24 research outputs found
Neutrino Telescopes' Sensitivity to Dark Matter
The nature of the dark matter of the Universe is yet unknown and most likely
is connected with new physics. The search for its composition is under way
through direct and indirect detection. Fundamental physical aspects such as
energy threshold, geometry and location are taken into account to investigate
proposed neutrino telescopes of km^3 volume sensitivities to dark matter. These
sensitivities are just sufficient to test a few WIMP scenarios. Telescopes of
km^3 volume, such as IceCube, can definitely discover or exclude superheavy (M
> 10^10 GeV) Strong Interacting Massive Particles (Simpzillas). Smaller
neutrino telescopes such as ANTARES, AMANDA-II and NESTOR can probe a large
region of the Simpzilla parameter space.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figure
Further investigation of a relic neutralino as a possible origin of an annual-modulation effect in WIMP direct search
We analyze the annual-modulation effect, measured by the DAMA Collaboration
with the new implementation of a further two-years running, in the context of a
possible interpretation in terms of relic neutralinos. We impose over the set
of supersymmetric configurations, selected by the annual-modulation data, the
constraints derived from WIMP indirect measurements, and discuss the features
of the ensuing relic neutralinos. We critically discuss the sources of the main
theoretical uncertainties in the analysis of event rates for direct and
indirect WIMP searches.Comment: 29 pages, 12 figures, typeset with ReVTeX. In order to reduce size,
the version on the archive has low resolution figures. A full version of the
paper can be found at http://www.to.infn.it/~fornengo/papers
Ultrahigh-Energy Neutrino Interactions
Cross sections for the interactions of ultrahigh-energy neutrinos with
nucleons are evaluated in light of new information about nucleon structure
functions. For --eV neutrinos, the cross section is about 2.4 times
previous estimates. We also review the cross sections for neutrino interactions
with atomic electrons. Some consequences for interaction rates in the Earth and
for event rates from generic astrophysical sources in large-scale detectors are
noted.Comment: 51 pages, LaTeX, uses elsart.sty and BoxedEPS for 23 uufiled
PostScript figures. Compressed PostScript version is available at
http://chrisq.fnal.gov/Papers/GQRS.ps.
The yeast vacuolar membrane proteome
Transport of solutes between the cytosol and the vacuolar lumen is of crucial importance for various functions of vacuoles, including ion homeostasis; detoxification; storage of different molecules such as amino acids, phosphate, and calcium ions; and proteolysis. To identify proteins that catalyze solute transport across the vacuolar membrane, the membrane proteome of purified Saccharomyces cerevisiae vacuoles was analyzed. Subtractive proteomics was used to distinguish contaminants from true vacuolar proteins by comparing the relative abundances of proteins in pure and crude preparations. A robust statistical analysis combining enrichment ranking with the double boundary iterative group analysis revealed that 148 proteins were significantly enriched in the pure vacuolar preparations. Among these proteins were well characterized vacuolar proteins, such as the subunits of the vacuolar H+-ATPase, but also proteins that had not previously been assigned to a cellular location, many of which are likely novel vacuolar membrane transporters, e.g. for nucleosides and oligopeptides. Although the majority of contaminating proteins from other organelles were depleted from the pure vacuolar membranes, some proteins annotated to reside in other cellular locations were enriched along with the vacuolar proteins. In many cases the enrichment of these proteins is biologically relevant, and we discuss that a large group is involved in membrane fusion and protein trafficking to vacuoles and may have multiple localizations. Other proteins are degraded in vacuoles, and in some cases database annotations are likely to be incomplete or incorrect. Our work provides a wealth of information on vacuolar biology and a solid basis for further characterization of vacuolar functions