ACUTE EFFECTS OF STATIC STRETCHING ON FORCE OUTPUT OF DORSI FLEXORS IN DANCE STUDENTS

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of static stretching on maximal force production of the dorsi flexors in dance students who had been performing stretching exercise regularly. Eight female university students in the department of dance and dance education, and nine female university students without dance experience performed a maximal voluntary contraction of the dorsi flexors after six minutes of static stretching. After static stretching, maximal voluntary force of dorsi flexors decreased significantly in both groups, while the joint range of motion in plantar flexion was significantly higher in the dance students compared with the non-dancers. These results suggest that prolonged stretching exercise induces a similar deficit in force production after acute static stretching in both dancers and non-dancers

A New High Resolution CO Map of the inner 2.'5 of M51 I. Streaming Motions and Spiral Structure

[Abridged] The Owens Valley mm-Array has been used to map the CO 1--0 emission in the inner 2'.5 of the grand design spiral galaxy M51 at 2''-3'' resolution. The molecular spiral arms are revealed with unprecedented clarity: supermassive cloud complexes, Giant Molecular Associations, are for the first time resolved both along and perpendicular to the arms. Major complexes occur symmetrically opposite each other in the two major arms. Streaming motions can be studied in detail along the major and minor axes of M51. The streaming velocities are very large, 60-150 km/s. For the first time, sufficient resolution to resolve the structure in the molecular streaming motions is obtained. Our data support the presence of galactic shocks in the arms of M51. In general, velocity gradients across arms are higher by a factor of 2-10 than previously found. They vary in steepness along the spiral arms, becoming particularly steep in between GMAs. The steep gradients cause conditions of strong reverse shear in several regions in the arms, and thus the notion that shear is generally reduced by streaming motions in spiral arms will have to be modified. Of the three GMAs studied on the SW arm, only one shows reduced shear. We find an expansion in the NE molecular arm at 25'' radius SE of the center. This broadening occurs right after the end of the NE arm at the Inner Lindblad Resonance. Bifurcations in the molecular spiral arm structure, at a radius of 73'', may be evidence of a secondary compression of the gas caused by the 4/1 ultraharmonic resonance. Inside the radius of the ILR, we detect narrow (~ 5'') molecular spiral arms possibly related to the K-band arms found in the same region. We find evidence of non-circular motions in the inner 20'' which are consistent with gas on elliptical orbits in a bar.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figures, uses latex macros for ApJ; accepted for publication in Ap

Water Maser Emission from the Active Nucleus in M51

22 GHz water vapor `kilomaser' emission is reported from the central region of the Whirlpool galaxy M 51 (NGC 5194). The red-shifted spectral features (Vlsr ~ 560 km/s), flaring during most of the year 2000, originate from a spatially unresolved maser spot of size < 30 mas (< 1.5 pc), displaced by < 250 mas from the nucleus. The data provide the first direct evidence for the association of an H2O kilomaser with an active galactic nucleus (AGN). In early 2001, blue-shifted maser emission (Vlsr ~ 435 km/s) was also detected. Red- and blue-shifted features bracket the systemic velocity asymmetrically. Within the standard model of a rotating Keplerian torus, this may either suggest the presence of a highly eccentric circumnuclear cloud or red- and blue-shifted `high velocity' emission from a radially extended torus. Most consistent with the measured H2O position is, however, an association of the red-shifted H2O emission with the northern part of the bipolar radio jet. In this scenario, the (weaker) northern jet is receding while the blue-shifted H2O emission is associated with the approaching southern jet.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Lepton Flavour Violation in charged leptons within SUSY-seesaw

In this paper we review our main results for Lepton Flavour Violating (LFV) semileptonic tau decays and muon-electron conversion in nuclei within the context of two Constrained SUSY-Seesaw Models, the CMSSM and the NUHM. The relevant spectrum is that of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model extended by three right handed neutrinos, $\nu_{R_i}$ and their corresponding SUSY partners, ${\tilde \nu}_{R_i}$, ($i=1,2,3$). We use the seesaw mechanism for neutrino mass generation and choose a parameterisation of this mechanism that allows us to incorporate the neutrino data in our analysis of LFV processes. In addition to the full one-loop results for the rates of these processes, we will also review the set of simple formulas, valid at large $\tan \beta$, which are very useful to compare with present experimental bounds. The sensitivity to SUSY and Higgs sectors in these processes will also be discussed. This is a very short summary of the works in Refs. \cite{Arganda:2008jj} and \cite{Arganda:2007jw} to which we refer the reader for more details.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. To be published in the proceedings of the Tau08 Conference, Novosibirsk, Russia, 22-25 September 200

Search for lepton flavor violation via the intense high-energy muon beam

A deep inerastic scattering process \mutau is discussed to study lepton flavor violation between muons and tau leptons. In supersymmetric models, the Higgs boson mediated diagrams could be important for this reaction. We find that at a muon energy ($E_{\mu}$) higher than 50 GeV, the predicted cross section significantly increases due to the contribution from sea $b$-quarks. The number of produced tau leptons can be $\mathcal{O}(10^4)$ at $E_{\mu}$= 300 GeV from $10^{20}$ muons, whereas $\mathcal{O}(10^2)$ events are given at $E_{\mu}= 50$ GeV.Comment: Contribution to the 6th International Workshop on Neutrino Factories & Superbeams(NuFact04), Jul. 26-Aug. 1, 2004, Osaka Univerisity, Osaka, Japan, talk given by S.K., to appear in the Proceedings, 3 pages, 4 figure