12,628 research outputs found
Produce handling and processing practices.
In the past decade, outbreaks of human illness associated with the consumption of raw vegetables and fruits (or unpasteurized products produced from them) have increased in the United States. Changes in agronomic, harvesting, distribution, processing, and consumption patterns and practices have undoubtedly contributed to this increase. Pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes, Clostridium botulinum, and Bacillus cereus are naturally present in some soil, and their presence on fresh produce is not rare. Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Campylobacter jejuni, Vibrio cholerae, parasites, and viruses are more likely to contaminate fresh produce through vehicles such as raw or improperly composted manure, irrigation water containing untreated sewage, or contaminated wash water. Contact with mammals, reptiles, fowl, insects, and unpasteurized products of animal origin offers another avenue through which pathogens can access produce. Surfaces, including human hands, which come in contact with whole or cut produce represent potential points of contamination throughout the total system of growing, harvesting, packing, processing, shipping, and preparing produce for consumption. Treatment of produce with chlorinated water reduces populations of pathogenic and other microorganisms on fresh produce but cannot eliminate them. Reduction of risk for human illness associated with raw produce can be better achieved through controlling points of potential contamination in the field; during harvesting; during processing or distribution; or in retail markets, food-service facilities, or the home
On the role of a new type of correlated disorder in extended electronic states in the Thue-Morse lattice
A new type of correlated disorder is shown to be responsible for the
appearance of extended electronic states in one-dimensional aperiodic systems
like the Thue-Morse lattice. Our analysis leads to an understanding of the
underlying reason for the extended states in this system, for which only
numerical evidence is available in the literature so far. The present work also
sheds light on the restrictive conditions under which the extended states are
supported by this lattice.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX V2.09, 1 figure (available on request), to appear in
Physical Review Letter
Entanglement Entropy of Two Spheres
We study the entanglement entropy S_{AB} of a massless free scalar field on
two spheres A and B whose radii are R_1 and R_2, respectively, and the distance
between the centers of them is r. The state of the massless free scalar field
is the vacuum state. We obtain the result that the mutual information
S_{A;B}:=S_A+S_B-S_{AB} is independent of the ultraviolet cutoff and
proportional to the product of the areas of the two spheres when r>>R_1,R_2,
where S_A and S_B are the entanglement entropy on the inside region of A and B,
respectively. We discuss possible connections of this result with the physics
of black holes.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures; v4, added references, revised argument in
section V, a typo in eq.(25) corrected, published versio
Effective mass theory of monolayer \delta-doping in the high-density limit
Monolayer \delta-doped structures in silicon have attracted renewed interest
with their recent incorporation into atomic-scale device fabrication strategies
as source and drain electrodes and in-plane gates. Modeling the physics of
\delta-doping at this scale proves challenging, however, due to the large
computational overhead associated with ab initio and atomistic methods. Here,
we develop an analytical theory based on an effective mass approximation. We
specifically consider the Si:P materials system, and the limit of high donor
density, which has been the subject of recent experiments. In this case,
metallic behavior including screening tends to smooth out the local disorder
potential associated with random dopant placement. While smooth potentials may
be difficult to incorporate into microscopic, single-electron analyses, the
problem is easily treated in the effective mass theory by means of a jellium
approximation for the ionic charge. We then go beyond the analytic model,
incorporating exchange and correlation effects within a simple numerical model.
We argue that such an approach is appropriate for describing realistic,
high-density, highly disordered devices, providing results comparable to
density functional theory, but with greater intuitive appeal, and lower
computational effort. We investigate valley coupling in these structures,
finding that valley splitting in the low-lying \Gamma band grows much more
quickly than the \Gamma-\Delta band splitting at high densities. We also find
that many-body exchange and correlation corrections affect the valley splitting
more strongly than they affect the band splitting
Synthetic Observations of Simulated Radio Galaxies I: Radio and X-ray Analysis
We present an extensive synthetic observational analysis of numerically-
simulated radio galaxies designed to explore the effectiveness of conventional
observational analyses at recovering physical source properties. These are the
first numerical simulations with sufficient physical detail to allow such a
study. The present paper focuses on extraction of magnetic field properties
from nonthermal intensity information. Synchrotron and inverse-Compton
intensities provided meaningful information about distributions and strengths
of magnetic fields, although considerable care was called for. Correlations
between radio and X-ray surface brightness correctly revealed useful dynamical
relationships between particles and fields. Magnetic field strength estimates
derived from the ratio of X-ray to radio intensity were mostly within about a
factor of two of the RMS field strength along a given line of sight. When
emissions along a given line of sight were dominated by regions close to the
minimum energy/equipartition condition, the field strengths derived from the
standard power-law-spectrum minimum energy calculation were also reasonably
close to actual field strengths, except when spectral aging was evident.
Otherwise, biases in the minimum- energy magnetic field estimation mirrored
actual differences from equipartition. The ratio of the inverse-Compton
magnetic field to the minimum-energy magnetic field provided a rough measure of
the actual total energy in particles and fields in most instances, within an
order of magnitude. This may provide a practical limit to the accuracy with
which one may be able to establish the internal energy density or pressure of
optically thin synchrotron sources.Comment: 43 pages, 14 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ, v601 n2
February 1, 200
First-Order Melting of a Moving Vortex Lattice: Effects of Disorder
We study the melting of a moving vortex lattice through numerical simulations
with the current driven 3D XY model with disorder. We find that there is a
first-order phase transition even for large disorder when the corresponding
equilibrium transition is continuous. The low temperature phase is an
anisotropic moving glass.Comment: Important changes from original version. Finite size analysis of
results has been added. Figure 2 has been changed. There is a new additional
Figure. To be published in Physical Review Letter
Prostaglandin E2 promotes intestinal repair through an adaptive cellular response of the epithelium
Adaptive cellular responses are often required during wound repair. Following disruption of the intestinal epithelium, woundâassociated epithelial (WAE) cells form the initial barrier over the wound. Our goal was to determine the critical factor that promotes WAE cell differentiation. Using an adaptation of our in vitro primary epithelial cell culture system, we found that prostaglandin E2 (PGE (2)) signaling through one of its receptors, Ptger4, was sufficient to drive a differentiation state morphologically and transcriptionally similar to in vivo WAE cells. WAE cell differentiation was a permanent state and dominant over enterocyte differentiation in plasticity experiments. WAE cell differentiation was triggered by nuclear βâcatenin signaling independent of canonical Wnt signaling. Creation of WAE cells via the PGE (2)âPtger4 pathway was required in vivo, as mice with loss of Ptger4 in the intestinal epithelium did not produce WAE cells and exhibited impaired wound repair. Our results demonstrate a mechanism by which WAE cells are formed by PGE (2) and suggest a process of adaptive cellular reprogramming of the intestinal epithelium that occurs to ensure proper repair to injury
Crossover of conductance and local density of states in a single-channel disordered quantum wire
The probability distribution of the mesoscopic local density of states (LDOS)
for a single-channel disordered quantum wire with chiral symmetry is computed
in two different geometries. An approximate ansatz is proposed to describe the
crossover of the probability distributions for the conductance and LDOS between
the chiral and standard symmetry classes of a single-channel disordered quantum
wire. The accuracy of this ansatz is discussed by comparison with a
large-deviation ansatz introduced by Schomerus and Titov in Phys. Rev. B
\textbf{67}, 100201(R) (2003).Comment: 19 pages, 5 eps figure
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