1,860 research outputs found
Differential flow in heavy-ion collisions at balance energies
A strong differential transverse collective flow is predicted for the first
time to occur in heavy-ion collisions at balance energies. We also give a novel
explanation for the disappearance of the total transverse collective flow at
the balance energies. It is further shown that the differential flow especially
at high transverse momenta is a useful microscope capable of resolving the
balance energy's dual sensitivity to both the nuclear equation of state and
in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross sections in the reaction dynamics.Comment: Phys. Rev. Lett. (1999) in pres
Grazing and No-Till Cropping Impacts on Nitrogen Retention in Dryland Agroecosystems
As the world\u27s population increases, marginal lands such as drylands are likely to become more important for food production. One proven strategy for improving crop production in drylands involves shifting from conventional tillage to no-till to increase water use efficiency, especially when this shift is coupled with more intensive crop rotations. Practices such as no-till that reduce soil disturbance and increase crop residues may promote C and N storage in soil organic matter, thus promoting N retention and reducing N losses. By sampling soils 15 yr after a N tracer addition, this study compared long-term soil N retention across several agricultural management strategies in current and converted shortgrass steppe ecosystems: grazed and ungrazed native grassland, occasionally mowed planted perennial grassland, and three cropping intensities of no-till dryland cropping. We also examined effects of the environmental variables site location and topography on N retention. Overall, the long-term soil N retention of \u3e18% in these managed semiarid ecosystems was high compared with published values for other cropped or grassland ecosystems. Cropping practices strongly influenced long-term N retention, with planted perennial grass systems retaining \u3e90% of N in soil compared with 30% for croplands. Grazing management, topography, and site location had smaller effects on long-term N retention. Estimated 15-yr N losses were low for intact and cropped systems. This work suggests that semiarid perennial grass ecosystems are highly N retentive and that increased intensity of semiarid land management can increase the amount of protein harvested without increasing N losses
Exploring Halo Substructure with Giant Stars. VI. Extended Distributions of Giant Stars Around the Carina Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy -- How Reliable Are They?
The question of the existence of active tidal disruption around various dSph
galaxies remains controversial. That debate often centers on the nature (bound
vs. unbound) of extended populations of stars. However, the more fundamental
issue of the very existence of the extended populations is still contentious.
We present an evaluation of the debate centering on one particular dSph,
Carina, for which claims both for and against the existence of stars beyond the
King radius have been made. Our review includes an examination of all previous
studies bearing on the Carina radial profile and shows that the survey method
which achieves the highest detected dSph signal-to-background in the outer
parts of the galaxy is the Washington M, T2 + DDO51 (MTD) filter approach from
Paper II in this series. We then address statistical methods used to evaluate
the reliability of MTD surveys in the presence of photometric errors and for
which a new, a posteriori statistical analysis methodology is provided.
Finally, these statistical methods are tested by new spectroscopy of stars in
the MTD-selected Carina candidate sample. Of 74 candidate giants with follow-up
spectroscopy, the MTD technique identified 61 new Carina members, including 8
stars outside the King radius. From a sample of 29 stars not initially
identified as candidate Carina giants but that lie just outside of our
selection criteria, 12 have radial velocities consistent with membership,
including 5 extratidal stars. Carina is shown to have an extended population of
giant stars extending to a major axis radius of 40' (1.44x the nominal King
radius).Comment: 56 pages, 10 figures. Submitted to the Astronomical Journal, 2004 Sep
2
HLAProfiler utilizes k-mer profiles to improve HLA calling accuracy for rare and common alleles in RNA-seq data
BACKGROUND: The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system is a genomic region involved in regulating the human immune system by encoding cell membrane major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins that are responsible for self-recognition. Understanding the variation in this region provides important insights into autoimmune disorders, disease susceptibility, oncological immunotherapy, regenerative medicine, transplant rejection, and toxicogenomics. Traditional approaches to HLA typing are low throughput, target only a few genes, are labor intensive and costly, or require specialized protocols. RNA sequencing promises a relatively inexpensive, high-throughput solution for HLA calling across all genes, with the bonus of complete transcriptome information and widespread availability of historical data. Existing tools have been limited in their ability to accurately and comprehensively call HLA genes from RNA-seq data.
RESULTS: We created HLAProfiler ( https://github.com/ExpressionAnalysis/HLAProfiler ), a k-mer profile-based method for HLA calling in RNA-seq data which can identify rare and common HLA alleles with > 99% accuracy at two-field precision in both biological and simulated data. For 68% of novel alleles not present in the reference database, HLAProfiler can correctly identify the two-field precision or exact coding sequence, a significant advance over existing algorithms.
CONCLUSIONS: HLAProfiler allows for accurate HLA calls in RNA-seq data, reliably expanding the utility of these data in HLA-related research and enabling advances across a broad range of disciplines. Additionally, by using the observed data to identify potential novel alleles and update partial alleles, HLAProfiler will facilitate further improvements to the existing database of reference HLA alleles. HLAProfiler is available at https://expressionanalysis.github.io/HLAProfiler/
Differential Transverse Flow in Central C-Ne and C-Cu Collisions at 3.7 GeV/nucleon
Differential transverse flow of protons and pions in central C-Ne and C-Cu
collisions at a beam energy of 3.7 GeV/nucleon was measured as a function of
transverse momentum at the SKM-200-GIBS setup of JINR. In agreement with
predictions of a transversely moving thermal model, the strength of proton
differential transverse flow is found to first increase gradually and then
saturate with the increasing transverse momentum in both systems. While pions
are preferentially emitted in the same direction of the proton transverse flow
in the reaction of C-Ne, they exhibit an anti-flow to the opposote direction of
the proton transverse flow in the reaction of C-Cu due to stronger shadowing
effects of the heavier target in thr whole range of transverse momentum.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
An Overview of Fluctuation and Correlation Results in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
A great deal of recent data on event-by-event fluctuation and correlation
measurements has been released by several experiments at the SPS and RHIC.
Recent results on charge fluctuations, balance functions in pseudorapidity, and
average transverse momentum fluctuations will be reviewed. The results will be
compared to various model predictions after examining contributions to each
observable from known physics processes.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the Proceedings of the 17th
International Conference on Ultra Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions
(Quark Matter 2004), Oakland, California, 11-17 Jan 2004. Submitted to
J.Phys.
Statistical hadronization phenomenology in fluctuations at ultra-relativistic energies
We discuss the information that can be obtained from an analysis of
fluctuations in heavy ion collisions within the context of the statistical
model of particle production. We then examine the recently published
experimental data on ratio fluctuations, and use it to obtain constraints on
the statistical properties (physically relevant ensemble, degree of chemical
equilibration, scaling across energies and system sizes) and freeze-out
dynamics (amount of reinteraction between chemical and thermal freeze-out) of
the system.Comment: Proceedings, SQM2009. Fig. 4, the main results figure, was wrong due
to editing mistake, now correcte
Subthreshold antiproton production in proton-carbon reactions
Data from KEK on subthreshold antiproton as well as on pi(+-) and K(+-)
production in proton-nucleus reactions are described at projectile energies
between 3.5 and 12.0 GeV. We use a model which considers a hadron-nucleus
reaction as an incoherent sum over collisions of the projectile with a varying
number of target nucleons. It samples complete events and allows thus for the
simultaneous consideration of all particle species measured. The overall
reproduction of the data is quite satisfactory. It is shown that the
contributions from the interaction of the projectile with groups of several
target nucleons are decisive for the description of subthreshold production.
Since the collective features of subthreshold production become especially
significant far below the threshold, the results are extrapolated down to COSY
energies. It is concluded that an antiproton measurement at ANKE-COSY should be
feasible, if the high background of other particles can be efficiently
suppressed.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, gzipped tar file, submitted to J. Phys. G v2:
Modification of text due to demands of referee
Projectile fragmentation of 129Xe at Elab=790 AMeV
We have measured production yields and longitudinal momentum distributions of
projectile-like fragments in the reaction 129Xe + 27Al at an energy of Elab=790
AMeV. Production cross sections higher than expected from systematics were
observed for nuclei in the neutron-deficient tails of the isotopic
distributions. A comparison with previously measured data from the
fragmentation of 136Xe ions shows that the production yields strongly depend on
the neutron excess of the projectile with respect to the line of
beta-stability. The momentum distributions exhibit a dependence on the fragment
neutron-to-proton ratio in isobaric chains, which was not expected from
systematics so far. This can be interpreted by a higher excitation of the
projectile during the formation of neutron-deficient fragments.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl
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