1,184 research outputs found
Coherence of neutrino flavor mixing in quantum field theory
In the simplistic quantum mechanical picture of flavor mixing, conditions on
the maximum size and minimum coherence time of the source and detector regions
for the observation of interference---as well as the very viability of the
approach---can only be argued in an ad hoc way from principles external to the
formalism itself. To examine these conditions in a more fundamental way, the
quantum field theoretical -matrix approach is employed in this paper,
without the unrealistic assumption of microscopic stationarity. The fully
normalized, time-dependent neutrino flavor mixing event rates presented here
automatically reveal the coherence conditions in a natural, self-contained, and
physically unambiguous way, while quantitatively describing the transition to
their failure.Comment: 12 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Search for Radiative Decays of Cosmic Background Neutrino using Cosmic Infrared Background Energy Spectrum
We propose to search for the neutrino radiative decay by fitting a photon
energy spectrum of the cosmic infrared background to a sum of the photon energy
spectrum from the neutrino radiative decay and a continuum. By comparing the
present cosmic infrared background energy spectrum observed by AKARI and
Spitzer to the photon energy spectrum expected from neutrino radiative decay
with a maximum likelihood method, we obatined a lifetime lower limit of to years at 95% confidence level for the
third generation neutrino in the mass range between 50 \mmev
and 150 \mmev under the present constraints by the neutrino oscillation
measurements. In the left-right symmetric model, the minimum lifetime of
is predicted to be years for of 50 \mmev. We
studied the feasibility of the observation of the neutrino radiative decay with
a lifetime of years, by measuring a continuous energy
spectrum of the cosmic infrared background
Label-free electrochemical monitoring of DNA ligase activity
This study presents a simple, label-free electrochemical technique for the monitoring of DNA ligase activity. DNA ligases are enzymes that catalyze joining of breaks in the backbone of DNA and are of significant scientific interest due to their essential nature in DNA metabolism and their importance to a range of molecular biological methodologies. The electrochemical behavior of DNA at mercury and some amalgam electrodes is strongly influenced by its backbone structure, allowing a perfect discrimination between DNA molecules containing or lacking free ends. This variation in electrochemical behavior has been utilized previously for a sensitive detection of DNA damage involving the sugar-phosphate backbone breakage. Here we show that the same principle can be utilized for monitoring of a reverse process, i.e., the repair of strand breaks by action of the DNA ligases. We demonstrate applications of the electrochemical technique for a distinction between ligatable and unligatable breaks in plasmid DNA using T4 DNA ligase, as well as for studies of the DNA backbone-joining activity in recombinant fragments of E. coli DNA ligase
Teacher interventions in students’ collaborative work in a technology-rich educational makerspace
This study reports on an investigation of teacher interventions in students' collaborative work in an educational makerspace. We draw on a qualitative analysis of video data on teacher-student interaction derived from 94 students (aged 9-12) and their teachers in a Finnish school. The results show that the teacher interventions were both student- and teacher-initiated. Three leading teacher intervention strategies were identified, namely authoritative, orchestrating and unleashing which emerged in teacher-student interactions dealing with conceptual, procedural, technological, behavioural and motivational issues. The study demonstrates the demands makerspaces pose for teacher-student interaction, and how moving from authoritative to collaborative interaction requires collective efforts and cultural change.Peer reviewe
Vanadium (β-(Dimethylamino)ethyl)cyclopentadienyl Complexes with Diphenylacetylene Ligands
Reduction of the V(III) (β-(dimethylamino)ethyl)cyclopentadienyl dichloride complex [η5:η1-C5H4(CH2)2NMe2]VCl2(PMe3) with 1 equiv of Na/Hg yielded the V(II) dimer {[η5:η1-C5H4(CH2)2NMe2]V(µ-Cl)}2 (2). This compound reacted with diphenylacetylene in THF to give the V(II) alkyne adduct [η5:η1-C5H4(CH2)2NMe2]VCl(η2-PhC≡CPh). Further reduction of 2 with Mg in the presence of diphenylacetylene resulted in oxidative coupling of two diphenylacetylene groups to yield the diamagnetic, formally V(V), bent metallacyclopentatriene complex [η5:η1-C5H4(CH2)2NMe2]V(C4Ph4).
