178 research outputs found
The relentless march of mass coral bleaching: a global perspective of changing heat stress
The global coral bleaching event of 2014-2017 resulted from the latest in a series of heat stress events that have increased in intensity. We assessed global- and basin-scale variations in sea surface temperature-based heat stress products for 1985-2017 to provide the context for how heat stress during 2014-2017 compared with the past 3 decades. Previously, undefined "Heat Stress Year" periods (used to describe interannual variation in heat stress) were identified for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, in which heat stress peaks during or shortly after the boreal and austral summers, respectively. The proportion of reef pixels experiencing bleaching-level heat stress increased through the record, accelerating during the last decade. This increase in accumulated heat stress at a bleaching level is a result of longer stress events rather than an increase in the peak stress intensity. Thresholds of heat stress extent for the three tropical ocean basins were established to designate "global" events, and a Global Bleaching Index was defined that relates heat stress extent to that observed in 1998. Notably, during the 2014-2017 global bleaching event, more than three times as many reefs were exposed to bleaching-level heat stress as in the 1998 global bleaching
Nonresonant Semileptonic Heavy Quark Decay
In both the large N_c limit and the valence quark model, semileptonic decays
are dominated by resonant final states. Using Bjorken's sum rule in an
"unquenched" version of the quark model, I demonstrate that in the heavy quark
limit nonresonant final states should also be produced at a significant rate.
By calculating the individual strengths of a large number of exclusive two-body
nonresonant channels, I show that the total rate for such processes is highly
fragmented. I also describe some very substantial duality-violating suppression
factors which reduce the inclusive nonresonant rate to a few percent of the
total semileptonic rate for the finite quark masses of B decay, and comment on
the importance of nonresonant decays as testing grounds for very basic ideas on
the structure, strength, and significance of the quark-antiquark sea and on
quark-hadron duality in QCD.Comment: 51 pages, 2 Postscript figure
Coulomb Gauge QCD, Confinement, and the Constituent Representation
Quark confinement and the genesis of the constituent quark model are examined
in nonperturbative QCD in Coulomb gauge. We employ a self-consistent method to
construct a quasiparticle basis and to determine the quasiparticle interaction.
The results agree remarkably well with lattice computations. They also
illustrate the mechanism by which confinement and constituent quarks emerge,
provide support for the Gribov-Zwanziger confinement scenario, clarify several
perplexing issues in the constituent quark model, and permit the construction
of an improved model of low energy QCD.Comment: 43 pages, 14 figures, revtex, uses psfig.st
Isospin splitting in heavy baryons and mesons
A recent general analysis of light-baryon isospin splittings is updated and
extended to charmed baryons.
The measured and splittings stand out as being difficult
to understand in terms of two-body forces alone.
We also discuss heavy-light mesons; though the framework here is necessarily
less general, we nevertheless obtain some predictions that are not strongly
model-dependent.Comment: 12 pages REVTEX 3, plus 4 uuencoded ps figures, CMU-HEP93-
Elastic interactions of active cells with soft materials
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of
the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information
to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,
cellular force patterns during active mechanosensing can be modelled as
anisotropic force contraction dipoles. Their build-up depends on the mechanical
properties of the environment, including elastic rigidity and prestrain. In a
finite sized sample, it also depends on sample geometry and boundary conditions
through image strain fields. We discuss the interactions of active cells with
an elastic environment and compare it to the case of physical force dipoles.
Despite marked differences, both cases can be described in the same theoretical
framework. We exactly solve the elastic equations for anisotropic force
contraction dipoles in different geometries (full space, halfspace and sphere)
and with different boundary conditions. These results are then used to predict
optimal position and orientation of mechanosensing cells in soft material.Comment: Revtex, 38 pages, 8 Postscript files included; revised version,
accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Oxide phase characterization in simulated high burn-up UO2 fuels in the early stages of a nuclear severe accident
International audienc
K* nucleon hyperon form factors and nucleon strangeness
A crucial input for recent meson hyperon cloud model estimates of the nucleon
matrix element of the strangeness current are the nucleon-hyperon-K* (NYK*)
form factors which regularize some of the arising loops. Prompted by new and
forthcoming information on these form factors from hyperon-nucleon potential
models, we analyze the dependence of the loop model results for the
strange-quark observables on the NYK* form factors and couplings. We find, in
particular, that the now generally favored soft N-Lambda-K* form factors can
reduce the magnitude of the K* contributions in such models by more than an
order of magnitude, compared to previous results with hard form factors. We
also discuss some general implications of our results for hadronic loop models.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, new co-author, discussion extended to the
momentum dependence of the strange vector form factor
Black Hole Production at LHC: String Balls and Black Holes from pp and Lead-lead Collisions
If the fundamental planck scale is near a TeV, then parton collisions with
high enough center-of-mass energy should produce black holes. The production
rate for such black holes at LHC has been extensively studied for the case of a
proton-proton collision. In this paper, we extend this analysis to a lead-lead
collision at LHC. We find that the cross section for small black holes which
may in principle be produced in such a collision is either enhanced or
suppressed, depending upon the black hole mass. For example, for black holes
with a mass around 3 TeV we find that the differential black hole production
cross section, d\sigma/dM, in a typical lead-lead collision is up to 90 times
larger than that for black holes produced in a typical proton-proton collision.
We also discuss the cross-sections for `string ball' production in these
collisions. For string balls of mass about 1 (2) TeV, we find that the
differential production cross section in a typical lead-lead collision may be
enhanced by a factor up to 3300 (850) times that of a proton-proton collision
at LHC.Comment: Added some discussion, final version to appear in Phys. Rev. D (rapid
communications
Chaotic Genetic Patchiness in the Highly Valued Atlantic Stalked Barnacle Pollicipes pollicipes from the Iberian Peninsula: Implications for Fisheries Management. Frontiers in Marine Science
The stalked barnacle Pollicipes pollicipes inhabits rocky shores from the Atlantic coasts of Brittany (France) to Senegal. Because of the culinary traditions of southern Europe, stalked barnacles represent an important target species for local fisheries on the Iberian Peninsula. To manage this fishery sustainably, it is therefore important to assess the dynamics of local populations over the Iberian coast, and how they are interconnected at a wider scale using finely tuned genetic markers. In this work, a new enriched library of GT microsatellites for P. pollicipes was prepared and sequenced using Ion TorrentTM Next Gen-Sequencing Technology. 1,423 adults and juveniles were sampled in 15 localities of three geographic regions: southern Portugal, Galicia and Asturias (both in northern Spain). Twenty polymorphic loci arranged in five multiplex PCRs were then tested and validated as new molecular tools to address the spatial and temporal genetic patterns of P. pollicipes. Our results revealed high genetic diversity among adults. However, juveniles were genetically more structured than their adult counterparts, which alternatively displayed much more connectivity among the three studied regions. The lack of spatial genetic heterogeneity in adults may be due to the overlapping of several generations of settlers coming from different geographic origins, which mainly depends on the orientation of residual currents along the coast during reproduction. The genetic differentiation of juveniles may indeed be congruent with Iberian Peninsula hydrodynamics, which can produce chaotic genetic patchiness (CGP) at small temporal scales due to sweepstake reproductive success, collective dispersal and/or self-recruitment. Remarkably, most of the genetic heterogeneity of juveniles found in this work was located in Galicia, which could represent an admixture between distinct metapopulations or an old refuge for the most northern populations. To conclude, high genetic variation in P. pollicipes can lead to the false impression of population panmixia at the Iberian scale by masking more restricted and current-driven larval exchanges between regions. This possibility should be taken into consideration for further specific management and conservation plans for the species over the Iberian Peninsula
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