Chaos Driven Decay of Nuclear Giant Resonances: Route to Quantum Self-Organization

The influence of background states with increasing level of complexity on the strength distribution of the isoscalar and isovector giant quadrupole resonance in $^{40}$Ca is studied. It is found that the background characteristics, typical for chaotic systems, strongly affects the fluctuation properties of the strength distribution. In particular, the small components of the wave function obey a scaling law analogous to self-organized systems at the critical state. This appears to be consistent with the Porter-Thomas distribution of the transition strength.Comment: 14 pages, 4 Figures, Illinois preprint P-93-12-106, Figures available from the author

A New Approach to Searching for Dark Matter Signals in Fermi-LAT Gamma Rays

Several cosmic ray experiments have measured excesses in electrons and positrons, relative to standard backgrounds, for energies from ~ 10 GeV - 1 TeV. These excesses could be due to new astrophysical sources, but an explanation in which the electrons and positrons are dark matter annihilation or decay products is also consistent. Fortunately, the Fermi-LAT diffuse gamma ray measurements can further test these models, since the electrons and positrons produce gamma rays in their interactions in the interstellar medium. Although the dark matter gamma ray signal consistent with the local electron and positron measurements should be quite large, as we review, there are substantial uncertainties in the modeling of diffuse backgrounds and, additionally, experimental uncertainties that make it difficult to claim a dark matter discovery. In this paper, we introduce an alternative method for understanding the diffuse gamma ray spectrum in which we take the intensity ratio in each energy bin of two different regions of the sky, thereby canceling common systematic uncertainties. For many spectra, this ratio fits well to a power law with a single break in energy. The two measured exponent indices are a robust discriminant between candidate models, and we demonstrate that dark matter annihilation scenarios can predict index values that require "extreme" parameters for background-only explanations.Comment: v1: 11 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, revtex4; v2: 13 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, revtex4, Figure 4 added, minor additions made to text, references added, conclusions unchanged, published versio

lentiglobin gene therapy for transfusion dependent β thalassemia outcomes from the phase 1 2 northstar and phase 3 northstar 2 studies

Introduction Transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia (TDT) is a severe genetic disease characterized by anemia, iron overload and serious comorbidities for which gene therapy may be an effective treatment option. LentiGlobin gene therapy contains autologous CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) transduced ex vivo with the BB305 lentiviral vector (LVV) encoding β-globin with a T87Q substitution. Objective Evaluate the efficacy and safety of LentiGlobin in patients with TDT in the phase 1/2 Northstar (HGB-204; NCT01745120) and phase 3 Northstar-2 (HGB-207; NCT02906202) studies. Methods Patients with TDT (≥100 mL/kg/yr of red blood cells [RBCs] or ≥8 RBC transfusions/yr) received G-CSF and plerixafor for mobilization and HSCs were transduced with the BB305 LVV. Patients underwent single agent busulfan myeloablative conditioning, were infused with transduced cells, and were followed for engraftment, safety, and efficacy. Statistics are presented as median (min – max). Results As of March 7, 2018, 18 patients (12 – 35 yrs) were treated in Northstar (follow-up 32.1 [23.1 – 41.9] months) and as of May 15, 2018, 11 patients (12 – 24 yrs) were treated in Northstar-2 (follow-up 8.5 [0.3 – 16.2] months). Patients received a median cell dose of 8.0 (5.0 – 19.4) CD34+ cells × 106/kg in both studies. The median time to neutrophil and platelet engraftment in both studies was 19 (14 – 30) days and 44 (19 – 191) days, respectively; 1 patient in Northstar-2 (0.3 months follow-up) had not engrafted at time of analysis. Of 6 patients with platelet engraftment ≥ Day 60, 4 had non-serious bleeding events prior to engraftment. All 6 had intact spleens and 3/6 received G-CSF between Days 0 – 21. Both factors appeared associated with time to platelet engraftment. In Northstar, 8/10 patients with non-β0/β0 genotypes and 2/8 patients with β0/β0 genotypes achieved transfusion independence (TI; weighted average hemoglobin [Hb] ≥ 9 g/dL without RBC transfusions for ≥ 12 months). Median Hb during TI was 10.0 (9.3 – 13.1) g/dL. In Northstar-2, 7/8 patients with non-β0/β0 genotypes and ≥ 6 months follow-up stopped RBC transfusions with Hb of 11.1 – 13.3 g/dL at last visit; the first patient treated achieved TI. Non-hematologic grade ≥ 3 adverse events post-infusion in ≥ 5/29 (15%) patients were stomatitis, febrile neutropenia, and pharyngeal inflammation. Veno-occlusive liver disease attributed to busulfan occurred in 4/29 patients (Table 1). There was no transplant-related mortality, vector-mediated replication competent lentivirus, or clonal dominance. Conclusion In Northstar, 80% of patients with non-β0/β0 genotypes achieved TI and early Northstar-2 data suggest that patients can achieve near-normal Hb without transfusions. The safety profile of LentiGlobin is consistent with myeloablative busulfan conditioning. Longer time to platelet engraftment was observed in few patients, but no graft failure or deaths were reported

Spatial competition and agglomeration in the visitor attraction sector

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical contribution to understanding spatial competition by examining visitor attractions in two contrasting clusters of lower and higher levels of agglomeration of businesses in Cornwall, the UK. The study found that competition is mainly for customers and labour and is related differently to the levels of agglomeration, spatial proximity and thematic product similarity between visitor attractions at the local compared to the regional scale. Location can be used differently for employing ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ competitive strategies. The study contributes to the knowledge on the spatiality of competition and the locational strategies of service businesses

The Theory/Applications Balance in Management Pedagogy: Where Do We Stand?

