29,198 research outputs found
A new formulation of the effective theory for heavy particles
We derive the effective theories for heavy particles with a functional
integral approach by integrating away the states with high velocity and with
high virtuality. This formulation is non-perturbative and has a close
connection with the Wilson renormalization group transformation. The fixed
point hamiltonian of our transformation coincides with the static hamiltonian
and irrelevant operators can be identified with the usual corrections to
the static theory. No matching condition has to be imposed between the full and
the static theory operators with our approach. The values of the matching
constants come out as a dynamical effect of the renormalization group flow.Comment: 26 pages, plain Latex + 4 postscript figures (appended at the end),
Preprint Roma1 993-94 (some missing lines in a few formulas have been
restored; minor changes
Supercooling across first-order phase transitions in vortex matter
Hysteresis in cycling through first-order phase transitions in vortex matter,
akin to the well-studied phenomenon of supercooling of water, has been
discussed in literature. Hysteresis can be seen while varying either
temperature T or magnetic field H (and thus the density of vortices). Our
recent work on phase transitions with two control variables shows that the
observable region of metastability of the supercooled phase would depend on the
path followed in H-T space, and will be larger when T is lowered at constant H
compared to the case when H is lowered at constant T. We discuss the effect of
isothermal field variations on metastable supercooled states produced by
field-cooling. This path dependence is not a priori applicable to metastability
caused by reduced diffusivity or hindered kinetics.Comment: Tex, 8 pages, 3 Postscripts figures. Submitted to Pramana - J.
Physic
QCD as a Quantum Link Model
QCD is constructed as a lattice gauge theory in which the elements of the
link matrices are represented by non-commuting operators acting in a Hilbert
space. The resulting quantum link model for QCD is formulated with a fifth
Euclidean dimension, whose extent resembles the inverse gauge coupling of the
resulting four-dimensional theory after dimensional reduction. The inclusion of
quarks is natural in Shamir's variant of Kaplan's fermion method, which does
not require fine-tuning to approach the chiral limit. A rishon representation
in terms of fermionic constituents of the gluons is derived and the quantum
link Hamiltonian for QCD with a U(N) gauge symmetry is expressed in terms of
glueball, meson and constituent quark operators. The new formulation of QCD is
promising both from an analytic and from a computational point of view.Comment: 27 pages, including three figures. ordinary LaTeX; Submitted to Nucl.
Phys.
Alveolar macrophage-derived microvesicles mediate acute lung injury
Background Microvesicles (MVs) are important mediators of intercellular communication, packaging a variety of molecular cargo. They have been implicated in the pathophysiology of various inflammatory diseases; yet, their role in acute lung injury (ALI) remains unknown. Objectives We aimed to identify the biological activity and functional role of intra-alveolar MVs in ALI. Methods Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was instilled intratracheally into C57BL/6 mice, and MV populations in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) were evaluated. BALF MVs were isolated 1 hour post LPS, assessed for cytokine content and incubated with murine lung epithelial (MLE-12) cells. In separate experiments, primary alveolar macrophage-derived MVs were incubated with MLE-12 cells or instilled intratracheally into mice. Results Alveolar macrophages and epithelial cells rapidly released MVs into the alveoli following LPS. At 1 hour, the dominant population was alveolar macrophage-derived, and these MVs carried substantive amounts of tumour necrosis factor (TNF) but minimal amounts of IL-1β/IL-6. Incubation of these mixed MVs with MLE-12 cells induced epithelial intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) expression and keratinocyte-derived cytokine release compared with MVs from untreated mice (p<0.001). MVs released in vitro from LPS-primed alveolar macrophages caused similar increases in MLE-12 ICAM-1 expression, which was mediated by TNF. When instilled intratracheally into mice, these MVs induced increases in BALF neutrophils, protein and epithelial cell ICAM-1 expression (p<0.05). Conclusions We demonstrate, for the first time, the sequential production of MVs from different intra-alveolar precursor cells during the early phase of ALI. Our findings suggest that alveolar macrophage-derived MVs, which carry biologically active TNF, may play an important role in initiating ALI
Universality in Turbulence: an Exactly Soluble Model
The present note contains the text of lectures discussing the problem of
universality in fully developed turbulence. After a brief description of
