Measurement of nuclear effects in neutrino interactions with minimal dependence on neutrino energy

We present a phenomenological study of nuclear effects in neutrino charged-current interactions, using transverse kinematic imbalances in exclusive measurements. Novel observables with minimal dependence on neutrino energy are proposed to study quasielastic scattering, and especially resonance production. They should be able to provide direct constraints on nuclear effects in neutrino- and antineutrino-nucleus interactions.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, accepted version by PR

Prevalence and clinical characteristics of left ventricular dysfunction among elderly patients in general practice setting: cross sectional survey

Objective: To assess the prevalence and clinical characteristics of left ventricular dysfunction among elderly patients in the general practice setting by echocardiographic assessment of ventricular function. Design: Cross sectional survey. Setting: Four centre general practice in Poole, Dorset. Subjects: 817 elderly patients aged 70-84 years. Main outcomes: Echocardiographic assessment of left ventricular systolic function including measurement of ejection fraction by biplane summation method where possible, clinical symptoms, and signs of left ventricular dysfunction. Results: The overall prevalence of left ventricular systolic dysfunction was 7.5% (95% confidence interval 5.8% to 9.5%); mild dysfunction (5.0%) was considerably more prevalent than moderate (1.6%) or severe dysfunction (0.7%). Measurement of ejection fraction was possible in 82% of patients (n=667): in patients categorised as having mild, moderate, or severe dysfunction, the mean ejection fraction was 48% (SD 12.0), 38% (8.1), and 26% (7.9) respectively. At all ages the prevalence was much higher in men than in women (odds ratio 5.1, 95% confidence interval 2.6 to 10.1). No clinical symptom or sign was both sensitive and specific. In around half the patients with ventricular dysfunction (52%, 32/61) heart failure had not been previously diagnosed. Conclusions: Unrecognised left ventricular dysfunction is a common problem in elderly patients in the general practice setting. Appropriate treatment with angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors has the potential to reduce hospitalisation and mortality in these patients, but diagnosis should not be based on clinical history and examination alone. Screening is feasible in general practice, but it should not be implemented until the optimum method of identifying left ventricular dysfunction is clarified, and the cost effectiveness of screening has been shown

Divergence in Dialogue

Copyright: 2014 Healey et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC; http://www.esrc.ac.uk/) through the DynDial project (Dynamics of Conversational Dialogue, RES-062-23-0962) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/) through the RISER project (Robust Incremental Semantic Resources for Dialogue, EP/J010383/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Energy Flow in Acoustic Black Holes

We present the results of an analysis of superradiant energy flow due to scalar fields incident on an acoustic black hole. In addition to providing independent confirmation of the recent results in [5], we determine in detail the profile of energy flow everywhere outside the horizon. We confirm explicitly that in a suitable frame the energy flow is inward at the horizon and outward at infinity, as expected on physical grounds.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, Comments added to discussion of energy flow and introductory section abbreviate

The influence of Harmonia axyridis morbidity on 2-Isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine in 'Cabernet Sauvignon' wine

Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae; the Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle; MALB) is a vineyard pest in many winemaking regions of the world due to its ability to taint juice and wine (‘ladybug taint’) through excretion or extraction of 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (IPMP) when the beetles are incorporated with the grapes at harvest. A common vineyard intervention is the use of insecticidal sprays and the resulting dead beetles are often incorporated in with the harvested fruit. The main objective of this study was to quantify the impact of dead MALB on IPMP concentrations in red wine. Duplicate 'Cabernet Sauvignon' wines were produced with the addition of 10 beetles·l-1 juice, added either live or at 1, 3, 7, or 60-days postmortem. A control wine with no added beetles was included. IPMP concentration was substantially higher in live-beetle wines, and decreased to base-line levels at approximately 6.5 days post-mortem. These results should assist in decisions on viticultural interventions, such as timing of insecticidal sprays, as well as the establishment of grape quality parameters.

Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking for Scalar QED with Non-minimal Chern-Simons Coupling

We investigate the two-loop effective potential for both minimally and non-minimally coupled Maxwell-Chern-Simons theories. The non-minimal gauge interaction represents the magnetic moment interaction between a charged scalar and the electromagnetic field. In a previous paper we have shown that the two loop effective potential for this model is renormalizable with an appropriate choice of the non-minimal coupling constant. We carry out a detailed analysis of the spontaneous symmetry breaking induced by radiative corrections. As long as the renormalization point for all couplings is chosen to be the true minimum of the effective potential, both models predict the presence of spontaneous symmetry breaking. Two loop corrections are small compared to the one loop result, and thus the symmetry breaking is perturbatively stable.Comment: Revtex 25 pages, 9 figure

New Measurements of Doubly Ionized Iron Group Spectra by High Resolution Fourier Transform and Grating Spectroscopy

We report new measurements of doubly ionized iron group element spectra, important in the analysis of B-type (hot) stars whose spectra they dominate. These measurements include Co III and Cr III taken with the Imperial College VUV Fourier transform (FT) spectrometer and measurements of Co III taken with the normal incidence vacuum spectrograph at NIST, below 135 nm. We report new Fe III grating spectra measurements to complement our FT spectra. Work towards transition wavelengths, energy levels and branching ratios (which, combined with lifetimes, produce oscillator strengths) for these ions is underway

Valuing initial teacher education at Master's level

The future of Master’s-level work in initial teacher education (ITE) in England seems uncertain. Whilst the coalition government has expressed support for Master’s-level work, its recent White Paper focuses on teaching skills as the dominant form of professional development. This training discourse is in tension with the view of professional learning advocated by ITE courses that offer Master’s credits. Following a survey of the changing perceptions of Master’s-level study during a Post Graduate Certificate in Education course by student teachers in four subject groups, this paper highlights how the process of professional learning can have the most impact on how they value studying at a higher level during their early professional development

One-Loop Renormalization of Lorentz-Violating Electrodynamics

We show that the general Lorentz- and CPT-violating extension of quantum electrodynamics is one-loop renormalizable. The one-loop Lorentz-violating beta functions are obtained, and the running of the coefficients for Lorentz and CPT violation is determined. Some implications for theory and experiment are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in Physical Review

Mappings preserving locations of movable poles: a new extension of the truncation method to ordinary differential equations

The truncation method is a collective name for techniques that arise from truncating a Laurent series expansion (with leading term) of generic solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). Despite its utility in finding Backlund transformations and other remarkable properties of integrable PDEs, it has not been generally extended to ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Here we give a new general method that provides such an extension and show how to apply it to the classical nonlinear ODEs called the Painleve equations. Our main new idea is to consider mappings that preserve the locations of a natural subset of the movable poles admitted by the equation. In this way we are able to recover all known fundamental Backlund transformations for the equations considered. We are also able to derive Backlund transformations onto other ODEs in the Painleve classification.Comment: To appear in Nonlinearity (22 pages