X(3872) and its Partners in the Heavy Quark Limit of QCD

In this letter, we propose interpolating currents for the X(3872) resonance, and show that, in the Heavy Quark limit of QCD, the X(3872) state should have degenerate partners, independent of its internal structure. Magnitudes of possible I=0 and I=1 components of the X(3872) are also discussed.Comment: 12 page

Renormalized coordinate approach to the thermalization process

We consider a particle in the harmonic approximation coupled linearly to an environment. modeled by an infinite set of harmonic oscillators. The system (particle--environment) is considered in a cavity at thermal equilibrium. We employ the recently introduced notion of renormalized coordinates to investigate the time evolution of the particle occupation number. For comparison we first present this study in bare coordinates. For a long ellapsed time, in both approaches, the occupation number of the particle becomes independent of its initial value. The value of ocupation number of the particle is the physically expected one at the given temperature. So we have a Markovian process, describing the particle thermalization with the environment. With renormalized coordinates no renormalization procedure is required, leading directly to a finite result.Comment: 16 pages, LATEX, 2 figure

Exogenous schwann cells migrate, remyelinate and promote clinical recovery in experimental auto-immune encephalomyelitis

Schwann cell (SC) transplantation is currently being discussed as a strategy that may promote functional recovery in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and other inflammatory demyelinating diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). However this assumes they will not only survive but also remyelinate demyelinated axons in the chronically inflamed CNS. To address this question we investigated the fate of transplanted SCs in myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG)-induced experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in the Dark Agouti rat; an animal model that reproduces the complex inflammatory demyelinating immunopathology of MS. We now report that SCs expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP-SCs) allografted after disease onset not only survive but also migrate to remyelinate lesions in the inflamed CNS. GFP-SCs were detected more frequently in the parenchyma after direct injection into the spinal cord, than via intra-thecal delivery into the cerebrospinal fluid. In both cases the transplanted cells intermingled with astrocytes in demyelinated lesions, aligned with axons and by twenty one days post transplantation had formed Pzero protein immunoreactive internodes. Strikingly, GFP-SCs transplantation was associated with marked decrease in clinical disease severity in terms of mortality; all GFP-SCs transplanted animals survived whilst 80% of controls died within 40 days of disease

Detection of enteric parasite DNA in household and bed dust samples: potential for infection transmission.

BACKGROUND: Enteric parasites are transmitted in households but few studies have sampled inside households for parasites and none have used sensitive molecular methods. METHODS: We collected bed and living room dust samples from households of children participating in a clinical trial of anthelmintic treatment in rural coastal Ecuador. Dust was examined for presence of DNA specific for 11 enteric parasites (Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Ancylostoma duodenale, Necator americanus, Strongyloides stercoralis, Toxocara canis and T. cati, Giardia lamblia, Blastocystis hominis, Cryptosporidium spp., and Entamoeba histolytica) by quantitative PCR (qPCR). RESULTS: Of the 38 households sampled, 37 had positive dust for at least one parasite and up to 8 parasites were detected in single samples. Positivity was greatest for B. hominis (79% of household samples) indicating a high level of environmental fecal contamination. Dust positivity rates for individual pathogens were: S. stercoralis (52%), A. lumbricoides (39%), G. lamblia (39%), Toxocara spp. (42%), hookworm (18%) and T. trichiura (8%). DNA for Cryptosporidium spp. and E. histolytica was not detected. Bed dust was more frequently positive than floor samples for all parasites detected. Positivity for A. lumbricoides DNA in bed (adjusted OR: 10.0, 95% CI: 2.0-50.1) but not floor dust (adjusted OR: 3.6, 95% CI: 0.3-37.9) was significantly associated with active infections in children. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first use of qPCR on environmental samples to detect a wide range of enteric pathogen DNA. Our results indicate widespread contamination of households with parasite DNA and raise the possibility that beds, under conditions of overcrowding in a humid tropical setting, may be a source of transmission

Importance of personality for objective and subjective-physical health in older men and women

Objective and subjective health generally have a positive relationship, although their association may be moderated by factors such as gender and personality. We aimed to analyze the association between personality and objective (metabolic syndrome (MetS)) and subjective-physical health in older men and women. For this purpose, in 138 participants (53.6% women, Mage = 66.85), neuroticism, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness, and agreeableness (NEO Five Factor Inventory), subjective-physical health (Short Form Health Survey, SF-36), and MetS (employing waist circumference, blood pressure, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and glycated hemoglobin) were assessed. Logistic regression analysis was performed to analyze whether personality was associated with MetS. Moreover, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to analyze the relationship between personality or MetS, and subjective-physical health. Finally, gender and personality moderation analyses were performed with PROCESS. Results showed that higher neuroticism was associated with an increased likelihood of MetS, whereas higher neuroticism and lower extraversion were associated with lower subjective-physical health. Moreover, the negative relationship between MetS and subjective-physical health was stronger in individuals with low conscientiousness. Regarding gender differences, only in women, higher extraversion was related to a decreased likelihood of MetS, and MetS was related to lower subjective-physical health. In conclusion, higher neuroticism is the main vulnerability health factor, whereas to a lesser extent extraversion and conscientiousness are protective factors. Furthermore, the association between objective and subjective health is not direct, but it may vary depending on personality and gender

Burning dynamics and in-depth flame spread of wood cribs in large compartment fires

