41,524 research outputs found
NEW PARTICLES AND INTERACTIONS
We analyze the manifestations of new matter particles predicted by models of
new physics beyond the Standard Model, at present and future high--energy
colliders. We consider both the production of these new particles and some of
their indirect signatures at and colliders as well as TeV \ee
colliders with their \ee, e \gamma, \gamma \gamma and modes. The
report is arranged into four main sections plus an overview. These sections
will deal separately with exotic and excited fermions, difermions, and new
interactions.Comment: 64 pages, latex, 30 figures (not included). The full *.ps file
including the figures can be obtained via anonymous ftp at
ftp://lpsvsh.lps.umontreal.ca/hep_th/dpf.ps . To appear as a chapter in
"Electroweak Symmetry Breaking and Beyond the Standard Model", edited by T.
Barklow, S. Dawson, H.E. Haber and S. Siegrist, World Scientifi
Fabrication of Embedded Microvalve on PMMA Microfluidic Devices through Surface Functionalization
The integration of a PDMS membrane within orthogonally placed PMMA
microfluidic channels enables the pneumatic actuation of valves within bonded
PMMA-PDMS-PMMA multilayer devices. Here, surface functionalization of PMMA
substrates via acid catalyzed hydrolysis and air plasma corona treatment were
investigated as possible techniques to permanently bond PMMA microfluidic
channels to PDMS surfaces. FTIR and water contact angle analysis of
functionalized PMMA substrates showed that air plasma corona treatment was most
effective in inducing PMMA hydrophilicity. Subsequent fluidic tests showed that
air plasma modified and bonded PMMA multilayer devices could withstand fluid
pressure at an operational flow rate of 9 mircoliters/min. The pneumatic
actuation of the embedded PDMS membrane was observed through optical microscopy
and an electrical resistance based technique. PDMS membrane actuation occurred
at pneumatic pressures of as low as 10kPa and complete valving occurred at
14kPa for 100 micrometers x 100 micrometers channel cross-sections.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association
(http://irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/16838
Probing the Galaxy I. The galactic structure towards the galactic pole
Observations of (B-V) colour distributions towards the galactic poles are
compared with those obtained from synthetic colour-magnitude diagrams to
determine the major constituents in the disc and spheroid. The disc is
described with four stellar sub-populations: the young, intermediate, old, and
thick disc populations, which have respectively scale heights of 100 pc, 250
pc, 0.5 kpc, and 1.0 kpc. The spheroid is described with stellar contributions
from the bulge and halo. The bulge is not well constrained with the data
analyzed in this study. A non-flattened power-law describes the observed
distributions at fainter magnitudes better than a deprojected R^{1/4}-law.
Details about the age, metallicity, and normalizations are listed in Table 1.
The star counts and the colour distributions from the stars in the intermediate
fields towards the galactic anti-centre are well described with the stellar
populations mentioned above. Arguments are given that the actual solar offset
is about 15 pc north from the galactic plane.Comment: 11 pages TeX, 4 separate pages with additional figures, accepted for
publication in A&
Time Uncertainty in Quantum Gravitational Systems
It is generally argued that the combined effect of Heisenberg principle and
general relativity leads to a minimum time uncertainty. Most of the analyses
supporting this conclusion are based on a perturbative approach to
quantization. We consider a simple family of gravitational models, including
the Einstein-Rosen waves, in which the (non-linearized) inclusion of gravity
changes the normalization of time translations by a monotonic energy-dependent
factor. In these circumstances, it is shown that a maximum time resolution
emerges non-perturbatively only if the total energy is bounded. Perturbatively,
however, there always exists a minimum uncertainty in the physical time.Comment: (4 pages, no figures) Accepted for publication in Physical Review
From computation to black holes and space-time foam
We show that quantum mechanics and general relativity limit the speed
of a simple computer (such as a black hole) and its memory space
to \tilde{\nu}^2 I^{-1} \lsim t_P^{-2}, where is the Planck time.
