378 research outputs found
Meteorites on Mars observed with the Mars Exploration Rovers
Reduced weathering rates due to the lack of liquid water and significantly greater typical surface ages should result in a higher density of meteorites on the surface of Mars compared to Earth. Several meteorites were identified among the rocks investigated during Opportunity’s traverse across the sandy Meridiani plains. Heat Shield Rock is a IAB iron meteorite and has been officially recognized as ‘‘Meridiani Planum.’’ Barberton is olivine-rich and contains metallic Fe in the form of kamacite, suggesting a meteoritic origin. It is chemically most consistent with a mesosiderite silicate clast. Santa Catarina is a brecciated rock with a chemical and mineralogical composition similar to Barberton. Barberton, Santa Catarina, and cobbles adjacent to Santa Catarina may be part of a strewn field. Spirit observed two probable iron meteorites from its Winter Haven location in the Columbia Hills in Gusev Crater. Chondrites have not been identified to date, which may be a result of their lower strengths and probability to survive impact at current atmospheric pressures. Impact craters directly associated with Heat Shield Rock, Barberton, or Santa Catarina have not been observed, but such craters could have been erased by eolian-driven erosion.Additional co-authors: DW Ming, RV Morris, PA de Souza Jr, SW Squyres, C Weitz, AS Yen, J Zipfel, T Economo
Search for Magnetic Monopoles Trapped in Matter
There have been many searches for magnetic monopoles in flight, but few for
monopoles in matter. We have searched for magnetic monopoles in meteorites,
schists, ferromanganese nodules, iron ores and other materials. The detector
was a superconducting induction coil connected to a SQUID (Superconducting
Quantum Interference Device) with a room temperature bore 15 cm in diameter. We
tested a total of more than 331 kg of material including 112 kg of meteorites.
We found no monopole and conclude the overall monopole/nucleon ratio in the
samples is with a 90\% confidence level.Comment: 6 pages, rev tex, no figure
Quantum solitons at strong coupling
We examine the effect of one loop quantum corrections on the formation of
nontopological solitons in a strongly coupled scalar-fermionic Yukawa theory.
The exact one fermion loop contribution is incorporated by using a nonlocal
method to correct the local derivative expansion approximation (DE) of the
effective action. As the Yukawa coupling is increased we find that the nonlocal
corrections play an increasingly important role. The corrections cause the
scalar field to increase in depth while maintaining its size. This increases
the energy of the bag configuration, but this is compensated for by more
tightly bound fermionic states with lower energy. In contrast to the
semi-classical picture without quantum corrections, the binding energy is
small, and the total energy scales directly with the Yukawa coupling. This
confirms the qualitative behavior found in earlier work using the second order
DE, although the quantitative solutions differ.Comment: 17 pages, 4 Postscript figures, REVTe
Phi^{zero}-N Bound State
We show that the QCD van der Waals attractive potential is strong enough to
bind a meson onto a nucleon inside a nucleus to form a bound state.
The direct experimental signature for such an exotic state is proposed in the
case of subthreshold meson photoproduction from nuclear targets. The
production rate is estimated and such an experiment is found to be feasible at
the Jefferson Laboratory.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Quantum Kinks: Solitons at Strong Coupling
We examine solitons in theories with heavy fermions. These ``quantum''
solitons differ dramatically from semi-classical (perturbative) solitons
because fermion loop effects are important when the Yukawa coupling is strong.
We focus on kinks in a --dimensional theory coupled to
fermions; a large- expansion is employed to treat the Yukawa coupling
nonperturbatively. A local expression for the fermion vacuum energy is derived
using the WKB approximation for the Dirac eigenvalues. We find that fermion
loop corrections increase the energy of the kink and (for large ) decrease
its size. For large , the energy of the quantum kink is proportional to ,
and its size scales as , unlike the classical kink; we argue that these
features are generic to quantum solitons in theories with strong Yukawa
couplings. We also discuss the possible instability of fermions to solitons.Comment: 21 pp. + 2 figs., phyzzx, JHU-TIPAC-92001
Wake up, wake up! It's me! It's my life! patient narratives on person-centeredness in the integrated care context: a qualitative study
Person-centered care emphasizes a holistic, humanistic approach that puts patients first, at the center of medical care. Person-centeredness is also considered a core element of integrated care. Yet typologies of integrated care mainly describe how patients fit within integrated services, rather than how services fit into the patient's world. Patient-centeredness has been commonly defined through physician's behaviors aimed at delivering patient-centered care. Yet, it is unclear how 'person-centeredness' is realized in integrated care through the patient voice. We aimed to explore patient narratives of person-centeredness in the integrated care context
Use of historical isoscapes to develop an estuarine nutrient baseline