Wood cribs pervade the fire research literature as the chosen fuel load for testing within the built environment. As such, the underpinning knowledge of fire behaviour in compartments was developed from experiments using wood cribs in small compartments. Despite the apparent incomparability of porous fuel-beds such as cribs to real solid fuels in the built environment, the role of the fuel mass transfer number (“B-Number”) in defining the compartment fire dynamics has received little attention. In the case of large open-plan compartments, the burning processes are strongly dependant on the relationship of the fuel nature and compartment geometry. To address these limitations, the physical processes in-depth and external to a spreading wood crib fire in a compartment are examined. A theory to couple these processes to a compartment is proposed and analogised into the classical “Emmons problem”, leading to a definition of a total mass transfer number for a wood crib. Comparing the theory against data from a large-scale experiment shows that the wood crib approximates steady-state burning in two regimes: a fuel-bed-controlled regime and a momentum-controlled regime. The fuel-bed-controlled regime occurs when the burning and spread rates are governed by the processes internal to the crib, and the fire behaviour is therefore defined by the crib geometry. This regime is characterised by a fire that travels or grows slowly, with small external heat fluxes. The momentum-controlled regime occurs when the fire is fully-developed and the external heat fluxes are very large. Burning rates are controlled by the residence time, with the compartment fire dynamics defined by complex transport processes associated with the momentum-driven flows external to the crib. Transitions from the fuel-bed-controlled regime to the momentum-controlled regime are driven by accelerations in the flame spread rate along the surface of the crib leading to additional energy input mechanism that is used to raise the in-depth flame spread rate of the crib. It is hypothesised that the burning mechanisms of fuels with large mass transfer numbers, such as non-charring plastics, diverge significantly from wood cribs, and therefore extrapolating test data from wood cribs fires in compartments to real fuels must be done with extreme caution. Thus, the nature of the fuel is an important and unavoidable consideration when studying the fire dynamics of large open-plan compartments

Post-encoding stress does not enhance memory consolidation: The role of cortisol and testosterone reactivity

In contrast to the large body of research on the effects of stress-induced cortisol on memory consolidation in young people, far less attention has been devoted to understanding the effects of stress-induced testosterone on this memory phase. This study examined the psychobiological (i.e., anxiety, cortisol, and testosterone) response to the Maastricht Acute Stress Test and its impact on free recall and recognition for emotional and neutral material. Thirty-seven healthy young men and women were exposed to a stress (MAST) or control task post-encoding, and 24 h later, they had to recall the material previously learned. Results indicated that the MAST increased anxiety and cortisol levels, but it did not significantly change the testosterone levels. Post-encoding MAST did not affect memory consolidation for emotional and neutral pictures. Interestingly, however, cortisol reactivity was negatively related to free recall for negative low-arousal pictures, whereas testosterone reactivity was positively related to free recall for negative-high arousal and total pictures. This study provides preliminary evidence about a different reactivity of testosterone and cortisol to the MAST as well as on their effects on consolidation. Our results suggest a different pattern of relationships between these steroid hormones and the arousal of the negative images

MOPREDAScentury: a long-term monthly precipitation grid for the Spanish mainland

This article describes the development of a monthly precipitation dataset for the Spanish mainland (western Mediterranean basin), covering the period between December 1915 and December 2020. The dataset combines ground observational data from the National Climate Data Bank (NCDB) of the Spanish national climate and weather service (AEMET) and new data rescued from meteorological yearbooks published prior to 1951 that was never incorporated into the NCDB. The yearbooks data represented a significant improvement of the dataset, as it almost doubled the number of weather stations available during the first decades of the 20th century, the period when the dataset was more scarce. The final dataset contains records from 11,312 stations, although the number of stations with data in a given month varies largely between 674 in 1939 and a maximum of 5,234 in 1975. Spatial interpolation was used on the resulting dataset to create monthly precipitation grids. The process involved a two-stage process: estimation of the probability of zero-precipitation (dry month), and estimation of precipitation magnitude. Interpolation was carried out using universal kriging, using anomalies (ratios with respect to the 1961&ndash;2000 monthly climatology) as dependent variable and several geographic variates as independent variables. Cross-validation results showed that the resulting grids are spatially and temporally unbiased, although the mean error and the variance deflation effect are highest during the first decades of the 20th century, when the observational dataset was more scarce. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.20350/digitalCSIC/15136 under an open license, and can be cited as Beguer&iacute;a et al. (2023).</p

Upward Flame Spread for Fire Risk Classification of High-Rise Buildings

External fire spread has the potential to breach vertical compartmentation and violate the fire safety strategy of a building. The traditional design solution to this has been the use of non-combustible materials and spandrel panels but recent audits show that combustible materials are widespread and included in highly complex systems. Furthermore, most jurisdictions no longer require detailing of spandrel panels under many different circumstances. These buildings require rapid investigation using rational scientific methods to be able to adequately classify the fire risk. In this work, we use an extensive experimental campaign of material-scale data to explore the critical parameters driving upward flame spread. Two criteria are outlined using two different approaches. The first evaluates the time to ignition and the time to burnout to assess the ability for a fire to spread, and can be easily determined using traditional means. The second evaluates the preheated flame length as the critical parameter driving flame spread. A wide range of cladding materials are ranked according to these criteria to show their potential propensity to flame spread. From this, designers can use conservative approaches to perform fire risk assessments for buildings with combustible materials or can be used to aid decision-making. Precise estimates of flame spread rates within complex façade systems are not achievable with the current level of knowledge and will require a substantial amount of work to make progress