A study of local approximation for polarization potentials

We discuss the derivation of an equivalent \textit{l}-independent polarization potential for use in the optical Schr\"{o}dinger equation that describes the elastic scattering of heavy ions. Three diffferent methods are used for this purpose. Application of our theory to the low energy scattering of the halo nucleus $^{11}$Li from a $^{12}$C target is made. It is found that the notion of \textit{l}-independent polarization potential has some validity but can not be a good substitute for the \textit{l}-dependent local equivalent Feshbach polarization potential.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Role of Salicylic Acid in the Improvement of PEG – Induced Drought Stress in Maize (Zea mays L.) cv. Baghdad

Laboratory experiment using hydroponic culture system was conducted at plant physiology laboratory, Department of Biology, College of Education for Pure  Sciences, University of Basrah, in order to study the role of seeds soaking with salicylic acid (SA) and the effect of PEG8000 induced water stress on germination and early seedling growth stages of maize (Zea mays L.) cv. Baghdad. Seeds were soaked with three concentrations of SA (0.1,0.3 and 0.5 mM) in addition to control treatment with distilled water, while PEG8000 were used at concentrations of  0% (distilled water) 1%, 2%, 3%, 6%, 9% and 12%. The data was recorded on various parameters like seeds germination percentage, seedlings roots and shoot length and seedlings roots and shoot fresh and dry weight.The experiment was designed as completely randomized factorial with three replicates for each treatment. Results indicated that SA at 0.5 mM caused a significant increase in germination percentage roots and shoot length, roots and shoots fresh and dry weight while PEG8000 caused a significant decrease especially at its high concentrations (6% and 9%) in all the previous parameters. Interaction between SA at 0.5 mM and PEG had improved significantly germination percentage, shoot and roots length, shoot and roots fresh and dry weight so it had a positive significance effect on increasing the drought tolerance in maize. Keywords: Maize, Salicylic acid, PEG8000, Hydroponic, Germination, Seedling growth.

Role of virtual break-up of projectile in astrophysical fusion reactions

We study the effect of virtual Coulomb break-up, commonly known as the dipole polarizability, of the deuteron projectile on the astrophysical fusion reaction 3He(d,p)4He. We use the adiabatic approximation to estimate the potential shift due to the E1 transition to the continuum states in the deuteron, and compute the barrier penetrability in the WKB approximation. We find that the enhancement of the penetrability due to the deuteron break-up is too small to resolve the longstanding puzzle observed in laboratory measurements that the electron screening effect is surprisingly larger than theoretical prediction based on an atomic physics model. The effect of the 3He break-up in the 3He(d,p)4He reaction, as well as the 7Li break-up in the 7Li(p,alpha)4He reaction is also discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 2 eps figure

Matrix Elements of Random Operators and Discrete Symmetry Breaking in Nuclei

It is shown that several effects are responsible for deviations of the intensity distributions from the Porter-Thomas law. Among these are genuine symmetry breaking, such as isospin; the nature of the transition operator; truncation of the Hilbert space in shell model calculations and missing transitionsComment: 8 pages, 3 figure

The Coulomb phase shift revisited

We investigate the Coulomb phase shift, and derive and analyze new and more precise analytical formulae. We consider next to leading order terms to the Stirling approximation, and show that they are important at small values of the angular momentum $l$ and other regimes. We employ the uniform approximation. The use of our expressions in low energy scattering of charged particles is discussed and some comparisons are made with other approximation methods.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Cyclic Self-Organizing Map for Object Recognition

Object recognition is an important machine learning (ML) application. To have a robust ML application, we need three major steps: (1) preprocessing (i.e. preparing the data for the ML algorithms); (2) using appropriate segmentation and feature extraction algorithms to abstract the core features data and (3) applying feature classification or feature recognition algorithms. The quality of the ML algorithm depends on a good representation of the data. Data representation requires the extraction of features with an appropriate learning rate. Learning rate influences how the algorithm will learn about the data or how the data will be processed and treated. Generally, this parameter is found on a trial-and-error basis and scholars sometimes set it to be constant. This paper presents a new optimization technique for object recognition problems called Cyclic-SOM by accelerating the learning process of the self-organizing map (SOM) using a non-constant learning rate. SOM uses the Euclidean distance to measure the similarity between the inputs and the features maps. Our algorithm considers image correlation using mean absolute difference instead of traditional Euclidean distance. It uses cyclical learning rates to get high performance with a better recognition rate. Cyclic-SOM possesses the following merits: (1) it accelerates the learning process and eliminates the need to experimentally find the best values and schedule for the learning rates; (2) it offers one form of improvement in both results and training; (3) it requires no manual tuning of the learning rate and appears robust to noisy gradient information, different model architecture choices, various data modalities and selection of hyper-parameters and (4) it shows promising results compared to other methods on different datasets. Three wide benchmark databases illustrate the efficiency of the proposed technique: AHD Base for Arabic digits, MNIST for English digits, and CMU-PIE for faces

Symptoms of anxiety and depression among adolescents with seizures in Irbid, Northern Jordan

AbstractIn Jordan, individuals with epilepsy commonly attend neuropsychiatric clinics. The objective of this study was to assess the psychosocial outcome of epilepsy among adolescents. The study included 101 epileptic adolescents who attended the neurology clinic at the Princess Basma Teaching Hospital in Northern Jordan and 101 non-epileptic controls. Sociodemographic characteristics and all relevant clinical data were collected through interviewing the cases and controls. Identification of the symptoms of anxiety and depression was made according to DSM-IV criteria. The patients were age and sex matched with the controls. The controls had achieved a significantly better education ( >12 years education) than the patients with epilepsy. The adolescents with epilepsy were also shown to be disadvantaged in their living circumstances. Some of them were dependent on their parents in some daily physical activities, such as bathing, which might be a sign of overprotection by their parents. Those with epilepsy had a significantly higher tendency to develop symptoms of anxiety and depression than the control group. Moreover these psychiatric symptoms, especially anxiety symptoms, were more likely to happen when seizures had not been properly medically controlled. Overprotective parental behaviour towards their ill children could also delay their psychosocial maturation. Therefore, counselling of patients and parents about epilepsy is an important factor in the control of seizures and their sequelae

Particle production in proton-proton collisions

Proton-proton collision is a simple system to investigate nuclear matter and it is considered to be a guide for more sophisticated processes in the proton-nucleus and the nucleus-nucleus collisions. In this article, we present a phenomological study of how the mechanism of particle production in pp interaction changes over a wide range of interaction energy. This study is done on data of charged particle produced in pp experiments at different values of energy. Some of these data give the created particles classified as hadrons, baryons and mesons, which help us compare between production of different particles. This might probe some changes in the state of nuclear matter and identify the mechanism of interaction.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1410.715