Business schools are expected to be "professional" in the sense that their mission is primarily to prepare people to practice their skills in the business world. Various critics, however, claim that management professors overemphasize theory and research and neglect the practice and applications students need to transfer classroom theory to the world of practice. This study compared an earlier sample with a more recent sample of Academy of Management members concerning the relative emphasis they believed should be placed on theory and applications in management pedagogy and the techniques they used to bring applications into the classroom. Current respondents believed that more emphasis should be placed on applications than the earlier respondents. An unexpected finding, however, was that the more recent respondents reported a lower mean usage of pedagogical techniques that are appropriate for developing students' ability to apply course concepts than the previous group. Possible reasons for these incongruent findings are discussed as well as the implications for management pedagogy.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation in Clusters of Galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

Nearby clusters and groups of galaxies are potentially bright sources of high-energy gamma-ray emission resulting from the pair-annihilation of dark matter particles. However, no significant gamma-ray emission has been detected so far from clusters in the first 11 months of observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope. We interpret this non-detection in terms of constraints on dark matter particle properties. In particular for leptonic annihilation final states and particle masses greater than ~200 GeV, gamma-ray emission from inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons is expected to dominate the dark matter annihilation signal from clusters, and our gamma-ray limits exclude large regions of the parameter space that would give a good fit to the recent anomalous Pamela and Fermi-LAT electron-positron measurements. We also present constraints on the annihilation of more standard dark matter candidates, such as the lightest neutralino of supersymmetric models. The constraints are particularly strong when including the fact that clusters are known to contain substructure at least on galaxy scales, increasing the expected gamma-ray flux by a factor of ~5 over a smooth-halo assumption. We also explore the effect of uncertainties in cluster dark matter density profiles, finding a systematic uncertainty in the constraints of roughly a factor of two, but similar overall conclusions. In this work, we focus on deriving limits on dark matter models; a more general consideration of the Fermi-LAT data on clusters and clusters as gamma-ray sources is forthcoming.Comment: accepted to JCAP, Corresponding authors: T.E. Jeltema and S. Profumo, minor revisions to be consistent with accepted versio

Demonstration of the temporal matter-wave Talbot effect for trapped matter waves

We demonstrate the temporal Talbot effect for trapped matter waves using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. We investigate the phase evolution of an array of essentially non-interacting matter waves and observe matter-wave collapse and revival in the form of a Talbot interference pattern. By using long expansion times, we image momentum space with sub-recoil resolution, allowing us to observe fractional Talbot fringes up to 10th order.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Kaon Production and Kaon to Pion Ratio in Au+Au Collisions at \snn=130 GeV

Mid-rapidity transverse mass spectra and multiplicity densities of charged and neutral kaons are reported for Au+Au collisions at \snn=130 GeV at RHIC. The spectra are exponential in transverse mass, with an inverse slope of about 280 MeV in central collisions. The multiplicity densities for these particles scale with the negative hadron pseudo-rapidity density. The charged kaon to pion ratios are $K^+/\pi^- = 0.161 \pm 0.002 {\rm (stat)} \pm 0.024 {\rm (syst)}$ and $K^-/\pi^- = 0.146 \pm 0.002 {\rm (stat)} \pm 0.022 {\rm (syst)}$ for the most central collisions. The $K^+/\pi^-$ ratio is lower than the same ratio observed at the SPS while the $K^-/\pi^-$ is higher than the SPS result. Both ratios are enhanced by about 50% relative to p+p and $\bar{\rm p}$+p collision data at similar energies.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Anisotropy studies around the galactic centre at EeV energies with the Auger Observatory

Data from the Pierre Auger Observatory are analyzed to search for anisotropies near the direction of the Galactic Centre at EeV energies. The exposure of the surface array in this part of the sky is already significantly larger than that of the fore-runner experiments. Our results do not support previous findings of localized excesses in the AGASA and SUGAR data. We set an upper bound on a point-like flux of cosmic rays arriving from the Galactic Centre which excludes several scenarios predicting sources of EeV neutrons from Sagittarius $A$. Also the events detected simultaneously by the surface and fluorescence detectors (the `hybrid' data set), which have better pointing accuracy but are less numerous than those of the surface array alone, do not show any significant localized excess from this direction.Comment: Matches published versio