Pedagogical approaches for e-assessment with authentication and authorship verification in Higher Education
Checking the identity of students and authorship of their online submissions is a major concern in Higher Education due to the increasing amount of plagiarism and cheating using the Internet. The literature on the effects of e-authentication systems for teaching staff is very limited because it is a novel procedure for them. A considerable gap is to understand teaching staff’ views regarding the use of e-authentication instruments and how they impact trust in e-assessment. This mixed-method study examines the concerns and practices of 108 teaching staff who used the TeSLA - Adaptive Trust-based e-Assessment System in six countries: UK, Spain, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Finland and Turkey. The findings revealed some technological, organisational and pedagogical issues related to accessibility, security, privacy and e-assessment design and feedback. Recommendations are to provide: a FAQ and an audit report with results, to raise awareness about data security and privacy, to develop policies and guidelines about fraud detection and prevention, e-assessment best practices and course team support
Left-handed neutrino disappearance probe of neutrino mass and character
We explore the sensitivity to a non vanishing neutrino mass offered by
dynamical observables, i.e., branching ratios and polarizations. The
longitudinal polarization in the C.M. frame decreases by a 4% for and MeV. Taking advantage of the
fact that the polarization is a Lorentz variant quantity, we study the
polarization effects in a boosted frame. By means of a neutrino beam, produced
by a high velocity boosted parent able to flip the neutrino helicity, we find
that an enhanced left-handed neutrino deficit, induced by a Wigner rotation,
appears.Comment: 8 pages and 2 figures. Last version accepted in PRL, new references
and better analysis of experimental possibilitie
Field-induced Ordering in Critical Antiferromagnets
Transfer-matrix scaling methods have been used to study critical properties
of field-induced phase transitions of two distinct two-dimensional
antiferromagnets with discrete-symmetry order parameters: triangular-lattice
Ising systems (TIAF) and the square-lattice three-state Potts model (SPAF-3).
Our main findings are summarised as follows. For TIAF, we have shown that the
critical line leaves the zero-temperature, zero -field fixed point at a finite
angle. Our best estimate of the slope at the origin is . For SPAF-3 we provided evidence that the zero-field correlation
length diverges as , with , through analysis of the critical curve at plus crossover
arguments. For SPAF-3 we have also ascertained that the conformal anomaly and
decay-of-correlations exponent behave as: (a) H=0: ; (b) .Comment: RevTex, 7 pages, 4 eps figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
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Cross-cultural invariances in the architecture of shame
This set of experiments shows that in 15 traditional small-scale societies there is an extraordinarily close correspondence between (i) the intensity of shame felt if one exhibited specific acts or traits and (ii) the magnitude of devaluation expressed in response to those acts or traits by local audiences, and even foreign audiences. Three important and widely acknowledged sources of cultural variation between communities—}geographic proximity, linguistic similarity, and religious similarity{—}all failed to account for the strength of between-community correlations in the shame{–}devaluation link. This supplies a parallel line of evidence that shame is a universal system, part of our species{’} cooperative biology, rather than a product of cultural evolution.Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species{’} social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action{’}s direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean r = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame{’s match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution
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Utility of the US National Ignition Facility for Development of Inertial Fusion Energy
The demonstration of inertial fusion ignition and gain in the proposed US National Ignition Facility (NIF), along with the parallel demonstration of the feasibility of an efficient, high-repetition-rate driver, would provide the basis for a follow-on Engineering Test Facility (ETF), a facility for integrated testing of the technologies needed for inertial fusion-energy (IFE) power plants. A workshop was convened at the University of California, Berkeley on February 22--24, 1994, attended by 61 participants from 17 US organizations, to identify possible NIF experiments relevant to IFE. We considered experiments in four IFE areas: Target physics, target chamber dynamics, fusion power ethnology, and target systems, as defined in the following sections
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