236,375 research outputs found
Comment on ``Signal of Quark Deconfinement in the Timing Structure of Pulsar Spin-Down''
This is a comment on a paper by Glendenning, Pei, and Weber (Phys. Rev.
Lett., 79, 1603, 1997), where the authors gave an incorrect estimate of the
event rate and neglected the important gravitational energy release. Previous
work on the same subject is reviewed, and a new suggestion is made to link
quark-hadron phase transitions with soft gamma-ray repeaters.Comment: 4 pages; to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Effects of the tensor force on the ground and first states of the magic Ca nucleus
The magic nature of the Ca nucleus is investigated in the light of the
recent experimental results. We employ both HFB and HF+BCS methods using
Skyrme-type SLy5, SLy5+T and T44 interactions. The evolution of the
single-particle spectra is studied for the N=34 isotones: Fe, Cr,
Ti and Ca. An increase is obtained in the neutron spin-orbit
splittings of and states due to the effect of the tensor force which
also makes Ca a magic nucleus candidate. QRPA calculations on top of
HF+BCS are performed to investigate the first = states of the
calcium isotopic chain. A good agreement for excitation energies is obtained
when we include the tensor force in the mean-field part of the calculations.
The first states indicate a subshell closure for both Ca and
Ca nuclei. We confirm that the tensor part of the interaction is quite
essential in explaining the neutron subshell closure in Ca and Ca
nuclei.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
Consumer Food Safety Risk Attitudes and Perceptions Over Time: The Case of BSE Crisis
Recent research has shown that by decoupling the risk response behaviour of consumers into the separate components of risk perception and risk attitude, a more robust conceptualization and prediction of consumers’ reactions to food safety issues is possible. Furthermore, it has been argued that the influence of risk attitudes and risk perceptions on consumer risk behaviour for contaminated food products can be used to formulate effective agricultural policies and strategies in case of a food crisis. The question arises whether or not the influence and magnitude of these risk variables changes over time and, hence, whether policies and strategies must be adapted. The BSE (mad cow disease) crises in the USA, Germany and The Netherlands in 2001 and 2004 provided us with a natural experiment to examine the relationship between risk attitudes and perceptions and behaviour over time. The results show that in some countries consumers risk behaviour changed, whereas in others not. These results are useful to policy makers and decision makers in food industry in developing more efficient supply chain management and public policies
Evaluation of expected solar flare neutrino events in the IceCube observatory
Since the end of the eighties and in response to a reported increase in the
total neutrino flux in the Homestake experiment in coincidence with a solar
flare, solar neutrino detectors have searched for solar flare signals.
Neutrinos from the decay of mesons, which are themselves produced in collisions
of accelerated protons with the solar atmosphere, would provide a novel window
on the underlying physics of the acceleration process. For our studies we focus
on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic kilometer neutrino detector
located at the geographical South Pole. Due to its Supernova data acquisition
system and its DeepCore component, dedicated to low energy neutrinos, IceCube
may be sensitive to solar flare neutrinos and thus permit either a measurement
of the signal or the establishment of more stringent upper limits on the solar
flare neutrino flux. We present an approach for a time profile analysis based
on a stacking method and an evaluation of a possible solar flare signal in
IceCube using the Geant4 toolkit.Comment: Paper submitted to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference, The
Hague 201
Yang-Yang thermodynamics on an atom chip
We investigate the behavior of a weakly interacting nearly one-dimensional
(1D) trapped Bose gas at finite temperature. We perform in situ measurements of
spatial density profiles and show that they are very well described by a model
based on exact solutions obtained using the Yang-Yang thermodynamic formalism,
in a regime where other, approximate theoretical approaches fail. We use
Bose-gas focusing [Shvarchuck etal., Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 270404 (2002)] to
probe the axial momentum distribution of the gas, and find good agreement with
the in situ results.Comment: extended introduction and conclusions, and minor changes throughout;
accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
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