The Effects of Reducing Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Barriers to Trade on the Washington State Apple Industry

Health Economics and Policy,

B+→K−π+π+B^+\to K^-\pi^+\pi^+: three-body final state interactions and KπK\pi isospin states

Final state interactions are considered to formulate the $B$ meson decay amplitude for the $K\pi\pi$ channel. The Faddeev decomposition of the Bethe-Salpeter equation is used in order to build a relativistic three-body model within the light-front framework. The S-wave scattering amplitude for the $K\pi$ system is considered in the $1/2$ and $3/2$ isospin channels with the set of inhomogeneous integral equations solved perturbatively. In comparison with previous results for the $D$ meson decay in the same channel, one has to consider the different partonic processes, which build the source amplitudes, and the larger absorption to other decay channels appears, that are important features to be addressed. As in the $D$ decay case, the convergence of the rescattering perturbative series is also achieved with two-loop contributions.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Quantum electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions, confinement, and the stability of U(1) spin liquids

Compact quantum electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions often arises as an effective theory for a Mott insulator, with the Dirac fermions representing the low-energy spinons. An important and controversial issue in this context is whether a deconfinement transition takes place. We perform a renormalization group analysis to show that deconfinement occurs when $N>N_c=36/\pi^3\approx 1.161$, where $N$ is the number of fermion replica. For $N<N_c$, however, there are two stable fixed points separated by a line containing a unstable non-trivial fixed point: a fixed point corresponding to the scaling limit of the non-compact theory, and another one governing the scaling behavior of the compact theory. The string tension associated to the confining interspinon potential is shown to exhibit a universal jump as $N\to N_c^-$. Our results imply the stability of a spin liquid at the physical value N=2 for Mott insulators.Comment: 4 pages; 1 figure; v4: version accepted for publication in PRL. Additional material: the detailed derivation of the RG equations appearing in this preprint can be downloaded from http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~nogueira/cqed3.htm

Growth kinetics of environmental Legionella pneumophila isolated from industrial wastewater

Wastewater treatment plants are environmental niches for Legionella pneumophila, the most commonly identified causative agent of severe pneumonia known as Legionnaire's disease. In the present study, Legionella pneumophila's concentrations were monitored in an industrial wastewater treatment plant and environmental isolates were characterized concerning their growth kinetics with respect to temperature and their inhibition by organic acids and ammonium. The results of the monitoring study showed that Legionella pneumophila occurs in activated sludge tanks operated with very different sludge retention times, 2.5 days in a complete-mix reactor, and 10 days in a membrane bioreactor, indicating that this bacterium can grow at different rates, despite the same wastewater temperature of 35 degrees C. The morphology of Legionella cells is different in both reactors; in the membrane bioreactor, the bacteria grow in clusters, while in the complete-mix reactor, filaments predominate demonstrating a faster growth rate. Legionella pneumophila concentrations in the complete-mix reactor and in the membrane bioreactor were within the range 3 x 10(1) to 4.8 x 10(3) GU/mL and 3 x 10(2) to 4.7 x 10(3) GU/mL, respectively. Environmental Legionella pneumophila SG2-14 isolates showed distinct temperature preferences. The lowest growth rate was observed at 28 degrees C, and the highest 0.34 d(-1) was obtained at 42 degrees C. The presence of high concentrations of organic acids and ammonium found in anaerobically pre-treated wastewater caused growth inhibition. Despite the increasing research efforts, the mechanisms governing the growth of Legionella pneumophila in wastewater treatment plants are still unclear. New innovative strategies to prevent the proliferation of this bacterium in wastewater are in demand

Color-suppression of non-planar diagrams in bosonic bound states

We study the suppression of non-planar diagrams in a scalar QCD model of a meson system in $3+1$ space-time dimensions due to the inclusion of the color degrees of freedom. As a prototype of the color-singlet meson, we consider a flavor-nonsinglet system consisting of a scalar-quark and a scalar-antiquark with equal masses exchanging a scalar-gluon of a different mass, which is investigated within the framework of the homogeneous Bethe-Salpeter equation. The equation is solved by using the Nakanishi representation for the manifestly covariant bound-state amplitude and its light-front projection. The resulting non-singular integral equation is solved numerically. The damping of the impact of the cross-ladder kernel on the binding energies are studied in detail. The color-suppression of the cross-ladder effects on the light-front wave function and the elastic electromagnetic form factor are also discussed. As our results show, the suppression appears significantly large for $N_c=3$, which supports the use of rainbow-ladder truncations in practical nonperturbative calculations within QCD.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. To appear in Physics Letters

Solving the three-body bound-state Bethe-Salpeter equation in Minkowski space

The scalar three-body Bethe-Salpeter equation, with zero-range interaction, is solved in Minkowski space by direct integration of the four-dimensional integral equation. The singularities appearing in the propagators are treated properly by standard analytical and numerical methods, without relying on any ansatz or assumption. The results for the binding energies and transverse amplitudes are compared with the results computed in Euclidean space. A fair agreement between the calculations is found.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, version accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.