Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions and the QCD Matter Phase Diagram

This review will be concerned with our knowledge of extended matter under the governance of strong interaction, in short: QCD matter. Strictly speaking, the hadrons are representing the first layer of extended QCD architecture. In fact we encounter the characteristic phenomena of confinement as distances grow to the scale of 1 fm (i.e. hadron size): loss of the chiral symmetry property of the elementary QCD Lagrangian via non-perturbative generation of "massive" quark and gluon condensates, that replace the bare QCD vacuum. However, given such first experiences of transition from short range perturbative QCD phenomena (jet physics etc.), toward extended, non perturbative QCD hadron structure, we shall proceed here to systems with dimensions far exceeding the force range: matter in the interior of heavy nuclei, or in neutron stars, and primordial matter in the cosmological era from electro-weak decoupling (10^-12 s) to hadron formation (0.5 10^-5 s). This primordial matter, prior to hadronization, should be deconfined in its QCD sector, forming a plasma (i.e. color conducting) state of quarks and gluons: the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP).Comment: 146 pages, 83 figure

Topology of the Polypeptide Chain in the Complex of Agglutinin from Castor Bean Seeds with -D-Galactose in the Crystalline State

The three-dimensional structure of the complex of agglutinin from Ricinus communis with frame3Dframe4galactose was established and refined at 2.5 ? resolution by X-ray structure analysis. Biocrystals were obtained using dialysis through a semipermeable membrane. X-ray intensity data (Rmerge = 4.6%) were collected from one crystal at 100 K using synchrotron radiation at the DESY outstation [European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Hamburg, Germany]. The initial phases were calculated by the molecular replacement method. The atoms of both protein and sugar molecules were localized. Unlike ricin, the ricinlike heterodimer RcA contains only one galactose-binding center in the region of the Asn46-Gly25-Trp37-Lys40 site in the first domain of the B subunit, whereas the second galactose-binding site of the B subunit is lost. One functionally important water molecule, which is bound to the residues Tyr123-Glu176-Arg179-Glu207, wasrevealed in the region of the active center in the A subunit

Global Properties of Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions

84 pages, 34 figures; Lecture given at the QGP Winter School, Jaipur, India, Feb.1-3, 2008; To appear in Springer Lecture Notes in PhysicsIn this lecture note, we discuss the global properties of nucleus-nucleus collisions. After a brief introduction to heavy-ion collisions, we introduce useful kinematics and then discuss the bulk hadron production in A+A collisions. At the end we discuss the hadronization and hadronic freeze-out in A+A collisions. We have tried to cover the topic from very fundamental arguments especially for the beginners in the field. We also give very useful formulae frequently used by experimentalists, from a first principle derivation