878 research outputs found
Observation of Parity Violation in the Omega-minus -> Lambda + K-minus Decay
The alpha decay parameter in the process Omega-minus -> Lambda + K-minus has
been measured from a sample of 4.50 million unpolarized Omega-minus decays
recorded by the HyperCP (E871) experiment at Fermilab and found to be [1.78 +/-
0.19(stat) +/- 0.16(syst)]{\times}10^{-2}. This is the first unambiguous
evidence for a nonzero alpha decay parameter, and hence parity violation, in
the Omega-minus -> Lambda + K-minus decay.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
HyperCP: A high-rate spectrometer for the study of charged hyperon and kaon decays
The HyperCP experiment (Fermilab E871) was designed to search for rare
phenomena in the decays of charged strange particles, in particular CP
violation in and hyperon decays with a sensitivity of
. Intense charged secondary beams were produced by 800 GeV/c protons
and momentum-selected by a magnetic channel. Decay products were detected in a
large-acceptance, high-rate magnetic spectrometer using multiwire proportional
chambers, trigger hodoscopes, a hadronic calorimeter, and a muon-detection
system. Nearly identical acceptances and efficiencies for hyperons and
antihyperons decaying within an evacuated volume were achieved by reversing the
polarities of the channel and spectrometer magnets. A high-rate
data-acquisition system enabled 231 billion events to be recorded in twelve
months of data-taking.Comment: 107 pages, 45 Postscript figures, 14 tables, Elsevier LaTeX,
submitted to Nucl. Instrum. Meth.
Towards standard setting for patient-reported outcomes in the NHS homeopathic hospitals
We report findings from a pilot data collection study within a programme of quality assurance, improvement and development across all five homeopathic hospitals in the UK National Health Service (NHS).<p></p>
<b>Aims</b> (1) To pilot the collection of clinical data in the homeopathic hospital outpatient setting, recording patient-reported outcome since first appointment; (2) to sample the range of medical complaints that secondary-care doctors treat using homeopathy, and thus identify the nature and complexity of complaints most frequently treated nationally; (3) to present a cross section of outcome scores by appointment number, including that for the most frequently treated medical complaints; (4) to explore approaches to standard setting for homeopathic practice outcome in patients treated at the homeopathic hospitals.<p></p>
<b>Methods</b> A total of 51 medical practitioners took part in data collection over a 4-week period. Consecutive patient appointments were recorded under the headings: (1) date of first appointment in the current series; (2) appointment number; (3) age of patient; (4) sex of patient; (5) main medical complaint being treated; (6) whether other main medical complaint(s); (7) patient-reported change in health, using Outcome Related to Impact on Daily Living (ORIDL) and its derivative, the ORIDL Profile Score (ORIDL-PS; range, â4 to +4, where a score ≤â2 or ≥+2 indicates an effect on the quality of a patient's daily life); (8) receipt of other complementary medicine for their main medical complaint.<p></p>
<b>Results</b> The distribution of patient age was bimodal: main peak, 49 years; secondary peak, 6 years. Male:female ratio was 1:3.5. Data were recorded on a total of 1797 individual patients: 195 first appointments, 1602 follow-ups (FUs). Size of clinical service and proportion of patients who attended more than six visits varied between hospitals. A total of 235 different medical complaints were reported. The 30 most commonly treated complaints were (in decreasing order of frequency): eczema; chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS); menopausal disorder; osteoarthritis; depression; breast cancer; rheumatoid arthritis; asthma; anxiety; irritable bowel syndrome; multiple sclerosis; psoriasis; allergy (unspecified); fibromyalgia; migraine; premenstrual syndrome; chronic rhinitis; headache; vitiligo; seasonal allergic rhinitis; chronic intractable pain; insomnia; ulcerative colitis; acne; psoriatic arthropathy; urticaria; ovarian cancer; attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); epilepsy; sinusitis. The proportion of patients with important co-morbidity was higher in those seen after visit 6 (56.9%) compared with those seen up to and including that point (40.7%; P < 0.001). The proportion of FU patients reporting ORIDL-PS ≥ +2 (improvement affecting daily living) increased overall with appointment number: 34.5% of patients at visit 2 and 59.3% of patients at visit 6, for example. Amongst the four most frequently treated complaints, the proportion of patients that reported ORIDL-PS ≥ +2 at visit numbers greater than 6 varied between 59.3% (CFS) and 73.3% (menopausal disorder).<p></p>
<b>Conclusions</b> We have successfully piloted a process of national clinical data collection using patient-reported outcome in homeopathic hospital outpatients, identifying a wide range and complexity of medical complaints treated in that setting. After a series of homeopathy appointments, a high proportion of patients, often representing âeffectiveness gapsâ for conventional medical treatment, reported improvement in health affecting their daily living. These pilot findings are informing our developing programme of standard setting for homeopathic care in the hospital outpatient context
UHECR Acceleration in Dark Matter Filaments of Cosmological Structure Formation
A mechanism for proton acceleration to ~10^21eV is suggested. It may operate
in accretion flows onto thin dark matter filaments of cosmic structure
formation. The flow compresses the ambient magnetic field to strongly increase
and align it with the filament. Particles begin the acceleration by the ExB
drift with the accretion flow. The energy gain in the drift regime is limited
by the conservation of the adiabatic invariant p_perp^2/B. Upon approaching the
filament, the drift turns into the gyro-motion around the filament so that the
particle moves parallel to the azimuthal electric field. In this 'betatron'
regime the acceleration speeds up to rapidly reach the electrodynamic limit
for an accelerator with magnetic field and the orbit radius
(Larmor radius). The periodic orbit becomes unstable and the particle
slings out of the filament to the region of a weak (uncompressed) magnetic
field, which terminates the acceleration.
