33,888 research outputs found
Test of Chemical freeze-out at RHIC
We present the results of a systematic test applying statistical thermal
model fits in a consistent way for different particle ratios, and different
system sizes using the various particle yields measured in the STAR experiment.
Comparison between central and peripheral Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions with data
from p+p collisions provides an interesting tool to verify the dependence with
the system size. We also present a study of the rapidity dependence of the
thermal fit parameters using available data from RHIC in the forward rapidity
regions and also using different parameterization for the rapidity distribution
of different particles.Comment: SQM2008 conference proceeding
Tidal effects and the Proximity decay of nuclei
We examine the decay of the 3.03 MeV state of Be evaporated from an
excited projectile-like fragment following a peripheral heavy-ion collision.
The relative energy of the daughter particles exhibits a dependence on
the decay angle of the Be, indicative of a tidal effect. Comparison of
the measured tidal effect with a purely Coulomb model suggests the influence of
a measurable nuclear proximity interaction.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
The evolution, distribution and diversity of endogenous circoviral elements in vertebrate genomes
Circoviruses (family Circoviridae) are small, non-enveloped viruses that have short, single-stranded DNA genomes. Circovirus sequences are frequently recovered in metagenomic investigations, indicating that these viruses are widespread, yet they remain relatively poorly understood. Endogenous circoviral elements (CVe) are DNA sequences derived from circoviruses that occur in vertebrate genomes. CVe are a useful source of information about the biology and evolution of circoviruses. In this study, we screened 362 vertebrate genome assemblies in silico to generate a catalog of CVe loci. We identified a total of 179 CVe sequences, most of which have not been reported previously. We show that these CVe loci reflect at least 19 distinct germline integration events. We determine the structure of CVe loci, identifying some that show evidence of potential functionalization. We also identify orthologous copies of CVe in snakes, fish, birds, and mammals, allowing us to add new calibrations to the timeline of circovirus evolution. Finally, we observed that some ancient CVe group robustly with contemporary circoviruses in phylogenies, with all sequences within these groups being derived from the same host class or order, implying a hitherto underappreciated stability in circovirus-host relationships. The openly available dataset constructed in this investigation provides new insights into circovirus evolution, and can be used to facilitate further studies of circoviruses and CVe
Vortex rectification effects in films with periodic asymmetric pinning
We study the transport of vortices excited by an ac current in an Al film
with an array of nanoengineered asymmetric antidots. The vortex response to the
ac current is investigated by detailed measurements of the voltage output as a
function of ac current amplitude, magnetic field and temperature. The
measurements revealed pronounced voltage rectification effects which are mainly
characterized by the two critical depinning forces of the asymmetric potential.
The shape of the net dc voltage as a function of the excitation amplitude
indicates that our vortex ratchet behaves in a way very different from standard
overdamped models. Rather, as demonstrated by the observed output signal, the
repinning force, necessary to stop vortex motion, is considerably smaller than
the depinning force, resembling the behavior of the so-called inertia ratchets.
Calculations based on an underdamped ratchet model provide a very good fit to
the experimental data.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Mesoscopic Kondo effect of a quantum dot embedded in an Aharonov-Bohm ring with intradot spin-flip scattering
We study the Kondo effect in a quantum dot embedded in a mesoscopic ring
taking into account intradot spin-flip scattering . Based on the finite-
slave-boson mean-field approach, we find that the Kondo peak in the density of
states is split into two peaks by this coherent spin-flip transition, which is
responsible for some interesting features of the Kondo-assisted persistent
current circulating the ring: (1) strong suppression and crossover to a sine
function form with increasing ; (2) appearance of a "hump" in the
-dependent behavior for odd parity. -induced reverse of the persistent
current direction is also observed for odd parity.Comment: 7 pages,6 figures, to be published by Europhys. Let
The Overlooked Potential of Generalized Linear Models in Astronomy - I: Binomial Regression
Revealing hidden patterns in astronomical data is often the path to
fundamental scientific breakthroughs; meanwhile the complexity of scientific
inquiry increases as more subtle relationships are sought. Contemporary data
analysis problems often elude the capabilities of classical statistical
techniques, suggesting the use of cutting edge statistical methods. In this
light, astronomers have overlooked a whole family of statistical techniques for
exploratory data analysis and robust regression, the so-called Generalized
Linear Models (GLMs). In this paper -- the first in a series aimed at
illustrating the power of these methods in astronomical applications -- we
elucidate the potential of a particular class of GLMs for handling
binary/binomial data, the so-called logit and probit regression techniques,
from both a maximum likelihood and a Bayesian perspective. As a case in point,
we present the use of these GLMs to explore the conditions of star formation
activity and metal enrichment in primordial minihaloes from cosmological
hydro-simulations including detailed chemistry, gas physics, and stellar
feedback. We predict that for a dark mini-halo with metallicity , an increase of in the gas
molecular fraction, increases the probability of star formation occurrence by a
factor of 75%. Finally, we highlight the use of receiver operating
characteristic curves as a diagnostic for binary classifiers, and ultimately we
use these to demonstrate the competitive predictive performance of GLMs against
the popular technique of artificial neural networks.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomy
and Computin
Components of multifractality in the Central England Temperature anomaly series
We study the multifractal nature of the Central England Temperature (CET)
anomaly, a time series that spans more than 200 years. The series is analyzed
as a complete data set and considering a sliding window of 11 years. In both
cases, we quantify the broadness of the multifractal spectrum as well as its
components defined by the deviations from the Gaussian distribution and the
influence of the dependence between measurements. The results show that the
chief contribution to the multifractal structure comes from the dynamical
dependencies, mainly the weak ones, followed by a residual contribution of the
deviations from Gaussianity. However, using the sliding window, we verify that
the spikes in the non-Gaussian contribution occur at very close dates
associated with climate changes determined in previous works by component
analysis methods. Moreover, the strong non-Gaussian contribution found in the
multifractal measures from the 1960s onwards is in agreement with global
results very recently proposed in the literature.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure
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