The Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction in a Chiral Constituent Quark Model

We study the short-range nucleon-nucleon interaction in a chiral constituent quark model by diagonalizing a Hamiltonian comprising a linear confinement and a Goldstone boson exchange interaction between quarks. The six-quark harmonic oscillator basis contains up to two excitation quanta. We show that the highly dominant configuration is $\mid s^4p^2[42]_O [51]_{FS}>$ due to its specific flavour-spin symmetry. Using the Born-Oppenheimer approximation we find a strong effective repulsion at zero separation between nucleons in both $^3S_1$ and $^1S_0$ channels. The symmetry structure of the highly dominant configuration implies the existence of a node in the S-wave relative motion wave function at short distances. The amplitude of the oscillation of the wave function at short range will be however strongly suppressed. We discuss the mechanism leading to the effective short-range repulsion within the chiral constituent quark model as compared to that related with the one-gluon exchange interaction.Comment: 31 pages, LaTe

On a three-body confinement force in hadron spectroscopy

Recently it has been argued that a three-body colour confinement interaction can affect the stability condition of a three-quark system and the spectrum of a tetraquark described by any constituent quark model. Here we discuss the role of a three-body colour confinement interaction in a simple quark model and present some of its implications for the spectra of baryons, tetraquarks and six-quark systems.Comment: 19 pages (RevTeX), addition of new material regarding the NN interaction, more accurate discussion of the baryonic case, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Minimizing the threat of pandemic emergence from avian influenza in poultry systems

BACKGROUND: Live-animal markets are a culturally important feature of meat distribution chains in many populations, yet they provide an opportunity for the maintenance and transmission of potentially emergent zoonotic pathogens. The ongoing human outbreak of avian H7N9 in China highlights the need for increased surveillance and control in these live-bird markets (LBMs). DISCUSSION: Closure of retail markets in affected areas rapidly decreased human cases to rare, sporadic occurrence, but little attention has been paid thus far to the role of upstream elements of the poultry distribution chain such as wholesale markets. This could partly explain why transmission in poultry populations has not been eliminated more broadly. We present surveillance data from both wholesale live-bird markets (wLBMs) and rLBMs in Shantou, China (from 2004–2006), and call on disease-dynamic theory to illustrate why closing rLBMs has only minor effects on the overall volume of transmission. We show that the length of time birds stay in rLBMs can severely limit transmission there, but that the system-wide effect may be reduced substantially by high levels of transmission upstream of retail markets. SUMMARY: Management plans that minimize transmission throughout the entire poultry supply chain are essential for minimizing exposure to the public. These include reducing stay-time of birds in markets to 1 day, standardizing poultry supply chains to limit transmission in pre-retail settings, and monitoring strains with epidemiological traits that pose a high risk of emergence. These actions will further limit human exposure to extant viruses and reduce the likelihood of the emergence of novel strains by decreasing the overall volume of transmission

Interacting random Dirac fermions in superconducting cuprates

We study the effects of quasiparticle interactions on disorder-induced localization of Dirac-like nodal excitations in superconducting high-$T_c$ cuprates. As suggested by the experimental ARPES and terahertz conductivity data in $Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta}$, we focus on the interactions mediated by the order parameter fluctuations near an incipient second pairing transition $d\to d+is$. We find interaction corrections to the density of states, specific heat, and conductivity as well as phase and energy relaxation rates and assess the applicability of the recent localization scenarios for non-interacting random Dirac fermions to the cuprates

Latitudinal decline in stand biomass and productivity at the elevational treeline in the Ural mountains despite a common thermal growth limit

Aim: To quantify tree biomass and stand productivity of treeline ecotones and identify driving factors. Location: treeline ecotones of seven regions from the South to Polar Urals, spanning a latitudinal gradient of 1,500 km. Taxa: Picea obovata, Betula pubescens, Larix sibirica. Methods: Stand biomass and productivity were estimated across 18 elevational transects from the tree species line to the closed forest line based on allometric measurements of 326 trees (including roots for 53 trees), stand structure assessments and demographic patterns of 20,600 trees. Stand growth data were linked to (a) temperatures monitored in situ for five years in the South and Polar Urals, (b) climate variables extrapolated from nearby climate stations and (c) measures of nutrient availability in soils and tree foliage. Results: treeline position along the latitudinal gradient occurred at a similar mean growing season temperature. Despite the common cold limitation of tree distribution along the Ural mountain range, stand biomass and productivity within the treeline ecotone decreased by a factor of three and five from the South to the Polar Urals, mainly due to a declining stand density. Among climatic variables, growing season length decreased by 20% and winter temperatures declined by 4°C towards the Polar Urals, whereas growing degree days > 5°C remained similar, averaging 554 ± 9°C. Soil development was poorer in the Polar than in the South Urals, and plant-available N and P in the soil were 20 and 30 times lower, respectively, probably due to lower winter temperatures. Main conclusions: Our results suggest that once the thermal limitation for tree growth is relieved, soil fertility—restricted by permafrost and low soil temperatures during winter—plays a key and yet underexplored role for stand productivity in treeline ecotones. The observed latitudinal decline in stand productivity is important for above- and belowground diversity and functioning. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Lt

