75 research outputs found
Characterization of cucumber mosaic virus isolated from yam (Dioscorea spp.) in West Africa
Millions of people in the West African sub-region depend on yam for food and income. In 2008, cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), one of the most economically important plant viruses was detected in yam fields in Ghana, Benin and Togo, three of the five topmost yam producing countries in the world. Some strains of CMV are reportedly more virulent than others thus the need to characterise the strain isolated from yam. Sap inoculation of the yam strain induced systemic mosaic on Cucumis sativus and systemic chlorosis, necrotic lesions and leaf distortion on Nicotiana glutinosa. Sequence analysis of the 3' end of the coat protein gene and C-terminal noncoding region revealed 98 to 99, 93 to 98 and 78 to 79% nucleotide homology with members of the subgroups IA, IB and II, respectively. This analysis further revealed the absence of the EcoR1 restriction site characteristic of subgroup II strains and the presence of 15 nucleotide deletions dispersed along the C-terminal noncoding region of subgroup IA strains. At the amino acid level, the virus had 99 to 100% homology with subgroup I strains and 89% homology with subgroup II strains. Phylogenetic analysis of the amino acid confirms that the yam strain of CMV belongs to subgroup I while nucleotide sequence phylogeny confirms its placement in subgroup IA.Keywords: Yam viruses, cucumber mosaic virus, sequence analysisAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(22), pp. 3472-348
Static Charges in the Low-Energy Theory of the S-Duality Twist
We continue the study of the low-energy limit of N=4 super Yang-Mills theory
compactified on a circle with S-duality and R-symmetry twists that preserve N=6
supersymmetry in 2+1D. We introduce external static supersymmetric quark and
anti-quark sources into the theory and calculate the Witten Index of the
resulting Hilbert space of ground states on a torus. Using these results we
compute the action of simple Wilson loops on the Hilbert space of ground states
without sources. In some cases we find disagreement between our results for the
Wilson loop eigenvalues and previous conjectures about a connection with
Chern-Simons theory.Comment: 73 pages, two paragraphs added, one to the introduction and one to
the discussio
Chiral Generations on Intersecting 5-branes in Heterotic String Theory
We show that there exist two 27 and one 27 bar of E6, net one D=4, N=1 chiral
matter supermultiplet as zero modes localized on the intersection of two
5-branes in the E8 x E8 heterotic string theory. The smeared intersecting
5-brane solution is used via the standard embedding to construct a heterotic
background, which provides, after a compactification of some of the transverse
dimensions, a five-dimensional Randall-Sundrum II like brane-world set-up in
heterotic string theory. As a by-product, we present a new proof of anomaly
cancellation between those from the chiral matter and the anomaly inflow onto
the brane without small instanton.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures; references added, typo correcte
Entanglement entropy of Wilson surfaces from bubbling geometries in M-theory
We consider solutions of eleven-dimensional supergravity constructed in [1,2]
that are half-BPS, locally asymptotic to and are the
holographic dual of heavy Wilson surfaces in the six-dimensional
theory. Using these bubbling solutions we calculate the holographic
entanglement entropy for a spherical entangling surface in the presence of a
planar Wilson surface. In addition, we calculate the holographic stress tensor
and, by evaluating the on-shell supergravity action, the expectation value of
the Wilson surface operator.Comment: 42 pages, 4 figures, v2: minor modification
Degenerate Rotating Black Holes, Chiral CFTs and Fermi Surfaces I - Analytic Results for Quasinormal Modes
In this work we discuss charged rotating black holes in
that degenerate to extremal black holes with zero entropy. These black holes
have scaling properties between charge and angular momentum similar to those of
Fermi surface operators in a subsector of SYM. We add a
massless uncharged scalar to the five dimensional supergravity theory, such
that it still forms a consistent truncation of the type IIB ten dimensional
supergravity and analyze its quasinormal modes. Separating the equation of
motion to a radial and angular part, we proceed to solve the radial equation
using the asymptotic matching expansion method applied to a Heun equation with
two nearby singularities. We use the continued fraction method for the angular
Heun equation and obtain numerical results for the quasinormal modes. In the
case of the supersymmetric black hole we present some analytic results for the
decay rates of the scalar perturbations. The spectrum of quasinormal modes
obtained is similar to that of a chiral 1+1 CFT, which is consistent with the
conjectured field-theoretic dual. In addition, some of the modes can be found
analytically.Comment: 41 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX; v2: typos corrected, references adde
Holographic Interface-Particle Potential
We consider two N=4 supersymmetric gauge theories connected by an interface
and the gravity dual of this system. This interface is expressed by a fuzzy
funnel solution of Nahm's equation in the gauge theory side. The gravity dual
is a probe D5-brane in AdS_5 x S^5. The potential energy between this interface
and a test particle is calculated in both the gauge theory side and the gravity
side by the expectation value of a Wilson loop. In the gauge theory it is
evaluated by just substituting the classical solution to the Wilson loop. On
the other hand it is done by the on-shell action of the fundamental string
stretched between the AdS boundary and the D5-brane in the gravity. We show the
gauge theory result and the gravity one agree with each other.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures. v2: added discussion on perturbative corrections
in the gauge theory sid
The Pioneer Anomaly
Radio-metric Doppler tracking data received from the Pioneer 10 and 11
spacecraft from heliocentric distances of 20-70 AU has consistently indicated
the presence of a small, anomalous, blue-shifted frequency drift uniformly
changing with a rate of ~6 x 10^{-9} Hz/s. Ultimately, the drift was
interpreted as a constant sunward deceleration of each particular spacecraft at
the level of a_P = (8.74 +/- 1.33) x 10^{-10} m/s^2. This apparent violation of
the Newton's gravitational inverse-square law has become known as the Pioneer
anomaly; the nature of this anomaly remains unexplained. In this review, we
summarize the current knowledge of the physical properties of the anomaly and
the conditions that led to its detection and characterization. We review
various mechanisms proposed to explain the anomaly and discuss the current
state of efforts to determine its nature. A comprehensive new investigation of
the anomalous behavior of the two Pioneers has begun recently. The new efforts
rely on the much-extended set of radio-metric Doppler data for both spacecraft
in conjunction with the newly available complete record of their telemetry
files and a large archive of original project documentation. As the new study
is yet to report its findings, this review provides the necessary background
for the new results to appear in the near future. In particular, we provide a
significant amount of information on the design, operations and behavior of the
two Pioneers during their entire missions, including descriptions of various
data formats and techniques used for their navigation and radio-science data
analysis. As most of this information was recovered relatively recently, it was
not used in the previous studies of the Pioneer anomaly, but it is critical for
the new investigation.Comment: 165 pages, 40 figures, 16 tables; accepted for publication in Living
Reviews in Relativit
Non-Supersymmetric String Theory
A class of non-supersymmetric string backgrounds can be constructed using
twists that involve space-time fermion parity. We propose a non-perturbative
definition of string theory in these backgrounds via gauge theories with
supersymmetry softly broken by twisted boundary conditions. The perturbative
string spectrum is reproduced, and qualitative effects of the interactions are
discussed. Along the way, we find an interesting mechanism for inflation. The
end state of closed string tachyon condensation is a highly excited state in
the gauge theory which, in all likelihood, does not have a geometric
interpretation.Comment: 35 pages, 2 figures; revision adds a computation of the relevant
orbifold state
Cognitive screening among acute respiratory failure survivors: a cross-sectional evaluation of the Mini-Mental State Examination
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