Vacuum Cherenkov radiation and bremsstrahlung from disformal couplings

The simplest way to modify gravity is to extend the gravitational sector to include an additional scalar degree of freedom. The most general metric that can be built in such a theory includes disformal terms, so that standard model fields move on a metric which is the sum of the space time metric and a tensor constructed from first derivatives of the scalar. In such a theory gravitational waves and photons can propagate at different speeds, and these can in turn be different from the maximum speed limit for matter particles. In this work we show that disformal couplings can cause charged particles to emit Cherenkov radiation and bremsstrahlung apparently in vacuum, depending on the background evolution of the scalar field. We discuss the implications of this for observations of cosmic rays, and the constraints that arise for models of dark energy with disformal couplings

Illness and Treatment Perceptions of Patients with Epilepsy Attending Treatment at a Tertiary Hospital in Addis Ababa – A Qualitative Exploration

BACKGROUND: Epilepsy can be a large economic burden in countries where appropriate treatment is not taken due to religious and psychosocial beliefs. The objective of this study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of patients with epilepsy attending their treatment at Tikur Anbessa SpecializedHospital about their illness and treatment.METHODS: A qualitative exploratory design with an in-depth interview was followed. Fourteen purposively selected patients were used until saturation of key emerging themes was achieved.RESULTS: The finding showed that study participants expressed perceptions towards their illness including about its cause, timeline, severity and psychosocial consequences which at times may be considered different from the biomedical version. They also expressed concerns about their treatment, reported aboutsocial and psychological issues and in certain cases dissatisfaction with their healthcare providers. Such issues may have led to delays in treatment-seeking and non-adherence to recommended treatment regimens and as well use of traditional medicine and spiritual healing. On the other hand, reasons that were reported to positively influence their treatment experiences include necessity perceptions about their medications, family support and use of spiritual healing alongside their biomedical treatment.CONCLUSION: The healthcare provision should improve to cater to these groups of patients including instituting chronic care management and appropriate health education provision

Physics of Interpulse Emission in Radio Pulsars

The magnetized induced Compton scattering off the particles of the ultrarelativistic electron-positron plasma of pulsar is considered. The main attention is paid to the transverse regime of the scattering, which holds in a moderately strong magnetic field. We specifically examine the problem on induced transverse scattering of the radio beam into the background, which takes place in the open field line tube of a pulsar. In this case, the radiation is predominantly scattered backwards and the scattered component may grow considerably. Based on this effect, we for the first time suggest a physical explanation of the interpulse emission observed in the profiles of some pulsars. Our model can naturally account for the peculiar spectral and polarization properties of the interpulses. Furthermore, it implies a specific connection of the interpulse to the main pulse, which may reveal itself in the consistent intensity fluctuations of the components at different timescales. Diverse observational manifestations of this connection, including the moding behavior of PSR B1822-09, the peculiar temporal and frequency structure of the giant interpulses in the Crab pulsar, and the intrinsic phase correspondence of the subpulse patterns in the main pulse and the interpulse of PSR B1702-19, are discussed in detail. It is also argued that the pulse-to-pulse fluctuations of the scattering efficiency may lead to strong variability of the interpulse, which is yet to be studied observationally. In particular, some pulsars may exhibit transient interpulses, i.e. the scattered component may be detectable only occasionally.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Stress Alters Rates and Types of Loss of Heterozygosity in Candida albicans

Genetic diversity is often generated during adaptation to stress, and in eukaryotes some of this diversity is thought to arise via recombination and reassortment of alleles during meiosis. Candida albicans, the most prevalent pathogen of humans, has no known meiotic cycle, and yet it is a heterozygous diploid that undergoes mitotic recombination during somatic growth. It has been shown that clinical isolates as well as strains passaged once through a mammalian host undergo increased levels of recombination. Here, we tested the hypothesis that stress conditions increase rates of mitotic recombination in C. albicans, which is measured as loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at specific loci. We show that LOH rates are elevated during in vitro exposure to oxidative stress, heat stress, and antifungal drugs. In addition, an increase in stress severity correlated well with increased LOH rates. LOH events can arise through local recombination, through homozygosis of longer tracts of chromosome arms, or by whole-chromosome homozygosis. Chromosome arm homozygosis was most prevalent in cultures grown under conventional lab conditions. Importantly, exposure to different stress conditions affected the levels of different types of LOH events, with oxidative stress causing increased recombination, while fluconazole and high temperature caused increases in events involving whole chromosomes. Thus, C. albicans generates increased amounts and different types of genetic diversity in response to a range of stress conditions, a process that we term “stress-induced LOH” that arises either by elevating rates of recombination and/or by increasing rates of chromosome missegregation

Understanding the competing pathways leading to hydropyrene and isoelisabethatriene

Terpene synthases are responsible for the biosynthesis of terpenes, the largest family of natural products. Hydropyrene synthase generates hydropyrene and hydropyrenol as its main products along with two byproducts, isoelisabethatrienes A and B. Fascinatingly, a single active site mutation (M75L) diverts the product distribution towards isoelisabethatrienes A and B. In the current work, we study the competing pathways leading to these products using quantum chemical calculations in the gas phase. We show that there is a great thermodynamic preference for hydropyrene and hydropyrenol formation, and hence most likely in the synthesis of the isoelisabethatriene products kinetic control is at play

