612 research outputs found
The Impact of Eddies on Nutrient Supply, Diatom Biomass and Carbon Export in the Northern South China Sea
We have investigated the effect of eddies (cold and warm eddies, CEs and WEs) on the nutrient supply to the euphotic zone and the organic carbon export from the euphotic zone to deeper parts of the water column in the northern South China Sea. Besides basic hydrographic and biogeochemical parameters, the flux of particulate organic carbon (POC), a critical index of the strength of the oceanic biological pump, was also measured at several locations within two CEs and one WE using floating sediment traps deployed below the euphotic zone. The POC flux associated with the CEs (85 ± 55 mg-C m −2 d −1) was significantly higher than that associated with the WE (20 ± 7 mg-C m −2 d −1). This was related to differences in the density structure of the water column between the two types of eddies. Within the core of the WE, downwelling created intense stratification which hindered the upward mixing of nutrients and favored the growth of small phytoplankton species. Near the periphery of the WE, nutrient replenishment from below did take place, but only to a limited extent. By far the strongest upwelling was associated with the CEs, bringing nutrients into the lower portion (∼50 m) of the euphotic zone and fueling the growth of larger-cell phytoplankton such as centric diatoms (e.g., Chaetoceros, Coscinodiscus) and dinoflagellates (e.g., Ceratium). A significant finding that emerged from all the results was the positive relationship between the phytoplankton carbon content in the subsurface layer (where the chlorophyll a maximum occurs) and the POC flux to the deep sea
Modified Chaplygin Gas and Solvable F-essence Cosmologies
The Modified Chaplygin Gas (MCG) model belongs to the class of a unified
models of dark energy and dark matter. In this paper, we have modeled MCG in
the framework of f-essence cosmology. By constructing an equation connecting
the MCG and the f-essence, we solve it to obtain explicitly the pressure and
energy density of MCG. As special cases, we obtain both positive and negative
pressure solutions for suitable choices of free parameters. We also calculate
the state parameter which describes the phantom crossing.Comment: 12 pages, (Invited Review), accepted for publication in "Astrophysics
and Space Science" DOI: 10.1007/s10509-011-0870-
Gravitational Geometric Phase in the Presence of Torsion
We investigate the relativistic and non-relativistic quantum dynamics of a
neutral spin-1/2 particle submitted an external electromagnetic field in the
presence of a cosmic dislocation. We analyze the explicit contribution of the
torsion in the geometric phase acquired in the dynamic of this neutral
spinorial particle. We discuss the influence of the torsion in the relativistic
geometric phase. Using the Foldy-Wouthuysen approximation, the non-relativistic
quantum dynamics are studied and the influence of the torsion in the
Aharonov-Casher and He-McKellar-Wilkens effects are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, no figur
Space-time evolution induced by spinor fields with canonical and non-canonical kinetic terms
We study spinor field theories as an origin to induce space-time evolution.
Self-interacting spinor fields with canonical and non-canonical kinetic terms
are considered in a Friedman-Robertson-Walker universe. The deceleration
parameter is calculated by solving the equation of motion and the Friedman
equation, simultaneously. It is shown that the spinor fields can accelerate and
decelerate the universe expansion. To construct realistic models we discuss the
contributions from the dynamical symmetry breaking.Comment: 16 pages, 19 figure
Running coupling: Does the coupling between dark energy and dark matter change sign during the cosmological evolution?
