1,068 research outputs found
Data sources for rescuing the rich heritage of Mediterranean historical surface climate data
10.1002/gdj3.4Availability of long-term and high-quality instrumental climate records is still insufficient and the rich heritage of meteorological surface observations is largely underexploited in many parts of the world. This is particularly striking over the Greater Mediterranean region (GMR), where meteorological observations have been taken since the 18th century at some locations. The lack of high quality and long series here is despite this region being regarded as a climate change hot spot. This article mainly assesses relevant sources containing Mediterranean historical climate data and metadata either from online repositories worldwide or physical archives, with the emphasis here on the rich holdings kept at French archives. A particular case study is the data rescue (DARE) program undertaken by the Algerian National Meteorological Service, as well as some of the past and ongoing projects and initiatives aimed at enhancing climate data availability and accessibility over the GMR. Our findings point to the high potential for undertaking DARE activities over the GMR and the need for bringing longer and higher quality climate time series to support a diverse number of scientific and technical assessments and policies
Rates for the reactions antiproton-proton --> pi phi and gamma phi
We study antiproton-proton annihilation at rest into and
. Rescattering by and
for states is sizable, of
order in the branching ratio, but
smaller than experiment. For the
rescattering contributions are negligible, but the channel is well
explained by a intermediate state combined with vector meson
dominance.Comment: 12 pages, plain latex, 2 postscript figures available upon request,
PSI-PR-93-2
Universal Scaling of Wave Propagation Failure in Arrays of Coupled Nonlinear Cells
We study the onset of the propagation failure of wave fronts in systems of
coupled cells. We introduce a new method to analyze the scaling of the critical
external field at which fronts cease to propagate, as a function of
intercellular coupling. We find the universal scaling of the field throughout
the range of couplings, and show that the field becomes exponentially small for
large couplings. Our method is generic and applicable to a wide class of
cellular dynamics in chemical, biological, and engineering systems. We confirm
our results by direct numerical simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, RevTe
Branching Ratio and CP Asymmetry of B_s \to K^*_0(1430)\pi Decays in the PQCD Approach
In the two-quark model supposition for , the branching ratios
and the direct CP-violating asymmetries for decays are studied by employing the
perturbative QCD factorization approach. We find that although these two decays
are both tree-dominated, the ratio of their penguin to tree contributions are
very different: there is only a few percent for the decay , while about 37% in scenario I, even 51% in scenario II
for the decay . It results that these two
decays have very different values in the branching ratios and the direct CP
asymmetries. The branching ratio of the decay is at the order of , and its direct CP asymmetry
is about (20-30)%. While for the decay , its
direct CP-violating asymmetry is very large and about 90%, but it is difficult
to measure it, because the branching ratio for this channel is small and only
order.Comment: 8pages, 2figure
Clustering and Sharing Incentives in BitTorrent Systems
Peer-to-peer protocols play an increasingly instrumental role in Internet
content distribution. Consequently, it is important to gain a full
understanding of how these protocols behave in practice and how their
parameters impact overall performance. We present the first experimental
investigation of the peer selection strategy of the popular BitTorrent protocol
in an instrumented private torrent. By observing the decisions of more than 40
nodes, we validate three BitTorrent properties that, though widely believed to
hold, have not been demonstrated experimentally. These include the clustering
of similar-bandwidth peers, the effectiveness of BitTorrent's sharing
incentives, and the peers' high average upload utilization. In addition, our
results show that BitTorrent's new choking algorithm in seed state provides
uniform service to all peers, and that an underprovisioned initial seed leads
to the absence of peer clustering and less effective sharing incentives. Based
on our observations, we provide guidelines for seed provisioning by content
providers, and discuss a tracker protocol extension that addresses an
identified limitation of the protocol
Linguistic expert creation in online health practices
In this chapter, we explore how the construction of an expert identity varies across online e-health settings with different socio-technological features. Our methodology is qualitative in nature and draws on insights from discourse analysis, in particular positioning theory. Results show that four aspects of creating expertise are vital: the embeddedness of the posi-tioning strategies in the online health context, the interplay between these strategies within each setting, the interactivity of the medium, and the fact that not only professionals, but also clients and laypeople construct their expertise. The results reveal that previously found strategies to create expertise (e.g., using jargon or showing empathy) could be confirmed in our corpus, and that the interplay of several strategies is in fact needed to create credible and trustworthy expert identities for all participants involved. This interplay varies accord-ing to the practice
The detailed mechanism of the eta production in pp scattering up to the Tlab = 4.5 GeV
Contrary to very early beliefs, the experimental cross section data for the
eta production in proton-proton scattering are well described if pi and only
eta meson exchange diagrams are used to calculate the Born term. The inclusion
of initial and final state interactions is done in the factorization
approximation by using the inverse square of the Jost function. The two body
Jost functions are obtained from the S matrices in the low energy effective
range approximation. The danger of double counting in the p-eta final state
interaction is discussed. It is shown that higher partial waves in
meson-nucleon amplitudes do not contribute significantly bellow excess energy
of Q=100 MeV. Known difficulties of reducing the multi resonance model to a
single resonance one are illustrated.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, corrected typos in relation (3), changed content
(added section with differential cross sections
Mutations in the C-terminal region of the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase and their correlation with drug resistance associated mutations and antiviral treatment
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objective</p> <p>Replication of HIV-1 after cell entry is essentially dependent on the reverse transcriptase (RT). Antiretroviral drugs impairing the function of the RT currently aim at the polymerase subunit. One reason for failure of antiretroviral treatment is the evolvement of resistance-associated mutations in the viral genome. For RT inhibitors, almost all identified mutations are located within the polymerase; therefore, general genotyping confines to investigate this subunit. Recently several studies have shown that substitutions within the RNase H and the connection domain increase antiviral drug-resistance in vitro, and some of them are present in patient isolates.</p> <p>Aim</p> <p>The aim of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of these substitutions and their association with mutations in the polymerase domain arising during antiretroviral treatment.</p> <p>Materials and methods</p> <p>We performed genotypic analyzes on seventy-four virus isolates derived from treated and untreated patients, followed at the HIV Centre of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Hospital (Frankfurt/Main, Germany). We subsequently analysed the different substitutions in the c-terminal region to evaluate whether there were associations with each other, n-terminal substitutions or with antiretroviral treatment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We identified several primer grip substitutions, but almost all of them were located in the connection domain. This is consistent with other in-vivo studies, in which especially the primer grip residues located in the RNase H were unvaried. Furthermore, we identified other substitutions in the connection domain and in the RNase H. Especially E399D seemed to be associated with an antiretroviral treatment and N-terminal resistance-delivering mutations.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Some of the identified substitutions were associated with antiviral treatment and drug resistance-associated mutations. Due to the low prevalence of C-terminal mutations and as only a few of them could be associated with antiviral treatment and N-terminal resistance-delivering mutations, we would not recommend routinely testing of the C-terminal RT region.</p
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