377 research outputs found
Resonance-continuum interference in the di-photon Higgs signal at the LHC
A low mass Standard Model Higgs boson should be visible at the Large Hadron
Collider through its production via gluon-gluon fusion and its decay to two
photons. We compute the interference of this resonant process, gg -> H -> gamma
gamma, with the continuum QCD background, gg -> gamma gamma induced by quark
loops. Helicity selection rules suppress the effect, which is dominantly due to
the imaginary part of the two-loop gg -> gamma gamma scattering amplitude. The
interference is destructive, but only of order 5% in the Standard Model, which
is still below the 10-20% present accuracy of the total cross section
prediction. We comment on the potential size of such effects in other Higgs
models.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Non-equilibrium phase transition in a sheared granular mixture
The dynamics of an impurity (or tracer particle) immersed in a dilute
granular gas under uniform shear flow is investigated. A non-equilibrium phase
transition is identified from an exact solution of the inelastic Boltzmann
equation for a granular binary mixture in the tracer limit, where the impurity
carries either a vanishing (disordered phase) or a finite (ordered phase)
fraction of the total kinetic energy of the system. In the disordered phase,
the granular temperature ratio (impurity "temperature" over that of the host
fluid) is finite, while it diverges in the ordered phase. To correctly capture
this extreme violation of energy equipartition, we show that the picture of an
impurity enslaved to the host fluid is insufficient
Diffusion Process in a Flow
We establish circumstances under which the dispersion of passive contaminants
in a forced, deterministic or random, flow can be consistently interpreted as a
Markovian diffusion process. In case of conservative forcing the repulsive case
only, with bounded from below, is
unquestionably admitted by the compatibility conditions. A class of diffusion
processes is exemplified, such that the attractive forcing is allowed as well,
due to an appropriate compensation coming from the "pressure" term. The
compressible Euler flows form their subclass, when regarded as stochastic
processes. We establish circumstances under which the dispersion of passive
contaminants in a forced, deterministic or random, flow can be consistently
interpreted as a Markovian diffusion process. In case of conservative forcing
the repulsive case only, with bounded
from below, is unquestionably admitted by the compatibility conditions. A class
of diffusion processes is exemplified, such that the attractive forcing is
allowed as well, due to an appropriate compensation coming from the "pressure"
term. The compressible Euler flows form their subclass, when regarded as
stochastic processes.Comment: 10 pages, Late
Diffusion and Current of Brownian Particles in Tilted Piecewise Linear Potentials: Amplification and Coherence
Overdamped motion of Brownian particles in tilted piecewise linear periodic
potentials is considered. Explicit algebraic expressions for the diffusion
coefficient, current, and coherence level of Brownian transport are derived.
Their dependencies on temperature, tilting force, and the shape of the
potential are analyzed. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the
non-monotonic behavior of the diffusion coefficient as a function of
temperature are determined. The diffusion coefficient and coherence level are
found to be extremely sensitive to the asymmetry of the potential. It is
established that at the values of the external force, for which the enhancement
of diffusion is most rapid, the level of coherence has a wide plateau at low
temperatures with the value of the Peclet factor 2. An interpretation of the
amplification of diffusion in comparison with free thermal diffusion in terms
of probability distribution is proposed.Comment: To appear in PR
Numerical Schemes for Multivalued Backward Stochastic Differential Systems
We define some approximation schemes for different kinds of generalized
backward stochastic differential systems, considered in the Markovian
framework. We propose a mixed approximation scheme for a decoupled system of
forward reflected SDE and backward stochastic variational inequality. We use an
Euler scheme type, combined with Yosida approximation techniques.Comment: 13 page
Peritoneal and hemodialysis: I. Differences in patient characteristics at initiation
Peritoneal and hemodialysis: I. Differences in patient characteristics at initiation.BackgroundComparisons of mortality outcomes between peritoneal dialysis (PD) and hemodialysis (HD) patients have shown varying results, which may be caused by the unequally distributed clinical conditions of patients at initiation. To address this issue, we evaluated the clinical characteristics of 105,954 patients at the initiation of PD and HD, using the U.S. national incidence data on treated end-stage renal disease from the Medical Evidence Form, 1995 to 1997.MethodsA general linear model was used to analyze differences of age, albumin, creatinine, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and hematocrit; categorical data analysis to evaluate body mass index (BMI), grouped into four categories: !19, 19–25 (!25), 25–30 (!30), and 30+; and logistic regression to assess the likelihood of initiating PD versus HD. Diabetics (DM) were analyzed separately from non-diabetics (NDM). Explanatory variables in the logistic regression included incidence year, race, gender, age, BMI, albumin, creatinine, BUN, and hematocrit. Race included white and black. Age was categorized into four groups: 20–44, 45–64, 65–74, and 75+.ResultsAt the initiation of dialysis PD patients were approximately 6 years younger (P ! 0.0001) than HD patients. PD patients also had higher (P ! 0.0001) albumin (+0.35 g/dL for DM and +0.23 g/dL for NDM) and hematocrit (+1.64% for DM and +1.71% for NDM) levels, and lower (P ! 0.04) BUN (-8.75 mg/dL for DM and -5.24 mg/dL for NDM) and creatinine (-0.51 mg/dL for DM and -0.23 mg/dL for NDM) levels than HD patients. Whites had a higher (P ! 0.0001) likelihood of starting PD than blacks, and patients with BMI !19 had a lower (P ! 0.0001) chance of beginning on PD.ConclusionPD patients had favorable clinical conditions at the initiation of dialysis, which should be taken into consideration when comparing dialysis outcomes between the two modalities
Broken symmetries and directed collective energy transport
We study the appearance of directed energy current in homogeneous spatially
extended systems coupled to a heat bath in the presence of an external ac field
E(t). The systems are described by nonlinear field equations. By making use of
a symmetry analysis we predict the right choice of E(t) and obtain directed
energy transport for systems with a nonzero topological charge Q. We
demonstrate that the symmetry properties of motion of topological solitons
(kinks and antikinks) are equivalent to the ones for the energy current.
