitude distribution and Monte Carlo simulations of sunspot appearance using different models for spot growth rate, growth time and depth of Wilson depression.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, in press (Solar Physics

Can Inoculation Withstand Multiple Attacks?: An Examination of the Effectiveness of the Inoculation Strategy Compared to the Supportive and Restoration Strategies

This investigation introduced multiple competitive attacks in order to assess the effectiveness of inoculation treatments in protecting established attitudes in a natural setting. A four-phase experiment was conducted involving 433 participants. The results revealed that the effectiveness of refutational inoculation messages dissipated some in the face of an additional attack. Still, refutational inoculation messages proved to be more effective than supportive, restoration, and control (no message) conditions in protecting established attitudes in the face of multiple attacks. The content of an additional attack (the same as the first attack or different) did not affect the capacity of inoculation refutational messages to confer resistance to competitive attacks.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Measurement of the muon flux from 400 GeV/c protons interacting in a thick molybdenum/tungsten target

The SHiP experiment is proposed to search for very weakly interacting particles beyond the Standard Model which are produced in a 400 GeV/c proton beam dump at the CERN SPS. About 1011 muons per spill will be produced in the dump. To design the experiment such that the muon-induced background is minimized, a precise knowledge of the muon spectrum is required. To validate the muon flux generated by our Pythia and GEANT4 based Monte Carlo simulation (FairShip), we have measured the muon flux emanating from a SHiP-like target at the SPS. This target, consisting of 13 interaction lengths of slabs of molybdenum and tungsten, followed by a 2.4 m iron hadron absorber was placed in the H4 400 GeV/c proton beam line. To identify muons and to measure the momentum spectrum, a spectrometer instrumented with drift tubes and a muon tagger were used. During a 3-week period a dataset for analysis corresponding to (3.27±0.07) × 1011 protons on target was recorded. This amounts to approximatively 1% of a SHiP spill

Track reconstruction and matching between emulsion and silicon pixel detectors for the SHiP-charm experiment

In July 2018 an optimization run for the proposed charm cross section measurement for SHiP was performed at the CERN SPS. A heavy, moving target instrumented with nuclear emulsion films followed by a silicon pixel tracker was installed in front of the Goliath magnet at the H4 proton beam-line. Behind the magnet, scintillating-fibre, drift-tube and RPC detectors were placed. The purpose of this run was to validate the measurement's feasibility, to develop the required analysis tools and fine-tune the detector layout. In this paper, we present the track reconstruction in the pixel tracker and the track matching with the moving emulsion detector. The pixel detector performed as expected and it is shown that, after proper alignment, a vertex matching rate of 87% is achieved

Overview and analysis of the polyprotein cleavage sites in the family Potyviridae

The genomes of plant viruses in the family Potyviridae encode large polyproteins that are cut by virus-encoded proteases into ten mature proteins. Three different types of protease have been identified, each of which cuts at sites with a distinctive sequence pattern. The experimental evidence for this specificity is reviewed and the cleavage site patterns are compiled for all sequenced species within the family. Seven of the nine cleavage sites in each species are cut by the viral Nla-Pro and patterns around these sites are related where possible to the active site-substrate interactions recently deduced following the resolution of the crystal structure of Tobacco etch virus (TEV) Nla-Pro (Phan et al., 2002. J. Biol. Chem. 277,50564-50572). In particular, a revised series of cleavage sites for Sweetpotato mild mottle virus (genus Ipomovirus) is proposed with a conserved His at the P1 position. This is supported by homology modelling studies using the TEV structure as a template. The data also provide a standard to correct the annotation of some other published sequences and to help predict these sites in further virus sequences as they become available. Comprehensive data for all sequences of each virus in the family, together with some summaries, have been made available at http://www.rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.uk/ppi/links/pplinks/potycleavage/ index.html