Coastal eutrophication is a prevalent threat to the healthy functioning of ecosystems globally. While degraded water quality can be detected by monitoring oxygen, nutrient concentrations, and algal abundance, establishing regulatory guidelines is complicated by a lack of baseline data (e.g., pre-Anthropocene). We use historical carbon and nitrogen isoscapes over ~300 years from sediment cores to reconstruct spatial and temporal changes in nutrient dynamics for a central California estuary, Elkhorn Slough, where development and agriculture dramatically enhanced nutrient inputs over the past century. We found strong contrasts between current sediment stable isotopes and those from the recent past, demonstrating shifts exceeding those in previously studied eutrophic estuaries and substantial increases in nutrient inputs. Comparisons of contemporary with historical isoscapes also revealed that nitrogen sources shifted from a historical marine-terrestrial gradient with higher ÎŽ15N near the inlet to amplified denitrification at the head and mouth of the modern estuary driven by increased N inputs. Geospatial analysis of historical data suggests that an increase in fertilizer application â rather than population growth or increases in the extent of cultivated land â is chiefly responsible for increasing nutrient loads during the 20th century. This study demonstrates the ability of isotopic and stoichiometric maps to provide important perspectives on long-term shifts and spatial patterns of nutrients that can be used to improve management of nutrient pollution
Long-Range Forces of QCD
We consider the scattering of two color dipoles (e.g., heavy quarkonium
states) at low energy - a QCD analog of Van der Waals interaction. Even though
the couplings of the dipoles to the gluon field can be described in
perturbation theory, which leads to the potential proportional to
(N_c^2-1)/R^{7}, at large distances R the interaction becomes totally
non-perturbative. Low-energy QCD theorems are used to evaluate the leading
long-distance contribution \sim (N_f^2-1)/(11N_c - 2N_f)^2 R^{-5/2} exp(-2 \mu
R) (\mu is the Goldstone boson mass), which is shown to arise from the
correlated two-boson exchange. The sum rule which relates the overall strength
of the interaction to the energy density of QCD vacuum is derived.
Surprisingly, we find that when the size of the dipoles shrinks to zero (the
heavy quark limit in the case of quarkonia), the non-perturbative part of the
interaction vanishes more slowly than the perturbative part as a consequence of
scale anomaly. As an application, we evaluate elastic \pi J/\psi and \pi J/\psi
\to \pi \psi' cross sections.Comment: 16pages, 9 eps figures; discussion extended, 2 new references added,
to appear in Phys.Rev.
Detailed Investigation of the Role of Common and Low-Frequency WFS1 Variants in Type 2 Diabetes Risk
OBJECTIVE: Wolfram syndrome 1 (WFS1) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are associated with risk of type 2 diabetes. In this study we aimed to refine this association and investigate the role of low-frequency WFS1 variants in type 2 diabetes risk. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: For fine-mapping, we sequenced WFS1 exons, splice junctions, and conserved noncoding sequences in samples from 24 type 2 diabetic case and 68 control subjects, selected tagging SNPs, and genotyped these in 959 U.K. type 2 diabetic case and 1,386 control subjects. The same genomic regions were sequenced in samples from 1,235 type 2 diabetic case and 1,668 control subjects to compare the frequency of rarer variants between case and control subjects. RESULTS: Of 31 tagging SNPs, the strongest associated was the previously untested 3' untranslated region rs1046320 (P = 0.008); odds ratio 0.84 and P = 6.59 x 10(-7) on further replication in 3,753 case and 4,198 control subjects. High correlation between rs1046320 and the original strongest SNP (rs10010131) (r2 = 0.92) meant that we could not differentiate between their effects in our samples. There was no difference in the cumulative frequency of 82 rare (minor allele frequency [MAF] 100,000) or studies in ethnically diverse populations. Low frequency variants in WFS1 are unlikely to have a large impact on type 2 diabetes risk in white U.K. populations, highlighting the complexities of undertaking association studies with low-frequency variants identified by resequencing
Microservice Transition and its Granularity Problem: A Systematic Mapping Study
Microservices have gained wide recognition and acceptance in software
industries as an emerging architectural style for autonomic, scalable, and more
reliable computing. The transition to microservices has been highly motivated
by the need for better alignment of technical design decisions with improving
value potentials of architectures. Despite microservices' popularity, research
still lacks disciplined understanding of transition and consensus on the
principles and activities underlying "micro-ing" architectures. In this paper,
we report on a systematic mapping study that consolidates various views,
approaches and activities that commonly assist in the transition to
microservices. The study aims to provide a better understanding of the
transition; it also contributes a working definition of the transition and
technical activities underlying it. We term the transition and technical
activities leading to microservice architectures as microservitization. We then
shed light on a fundamental problem of microservitization: microservice
granularity and reasoning about its adaptation as first-class entities. This
study reviews state-of-the-art and -practice related to reasoning about
microservice granularity; it reviews modelling approaches, aspects considered,
guidelines and processes used to reason about microservice granularity. This
study identifies opportunities for future research and development related to
reasoning about microservice granularity.Comment: 36 pages including references, 6 figures, and 3 table
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