39 research outputs found
Evading the CKM Hierarchy: Intrinsic Charm in B Decays
We show that the presence of intrinsic charm in the hadrons' light-cone wave
functions, even at a few percent level, provides new, competitive decay
mechanisms for B decays which are nominally CKM-suppressed. For example, the
weak decays of the B-meson to two-body exclusive states consisting of strange
plus light hadrons, such as B\to\pi K, are expected to be dominated by penguin
contributions since the tree-level b\to s u\bar u decay is CKM suppressed.
However, higher Fock states in the B wave function containing charm quark pairs
can mediate the decay via a CKM-favored b\to s c\bar c tree-level transition.
Such intrinsic charm contributions can be phenomenologically significant. Since
they mimic the amplitude structure of ``charming'' penguin contributions,
charming penguins need not be penguins at all.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, published version. References added, minor
change
Fitting the integrated Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies
Fitting the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies is an almost
universally used technique that has matured significantly in the last decade.
Model predictions and fitting procedures have improved significantly over this
time, attempting to keep up with the vastly increased volume and quality of
available data. We review here the field of SED fitting, describing the
modelling of ultraviolet to infrared galaxy SEDs, the creation of
multiwavelength data sets, and the methods used to fit model SEDs to observed
galaxy data sets. We touch upon the achievements and challenges in the major
ingredients of SED fitting, with a special emphasis on describing the interplay
between the quality of the available data, the quality of the available models,
and the best fitting technique to use in order to obtain a realistic
measurement as well as realistic uncertainties. We conclude that SED fitting
can be used effectively to derive a range of physical properties of galaxies,
such as redshift, stellar masses, star formation rates, dust masses, and
metallicities, with care taken not to over-interpret the available data. Yet
there still exist many issues such as estimating the age of the oldest stars in
a galaxy, finer details ofdust properties and dust-star geometry, and the
influences of poorly understood, luminous stellar types and phases. The
challenge for the coming years will be to improve both the models and the
observational data sets to resolve these uncertainties. The present review will
be made available on an interactive, moderated web page (sedfitting.org), where
the community can access and change the text. The intention is to expand the
text and keep it up to date over the coming years.Comment: 54 pages, 26 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics &
Space Scienc
Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA
Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5
GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS
detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the
centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total
transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly
a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4
GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This
observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with
a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil
Computer-Aided Solvent Screening for Biocatalysis
A computer-aidedsolventscreening methodology is described and tested for biocatalytic systems composed of enzyme, essential water and substrates/products dissolved in a solvent medium, without cells. The methodology is computationally simple, using group contribution methods for calculating constrained properties related to chemical reaction equilibrium, substrate and product solubility, water solubility, boiling points, toxicity and others. Two examples are provided, covering the screening of solvents for lipase-catalyzed transesterification of octanol and inulin with vinyl laurate. Esterification of acrylic acid with octanol is also addressed. Solvents are screened and candidates identified, confirming existing experimental results. Although the examples involve lipases, the method is quite general, so there seems to be no preclusion against application to other biocatalyst
Observation of Events with an Energetic Forward Neutron in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA
In deep inelastic neutral current scattering of positrons and protons at the center of mass energy of 300 GeV, we observe, with the ZEUS detector, events with a high energy neutron produced at very small scattering angles with respect to the proton direction. The events constitute a fixed fraction of the deep inelastic, neutral current event sample independent of Bjorken x and Q2 in the range 3 · 10-4 \u3c xBJ \u3c 6 · 10-3 and 10 \u3c Q2 \u3c 100 GeV2
New filovirus disease classification and nomenclature
Filoviruses, the members of the family Filoviridae, are
currently classified into one proposed and five established
genera (Supplementary Table 1). Of the twelve
described filoviruses, six have been identified as aetiological
agents of naturally occurring human disease
outbreaks