Charmed Exotics in Heavy Ion Collisions

Based on the color-spin interaction in diquarks, we argue that charmed multiquark hadrons are likely to exist. Because of the appreciable number of charm quarks produced in central nucleus-nucleus collisions at ultrarelativistic energies, production of charmed multiquark hadrons is expected to be enhanced in these collisions. Using both the quark coalescence model and the statistical hadronization model, we estimate the yield of charmed tetraquark meson $T_{cc}$ and pentaquark baryon $\Theta_{cs}$ in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. We further discuss the decay modes of these charmed exotic hadrons in order to facilitate their detections in experiments

Microscopic correlations of non-Hermitian Dirac operators in three-dimensional QCD

In the presence of a non-vanishing chemical potential the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator become complex. We calculate spectral correlation functions of complex eigenvalues using a random matrix model approach. Our results apply to non-Hermitian Dirac operators in three-dimensional QCD with broken flavor symmetry and in four-dimensional QCD in the bulk of the spectrum. The derivation follows earlier results of Fyodorov, Khoruzhenko and Sommers for complex spectra exploiting the existence of orthogonal polynomials in the complex plane. Explicit analytic expressions are given for all microscopic k-point correlation functions in the presence of an arbitrary even number of massive quarks, both in the limit of strong and weak non-Hermiticity. In the latter case the parameter governing the non-Hermiticity of the Dirac matrices is identified with the influence of the chemical potential

Melarsoprol cyclodextrin inclusion complexes as promising oral candidates for the treatment of human African trypanosomiasis

Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), or sleeping sickness, results from infection with the protozoan parasites <i>Trypanosoma brucei</i> (<i>T.b.</i>) <i>gambiense</i> or <i>T.b.rhodesiense</i> and is invariably fatal if untreated. There are 60 million people at risk from the disease throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The infection progresses from the haemolymphatic stage where parasites invade the blood, lymphatics and peripheral organs, to the late encephalitic stage where they enter the central nervous system (CNS) to cause serious neurological disease. The trivalent arsenical drug melarsoprol (Arsobal) is the only currently available treatment for CNS-stage <i>T.b.rhodesiense</i> infection. However, it must be administered intravenously due to the presence of propylene glycol solvent and is associated with numerous adverse reactions. A severe post-treatment reactive encephalopathy occurs in about 10% of treated patients, half of whom die. Thus melarsoprol kills 5% of all patients receiving it. Cyclodextrins have been used to improve the solubility and reduce the toxicity of a wide variety of drugs. We therefore investigated two melarsoprol cyclodextrin inclusion complexes; melarsoprol hydroxypropyl-͎-cyclodextrin and melarsoprol randomly-methylated-β-cyclodextrin. We found that these compounds retain trypanocidal properties <i>in vitro</i> and cure CNS-stage murine infections when delivered orally, once per day for 7-days, at a dosage of 0.05 mmol/kg. No overt signs of toxicity were detected. Parasite load within the brain was rapidly reduced following treatment onset and magnetic resonance imaging showed restoration of normal blood-brain barrier integrity on completion of chemotherapy. These findings strongly suggest that complexed melarsoprol could be employed as an oral treatment for CNS-stage HAT, delivering considerable improvements over current parenteral chemotherapy

Accuracy of five algorithms to diagnose gambiense human African trypanosomiasis.

Algorithms to diagnose gambiense human African trypanosomiasis (HAT, sleeping sickness) are often complex due to the unsatisfactory sensitivity and/or specificity of available tests, and typically include a screening (serological), confirmation (parasitological) and staging component. There is insufficient evidence on the relative accuracy of these algorithms. This paper presents estimates of the accuracy of five algorithms used by past Médecins Sans Frontières programmes in the Republic of Congo, Southern Sudan and Uganda

On Color Superconductivity in External Magnetic Field

We study color superconductivity in external magnetic field. We discuss the reason why the mixing angles in color-flavor locked (CFL) and two-flavor superconductivity (2SC) phases are different despite the fact that the CFL gap goes to the 2SC gap for $m_s \to \infty$. Although flavor symmetry is explicitly broken in external magnetic field, we show that all values of gaps in their coset spaces of possible solutions in the CFL phase are equivalent in external magnetic field.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe