Energies of Quantum QED Flux Tubes

In this talk I present recent studies on vacuum polarization energies and energy densities induced by QED flux tubes. I focus on comparing three and four dimensional scenarios and the discussion of various approximation schemes in view of the exact treatment.Comment: 9 pages latex, Talk presented at the QFEXT 05 workshop in Barcelona, Sept. 2005. To appear in the proceeding

Chiral Quark Model

In this talk I review studies of hadron properties in bosonized chiral quark models for the quark flavor dynamics. Mesons are constructed from Bethe--Salpeter equations and baryons emerge as chiral solitons. Such models require regularization and I show that the two--fold Pauli--Villars regularization scheme not only fully regularizes the effective action but also leads the scaling laws for structure functions. For the nucleon structure functions the present approach serves to determine the regularization prescription for structure functions whose leading moments are not given by matrix elements of local operators. Some numerical results are presented for the spin structure functions.Comment: Talk presented at the workshop QCD 2002, IIT Kanpur, Nov. 2002, 10 pages, proceedings style files include

Control of flower development in Arabidopsis thaliana by APETALA1 and interacting genes

Mutations in the APETALA1 gene disturb two phases of flower development, flower meristem specification and floral organ specification. These effects become manifest as a partial conversion of flowers into inflorescence shoots and a disruption of sepal and petal development. We describe the changes in an allelic series of nine apetala1 mutants and show that the two functions of APETALA1 are separable. We have also studied the interaction between APETALA1 and other floral genes by examining the phenotypes of multiply mutant plants and by in situ hybridization using probes for several floral control genes. The results suggest that the products of APETALA1 and another gene, LEAFY, are required to ensure that primordia arising on the flanks of the inflorescence apex adopt a floral fate, as opposed to becoming an inflorescence shoot. APETALA1 and LEAFY have distinct as well as overlapping functions and they appear to reinforce each other's action. CAULIFLOWER is a newly discovered gene which positively regulates both APETALA1 and LEAFY expression. All functions of CAULIFLOWER are redundant with those of APETALA1. APETALA2 also has an early function in reinforcing the action of APETALA1 and LEAFY, especially if the activity of either is compromised by mutation. After the identity of a flower primordium is specified, APETALA1 interacts with APETALA2 in controlling the development of the outer two whorls of floral organs

Soliton Models for the Nucleon and Predictions for the Nucleon Spin Structure

In these lectures the three flavor soliton approach for baryons is reviewed. Effects of flavor symmetry breaking in the baryon wave--functions on axial current matrix elements are discussed. A bosonized chiral quark model is considered to outline the computation of spin dependent nucleon structure functions in the soliton picture.Comment: 12 pages, Lectures presented at the Advanced Study Institute Symmetry and Spin, Prague, 2001, to appear in the proceedings. References correcte

Melting of hexagonal skyrmion states in chiral magnets

Skyrmions are spiral structures observed in thin films of certain magnetic materials (Uchida et al 2006 Science 311 359–61). Of the phases allowed by the crystalline symmetries of these materials (Yi et al 2009 Phys. Rev. B 80 054416), only the hexagonally packed phases (SCh) have been observed. Here the melting of the SCh phase is investigated using Monte Carlo simulations. In addition to the usual measure of skyrmion density, chiral charge, a morphological measure is considered. In doing so it is shown that the low-temperature reduction in chiral charge is associated with a change in skyrmion profiles rather than skyrmion destruction. At higher temperatures, the loss of six-fold symmetry is associated with the appearance of elongated skyrmions that disrupt the hexagonal packing

Risk Management for Ag Families: An Extension Model for Improving Family Business Success

A risky business environment for agricultural producers coupled with human risk elements unique to family businesses, points to the need for extension programs that integrate traditional risk management concepts into curriculums focused on the potentially unique educational needs of family farm management teams. Results in this paper indicate that a multi-state, grant funded program entitled "Risk Management for Ag Families" had impact and provides a model that traditional risk management education programs could benefit from.Risk and Uncertainty, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Nucleon Structure Functions from a Chiral Soliton in the Infinite Momentum Frame

We study the frame dependence of nucleon structure functions obtained within a chiral soliton model for the nucleon. Employing light cone coordinates and introducing collective coordinates together with their conjugate momenta, translational invariance of the solitonic quark fields (which describe the nucleon as a localized object) is restored. This formulation allows us to perform a Lorentz boost to the infinite momentum frame of the nucleon. The major result is that the Lorentz contraction associated with this boost causes the leading twist contribution to the structure functions to properly vanish when the Bjorken variable $x$ exceeds unity. Furthermore we demonstrate that for structure functions calculated in the valence quark approximation to the Nambu--Jona--Lasinio chiral soliton model the Lorentz contraction also has significant effects on the structure functions for moderate values of the Bjorken variable $x$.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, revised version to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Parton distributions in the chiral quark model: a continuum computation

We compute the parton distributions for the chiral quark model. We present a new technique for performing such computations based on Green functions. This approach avoids a discretization of the spectrum. It therefore does not need any smoothing procedures. The results are similar to those of other groups, however the distributions peak at smaller $x$.Comment: 19 pages, 8 Figures, LaTeX, some typos corrected, some additional comments in the conclusion

Instability of the hedgehog shape for the octet baryon in the chiral quark soliton model

In this paper the stability of the hedgehog shape of the chiral soliton is studied for the octet baryon with the SU(3) chiral quark soliton model. The strangeness degrees of freedom are treated by a simplified bound-state approach, which omits the locality of the kaon wave function. The mean field approximation for the flavor rotation is applied to the model. The classical soliton changes shape according to the strangeness. The baryon appears as a rotational band of the combined system of the deformed soliton and the kaon.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, 8 eps file