Kolmogorov's 1941 scaling theory of turbulence and a comparison between the
statistical approach to turbulence and field theory, we discuss a simple model
of turbulent advection which is exactly soluble but whose exact solution is
still difficult to analyze. The model exhibits a restricted universality. Its
correlation functions contain terms with universal but anomalous scaling but
with non-universal amplitudes typically diverging with the growing size of the
system. Strict universality applies only after such terms have been removed
leaving renormalized correlators with normal scaling. We expect that the
necessity of such an infrared renormalization is a characteristic feature of
universality in turbulence.Comment: 31 pages, late
Living for the weekend: youth identities in northeast England
Consumption and consumerism are now accepted as key contexts for the construction of youth identities in de-industrialized Britain. This article uses empirical evidence from interviews with young people to suggest that claims of `new community' are overstated, traditional forms of friendship are receding, and increasingly atomized and instrumental youth identities are now being culturally constituted and reproduced by the pressures and anxieties created by enforced adaptation to consumer capitalism. Analysis of the data opens up the possibility of a critical rather than a celebratory exploration of the wider theoretical implications of this process
A "superstorm": When moral panic and new risk discourses converge in the media
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Health, Risk and Society, 15(6), 681-698, 2013, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13698575.2013.851180.There has been a proliferation of risk discourses in recent decades but studies of these have been polarised, drawing either on moral panic or new risk frameworks to analyse journalistic discourses. This article opens the theoretical possibility that the two may co-exist and converge in the same scare. I do this by bringing together more recent developments in moral panic thesis, with new risk theory and the concept of media logic. I then apply this theoretical approach to an empirical analysis of how and with what consequences moral panic and new risk type discourses converged in the editorials of four newspaper campaigns against GM food policy in Britain in the late 1990s. The article analyses 112 editorials published between January 1998 and December 2000, supplemented with news stories where these were needed for contextual clarity. This analysis shows that not only did this novel food generate intense media and public reactions; these developed in the absence of the type of concrete details journalists usually look for in risk stories. Media logic is important in understanding how journalists were able to engage and hence how a major scare could be constructed around convergent moral panic and new risk type discourses. The result was a media ‘superstorm’ of sustained coverage in which both types of discourse converged in highly emotive mutually reinforcing ways that resonated in a highly sensitised context. The consequence was acute anxiety, social volatility and the potential for the disruption of policy and social change
Galaxy Clustering Evolution in the UH8K Weak Lensing Fields
We present measurements of the two-point galaxy angular correlation function
as a function of apparent magnitude, color, and morphology. We present new
galaxy number counts to limiting magnitudes of I=24.0 and V=25.0. We find
to be well described by a power-law of slope -0.8. We find the
amplitude of the correlation function to decrease monotonically with
increasingly faint apparent magnitude. We compare with predictions utilizing
redshift distributions based on deep spectroscopic observations. We conclude
that simple redshift-dependent models which characterize evolution by means of
the epsilon parameter inadequately describe the observations. We find a strong
clustering dependence on V-I color because galaxies of extreme color lie at
similar redshifts and the angular correlation functions for these samples are
minimally diluted by chance projections.
We then present the first attempt to investigate the redshift evolution of
clustering, utilizing a population of galaxies of the same morphological type
and absolute luminosity. We study the dependence of on
redshift for Lstar early-type galaxies in the redshift range 0.2<z<0.9.
Although uncertainties are large, we find the evolution in the clustering of
these galaxies to be consistent with stable clustering [epsilon=0]. We find
Lstar early-type galaxies to cluster slightly more strongly (rnought =
5.25\pm0.28 \hMpc assuming epsilon=0) than the local full field population.
This is in good agreement with the 2dFGRS value for Lstar early-type galaxies
in the local universe (abridged).Comment: 41 pages, including 12 figs, 10 tables, to appear in Ap
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