In this paper we put forward a running coupling scenario for describing the
interaction between dark energy and dark matter. The dark sector interaction in
our scenario is free of the assumption that the interaction term is
proportional to the Hubble expansion rate and the energy densities of dark
sectors. We only use a time-variable coupling (with the scale factor
of the universe) to characterize the interaction . We propose a
parametrization form for the running coupling in which the
early-time coupling is given by a constant , while today the coupling is
given by another constant, . For investigating the feature of the running
coupling, we employ three dark energy models, namely, the cosmological constant
model (), the constant model (), and the time-dependent
model (). We constrain the models with the current
observational data, including the type Ia supernova, the baryon acoustic
oscillation, the cosmic microwave background, the Hubble expansion rate, and
the X-ray gas mass fraction data. The fitting results indicate that a
time-varying vacuum scenario is favored, in which the coupling crosses
the noninteracting line () during the cosmological evolution and the sign
changes from negative to positive. The crossing of the noninteracting line
happens at around , and the crossing behavior is favored at about
1 confidence level. Our work implies that we should pay more attention
to the time-varying vacuum model and seriously consider the phenomenological
construction of a sign-changeable or oscillatory interaction between dark
sectors.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; refs added; to appear in EPJ
The mitochondrial genome of the thermal dimorphic fungus Penicillium marneffei is more closely related to those of molds than yeasts
AbstractWe report the complete sequence of the mitochondrial genome of Penicillium marneffei, the first complete mitochondrial DNA sequence of a thermal dimorphic fungus. This 35 kb mitochondrial genome contains the genes encoding ATP synthase subunits 6, 8, and 9 (atp6, atp8, and atp9), cytochrome oxidase subunits I, II, and III (cox1, cox2, and cox3), apocytochrome b (cob), reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide ubiquinone oxireductase subunits (nad1, nad2, nad3, nad4, nad4L, nad5, and nad6), ribosomal protein of the small ribosomal subunit (rps), 28 tRNAs, and small and large ribosomal RNAs. Analysis of gene contents, gene orders, and gene sequences revealed that the mitochondrial genome of P. marneffei is more closely related to those of molds than yeasts
Non Linear Current Response of a Many-Level Tunneling System: Higher Harmonics Generation
The fully nonlinear response of a many-level tunneling system to a strong
alternating field of high frequency is studied in terms of the
Schwinger-Keldysh nonequilibrium Green functions. The nonlinear time dependent
tunneling current is calculated exactly and its resonance structure is
elucidated. In particular, it is shown that under certain reasonable conditions
on the physical parameters, the Fourier component is sharply peaked at
, where is the spacing between
two levels. This frequency multiplication results from the highly nonlinear
process of photon absorption (or emission) by the tunneling system. It is
also conjectured that this effect (which so far is studied mainly in the
context of nonlinear optics) might be experimentally feasible.Comment: 28 pages, LaTex, 7 figures are available upon request from
[email protected], submitted to Phys.Rev.
Experimental Tests of Factorization in Charmless Non-Leptonic Two-Body B Decays
Using a theoretical framework based on the next-to-leading order QCD-improved
effective Hamiltonian and a factorization Ansatz for the hadronic matrix
elements of the four-quark operators, we reassess branching fractions in
two-body non-leptonic decays , involving the lowest lying
light pseudoscalar and vector mesons in the standard model. Using
the sensitivity of the decay rates on the effective number of colors, , as
a criterion of theoretical predictivity, we classify all the current-current
(tree) and penguin transitions in five different classes. The recently measured
charmless two-body decays and charge conjugates) are
dominated by the -stable QCD penguins (class-IV transitions) and their
estimates are consistent with data. The measured charmless and transition ,
on the other hand, belong to the penguin (class-V) and tree (class-III)
transitions. The class-V penguin transitions are in general more difficult to
predict. We propose a number of tests of the factorization framework in terms
of the ratios of branching ratios for some selected decays
involving light hadrons and , which depend only moderately on the
form factors. We also propose a set of measurements to determine the effective
coefficients of the current-current and QCD penguin operators. The potential
impact of decays on the CKM phenomenology is emphasized by
analyzing a number of decay rates in the factorization framework.Comment: 64 pages (LaTex) including 13 figures, requires epsfig.sty; submitted
to Phys. Rev.
Measurements of the observed cross sections for exclusive light hadrons containing at , 3.650 and 3.6648 GeV
By analyzing the data sets of 17.3, 6.5 and 1.0 pb taken,
respectively, at , 3.650 and 3.6648 GeV with the BES-II
detector at the BEPC collider, we measure the observed cross sections for
, , ,
and at the three energy
points. Based on these cross sections we set the upper limits on the observed
cross sections and the branching fractions for decay into these
final states at 90% C.L..Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
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