Phaseless VLBI mapping of compact extragalactic radio sources

The problem of phaseless aperture synthesis is of current interest in phase-unstable VLBI with a small number of elements when either the use of closure phases is not possible (a two-element interferometer) or their quality and number are not enough for acceptable image reconstruction by standard adaptive calibration methods. Therefore, we discuss the problem of unique image reconstruction only from the spectrum magnitude of a source. We suggest an efficient method for phaseless VLBI mapping of compact extragalactic radio sources. This method is based on the reconstruction of the spectrum magnitude for a source on the entire UV plane from the measured visibility magnitude on a limited set of points and the reconstruction of the sought-for image of the source by Fienup's method from the spectrum magnitude reconstructed at the first stage. We present the results of our mapping of the extragalactic radio source 2200 +420 using astrometric and geodetic observations on a global VLBI array. Particular attention is given to studying the capabilities of a two-element interferometer in connection with the putting into operation of a Russian-made radio interferometer based on Quasar RT-32 radio telescopes.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

Probing the imprints of generalized interacting dark energy on the growth of perturbations

We extensively study the evolution and distinct signatures of cosmological models, in which dark energy interacts directly with dark matter. We first focus on the imprints of these coupled models on the cosmic microwave background temperature power spectrum, in which we discuss the multipole peak separation together with the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. We also address the growth of matter perturbations, and disentangle the interacting dark energy models using the expansion history together with the growth history. We find that a disformal coupling between dark matter and dark energy induces intermediate-scales and time-dependent damped oscillatory features in the matter growth rate function, a unique characteristic of this coupling. Apart from the disformal coupling, we also consider conformally coupled models, together with models which simultaneously make use of both couplings

Linear Perturbations in Brane Gas Cosmology

We consider the effect of string inhomogeneities on the time dependent background of Brane Gas Cosmology. We derive the equations governing the linear perturbations of the dilaton-gravity background in the presence of string matter sources. We focus on long wavelength fluctuations and find that there are no instabilities. Thus, the predictions of Brane Gas Cosmology are robust against the introduction of linear perturbations. In particular, we find that the stabilization of the extra dimensions (moduli) remains valid in the presence of dilaton and string perturbations.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur

Quantum fluctuations in brane-world inflation without inflaton on the brane

A Randall-Sundrum type brane-cosmological model in which slow-roll inflation on the brane is driven solely by a bulk scalar field was recently proposed by Himemoto and Sasaki. We analyze their model in detail and calculate the quantum fluctuations of the bulk scalar field $\phi$ with $m^2=V''(\phi)$. We decompose the bulk scalar field into the infinite mass spectrum of 4-dimensional fields; the field with the smallest mass-square, called the zero-mode, and the Kaluza-Klein modes above it with a mass gap. We find the zero-mode dominance of the classical solution holds if $|m^2|\bar\ell^2\ll1$, where $\bar{\ell}$ is the curvature radius of the effectively anti-de Sitter bulk, but it is violated if $|m^2|\bar\ell^2\gg1$, though the violation is very small. Then we evaluate the vacuum expectation value $$ on the brane. We find the zero-mode contribution completely dominates if $|m^2|\bar{\ell}^2\ll 1$ similar to the case of classical background. In contrast, we find the Kaluza-Klein contribution is small but non-negligible if the value of $|m^2|\bar{\ell}^2$ is large.Comment: 12pages, 1 figure, typos corrected, a couple of paragraphs modified but no major change in the text, final version to be published in PR

The Initial Mass Function of the Stellar Association NGC 602 in the Small Magellanic Cloud with Hubble Space Telescope ACS Observations

We present our photometric study of the stellar association NGC 602 in the wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The data were taken in the filters F555W and F814W using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on-board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Photometry was performed using the ACS module of the stellar photometry package DOLPHOT. We detected more than 5,500 stars with a magnitude range of 14 \lsim m_{555} \lsim 28 mag. Three prominent stellar concentrations are identified with star counts in the observed field, the association NGC 602 itself, and two clusters, one of them not being currently in any known catalog. The Color-Magnitude Diagrams (CMDs) of both clusters show features typical for young open clusters, while that of the association reveals bright main sequence (MS) and faint pre-main sequence (PMS) stars as the members of the system. We construct the initial mass spectrum (IMS) of the association by applying an age-independent method of counting the PMS stars within evolutionary tracks, while for the bright MS stars we transform their magnitudes to masses with the use of mass-luminosity relations. The IMS of NGC 602 is found to be well represented by a single-power law, corresponding to an Initial Mass Function (IMF) of slope \Gamma\approx -1.2 for 1 \lsim M/M{\solar} \lsim 45. This indicates that the shape of the IMF of a star forming system in the SMC for stars with masses higher than 1 M{\solar} seems to be quite similar to the field IMF in the solar neighborhood.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 13 pages, 14 figures, emulateapj.cls LaTeX style, full resolution version available on http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~dgoulier/Science/NGC602/ms.pd