414 research outputs found
On the structure pf genealogical trees in the presence of selection
We investigate through numerical simulations the effect of selection on two
summary statistics for nucleotide variation in a sample of two genes from a
population of N asexually reproducing haploid individuals. One is the mean time
since two individuals had their most recent common ancestor (), and
the other is the mean number of nucleotide differences between two genes in the
sample (). In the case of diminishing epistasis, in which the
deleterious effect of a new mutation is attenuated, we find that the scale of
with the population size depends on the mutation rate, leading then
to the onset of a sharp threshold phenomenon as N becomes large.Comment: 6 page
Use of mulching to curb late blight epidemics on potatoes in Paraná, Brazil.
Potato late blight – PLB is the most destructive foliar fungal disease for the crop in Southern Brazil. Organic farmers are in the urge to find ways to minimize losses due to the disease. Thus, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of mulching on potato crop on late blight epidemic reduction using soil mulching. Two experiments were installed for the spring planting, at Lapa, PR. Treatments were with mulching (60 t/ha fresh weight, plant cover composition was mainly of ryegrass, oats, mixed with wild radish) and no mulching. Cultivars Ágata (susceptible) and BRS Ana (moderately resistant) were used in each experiment. Randomized complete blocks with 4 reps was the experimental design. PLB severity was weekly assessed visually on plots to estimate the area under late blight progress curves (AULBPC) for ANOVA. Plot size was of 6 ten-meter long rows, 0.8 m apart. Harvest was done at the 4 internal rows. There was a significant reduction of the AULBPC for the mulching treatment for both cultivars tested. Mulching also influenced positively commercial yield. There was a significant reduction in weed incidence for the mulching treatment as well. These experiments are under way for the Fall season planting
A geometric approach to time evolution operators of Lie quantum systems
Lie systems in Quantum Mechanics are studied from a geometric point of view.
In particular, we develop methods to obtain time evolution operators of
time-dependent Schrodinger equations of Lie type and we show how these methods
explain certain ad hoc methods used in previous papers in order to obtain exact
solutions. Finally, several instances of time-dependent quadratic Hamiltonian
are solved.Comment: Accepted for publication in the International Journal of Theoretical
Physic
Fluctuations of an evaporating black hole from back reaction of its Hawking radiation: Questioning a premise in earlier work
This paper delineates the first steps in a systematic quantitative study of
the spacetime fluctuations induced by quantum fields in an evaporating black
hole. We explain how the stochastic gravity formalism can be a useful tool for
that purpose within a low-energy effective field theory approach to quantum
gravity. As an explicit example we apply it to the study of the
spherically-symmetric sector of metric perturbations around an evaporating
black hole background geometry. For macroscopic black holes we find that those
fluctuations grow and eventually become important when considering sufficiently
long periods of time (of the order of the evaporation time), but well before
the Planckian regime is reached. In addition, the assumption of a simple
correlation between the fluctuations of the energy flux crossing the horizon
and far from it, which was made in earlier work on spherically-symmetric
induced fluctuations, is carefully analyzed and found to be invalid. Our
analysis suggests the existence of an infinite amplitude for the fluctuations
of the horizon as a three-dimensional hypersurface. We emphasize the need for
understanding and designing operational ways of probing quantum metric
fluctuations near the horizon and extracting physically meaningful information.Comment: 10 pages, REVTeX; minor changes, a few references added and a brief
discussion of their relevance included. To appear in the proceedings of the
10th Peyresq meeting. Dedicated to Rafael Sorkin on the occasion of his 60th
birthda
Quantum state transformation by dispersive and absorbing four-port devices
The recently derived input-output relations for the radiation field at a
dispersive and absorbing four-port device [T. Gruner and D.-G. Welsch, Phys.
