179 research outputs found
Damping Rates and Mean Free Paths of Soft Fermion Collective Excitations in a Hot Fermion-Gauge-Scalar Theory
We study the transport coefficients, damping rates and mean free paths of
soft fermion collective excitations in a hot fermion-gauge-scalar plasma with
the goal of understanding the main physical mechanisms that determine transport
of chirality in scenarios of non-local electroweak baryogenesis. The focus is
on identifying the different transport coefficients for the different branches
of soft collective excitations of the fermion spectrum. These branches
correspond to collective excitations with opposite ratios of chirality to
helicity and different dispersion relations. By combining results from the hard
thermal loop (HTL) resummation program with a novel mechanism of fermion
damping through heavy scalar decay, we obtain a robust description of the
different damping rates and mean free paths for the soft collective excitations
to leading order in HTL and lowest order in the Yukawa coupling. The space-time
evolution of wave packets of collective excitations unambiguously reveals the
respective mean free paths. We find that whereas both the gauge and scalar
contribution to the damping rates are different for the different branches, the
difference of mean free paths for both branches is mainly determined by the
decay of the heavy scalar into a hard fermion and a soft collective excitation.
We argue that these mechanisms are robust and are therefore relevant for
non-local scenarios of baryogenesis either in the Standard Model or extensions
thereof.Comment: REVTeX, 19 pages, 4 eps figures, published versio
Flow in heavy-ion collisions - Theory Perspective
I review recent developments in the field of relativistic hydrodynamics and
its application to the bulk dynamics in heavy-ion collisions at the
Relativistic Heavy- Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In
particular, I report on progress in going beyond second order relativistic
viscous hydrodynamics for conformal fluids, including temperature dependent
shear viscosity to entropy density ratios, as well as coupling hydrodynamic
calculations to microscopic hadronic rescattering models. I describe
event-by-event hydrodynamic simulations and their ability to compute higher
harmonic flow coefficients. Combined comparisons of all harmonics to recent
experimental data from both RHIC and LHC will potentially allow to determine
the desired details of the initial state and the medium properties of the
quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions.Comment: 8 pages, Invited plenary talk at the 22nd International Conference on
Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2011), May 23-28
2011, Annecy, Franc
Linkage analysis of HLA and candidate genes for celiac disease in a North American family-based study
BACKGROUND: Celiac disease has a strong genetic association with HLA. However, this association only explains approximately half of the sibling risk for celiac disease. Therefore, other genes must be involved in susceptibility to celiac disease. We tested for linkage to genes or loci that could play a role in pathogenesis of celiac disease. METHODS: DNA samples, from members of 62 families with a minimum of two cases of celiac disease, were genotyped at HLA and at 13 candidate gene regions, including CD4, CTLA4, four T-cell receptor regions, and 7 insulin-dependent diabetes regions. Two-point and multipoint heterogeneity LOD (HLOD) scores were examined. RESULTS: The highest two-point and multipoint HLOD scores were obtained in the HLA region, with a two-point HLOD of 3.1 and a multipoint HLOD of 5.0. For the candidate genes, we found no evidence for linkage. CONCLUSIONS: Our significant evidence of linkage to HLA replicates the known linkage and association of HLA with CD. In our families, likely candidate genes did not explain the susceptibility to celiac disease
Functional Analysis of Retinitis Pigmentosa 2 (RP2) Protein Reveals Variable Pathogenic Potential of Disease-Associated Missense Variants
Genetic mutations are frequently associated with diverse phenotypic consequences, which limits the interpretation of the consequence of a variation in patients. Mutations in the retinitis pigmentosa 2 (RP2) gene are associated with X-linked RP, which is a phenotypically heterogenic form of retinal degeneration. The purpose of this study was to assess the functional consequence of disease-associated mutations in the RP2 gene using an in vivo assay. Morpholino-mediated depletion of rp2 in zebrafish resulted in perturbations in photoreceptor development and microphthalmia (small eye). Ultrastructural and immunofluorescence analyses revealed defective photoreceptor outer segment development and lack of expression of photoreceptor-specific proteins. The retinopathy phenotype could be rescued by expressing the wild-type human RP2 protein. Notably, the tested RP2 mutants exhibited variable degrees of rescue of rod versus cone photoreceptor development as well as microphthalmia. Our results suggest that RP2 plays a key role in photoreceptor development and maintenance in zebrafish and that the clinical heterogeneity associated with RP2 mutations may, in part, result from its potentially distinct functional relevance in rod versus cone photoreceptors
Fluctuations around Bjorken Flow and the onset of turbulent phenomena
We study how fluctuations in fluid dynamic fields can be dissipated or
amplified within the characteristic spatio-temporal structure of a heavy ion
collision. The initial conditions for a fluid dynamic evolution of heavy ion
collisions may contain significant fluctuations in all fluid dynamical fields,
including the velocity field and its vorticity components. We formulate and
analyze the theory of local fluctuations around average fluid fields described
by Bjorken's model. For conditions of laminar flow, when a linearized treatment
of the dynamic evolution applies, we discuss explicitly how fluctuations of
large wave number get dissipated while modes of sufficiently long wave-length
pass almost unattenuated or can even be amplified. In the opposite case of
large Reynold's numbers (which is inverse to viscosity), we establish that
(after suitable coordinate transformations) the dynamics is governed by an
evolution equation of non-relativistic Navier-Stokes type that becomes
essentially two-dimensional at late times. One can then use the theory of
Kolmogorov and Kraichnan for an explicit characterization of turbulent
phenomena in terms of the wave-mode dependence of correlations of fluid dynamic
fields. We note in particular that fluid dynamic correlations introduce
characteristic power-law dependences in two-particle correlation functions.Comment: 40 pages, 5 figures, published versio
Adaptive mechanisms of plants against salt stress and salt shock
Salinization process occurs when soil is contaminated with salt, which consequently influences plant growth and development leading to reduction in yield of many food crops. Responding to a higher salt concentration than the normal range can result in plant developing complex physiological traits and activation of stress-related genes and metabolic pathways. Many studies have been carried out by different research groups to understand adaptive mechanism in many plant species towards salinity stress. However, different methods of sodium chloride (NaCl) applications definitely give different responses and adaptive mechanisms towards the increase in salinity. Gradual increase in NaCl application causes the plant to have salt stress or osmotic stress, while single step and high concentration of NaCl may result in salt shock or osmotic shock. Osmotic shock can cause cell plasmolysis and leakage of osmolytes in plant. Also, the gene expression pattern is influenced by the type of methods used in increasing the salinity. Therefore, this chapter discusses the adaptive mechanism in plant responding to both types of salinity increment, which include the morphological changes of plant roots and aerial parts, involvement of signalling molecules in stress perception and regulatory networks and production of osmolyte and osmoprotective proteins
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