Baryon and antibaryon production in hadron-hadron and hadron-nucleus interactions

Cascade baryon and anti-baryon yields have been measured in p+p and p+A collisions. After extraction of the projectile component in p+A interactions close similarities with A+A collisions concerning the nuclear enhancement factors are observed. In addition the importance of effects related to projectile isospin and to net baryon stopping is pointed out.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, Presented at Quark Matter 2002, Nantes, Franc

Resonance Production in STAR

The recent results from resonance production in central Au+Au and p+p collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} =$ 200 GeV from the STAR experiment at RHIC are presented and discussed.Comment: 7 pages, proceedings 19th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Breckenridge, Colorado, USA, February 8-15, 200

Investigation into the hardbean phenomenon in phaseolus vulgaris L.

The textural deterioration of dry beans during storage was investigated. The primary symptoms of this hardbean phenomenon were found to be reduced viability, reduced water uptake and reduced cooking rate. It was found that the basic cause of the beans failing to cook - or soften - was the failure of the cotyledon cells to separate during the cooking process. From these initial observations it was hypothesised that reduced cell separation rate was due to either reduced turgor pressure due to reduced water uptake, or reduced pectin solubility, or both. Techniques used included light microscopy, transmission and scanning electron microscopy, thin-layer chromatography and spectrophotometry and it was found that reduced cell separation rate was due to a combination of both reduced water uptake and reduced pectin solubility. By inducing the hardbean symptoms artificially their relevance to textural deterioration were determined. The significant events within the beans during storage were found to be phytin breakdown, membrane deterioration, cation leakage, pectin demethylation and pectin calcification. By running a storage trial and thus allowing hardness to develop within the beans the sequence of events was elucidated

A feasibility study on using inkjet technology, micropumps, and MEMs as fuel injectors for bipropellant rocket engines

Control over drop size distributions, injection rates, and geometrical distribution of fuel and oxidizer sprays in bi-propellant rocket engines has the potential to produce more efficient, more stable, less polluting rocket engines. This control also offers the potential of an engine that can be throttled, working efficiently over a wide range of output thrusts. Inkjet printing technologies, MEMS fuel atomizers, and piezoelectric injectors similar in concept to those used in diesel engines are considered for their potential to yield a new, more active injection scheme for a rocket engine. Inkjets are found to be unable to pump at sufficient pressures, and have possibly dangerous failure modes. Active injection is found to be feasible if high pressure drop along the injector plate are used. A conceptual design is presented and its basic behavior assessed

Selected results on Strong and Coulomb-induced correlations from the STAR experiment

Using recent high-statistics STAR data from Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at full RHIC energy I discuss strong and Coulomb-induced final state interaction effects on identical ($\pi-\pi$) and non-identical ($\pi-\Xi$) particle correlations. Analysis of $\pi-\Xi$ correlations reveals the strong and Coulomb-induced FSI effects allowing for the first time to estimate space extension of $\pi$ and $\Xi$ sources and average shift between them. Source imaging technique providing clean separation of these effects from effects due to the source function itself is applied to one-dimensional relative momentum correlation function of identical pions. For low momentum pions and/or non-central collisions large departure from a single-Gaussian shape is observed

How well does NLO pQCD describe strangeness in p+pp+p collisions at s\sqrt{s}= 200 GeV in STAR?

We present measurements of the transverse momentum spectra for $\mathrm{K^{0}_{S}}$, $\Lambda$, $\Xi$ and their antiparticles in p+p collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200 GeV$. The extracted mid-rapidity yields and $$ are in agreement with previous $p+\bar{p}$ experiments while they have smaller statistical errors. We compare the measured spectra for $\mathrm{K^{0}_{S}}$ and $\Lambda$ to the latest available calculations from NLO pQCD and see good agreement for the $\mathrm{K^{0}_{S}}$ above 1.5 GeV/c.Comment: conference proceedings, Strangeness in Quark Matter 2004, 5 pages, submitted to Journal Physics G, final version submitted to journal incl. modifications requested by edito

Editorial

This special issue of MSOR Connections is based on contributions to a workshop, ‘Programming in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum’, which took place at Middlesex University on 27th June 2019, and other submissions received on the same theme

Amino-terminal cysteine residues of RGS16 are required for palmitoylation and modulation of G(i)- and G(q)-mediated signaling

RGS proteins (Regulators of G protein Signaling) are a recently discovered family of proteins that accelerate the GTPase activity of heterotrimeric G protein α subunits of the i, q, and 12 classes. The proteins share a homologous core domain but have divergent amino-terminal sequences that are the site of palmitoylation for RGS-GAIP and RGS4. We investigated the function of palmitoylation for RGS16, which shares conserved amino-terminal cysteines with RGS4 and RGS5. Mutation of cysteine residues at residues 2 and 12 blocked the incorporation of [3H]palmitate into RGS16 in metabolic labeling studies of transfected cells or into purified RGS proteins in a cell-free palmitoylation assay. The purified RGS16 proteins with the cysteine mutations were still able to act as GTPase-activating protein for Giα. Inhibition or a decrease in palmitoylation did not significantly change the amount of protein that was membrane-associated. However, palmitoylation-defective RGS16 mutants demonstrated impaired ability to inhibit both Gi- and Gq-linked signaling pathways when expressed in HEK293T cells. These findings suggest that the amino-terminal region of RGS16 may affect the affinity of these proteins for Gα subunits in vivo or that palmitoylation localizes the RGS protein in close proximity to Gα subunits on cellular membranes