7,450 research outputs found
Progress of the Felsenkeller shallow-underground accelerator for nuclear astrophysics
Low-background experiments with stable ion beams are an important tool for
putting the model of stellar hydrogen, helium, and carbon burning on a solid
experimental foundation. The pioneering work in this regard has been done by
the LUNA collaboration at Gran Sasso, using a 0.4 MV accelerator. In the
present contribution, the status of the project for a higher-energy underground
accelerator is reviewed. Two tunnels of the Felsenkeller underground site in
Dresden, Germany, are currently being refurbished for the installation of a 5
MV high-current Pelletron accelerator. Construction work is on schedule and
expected to complete in August 2017. The accelerator will provide intense, 50
uA, beams of 1H+, 4He+, and 12C+ ions, enabling research on astrophysically
relevant nuclear reactions with unprecedented sensitivity.Comment: Submitted to the Proceedings of Nuclei in the Cosmos XIV, 19-24 June
2016, Niigata/Japa
Std fimbriae-fucose interaction increases Salmonella-induced intestinal inflammation and prolongs colonization
Author summary The intestinal epithelium is a crucial biological interface, interacting with both commensal and pathogenic microorganisms. It’s lined with heavily glycosylated proteins and glycolipids which can act as both attachment sites and energy sources for intestinal bacteria. Fut2, the enzyme governing epithelial α1,2-fucosylation, has been implicated in the interaction between microbes and intestinal epithelial cells. Salmonella is one of the most important bacterial gastrointestinal pathogens affecting millions of people worldwide. Salmonella possesses fimbrial and non-fimbrial adhesins which can be used to adhere to host cells. Here we show that Salmonella expresses Std fimbriae in the gastrointestinal tract in vivo and exploit Std fimbriae to bind fucosylated structures in the mucus and on the intestinal epithelium. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the Std fimbriae-fucose interaction is necessary for bacterial colonization of the intestine and for triggering intestinal inflammation. These data lend new insights into bacterial adhesion-epithelial interactions which are essential for bacterial pathogenesis and key factors in determining tissue tropism and host susceptibility to infectious disease
Excitonic condensate and quasiparticle transport in electron-hole bilayer systems
Bilayer electron-hole systems undergo excitonic condensation when the
distance d between the layers is smaller than the typical distance between
particles within a layer. All excitons in this condensate have a fixed dipole
moment which points perpendicular to the layers, and therefore this condensate
of dipoles couples to external electromagnetic fields. We study the transport
properties of this dipolar condensate system based on a phenomenological model
which takes into account contributions from the condensate and quasiparticles.
We discuss, in particular, the drag and counterflow transport, in-plane
Josephson effect, and noise in the in-plane currents in the condensate state
which provides a direct measure of the superfluid collective-mode velocity.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Section Extension from Hyperbolic Geometry of Punctured Disk and Holomorphic Family of Flat Bundles
The construction of sections of bundles with prescribed jet values plays a
fundamental role in problems of algebraic and complex geometry. When the jet
values are prescribed on a positive dimensional subvariety, it is handled by
theorems of Ohsawa-Takegoshi type which give extension of line bundle valued
square-integrable top-degree holomorphic forms from the fiber at the origin of
a family of complex manifolds over the open unit 1-disk when the curvature of
the metric of line bundle is semipositive. We prove here an extension result
when the curvature of the line bundle is only semipositive on each fiber with
negativity on the total space assumed bounded from below and the connection of
the metric locally bounded, if a square-integrable extension is known to be
possible over a double point at the origin. It is a Hensel-lemma-type result
analogous to Artin's application of the generalized implicit function theorem
to the theory of obstruction in deformation theory. The motivation is the need
in the abundance conjecture to construct pluricanonical sections from flatly
twisted pluricanonical sections. We also give here a new approach to the
original theorem of Ohsawa-Takegoshi by using the hyperbolic geometry of the
punctured open unit 1-disk to reduce the original theorem of Ohsawa-Takegoshi
to a simple application of the standard method of constructing holomorphic
functions by solving the d-bar equation with cut-off functions and additional
blowup weight functions
Deterministic Partial Differential Equation Model for Dose Calculation in Electron Radiotherapy
Treatment with high energy ionizing radiation is one of the main methods in
modern cancer therapy that is in clinical use. During the last decades, two
main approaches to dose calculation were used, Monte Carlo simulations and
semi-empirical models based on Fermi-Eyges theory. A third way to dose
calculation has only recently attracted attention in the medical physics
community. This approach is based on the deterministic kinetic equations of
radiative transfer. Starting from these, we derive a macroscopic partial
differential equation model for electron transport in tissue. This model
involves an angular closure in the phase space. It is exact for the
free-streaming and the isotropic regime. We solve it numerically by a newly
developed HLLC scheme based on [BerCharDub], that exactly preserves key
properties of the analytical solution on the discrete level. Several numerical
results for test cases from the medical physics literature are presented.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure
Neutron flux and spectrum in the Dresden Felsenkeller underground facility studied by moderated He counters
Ambient neutrons may cause significant background for underground
experiments. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate their flux and energy
spectrum in order to devise a proper shielding. Here, two sets of altogether
ten moderated He neutron counters are used for a detailed study of the
ambient neutron background in tunnel IV of the Felsenkeller facility,
underground below 45 meters of rock in Dresden/Germany. One of the moderators
is lined with lead and thus sensitive to neutrons of energies higher than 10
MeV. For each He counter-moderator assembly, the energy dependent neutron
sensitivity was calculated with the FLUKA code. The count rates of the ten
detectors were then fitted with the MAXED and GRAVEL packages. As a result,
both the neutron energy spectrum from 10 MeV to 300 MeV and the flux
integrated over the same energy range were determined experimentally.
The data show that at a given depth, both the flux and the spectrum vary
significantly depending on local conditions. Energy integrated fluxes of , , and cm
s, respectively, are measured for three sites within Felsenkeller tunnel
IV which have similar muon flux but different shielding wall configurations.
The integrated neutron flux data and the obtained spectra for the three sites
are matched reasonably well by FLUKA Monte Carlo calculations that are based on
the known muon flux and composition of the measurement room walls.Comment: 10 figures, 4 tables; to be published in Phys. Rev.
The Effect of Splayed Pins on Vortex Creep and Critical Currents
We study the effects of splayed columnar pins on the vortex motion using
realistic London Langevin simulations. At low currents vortex creep is strongly
suppressed, whereas the critical current j_c is enhanced only moderately.
Splaying the pins generates an increasing energy barrier against vortex
hopping, and leads to the forced entanglement of vortices, both of which
suppress creep efficiently. On the other hand splaying enhances kink nucleation
and introduces intersecting pins, which cut off the energy barriers. Thus the
j_c enhancement is strongly parameter sensitive. We also characterize the angle
dependence of j_c, and the effect of different splaying geometries.Comment: 4 figure
Study of the Decay B(0)(s)→D(*)(s)D(*)(s)
This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.241801
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