541 research outputs found
Evoecotoxicology: Environmental Changes and Life Features Development during the Evolutionary Process—the Record of the Past at Developmental Stages of Living Organisms
For most of evolutionary history, scientific understanding of the environment and life forms is extremely limited. In this commentary I discuss the hypothesis that ontogenetic features of living organisms can be considered biomarkers of coevolution between organisms and physicochemical agents during Earth’s history. I provide a new vision of evolution based on correlations between metabolic features and stage-dependent susceptibility of organisms to physicochemical agents with well-known environmental signatures. Thus, developmental features potentially reflect environmental changes during evolution. From this perspective, early multicellular life forms would have flourished in the anoxic Earth more than 2 billion years ago, which is at least 1.2 billion years in advance of available fossil evidence. The remarkable transition to aerobic metabolism in gastrula-stage embryos potentially reflects evolution toward tridermic organisms by 2 billion years ago. Noteworthy changes in embryonic resistance to physicochemical agents at different developmental stages that can be observed in living organisms potentially reflect the influence of environmental stress conditions during different periods of evolutionary history. Evoecotoxicology, as a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach, can enhance our understanding of evolution, including the phylogenetic significance of differences in susceptibility/resistance to physicochemical agents in different organisms
Optical properties of structurally-relaxed Si/SiO superlattices: the role of bonding at interfaces
We have constructed microscopic, structurally-relaxed atomistic models of
Si/SiO superlattices. The structural distortion and oxidation-state
characteristics of the interface Si atoms are examined in detail. The role
played by the interface Si suboxides in raising the band gap and producing
dispersionless energy bands is established. The suboxide atoms are shown to
generate an abrupt interface layer about 1.60 \AA thick. Bandstructure and
optical-absorption calculations at the Fermi Golden rule level are used to
demonstrate that increasing confinement leads to (a) direct bandgaps (b) a blue
shift in the spectrum, and (c) an enhancement of the absorption intensity in
the threshold-energy region. Some aspects of this behaviour appear not only in
the symmetry direction associated with the superlattice axis, but also in the
orthogonal plane directions. We conclude that, in contrast to Si/Ge, Si/SiO
superlattices show clear optical enhancement and a shift of the optical
spectrum into the region useful for many opto-electronic applications.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures (submitted to Phys. Rev. B
Exclusive rho^0 muoproduction on transversely polarised protons and deuterons
The transverse target spin azimuthal asymmetry A_UT in hard exclusive
production of rho^0 mesons was measured at COMPASS by scattering 160 GeV/c
muons off transversely polarised protons and deuterons. The measured asymmetry
is sensitive to the nucleon helicity-flip generalised parton distributions E^q,
which are related to the orbital angular momentum of quarks in the nucleon. The
Q^2, x_B and p_t^2 dependence of A_UT is presented in a wide kinematic range.
Results for deuterons are obtained for the first time. The measured asymmetry
is small in the whole kinematic range for both protons and deuterons, which is
consistent with the theoretical interpretation that contributions from GPDs E^u
and E^d approximately cancel.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures and 4 tables, updated author lis
First Measurement of Chiral Dynamics in \pi^- \gamma -> \pi^- \pi^- \pi^+
The COMPASS collaboration at CERN has investigated the \pi^- \gamma -> \pi^-
\pi^- \pi^+ reaction at center-of-momentum energy below five pion masses,
sqrt(s) < 5 m(\pi), embedded in the Primakoff reaction of 190 GeV pions
impinging on a lead target. Exchange of quasi-real photons is selected by
isolating the sharp Coulomb peak observed at smallest momentum transfers, t' <
0.001 (GeV/c)^2. Using partial-wave analysis techniques, the scattering
intensity of Coulomb production described in terms of chiral dynamics and its
dependence on the 3\pi-invariant mass m(3\pi) = sqrt(s) were extracted. The
absolute cross section was determined in seven bins of with an
overall precision of 20%. At leading order, the result is found to be in good
agreement with the prediction of chiral perturbation theory over the whole
energy range investigated.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Longitudinal double spin asymmetries in single hadron quasi-real photoproduction at high
We measured the longitudinal double spin asymmetries for single
hadron muo-production off protons and deuterons at photon virtuality <
1(GeV/) for transverse hadron momenta in the range 0.7
GeV/ to 4 GeV/ . They were determined using COMPASS data taken
with a polarised muon beam of 160 GeV/ or 200 GeV/ impinging on
polarised or targets. The experimental
asymmetries are compared to next-to-leading order pQCD calculations, and are
sensitive to the gluon polarisation inside the nucleon in the range
of the nucleon momentum fraction carried by gluons
Interplay among transversity induced asymmetries in hadron leptoproduction
In the fragmentation of a transversely polarized quark several left-right
asymmetries are possible for the hadrons in the jet. When only one unpolarized
hadron is selected, it exhibits an azimuthal modulation known as Collins
effect. When a pair of oppositely charged hadrons is observed, three
asymmetries can be considered, a di-hadron asymmetry and two single hadron
asymmetries. In lepton deep inelastic scattering on transversely polarized
nucleons all these asymmetries are coupled with the transversity distribution.
From the high statistics COMPASS data on oppositely charged hadron-pair
production we have investigated for the first time the dependence of these
three asymmetries on the difference of the azimuthal angles of the two hadrons.
The similarity of transversity induced single and di-hadron asymmetries is
discussed. A new analysis of the data allows to establish quantitative
relationships among them, providing for the first time strong experimental
indication that the underlying fragmentation mechanisms are all driven by a
common physical process.Comment: 6 figure
ABC Effect in Basic Double-Pionic Fusion --- Observation of a new resonance?
We report on a high-statistics measurement of the basic double pionic fusion
reaction over the energy region of the so-called ABC
effect, a pronounced low-mass enhancement in the -invariant mass
spectrum. The measurements were performed with the WASA detector setup at COSY.
The data reveal the ABC effect to be associated with a Lorentzian shaped energy
dependence in the integral cross section. The observables are consistent with a
resonance with in both and systems.
Necessary further tests of the resonance interpretation are discussed
Interplay among transversity induced asymmetries in hadron leptoproduction
In the fragmentation of a transversely polarized quark several left-right
asymmetries are possible for the hadrons in the jet. When only one unpolarized
hadron is selected, it exhibits an azimuthal modulation known as Collins
effect. When a pair of oppositely charged hadrons is observed, three
asymmetries can be considered, a di-hadron asymmetry and two single hadron
asymmetries. In lepton deep inelastic scattering on transversely polarized
nucleons all these asymmetries are coupled with the transversity distribution.
From the high statistics COMPASS data on oppositely charged hadron-pair
production we have investigated for the first time the dependence of these
three asymmetries on the difference of the azimuthal angles of the two hadrons.
The similarity of transversity induced single and di-hadron asymmetries is
discussed. A new analysis of the data allows to establish quantitative
relationships among them, providing for the first time strong experimental
indication that the underlying fragmentation mechanisms are all driven by a
common physical process.Comment: 6 figure
Collins and Sivers asymmetries in muonproduction of pions and kaons off transversely polarised proton
Measurements of the Collins and Sivers asymmetries for charged pions and
charged and neutral kaons produced in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering
of high energy muons off transversely polarised protons are presented. The
results were obtained using all the available COMPASS proton data, which were
taken in the years 2007 and 2010. The Collins asymmetries exhibit in the
valence region a non-zero signal for pions and there are hints of non-zero
signal also for kaons. The Sivers asymmetries are found to be positive for
positive pions and kaons and compatible with zero otherwise.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures and 1 tabl
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