Diffractive Meson Production and the Quark-Pomeron Coupling

Diffractive meson production at HERA offers interesting possibilities to investigate diffractive processes and thus to learn something about the properties of the pomeron. The most succesful phenomenological description of the pomeron so far assumes it to couple like a $C = +1$ isoscalar photon to single quarks. This coupling leads, however, to problems for exclusive diffractive reactions. We propose a new phenomenological pomeron vertex, which leads to very good fits to the known data, but avoids the problems of the old vertex.Comment: 20 pages, latex with uuencoded postscript, revised versio

Correlation functions of scattering matrix elements in microwave cavities with strong absorption

The scattering matrix was measured for microwave cavities with two antennas. It was analyzed in the regime of overlapping resonances. The theoretical description in terms of a statistical scattering matrix and the rescaled Breit-Wigner approximation has been applied to this regime. The experimental results for the auto-correlation function show that the absorption in the cavity walls yields an exponential decay. This behavior can only be modeled using a large number of weakly coupled channels. In comparison to the auto-correlation functions, the cross-correlation functions of the diagonal S-matrix elements display a more pronounced difference between regular and chaotic systems

Reciprocal regulation of PKA and rac signaling

Activated G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and receptor tyrosine kinases relay extracellular signals through spatial and temporal controlled kinase and GTPase entities. These enzymes are coordinated by multifunctional scaffolding proteins for precise intracellular signal processing. The cAMP-dependent protein kinase A (PKA) is the prime example for compartmentalized signal transmission downstream of distinct GPCRs. A-kinase anchoring proteins tether PKA to specific intracellular sites to ensure precision and directionality of PKA phosphorylation events. Here, we show that the Rho-GTPase Rac contains A-kinase anchoring protein properties and forms a dynamic cellular protein complex with PKA. The formation of this transient core complex depends on binary interactions with PKA subunits, cAMP levels and cellular GTP-loading accounting for bidirectional consequences on PKA and Rac downstream signaling. We show that GTP-Rac stabilizes the inactive PKA holoenzyme. However, β-adrenergic receptor-mediated activation of GTP-Rac–bound PKA routes signals to the Raf-Mek-Erk cascade, which is critically implicated in cell proliferation. We describe a further mechanism of how cAMP enhances nuclear Erk1/2 signaling: It emanates from transphosphorylation of p21-activated kinases in their evolutionary conserved kinase-activation loop through GTP-Rac compartmentalized PKA activities. Sole transphosphorylation of p21-activated kinases is not sufficient to activate Erk1/2. It requires complex formation of both kinases with GTP-Rac1 to unleash cAMP-PKA–boosted activation of Raf-Mek-Erk. Consequently GTP-Rac functions as a dual kinase-tuning scaffold that favors the PKA holoenzyme and contributes to potentiate Erk1/2 signaling. Our findings offer additional mechanistic insights how β-adrenergic receptor-controlled PKA activities enhance GTP-Rac–mediated activation of nuclear Erk1/2 signaling

A series of PDB related databases for everyday needs

The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is the world-wide repository of macromolecular structure information. We present a series of databases that run parallel to the PDB. Each database holds one entry, if possible, for each PDB entry. DSSP holds the secondary structure of the proteins. PDBREPORT holds reports on the structure quality and lists errors. HSSP holds a multiple sequence alignment for all proteins. The PDBFINDER holds easy to parse summaries of the PDB file content, augmented with essentials from the other systems. PDB_REDO holds re-refined, and often improved, copies of all structures solved by X-ray. WHY_NOT summarizes why certain files could not be produced. All these systems are updated weekly. The data sets can be used for the analysis of properties of protein structures in areas ranging from structural genomics, to cancer biology and protein design

Compulsory Military Service in Germany Revisited

This paper estimates the causal impact of compulsory military service on men in Germany using social security and pension administrative data for the cohort of individuals born in the period 1932-1942. Due to the combination of laws restricting conscription only to men born on or after July 1, 1937, difference-in-differences estimates of the effect of conscription on average daily wages can be computed using cohorts of women as a comparison group. The results indicate that conscription had no significant impact on a draftee's labor-market performance, validating an earlier result using an alternative identification strategy.Dieses Papier zeigt den kausalen Einfluss der Wehrpflicht auf Männer in Deutschland. Es werden Daten der Sozialversicherung und administrativen Pensionsdaten für die Kohorte der Individuen, die im Zeitraum von 1932 bis 1942 geboren wurden, verwendet. Aufgrund der Kombination der Gesetze zur eingeschränkten Wehrpflicht kann nur bei Männern, die am 01. Juli 1937 oder danach geboren wurden mittels des Differenz von Differenzen-Ansatzes der Effekt der Wehrpflicht auf den durchschnittlichen Tageslohn geschätzt werden. Als Vergleichsgruppe wird die Kohorte der Frauen verwendet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Wehrpflicht keinen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Arbeitsmarktentwicklung Wehrpflichtiger hat, was ein früheres Ergebnis mit einer alternativen Identifikationsstrategie bestätigt

The Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout: How Conservatives Profit from Rainy Election Days

In this short note, we use data from different elections in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia between 1975 and 2010 to show that the social democrats generally profit from higher voter turnout at the expense of the conservatives. We deal with the endogeneity of voter turnout by using election day rain as an instrumental variable. Our particular contribution is the comparison of municipal and state elections

A Critical Analysis of the Proton Form Factor with Sudakov Suppression and Intrinsic Transverse Momentum

The behavior of the proton magnetic form factor is studied within the modified hard scattering picture, which takes into account gluonic radiative corrections in terms of transverse separations. We parallel the analysis given previously by Li and make apparent a number of serious objections. The appropriate cut-off needed to render the form-factor calculation finite is both detailed and analyzed by considering different cut-off prescriptions. The use of the maximum interquark separation as a common infrared cut-off in the Sudakov suppression factor is proposed, since it avoids difficulties with the $\alpha _{s}$-singularities and yields a proton form factor insensitive to the inclusion of the soft region which therefore can be confidently attributed to perturbative QCD. Results are presented for a variety of proton wave functions including also their intrinsic transverse momentum. It turns out that the perturbative contribution, although theoretically self-consistent for $Q^{2}$ larger than about $6$~GeV${}^{2}$ to $10$~GeV${}^{2}$, is too small compared to the data.Comment: 31 pages (RevTex) + 6 figures in PS-file; preprint BUGH Wuppertal WU-B-94-06, preprint Ruhr-Universit\"at Bochum RUB-TPII-01/9