5,026 research outputs found
On a zero speed sensitive cellular automaton
Using an unusual, yet natural invariant measure we show that there exists a
sensitive cellular automaton whose perturbations propagate at asymptotically
null speed for almost all configurations. More specifically, we prove that
Lyapunov Exponents measuring pointwise or average linear speeds of the faster
perturbations are equal to zero. We show that this implies the nullity of the
measurable entropy. The measure m we consider gives the m-expansiveness
property to the automaton. It is constructed with respect to a factor dynamical
system based on simple "counter dynamics". As a counterpart, we prove that in
the case of positively expansive automata, the perturbations move at positive
linear speed over all the configurations
Metallochaperones Are Needed for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Escherichia coli Nicotinamidase-Pyrazinamidase Activity.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis nicotinamidase-pyrazinamidase (PZAse) is a metalloenzyme that catalyzes conversion of nicotinamide-pyrazinamide to nicotinic acid-pyrazinoic acid. This study investigated whether a metallochaperone is required for optimal PZAse activity. M. tuberculosis and Escherichia coli PZAses (PZAse-MT and PZAse-EC, respectively) were inactivated by metal depletion (giving PZAse-MT-Apo and PZAse-EC-Apo). Reactivation with the E. coli metallochaperone ZnuA or Rv2059 (the M. tuberculosis analog) was measured. This was repeated following proteolytic and thermal treatment of ZnuA and Rv2059. The CDC1551 M. tuberculosis reference strain had the Rv2059 coding gene knocked out, and PZA susceptibility and the pyrazinoic acid (POA) efflux rate were measured. ZnuA (200âÎŒM) achieved 65% PZAse-EC-Apo reactivation. Rv2059 (1âÎŒM) and ZnuA (1âÎŒM) achieved 69% and 34.3% PZAse-MT-Apo reactivation, respectively. Proteolytic treatment of ZnuA and Rv2059 and application of three (but not one) thermal shocks to ZnuA significantly reduced the capacity to reactivate PZAse-MT-Apo. An M. tuberculosis Rv2059 knockout strain was Wayne positive and susceptible to PZA and did not have a significantly different POA efflux rate than the reference strain, although a trend toward a lower efflux rate was observed after knockout. The metallochaperone Rv2059 restored the activity of metal-depleted PZAse in vitro Although Rv2059 is important in vitro, it seems to have a smaller effect on PZA susceptibility in vivo. It may be important to mechanisms of action and resistance to pyrazinamide in M. tuberculosis Further studies are needed for confirmation.IMPORTANCE Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis and remains one of the major causes of disease and death worldwide. Pyrazinamide is a key drug used in the treatment of tuberculosis, yet its mechanism of action is not fully understood, and testing strains of M. tuberculosis for pyrazinamide resistance is not easy with the tools that are presently available. The significance of the present research is that a metallochaperone-like protein may be crucial to pyrazinamide's mechanisms of action and of resistance. This may support the development of improved tools to detect pyrazinamide resistance, which would have significant implications for the clinical management of patients with tuberculosis: drug regimens that are appropriately tailored to the resistance profile of a patient's individual strain lead to better clinical outcomes, reduced onward transmission of infection, and reduction of the development of resistant strains that are more challenging and expensive to treat
decays
Effective chiral theory of mesons is applied to study the four decay modes of
. Theoretical values of the branching ratios are in
agreement with the data. The theory predicts that the resonance plays a
dominant role in these decays. There is no new parameter in this study.Comment: 12 pages and one figur
Seabird Bycatch in Pelagic Longline Fisheries Is Grossly Underestimated when Using Only Haul Data
Hundreds of thousands of seabirds are killed each year as bycatch in longline fisheries. Seabirds are predominantly caught during line setting but bycatch is generally recorded during line hauling, many hours after birds are caught. Bird loss during this interval may lead to inaccurate bycatch information. In this 15 year study, seabird bycatch was recorded during both line setting and line hauling from four fishing regions: Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean, Coral Sea and central Pacific Ocean. Over 43,000 albatrosses, petrels and skuas representing over 25 species were counted during line setting of which almost 6,000 seabirds attempted to take the bait. Bait-taking interactions were placed into one of four categories. (i) The majority (57%) of bait-taking attempts were âunsuccessfulâ involving seabirds that did not take the bait nor get caught or hooked. (ii) One-third of attempts were âsuccessfulâ with seabirds removing the bait while not getting caught. (iii) One-hundred and seventy-six seabirds (3% of attempts) were observed being âcaughtâ during line setting, with three albatross species â Laysan (Phoebastria immutabilis), black-footed (P. nigripes) and black-browed (Thalassarche melanophrys)â dominating this category. However, of these, only 85 (48%) seabird carcasses were retrieved during line hauling. Most caught seabirds were hooked through the bill. (iv) The remainder of seabird-bait interactions (7%) was not clearly observed, but likely involved more âcaughtâ seabirds. Bait taking attempts and percentage outcome (e.g. successful, caught) varied between seabird species and was not always related to species abundance around fishing vessels. Using only haul data to calculate seabird bycatch grossly underestimates actual bycatch levels, with the level of seabird bycatch from pelagic longline fishing possibly double what was previously thought
mixing and the next-to-leading-order power correction
The next-to-leading-order power correction for and
form factors are evaluated and employed to explore the
mixing. The parameters of the two mixing angle scheme are
extracted from the data for form factors, two photon decay widths and radiative
decays. The analysis gives the result:
, where
and are the decay constants and the mixing
angles for the singlet (octet) state. In addition, we arrive at a stringent
range for MeV MeV.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, To be publshied in Phys. Rev.