We also show that the life-time of a simple clock and its precision are
similarly limited. These bounds and the holographic bound originate from the
same physics that governs the quantum fluctuations of space-time. We further
show that these physical bounds are realized for black holes, yielding the
correct Hawking black hole lifetime, and that space-time undergoes much larger
quantum fluctuations than conventional wisdom claims -- almost within range of
detection with modern gravitational-wave interferometers.Comment: A misidentification of computer speeds is corrected. Our results for
black hole computation now agree with those given by S. Lloyd. All other
conclusions remain unchange
Probing spacetime foam with extragalactic sources
Due to quantum fluctuations, spacetime is probably ``foamy'' on very small
scales. We propose to detect this texture of spacetime foam by looking for
core-halo structures in the images of distant quasars. We find that the Very
Large Telescope interferometer will be on the verge of being able to probe the
fabric of spacetime when it reaches its design performance. Our method also
allows us to use spacetime foam physics and physics of computation to infer the
existence of dark energy/matter, independent of the evidence from recent
cosmological observations.Comment: LaTeX, 11 pages, 1 figure; version submitted to PRL; several
references added; very useful comments and suggestions by Eric Perlman
incorporate
Frustrated multiband superconductivity
We show that a clean multiband superconductor may display one or several
phase transitions with increasing temperature from or to frustrated
configurations of the relative phases of the superconducting order parameters.
These transitions may occur when more than two bands are involved in the
formation of the superconducting phase and when the number of repulsive
interband interactions is odd. These transitions are signalled by slope changes
in the temperature dependence of the superconducting gaps.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Increasing prevalence of asthma diagnosis and symptoms in children is confined to mild symptoms
BACKGROUND: The prevalence of childhood asthma is increasing but few studies have investigated trends in asthma severity. We investigated trends in asthma diagnosis and symptom morbidity between an eight year time period in a paired prevalence study.
METHODS: All children in one single school year aged 8-9 years in the city of Sheffield were given a parent respondent questionnaire in 1991 and 1999 based on questions from the International Survey of Asthma and Allergy in Children (ISAAC). Data were obtained regarding the prevalence of asthma and wheeze and current (12 month) prevalences of wheeze attacks, speech limiting wheeze, nocturnal cough and wheeze, and exertional symptoms.
RESULTS: The response rates in 1991 and 1999 were 4580/5321 (85.3%) and 5011/6021 (83.2%), respectively. There were significant increases between the two surveys in the prevalence of asthma ever (19.9% v 29.7%, mean difference 11.9%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 10.16 to 13.57, p<0.001), current asthma (10.3% v 13.0%, mean difference 2.7%, 95% CI 1.44 to 4.03, p<0.001), wheeze ever (30.3% v 35.8%, mean difference 5.7%, 95% CI 3.76 to 7.56, p<0.001), wheeze in the previous 12 months (17.0% v 19.4%, mean difference 2.5, 95% CI 0.95 to 4.07, p<0.01), and reporting of medication use (16.9% v 20%, mean difference 3.0%, 95% CI 1.46 to 4.62, p<0.001). There were also significant increases in reported hayfever and eczema diagnoses.
CONCLUSIONS: Diagnostic labelling of asthma and lifetime prevalence of wheeze has increased. The current 12 month point prevalence of wheeze has increased but this is confined to occasional symptoms. The increased medication rate may be responsible for the static prevalence of severe asthma symptoms. The significant proportion of children receiving medication but reporting no asthma symptoms identified from our 1999 survey suggests that some children are being inappropriately treated or overtreated
Effect of dead space on avalanche speed
The effects of dead space (the minimum distance travelled by a carrier before acquiring enough energy to impact ionize) on the current impulse response and bandwidth of an avalanche multiplication process are obtained from a numerical model that maintains a constant carrier velocity but allows for a random distribution of impact ionization path lengths. The results show that the main mechanism responsible for the increase in response time with dead space is the increase in the number of carrier groups, which qualitatively describes the length of multiplication chains. When the dead space is negligible, the bandwidth follows the behavior predicted by Emmons but decreases as dead space increase
Edge states in Open Antiferromagnetic Heisenberg Chains
In this letter we report our results in investigating edge effects of open
antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin chains with spin magnitudes
using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method initiated by
White. For integer spin chains, we find that edge states with spin magnitude
exist, in agreement with Valence-Bond-Solid model picture. For
half-integer spin chains, we find that no edge states exist for spin
chain, but edge state exists in spin chain with , in
agreement with previous conjecture by Ng. Strong finite size effects associated
with spin dimmerization in half-integer spin chains will also be discussed.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX 3.0, 5 figures in a separate uuencoded postscript
file. Replaced once to enlarge the acknowlegement
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