289 research outputs found
Environmental effects on parental care visitation patterns in blue tits cyanistes caeruleus
In bi-parental care systems each parent shares benefits with its unrelated partner from the common investment in offspring, but pays an individual cost of providing that care, leading to sexual conflict. However, several recent empirical studies have shown that coordinating behaviours like synchronisation (e.g., arriving at similar times) and alternation (taking turns in providing care) at the nest lead to increased investment overall, presumably to reduce conflict through policing or synergistic benefits. Ecological conditions should impact the costs and benefits of bi-parental care, yet there exists a gap in research on the relationship between ecological conditions and patterns of parental care behaviour beyond visitation rate. Here we provide an examination of how bi-parental provisioning behaviours, i.e., pair feeding rate and feeding consistency, and the degree to which parents synchronise or take turns, differ under contrasting ecological conditions in populations of blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) spanning a 1,000 m altitudinal gradient. We found that blue tit pairs synchronised and alternated more than expected by chance, and that care patterns were modified by ecology. Pairs synchronised more in woodland-pasture edges than in woodland interiors, and alternated more and fed more frequently at lower altitude compared to higher altitude nests. Variation in bi-parental coordination behaviours did not have a significant impact on fledging success but more synchronous nests had heavier chicks in woodland habitats. Taken as a whole, our results show that patterns of care are influenced by ecological conditions and that their interplay may change the outcome of sexual conflict
Hadron Spectra for Semileptonic Heavy Quark Decay
We calculate the leading perturbative and power corrections to the hadronic
invariant mass and energy spectra in semileptonic heavy hadron decays. We apply
our results to the system. Moments of the invariant mass spectrum, which
vanish in the parton model, probe gluon bremsstrahlung and nonperturbative
effects. Combining our results with recent data on meson branching ratios,
we obtain a lower bound and an upper bound
GeV. The Brodsky-Lepage-Mackenzie scale setting
procedure suggests that higher order perturbative corrections are small for
bottom decay, and even tractable for charm decay.Comment: 24 pages, uses REVTeX, 5 EPS figures embedded with epsf.sty, slightly
modified version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Renormalons in Effective Field Theories
We investigate the high-order behavior of perturbative matching conditions in
effective field theories. These series are typically badly divergent, and are
not Borel summable due to infrared and ultraviolet renormalons which introduce
ambiguities in defining the sum of the series. We argue that, when treated
consistently, there is no physical significance to these ambiguities. Although
nonperturbative matrix elements and matching conditions are in general
ambiguous, the ambiguity in any physical observable is always higher order in
than the theory has been defined. We discuss the implications for the
recently noticed infrared renormalon in the pole mass of a heavy quark. We show
that a ratio of form factors in exclusive decays (which is related
to the pole mass) is free from renormalon ambiguities regardless of the mass
used as the expansion parameter of HQET. The renormalon ambiguities also cancel
in inclusive heavy hadron decays. Finally, we demonstrate the cancellation of
renormalons in a four-Fermi effective theory obtained by integrating out a
heavy colored scalar.Comment: Minor changes mad
SU(3) Relations and the CP Asymmetries in B Decays to , and
We consider CP asymmetries in neutral meson decays to , , and . We use SU(3) relations to estimate or bound the
contributions to these amplitudes proportional to . Such
contributions induce a deviation of the terms measured in these time
dependent CP asymmetries from that measured for . For the mode, we estimate the deviation to be of order 0.1. For the
mode, we obtain an upper bound on this deviation of order 0.3. For the mode, we have to add a mild dynamical assumption to the SU(3) analysis due
to insufficient available data, yielding an upper bound of order 0.25. These
bounds may improve significantly with future data. While they are large at
present compared to the usually assumed Standard Model contribution, they are
obtained with minimal assumptions and hence provide more rigorous tests for new
physics. If measurements yield that are much larger than our
bounds, it would make a convincing case for new physics.Comment: 24 pages; corrections in Sec. III.A and V, results hardly affected,
to appear in Phys Rev
B-->pi and B-->K transitions in standard and quenched chiral perturbation theory
We study the effects of chiral logs on the heavy-->light pseudoscalar meson
transition form factors by using standard and quenched chiral perturbation
theory combined with the static heavy quark limit. The resulting expressions
are used to indicate the size of uncertainties due to the use of the quenched
approximation in the current lattice studies. They may also be used to assess
the size of systematic uncertainties induced by missing chiral log terms in
extrapolating toward the physical pion mass. We also provide the coefficient
multiplying the quenched chiral log, which may be useful if the quenched
lattice studies are performed with very light mesons.Comment: 33 pages, 8 PostScript figures, version to appear in PR
Phenomenology of the Expansion in Inclusive and Meson Decays
We apply a recent theoretical analysis of hadronic observables in inclusive
semileptonic heavy hadron decays to the phenomenology of and mesons.
