6,453 research outputs found
Unitarity of the tree approximation to the Glauber AA amplitude for large A
The nucleus-nucleus Glauber amplitude in the tree approximation is studied
for heavy participant nuclei. It is shown that, contrary to previous published
results, it is not unitary for realistic values of nucleon-nucleon
cross-sections.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. Submitted to Yad. Fi
Age Sensitivity of Behavioral Tests and Brain Substrates of Normal Aging in Mice
Knowledge of age sensitivity, the capacity of a behavioral test to reliably detect age-related changes, has utility in the design of experiments to elucidate processes of normal aging. We review the application of these tests in studies of normal aging and compare and contrast the age sensitivity of the Barnes maze, eyeblink classical conditioning, fear conditioning, Morris water maze, and rotorod. These tests have all been implemented to assess normal age-related changes in learning and memory in rodents, which generalize in many cases to age-related changes in learning and memory in all mammals, including humans. Behavioral assessments are a valuable means to measure functional outcomes of neuroscientific studies of aging. Highlighted in this review are the attributes and limitations of these measures in mice in the context of age sensitivity and processes of brain aging. Attributes of these tests include reliability and validity as assessments of learning and memory, well-defined neural substrates, and sensitivity to neural and pharmacological manipulations and disruptions. These tests engage the hippocampus and/or the cerebellum, two structures centrally involved in learning and memory that undergo functional and anatomical changes in normal aging. A test that is less well represented in studies of normal aging, the context pre-exposure facilitation effect (CPFE) in fear conditioning, is described as a method to increase sensitivity of contextual fear conditioning to changes in the hippocampus. Recommendations for increasing the age sensitivity of all measures of normal aging in mice are included, as well as a discussion of the potential of the under-studied CPFE to advance understanding of subtle hippocampus-mediated phenomena
Hexagons, Kinks and Disorder in Oscillated Granular Layers
Experiments on vertically oscillated granular layers in an evacuated
container reveal a sequence of well-defined pattern bifurcations as the
container acceleration is increased. Period doublings of the layer center of
mass motion and a parametric wave instability interact to produce hexagons and
more complicated patterns composed of distinct spatial domains of different
relative phase separated by kinks (phase discontinuities). Above a critical
acceleration, the layer becomes disordered in both space and time.Comment: 4 pages. The RevTeX file has a macro allowing various styles. The
appropriate style is "myprint" which is the defaul
Fluctuations of the number of participants and binary collisions in AA interactions at fixed centrality in the Glauber approach
In the framework of the classical Glauber approach, the analytical
expressions for the variance of the number of wounded nucleons and binary
collisions in AA interactions at a given centrality are presented. Along with
the optical approximation term, they contain additional contact terms arising
only in the case of nucleus-nucleus collisions. The magnitude of the additional
contributions, e.g., for PbPb collisions at SPS energies, is larger than the
contribution of the optical approximation at some values of the impact
parameter. The sum of the additional contributions is in good agreement with
the results of independent Monte Carlo simulations of this process. Due to
these additional terms, the variance of the total number of participants for
peripheral PbPb collisions and the variance of the number of collisions at all
values of the impact parameter exceed several multiples of the Poisson
variances. The correlator between the numbers of participants in colliding
nuclei at fixed centrality is also analytically calculated.Comment: updated version; as published by Phys. Rev.
Are we better-off? The benefits and costs of Australian COVID-19 lockdown
When compared with other countries, Australia has fared much better in COVID-19 outcomes, having experienced low COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths. Although it is difficult to know with certainty what and to what degree led to these advantageous outcomes, many attributed this success to the early implementation of strict border closure limiting cross-border transmission and being an Island nation (1–3). Australia has been proceeding with the elimination strategy aiming to contain and crush emerging outbreaks quickly through a suite of public health interventions, with lockdowns playing a central role. However, as vaccination rates continue to rise in Australia, we opine that the lockdowns and other stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions should be phasedown as the cost to the individuals, community, and the economy is likely to outweigh the benefits of these restrictions.
At the beginning of the pandemic, most countries followed and defended the implementation of lockdowns, with the early calculations suggesting that benefits far outweigh the costs (3–5). Some empirical studies also observed heterogeneity in the effectiveness of lockdowns and advocated for a careful consideration of demographic, economic, and societal factors before implementing stay-at-home orders, especially in developing countries in which many people rely on day-to-day economic resources (6, 7). However, using more recent data, others provided a different assessment arguing that lockdowns cause more harm than good even in developing countries—with the benefit-cost ratio being significantly overestimated (8, 9). Considering the burden of prolonged lockdown that Sydney and Melbourne have been experiencing and taking into account the increasing vaccination rates across the country, our governments need to carefully consider when and how to lift lockdown and other restrictions, as there is no doubt the cost of getting this wrong is very high.
Following a critical review by Allen (10), we discuss the issues associated with the evaluation of lockdown costs and benefits and provide an opinion on lockdowns doing potentially more harm than good as Australia achieves high vaccination rates. This may be useful in timely discussions among the public, media, public health officials, and decision-makers
Dynamic Boundaries in Asymmetric Exclusion Processes
We investigate the dynamics of a one-dimensional asymmetric exclusion process
with Langmuir kinetics and a fluctuating wall. At the left boundary, particles
are injected onto the lattice; from there, the particles hop to the right.
Along the lattice, particles can adsorb or desorb, and the right boundary is
defined by a wall particle. The confining wall particle has intrinsic forward
and backward hopping, a net leftward drift, and cannot desorb. Performing Monte
Carlo simulations and using a moving-frame finite segment approach coupled to
mean field theory, we find the parameter regimes in which the wall acquires a
steady state position. In other regimes, the wall will either drift to the left
and fall off the lattice at the injection site, or drift indefinitely to the
right. Our results are discussed in the context of non-equilibrium phases of
the system, fluctuating boundary layers, and particle densities in the lab
frame versus the frame of the fluctuating wall.Comment: 13 page
On the NLO QCD corrections to the production of the heaviest neutral Higgs scalar in the MSSM
We present a calculation of the two-loop top-stop-gluino contributions to
Higgs production via gluon fusion in the MSSM. By means of an asymptotic
expansion in the heavy particle masses, we obtain explicit and compact analytic
formulae that are valid when the Higgs and the top quark are lighter than stops
and gluino, without assuming a specific hierarchy between the Higgs mass and
the top mass. Being applicable to the heaviest Higgs scalar in a significant
region of the MSSM parameter space, our results complement earlier ones
obtained with a Taylor expansion in the Higgs mass, and can be easily
implemented in computer codes to provide an efficient and accurate
determination of the Higgs production cross section.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure
- …