Rev. A 54, 1661 (1996)] are used to derive the unitary transformation that
relates the output quantum state to the input quantum state, including
radiation and matter and without placing frequency restrictions. It is shown
that for each frequency the transformation can be regarded as a well-behaved
SU(4) group transformation that can be decomposed into a product of U(2) and
SU(2) group transformations. Each of them may be thought of as being realized
by a particular lossless four-port device. If for narrow-bandwidth radiation
far from the medium resonances the absorption matrix of the four-port device
can be disregarded, the well-known SU(2) group transformation for a lossless
device is recognized. Explicit formulas for the transformation of Fock-states
and coherent states are given.Comment: 24 pages, RevTe
Quantum corrected geodesics
We compute the graviton-induced corrections to the trajectory of a classical
test particle. We show that the motion of the test particle is governed by an
effective action given by the expectation value (with respect to the graviton
state) of the classical action. We analyze the quantum corrected equations of
motion for the test particle in two particular backgrounds: a Robertson Walker
spacetime and a 2+1 dimensional spacetime with rotational symmetry. In both
cases we show that the quantum corrected trajectory is not a geodesic of the
background metric.Comment: LaTeX file, 15 pages, no figure
Linear Response, Validity of Semi-Classical Gravity, and the Stability of Flat Space
A quantitative test for the validity of the semi-classical approximation in
gravity is given. The criterion proposed is that solutions to the
semi-classical Einstein equations should be stable to linearized perturbations,
in the sense that no gauge invariant perturbation should become unbounded in
time. A self-consistent linear response analysis of these perturbations, based
upon an invariant effective action principle, necessarily involves metric
fluctuations about the mean semi-classical geometry, and brings in the
two-point correlation function of the quantum energy-momentum tensor in a
natural way. This linear response equation contains no state dependent
divergences and requires no new renormalization counterterms beyond those
required in the leading order semi-classical approximation. The general linear
response criterion is applied to the specific example of a scalar field with
arbitrary mass and curvature coupling in the vacuum state of Minkowski
spacetime. The spectral representation of the vacuum polarization function is
computed in n dimensional Minkowski spacetime, and used to show that the flat
space solution to the semi-classical Einstein equations for n=4 is stable to
all perturbations on distance scales much larger than the Planck length.Comment: 22 pages: This is a significantly expanded version of gr-qc/0204083,
with two additional sections and two new appendices giving a complete,
explicit example of the semi-classical stability criterion proposed in the
previous pape
Tests of Higgs Boson Couplings at a mu+mu- Collider
We investigate the potential of a muon collider for testing the presence of
anomalous Higgs boson couplings. We consider the case of a light (less than
) Higgs boson and study the effects on the Higgs branching ratios and
total width, which could be induced by the non standard couplings created by a
class of dim=6 gauge invariant operators
satisfying the constraints imposed by the present and future hadronic and
colliders. For each operator we give the minimal value of the
integrated luminosity needed for the muon collider () to
improve these constraints. Depending on the operator and the Higgs mass, this
minimal luminosity lies between and .Comment: 18 pages and 4 figures; version to be published in Phys. Rev.D.
e-mail: [email protected]
The impact of replacing sugar- by artificially-sweetened beverages on brain and behavioral responses to food viewing - An exploratory study.
Several studies indicate that the outcome of nutritional and lifestyle interventions can be linked to brain 'signatures' in terms of neural reactivity to food cues. However, 'dieting' is often considered in a rather broad sense, and no study so far investigated modulations in brain responses to food cues occurring over an intervention specifically aiming to reduce sugar intake. We studied neural activity and liking in response to visual food cues in 14 intensive consumers of sugar-sweetened beverages before and after a 3-month replacement period by artificially-sweetened equivalents. Each time, participants were presented with images of solid foods differing in fat content and taste quality while high-density electroencephalography was recorded. Contrary to our hypotheses, there was no significant weight loss over the intervention period and no changes were observed in food liking or in neural activity in regions subserving salience and reward attribution. However, neural activity in response to high-fat, sweet foods was significantly reduced from pre-to post-intervention in prefrontal regions often linked to impulse control. This decrease in activity was associated with weight loss failure, suggesting an impairment in individuals' ability to exert control and adjust their solid food intake over the intervention period. Our findings highlight the need to implement multidisciplinary approaches when aiming to help individuals lose body weight
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