666 research outputs found

    Characterization of active and total fungal communities in the atmosphere over the Amazon rainforest

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    Fungi are ubiquitous in the atmosphere and may play an important role in atmospheric processes. We investigated the composition and diversity of fungal communities over the Amazon rainforest canopy and compared these communities to fungal communities 5 found in terrestrial environments. We characterized the total fungal community and the metabolically active portion of the community using high-throughout DNA and RNA sequencing and compared these data to predictions generated by a mass-balance model. We found that the total community was primarily comprised of fungi from the phylum Basidiomycota. In contrast, the active community was primarily composed of 10 members of the phylum Ascomycota and included a high relative abundance of lichen fungi, which were not detected in the total community. The relative abundance of Basidiomycota and Ascomycota in the total and active communities was consistent with our model predictions, suggesting that this result was driven by the relative size and number of spores produced by these groups. When compared to other environments, 15 fungal communities in the atmosphere were most similar to communities found in tropical soils and leaf surfaces, suggesting that inputs of fungi to the atmosphere are from local, rather than distant, sources. Our results demonstrate that there are significant differences in the composition of the total and active fungal communities in the atmosphere, and that lichen fungi, which have been shown to be efficient ice nucleators, 20 may be abundant members of active atmospheric fungal communities over the forest canopy

    Enhanced Fusion-Evaporation Cross Sections in Neutron-Rich 132^{132}Sn on 64^{64}Ni

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    Evaporation residue cross sections have been measured with neutron-rich radioactive 132^{132}Sn beams on 64^{64}Ni in the vicinity of the Coulomb barrier. The average beam intensity was 2×1042\times 10^{4} particles per second and the smallest cross section measured was less than 5 mb. Large subbarrier fusion enhancement was observed. Coupled-channels calculations taking into account inelastic excitation and neutron transfer underpredict the measured cross sections below the barrier.Comment: 4 pages including 1 table and 3 figure

    A-dependence of nuclear transparency in quasielastic A(e,e'p) at high Q^2

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    The A-dependence of the quasielastic A(e,e'p) reaction has been studied at SLAC with H-2, C, Fe, and Au nuclei at momentum transfers Q^2 = 1, 3, 5, and 6.8 (GeV/c)^2. We extract the nuclear transparency T(A,Q^2), a measure of the average probability that the struck proton escapes from the nucleus A without interaction. Several calculations predict a significant increase in T with momentum transfer, a phenomenon known as Color Transparency. No significant rise within errors is seen for any of the nuclei studied.Comment: 5 pages incl. 2 figures, Caltech preprint OAP-73

    Nuclear Skins and Halos in the Mean-Field Theory

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    Nuclei with large neutron-to-proton ratios have neutron skins, which manifest themselves in an excess of neutrons at distances greater than the radius of the proton distribution. In addition, some drip-line nuclei develop very extended halo structures. The neutron halo is a threshold effect; it appears when the valence neutrons occupy weakly bound orbits. In this study, nuclear skins and halos are analyzed within the self-consistent Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov and relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theories for spherical shapes. It is demonstrated that skins, halos, and surface thickness can be analyzed in a model-independent way in terms of nucleonic density form factors. Such an analysis allows for defining a quantitative measure of the halo size. The systematic behavior of skins, halos, and surface thickness in even-even nuclei is discussed.Comment: 22 RevTeX pages, 22 EPS figures included, submitted to Physical Review

    Charged pion form factor between Q^2=0.60 and 2.45 GeV^2. II. Determination of, and results for, the pion form factor

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    The charged pion form factor, Fpi(Q^2), is an important quantity which can be used to advance our knowledge of hadronic structure. However, the extraction of Fpi from data requires a model of the 1H(e,e'pi+)n reaction, and thus is inherently model dependent. Therefore, a detailed description of the extraction of the charged pion form factor from electroproduction data obtained recently at Jefferson Lab is presented, with particular focus given to the dominant uncertainties in this procedure. Results for Fpi are presented for Q^2=0.60-2.45 GeV^2. Above Q^2=1.5 GeV^2, the Fpi values are systematically below the monopole parameterization that describes the low Q^2 data used to determine the pion charge radius. The pion form factor can be calculated in a wide variety of theoretical approaches, and the experimental results are compared to a number of calculations. This comparison is helpful in understanding the role of soft versus hard contributions to hadronic structure in the intermediate Q^2 regime.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figure

    Momentum transfer dependence of nuclear transparency from the quasielastic 12C(e,e’p) reaction

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    The cross section for quasielastic 12C(e,e’p) scattering has been measured at momentum transfer Q2=1, 3, 5, and 6.8 (GeV/c)2. The results are consistent with scattering from a single nucleon as the dominant process. The nuclear transparency is obtained and compared with theoretical calculations that incorporate color transparency effects. No significant rise of the transparency with Q2 is observed

    Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

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    Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe
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