1,449 research outputs found
Effect of Hadron Dynamics on the Proton Lifetime
A detailed, quantitative re-examination of the effect of hadron dynamics on
baryon decay, modeled in terms of Skyrme-field tunneling, indicates that any
hadronic suppression should be quite mild. This appears to be another
illustration of the `Cheshire-cat' phenomenon, that variation of the
apportionment between description of the nucleon as a bag of quarks and
description as a Skyrme field configuration has little influence on many
nucleon properties. Perhaps the largest remaining uncertainty in evaluating the
decay rate has to do with the overlap between a specified quark-antiquark
configuration and a final meson state.Comment: minor corrections, 19 pages, 9 figure
Reformulating the Schrodinger equation as a Shabat-Zakharov system
We reformulate the second-order Schrodinger equation as a set of two coupled
first order differential equations, a so-called "Shabat-Zakharov system",
(sometimes called a "Zakharov-Shabat" system). There is considerable
flexibility in this approach, and we emphasise the utility of introducing an
"auxiliary condition" or "gauge condition" that is used to cut down the degrees
of freedom. Using this formalism, we derive the explicit (but formal) general
solution to the Schrodinger equation. The general solution depends on three
arbitrarily chosen functions, and a path-ordered exponential matrix. If one
considers path ordering to be an "elementary" process, then this represents
complete quadrature, albeit formal, of the second-order linear ODE.Comment: 18 pages, plain LaTe
Mode regularization of the susy sphaleron and kink: zero modes and discrete gauge symmetry
To obtain the one-loop corrections to the mass of a kink by mode
regularization, one may take one-half the result for the mass of a widely
separated kink-antikink (or sphaleron) system, where the two bosonic zero modes
count as two degrees of freedom, but the two fermionic zero modes as only one
degree of freedom in the sums over modes. For a single kink, there is one
bosonic zero mode degree of freedom, but it is necessary to average over four
sets of fermionic boundary conditions in order (i) to preserve the fermionic
Z gauge invariance , (ii) to satisfy the basic principle of
mode regularization that the boundary conditions in the trivial and the kink
sector should be the same, (iii) in order that the energy stored at the
boundaries cancels and (iv) to avoid obtaining a finite, uniformly distributed
energy which would violate cluster decomposition. The average number of
fermionic zero-energy degrees of freedom in the presence of the kink is then
indeed 1/2. For boundary conditions leading to only one fermionic zero-energy
solution, the Z gauge invariance identifies two seemingly distinct `vacua'
as the same physical ground state, and the single fermionic zero-energy
solution does not correspond to a degree of freedom. Other boundary conditions
lead to two spatially separated solutions, corresponding to
one (spatially delocalized) degree of freedom. This nonlocality is consistent
with the principle of cluster decomposition for correlators of observables.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figure
Cloning, in vitro mitochondrial import and membrane assembly of the 17.8 kDa subunit of complex I from Neurospora crassa
Predicting the public health benefit of vaccinating cattle against Escherichia coli O157
Identifying the major sources of risk in disease transmission is key to designing effective controls. However, understanding of transmission dynamics across species boundaries is typically poor, making the design and evaluation of controls particularly challenging for zoonotic pathogens. One such global pathogen is Escherichia coli O157, which causes a serious and sometimes fatal gastrointestinal illness. Cattle are the main reservoir for E. coli O157, and vaccines for cattle now exist. However, adoption of vaccines is being delayed by conflicting responsibilities of veterinary and public health agencies, economic drivers, and because clinical trials cannot easily test interventions across species boundaries, lack of information on the public health benefits. Here, we examine transmission risk across the cattleâhuman species boundary and show three key results. First, supershedding of the pathogen by cattle is associated with the genetic marker stx2. Second, by quantifying the link between shedding density in cattle and human risk, we show that only the relatively rare supershedding events contribute significantly to human risk. Third, we show that this finding has profound consequences for the public health benefits of the cattle vaccine. A naĂŻve evaluation based on efficacy in cattle would suggest a 50% reduction in risk; however, because the vaccine targets the major source of human risk, we predict a reduction in human cases of nearly 85%. By accounting for nonlinearities in transmission across the humanâanimal interface, we show that adoption of these vaccines by the livestock industry could prevent substantial numbers of human E. coli O157 cases
The CMS Event Builder
The data acquisition system of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron
Collider will employ an event builder which will combine data from about 500
data sources into full events at an aggregate throughput of 100 GByte/s.
Several architectures and switch technologies have been evaluated for the DAQ
Technical Design Report by measurements with test benches and by simulation.
This paper describes studies of an EVB test-bench based on 64 PCs acting as
data sources and data consumers and employing both Gigabit Ethernet and Myrinet
technologies as the interconnect. In the case of Ethernet, protocols based on
Layer-2 frames and on TCP/IP are evaluated. Results from ongoing studies,
including measurements on throughput and scaling are presented.
The architecture of the baseline CMS event builder will be outlined. The
event builder is organised into two stages with intelligent buffers in between.
The first stage contains 64 switches performing a first level of data
concentration by building super-fragments from fragments of 8 data sources. The
second stage combines the 64 super-fragments into full events. This
architecture allows installation of the second stage of the event builder in
steps, with the overall throughput scaling linearly with the number of switches
in the second stage. Possible implementations of the components of the event
builder are discussed and the expected performance of the full event builder is
outlined.Comment: Conference CHEP0
Using XDAQ in Application Scenarios of the CMS Experiment
XDAQ is a generic data acquisition software environment that emerged from a
rich set of of use-cases encountered in the CMS experiment. They cover not the
deployment for multiple sub-detectors and the operation of different processing
and networking equipment as well as a distributed collaboration of users with
different needs. The use of the software in various application scenarios
demonstrated the viability of the approach. We discuss two applications, the
tracker local DAQ system for front-end commissioning and the muon chamber
validation system. The description is completed by a brief overview of XDAQ.Comment: Conference CHEP 2003 (Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics,
La Jolla, CA
Immunohistochemical characterization of bipolar cells in four distantly related avian species
Whither Critical Masculinity Studies? Notes on Inclusive Masculinity Theory, Postfeminism, and Sexual Politics
Inclusive masculinity theory has recently been proposed as a new approach to theo- rizing contemporary masculinities. Focusing particularly on the work of the theoryâs key exponent, Eric Anderson, this article offers a critical reading of inclusive masculinity theory in relation to the context of contemporary postfeminism. Building on feminist scholarship that analyzes the emergence of a distinctive postfeminist sensibility within the academy, I consider how inclusive masculinity theory both reflects and reproduces certain logics of postfeminism. My central concern is the manner in which this scho- larship deemphasizes key issues of sexual politics and promotes a discourse of optimism about men, masculinities, and social change. Against this view, I argue that critical masculinity studies must foreground the analysis of gendered power relations and posit that the interrogation of contemporary postfeminism is critical to this endeavor
Measurements of Flavour Dependent Fragmentation Functions in Z^0 -> qq(bar) Events
Fragmentation functions for charged particles in Z -> qq(bar) events have
been measured for bottom (b), charm (c) and light (uds) quarks as well as for
all flavours together. The results are based on data recorded between 1990 and
1995 using the OPAL detector at LEP. Event samples with different flavour
compositions were formed using reconstructed D* mesons and secondary vertices.
The \xi_p = ln(1/x_E) distributions and the position of their maxima \xi_max
are also presented separately for uds, c and b quark events. The fragmentation
function for b quarks is significantly softer than for uds quarks.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures (and colour figs) included, submitted
to Eur. Phys. J.
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