COVID-19 in Latin America: Novel transmission dynamics for a global pandemic?
The COVID-19 virus expanded from China into Western Asia, Europe, and North America, impacting many of the worldâs wealthiest countries. Brazil reported Latin Americaâs first case in late February 2020, and in less than a month, over 7,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed among nearly every country and territory in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The LAC outbreak appears to be about two weeks behind the United States and Canada and about three to four weeks behind Western Europe. Thus, the global COVID-19 pandemic is entering a new phase, not only expanding beyond primarily temperate Northern Hemisphere countries into the tropics but also spreading to a geopolitical region marked by significantly worse poverty, water access and sanitation, and distrust in public governance (Fig 1). We believe that these aspects of the Latin American context are likely to substantially affect the transmission dynamics and scope of the COVID-19 outbreak in LAC, with potential implications for the trajectory of the global pandemic.The COVID-19 virus expanded from China into Western Asia, Europe, and North America, impacting many of the worldâs wealthiest countries. Brazil reported Latin Americaâs first case in late February 2020, and in less than a month, over 7,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed among nearly every country and territory in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The LAC outbreak appears to be about two weeks behind the United States and Canada and about three to four weeks behind Western Europe. Thus, the global COVID-19 pandemic is entering a new phase, not only expanding beyond primarily temperate Northern Hemisphere countries into the tropics but also spreading to a geopolitical region marked by significantly worse poverty, water access and sanitation, and distrust in public governance (Fig 1). We believe that these aspects of the Latin American context are likely to substantially affect the transmission dynamics and scope of the COVID-19 outbreak in LAC, with potential implications for the trajectory of the global pandemic
Chiral effective theory predictions for deuteron form factor ratios at low Q^2
We use chiral effective theory to predict the deuteron form factor ratio
G_C/G_Q as well as ratios of deuteron to nucleon form factors. These ratios are
calculated to next-to-next-to-leading order. At this order the chiral expansion
for the NN isoscalar charge operator (including consistently calculated 1/M
corrections) is a parameter-free prediction of the effective theory. Use of
this operator in conjunction with NLO and NNLO chiral effective theory wave
functions produces results that are consistent with extant experimental data
for Q^2 < 0.35 GeV^2. These wave functions predict a deuteron quadrupole moment
G_Q(Q^2=0)=0.278-0.282 fm^2-with the variation arising from short-distance
contributions to this quantity. The variation is of the same size as the
discrepancy between the theoretical result and the experimental value. This
motivates the renormalization of G_Q via a two-nucleon operator that couples to
quadrupole photons. After that renormalization we obtain a robust prediction
for the shape of G_C/G_Q at Q^2 < 0.3 GeV^2. This allows us to make precise,
model-independent predictions for the values of this ratio that will be
measured at the lower end of the kinematic range explored at BLAST. We also
present results for the ratio G_C/G_M.Comment: 31 pages, 7 figure
Isospin Structure of Penguins And Their Consequences in Physics
Isospin structure of gluon mediated or strong penguin is significantly
altered when the full electroweak corrections are included. This has the
consequence that some previous analyses which relied on a simple isospin
structure in charmless decays become inapplicable. We present the general
Hamiltonian in next-to-leading order QCD, and illustrate our conclusion
quantitatively for and decays in the
factorization approximation. Some remarks on CP asymmetries in decays are
also made.Comment: Revtex, 11 pages, typos in eq.(17) were correcte
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