Inclusion of non-spherical components of the Pauli blocking operator in (p,p') reactions

We present the first calculations of proton elastic and inelastic scattering in which the Pauli blocking operator contains the leading non-spherical components as well as the usual spherical (angle-averaged) part. We develop a formalism for including the contributions to the effective nucleon-nucleon interaction from the resulting new G-matrix elements that extend the usual two-nucleon spin structure and may not conserve angular momentum. We explore the consequences of parity conservation, time reversal invariance, and nucleon-nucleon antisymmetrization for the new effective interaction. Changes to the calculated cross section and spin observables are small in the energy range from 100 to 200 MeV.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Physical Review

Gas of self-avoiding loops on the brickwork lattice

An exact calculation of the phase diagram for a loop gas model on the brickwork lattice is presented. The model includes a bending energy. In the dense limit, where all the lattice sites are occupied, a phase transition occuring at an asymmetric Lifshitz tricritical point is observed as the temperature associated with the bending energy is varied. Various critical exponents are calculated. At lower densities, two lines of transitions (in the Ising universality class) are observed, terminated by a tricritical point, where there is a change in the modulation of the correlation function. To each tricritical point an associated disorder line is found.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures. to appear in J. Phys. A : Math. & Ge

Ludii -- The Ludemic General Game System

While current General Game Playing (GGP) systems facilitate useful research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for game-playing, they are often somewhat specialised and computationally inefficient. In this paper, we describe the "ludemic" general game system Ludii, which has the potential to provide an efficient tool for AI researchers as well as game designers, historians, educators and practitioners in related fields. Ludii defines games as structures of ludemes -- high-level, easily understandable game concepts -- which allows for concise and human-understandable game descriptions. We formally describe Ludii and outline its main benefits: generality, extensibility, understandability and efficiency. Experimentally, Ludii outperforms one of the most efficient Game Description Language (GDL) reasoners, based on a propositional network, in all games available in the Tiltyard GGP repository. Moreover, Ludii is also competitive in terms of performance with the more recently proposed Regular Boardgames (RBG) system, and has various advantages in qualitative aspects such as generality.Comment: Accepted at ECAI 202

Hemocytes are essential for Drosophila melanogaster post-embryonic development, independent of control of the microbiota

Proven roles for hemocytes (blood cells) have expanded beyond the control of infections in Drosophila. Despite this, the crucial role of hemocytes in post-embryonic development has long thought to be limited to control of microorganisms during metamorphosis. This has previously been shown by rescue of adult development in hemocyte-ablation models under germ-free conditions. Here, we show that hemocytes have an essential role in post-embryonic development beyond their ability to control the microbiota. Using a newly generated strong hemocyte-specific driver line for the GAL4/UAS system, we show that specific ablation of hemocytes is early pupal lethal, even under axenic conditions. Genetic rescue experiments prove that this is a hemocyte-specific phenomenon. RNA-seq data suggests that dysregulation of the midgut is a prominent consequence of hemocyte ablation in larval stages, resulting in reduced gut lengths. Dissection suggests that multiple processes may be affected during metamorphosis. We believe this previously unreported role for hemocytes during metamorphosis is a major finding for the field

Counselling to include tailored use of combined oral contraception in clinical practice: an evaluation

BACKGROUND: Combined oral contraception (COC, 'the pill') remains the most prescribed method of contraception in the UK. Although a variety of regimens for taking monophasic COC are held to be clinically safe, women are not routinely counselled about these choices and there is a lack of evidence on how to provide this information to women. AIM: To assess the usefulness and feasibility of including tailored use of monophasic COC within routine COC counselling in a sexual and reproductive health (SRH) service using a structured format. METHOD: Using a structured format, healthcare professionals (HCPs) counselled new and established COC users attending an SRH service about standard and tailored ways of taking the pill. Questionnaires were used to survey both the HCPs and patients immediately after the initial consultation, and then the patients again 8 weeks later. RESULTS: Nearly all patients (98%, n=95) felt it was helpful to be informed of the different ways of using monophasic COC by the HCP, without giving too much information at one time (96%, n=108). The HCPs were confident of their COC counselling (99%, n=110) and did not think the consultations took significantly longer (88%, n=98). CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that information on different pill taking regimens is useful and acceptable to patients, and can improve contraceptive pill user choice. It is also feasible for HCPs to perform COC counselling to include tailored pill use during routine consultations in a clinical setting

Cosmo MSW effect for mass varying neutrinos

We consider neutrinos with varying masses which arise in scenarios relating neutrino masses to the dark energy density in the universe. We point out that the neutrino mass variation can lead to level crossing and thus a cosmo MSW effect, having dramatic consequences for the flavor ratio of astrophysical neutrinos.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, more detailed discussions, version to be published by Mod. Phys. Lett.

Systematic Theoretical Search for Dibaryons in a Relativistic Model

A relativistic quark potential model is used to do a systematic search for quasi-stable dibaryon states in the $u$, $d$, and $s$ three flavor world. Flavor symmetry breaking and channel coupling effects are included and an adiabatic method and fractional parentage expansion technique are used in the calculations. The relativistic model predicts dibaryon candidates completely consistent with the nonrelativistic model.Comment: 12 pages, latex, no figure