The mechanism requires pre-acceleration that is likely to occur in structure
formation shocks upstream or nearby the filament accretion flow. Previous
studies identify such shocks as efficient proton accelerators to a firm upper
limit ~10^19.5 eV placed by the catastrophic photo-pion losses. The present
mechanism combines explosive energy gain in its final (betatron) phase with
prompt particle release from the region of strong magnetic field. It is this
combination that allows protons to overcome both the photo-pion and the
synchrotron-Compton losses and therefore attain energy 10^21 eV. A requirement
on accelerator to reach a given E_max placed by the accelerator energy
dissipation \propto E_{max}^{2}/Z_0 due to the finite vacuum impedance Z_0 is
circumvented by the cyclic operation of the accelerator.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures, to be published in JCA
From Tetraquark to Hexaquark: A Systematic Study of Heavy Exotics in the Large Limit
A systematic study of multiquark exotics with one or heavy quarks in
the large limit is presented. By binding a chiral soliton to a heavy
meson, either a normal -quark baryon or an exotic -quark baryon
is obtained. By replacing the heavy quark with heavy antiquarks, exotic
-quark and -quark mesons are obtained. When , they are
just the normal triquark baryon , the exotic pentaquark baryon , tetraquark di-meson and the hexaquark
di-baryon respectively. Their
stabilities and decays are also discussed. In particular, it is shown that the
``heavy to heavy'' semileptonic decays are described by the Isgur--Wise form
factors of the normal baryons.Comment: 14 pages in REVTeX, no Figure
Quantification of three macrolide antibiotics in pharmaceutical lots by HPLC: Development, validation and application to a simultaneous separation
A new validated high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method with rapid analysis time and high efficiency, for the analysis of erythromycin, azithromycin and spiramycin, under isocratic conditions with ODB RP18 as a stationary phase is described. Using an eluent composed of acetonitrile â2-methyl-2-propanol âhydrogenphosphate buffer, pH 6.5, with 1.5% triethylamine (33:7: up to 100, v/v/v), delivered at a flow-rate of 1.0 mL min-1. Ultra Violet (UV) detection is performed at 210 nm. The selectivity is satisfactory enough and no problematic interfering peaks are observed. The procedure is quantitatively characterized and repeatability, linearity, detection and quantification limits are very satisfactory. The method is applied successfully for the assay of the studied drugs in pharmaceutical dosage forms as tablets and powder for oral suspension. Recovery experiments revealed recovery of 97.13â100.28%
Planck 2015 results. XXVII. The Second Planck Catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich Sources
We present the all-sky Planck catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) sources detected from the 29 month full-mission data. The catalogue (PSZ2) is the largest SZ-selected sample of galaxy clusters yet produced and the deepest all-sky catalogue of galaxy clusters. It contains 1653 detections, of which 1203 are confirmed clusters with identified counterparts in external data-sets, and is the first SZ-selected cluster survey containing > confirmed clusters. We present a detailed analysis of the survey selection function in terms of its completeness and statistical reliability, placing a lower limit of 83% on the purity. Using simulations, we find that the Y5R500 estimates are robust to pressure-profile variation and beam systematics, but accurate conversion to Y500 requires. the use of prior information on the cluster extent. We describe the multi-wavelength search for counterparts in ancillary data, which makes use of radio, microwave, infra-red, optical and X-ray data-sets, and which places emphasis on the robustness of the counterpart match. We discuss the physical properties of the new sample and identify a population of low-redshift X-ray under- luminous clusters revealed by SZ selection. These objects appear in optical and SZ surveys with consistent properties for their mass, but are almost absent from ROSAT X-ray selected samples
Planck intermediate results. VIII. Filaments between interacting clusters
About half of the baryons of the Universe are expected to be in the form of
filaments of hot and low density intergalactic medium. Most of these baryons
remain undetected even by the most advanced X-ray observatories which are
limited in sensitivity to the diffuse low density medium. The Planck satellite
has provided hundreds of detections of the hot gas in clusters of galaxies via
the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect and is an ideal instrument for
studying extended low density media through the tSZ effect. In this paper we
use the Planck data to search for signatures of a fraction of these missing
baryons between pairs of galaxy clusters. Cluster pairs are good candidates for
searching for the hotter and denser phase of the intergalactic medium (which is
more easily observed through the SZ effect). Using an X-ray catalogue of
clusters and the Planck data, we select physical pairs of clusters as
candidates. Using the Planck data we construct a local map of the tSZ effect
centered on each pair of galaxy clusters. ROSAT data is used to construct X-ray
maps of these pairs. After having modelled and subtracted the tSZ effect and
X-ray emission for each cluster in the pair we study the residuals on both the
SZ and X-ray maps. For the merging cluster pair A399-A401 we observe a
significant tSZ effect signal in the intercluster region beyond the virial
radii of the clusters. A joint X-ray SZ analysis allows us to constrain the
temperature and density of this intercluster medium. We obtain a temperature of
kT = 7.1 +- 0.9, keV (consistent with previous estimates) and a baryon density
of (3.7 +- 0.2)x10^-4, cm^-3. The Planck satellite mission has provided the
first SZ detection of the hot and diffuse intercluster gas.Comment: Accepted by A&
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