Correlated bounds on the nonperturbative parameters and
are derived by considering data from decays and, independently,
data from decays. The two sets of bounds are found to be consistent with
each other. The data from decays are then are used to extract a lower limit
on the CKM matrix element . We address the issue of the convergence
of the perturbative expansions used in the analysis, and compare our bounds on
and to lattice and QCD sum rule results. Finally, we
argue that a comparison of the analyses of and decays provides
evidence for the applicability of parton-hadron duality in the semileptonic
decay of charmed hadrons.Comment: 18 pages, 3 embedded figures, uses REVTeX and epsf.sty; this is the
slightly revised version to appear in Physical Review
Priorities for development of research methods in occupational cancer.
Occupational cancer research methods was identified in 1996 as 1 of 21 priority research areas in the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA). To implement NORA, teams of experts from various sectors were formed and given the charge to further define research needs and develop strategies to enhance or augment research in each priority area. This article is a product of that process. Focus on occupational cancer research methods is important both because occupational factors play a significant role in a number of cancers, resulting in significant morbidity and mortality, and also because occupational cohorts (because of higher exposure levels) often provide unique opportunities to evaluate health effects of environmental toxicants and understand the carcinogenic process in humans. Despite an explosion of new methods for cancer research in general, these have not been widely applied to occupational cancer research. In this article we identify needs and gaps in occupational cancer research methods in four broad areas: identification of occupational carcinogens, design of epidemiologic studies, risk assessment, and primary and secondary prevention. Progress in occupational cancer will require interdisciplinary research involving epidemiologists, industrial hygienists, toxicologists, and molecular biologists
SU(3) Breaking and D0-D0bar Mixing
The main challenge in the Standard Model calculation of the mass and width
difference in the D0-D0bar system is to estimate the size of SU(3) breaking
effects. We prove that D meson mixing occurs in the Standard Model only at
second order in SU(3) violation. We consider the possibility that phase space
effects may be the dominant source of SU(3) breaking. We find that y=(Delta
Gamma)/(2Gamma) of the order of one percent is natural in the Standard Model,
potentially reducing the sensitivity to new physics of measurements of D meson
mixing.Comment: 18 pages; minor corrections, version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a pair in events with no charged leptons and large missing transverse energy using the full CDF data set
We report on a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in
association with a vector boson in the full data set of proton-antiproton
collisions at TeV recorded by the CDF II detector at the
Tevatron, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45 fb. We
consider events having no identified charged lepton, a transverse energy
imbalance, and two or three jets, of which at least one is consistent with
originating from the decay of a quark. We place 95% credibility level upper
limits on the production cross section times standard model branching fraction
for several mass hypotheses between 90 and . For a Higgs
boson mass of , the observed (expected) limit is 6.7
(3.6) times the standard model prediction.Comment: Accepted by Phys. Rev. Let
Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying to a bb pair in events with one charged lepton and large missing transverse energy using the full CDF data set
We present a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in
association with a W boson in sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV p-pbar collision data
collected with the CDF II detector at the Tevatron corresponding to an
integrated luminosity of 9.45 fb-1. In events consistent with the decay of the
Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair and the W boson to an electron or muon and a
neutrino, we set 95% credibility level upper limits on the WH production cross
section times the H->bb branching ratio as a function of Higgs boson mass. At a
Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV/c2 we observe (expect) a limit of 4.9 (2.8) times
the standard model value.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett (v2 contains clarifications suggested by
PRL
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