Numerical simulations confirm the predictions of the symmetry analysis and,
moreover, show that the directed energy current drastically increases as the
dissipation parameter reduces. Our results generalize recent rigorous
theories of currents generated by broken time-space symmetries to the case of
interacting many-particle systems.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Driven diffusion in a periodically compartmentalized tube: homogeneity versus intermittency of particle motion
We study the effect of a driving force F on drift and diffusion of a point Brownian particle in a tube formed by identical ylindrical compartments, which create periodic entropy barriers for the particle motion along the tube axis. The particle transport exhibits striking features: the effective mobility monotonically decreases with increasing F, and the effective diffusivity diverges as F → ∞, which indicates that the entropic effects in diffusive transport are enhanced by the driving force. Our consideration is based on two different scenarios of the particle motion at small and large F, homogeneous and intermittent, respectively. The scenarios are deduced from the careful analysis of statistics of the particle transition times between neighboring openings. From this qualitative picture, the limiting small-F and large-F behaviors of the effective mobility and diffusivity are derived analytically. Brownian dynamics simulations are used to find these quantities at intermediate values of the driving force for various compartment lengths and opening radii. This work shows that the driving force may lead to qualitatively different anomalous transport features, depending on the geometry design
AVPR1a and SLC6A4 Gene Polymorphisms Are Associated with Creative Dance Performance
Dancing, which is integrally related to music, likely has its origins close to the birth of Homo sapiens, and throughout our history, dancing has been universally practiced in all societies. We hypothesized that there are differences among individuals in aptitude, propensity, and need for dancing that may partially be based on differences in common genetic polymorphisms. Identifying such differences may lead to an understanding of the neurobiological basis of one of mankind's most universal and appealing behavioral traits—dancing. In the current study, 85 current performing dancers and their parents were genotyped for the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4: promoter region HTTLPR and intron 2 VNTR) and the arginine vasopressin receptor 1a (AVPR1a: promoter microsatellites RS1 and RS3). We also genotyped 91 competitive athletes and a group of nondancers/nonathletes (n = 872 subjects from 414 families). Dancers scored higher on the Tellegen Absorption Scale, a questionnaire that correlates positively with spirituality and altered states of consciousness, as well as the Reward Dependence factor in Cloninger's Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire, a measure of need for social contact and openness to communication. Highly significant differences in AVPR1a haplotype frequencies (RS1 and RS3), especially when conditional on both SLC6A4 polymorphisms (HTTLPR and VNTR), were observed between dancers and athletes using the UNPHASED program package (Cocaphase: likelihood ratio test [LRS] = 89.23, p = 0.000044). Similar results were obtained when dancers were compared to nondancers/nonathletes (Cocaphase: LRS = 92.76, p = 0.000024). These results were confirmed using a robust family-based test (Tdtphase: LRS = 46.64, p = 0.010). Association was also observed between Tellegen Absorption Scale scores and AVPR1a (Qtdtphase: global chi-square = 26.53, p = 0.047), SLC6A4 haplotypes (Qtdtphase: chi-square = 2.363, p = 0.018), and AVPR1a conditional on SCL6A4 (Tdtphase: LRS = 250.44, p = 0.011). Similarly, significant association was observed between Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire Reward Dependence scores and AVPR1a RS1 (chi-square = 20.16, p = 0.01). Two-locus analysis (RS1 and RS3 conditional on HTTLPR and VNTR) was highly significant (LRS = 162.95, p = 0.001). Promoter repeat regions in the AVPR1a gene have been robustly demonstrated to play a role in molding a range of social behaviors in many vertebrates and, more recently, in humans. Additionally, serotonergic neurotransmission in some human studies appears to mediate human religious and spiritual experiences. We therefore hypothesize that the association between AVPR1a and SLC6A4 reflects the social communication, courtship, and spiritual facets of the dancing phenotype rather than other aspects of this complex phenotype, such as sensorimotor integration
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