3,922 research outputs found
Quintessential Kination and Leptogenesis
Thermal leptogenesis induced by the CP-violating decay of a right-handed
neutrino (RHN) is discussed in the background of quintessential kination, i.e.,
in a cosmological model where the energy density of the early Universe is
assumed to be dominated by the kinetic term of a quintessence field during some
epoch of its evolution. This assumption may lead to very different
observational consequences compared to the case of a standard cosmology where
the energy density of the Universe is dominated by radiation. We show that,
depending on the choice of the temperature T_r above which kination dominates
over radiation, any situation between the strong and the super--weak wash--out
regime are equally viable for leptogenesis, even with the RHN Yukawa coupling
fixed to provide the observed atmospheric neutrino mass scale ~ 0.05 eV. For M<
T_r < M/100, i.e., when kination stops to dominate at a time which is not much
later than when leptogenesis takes place, the efficiency of the process,
defined as the ratio between the produced lepton asymmetry and the amount of CP
violation in the RHN decay, can be larger than in the standard scenario of
radiation domination. This possibility is limited to the case when the neutrino
mass scale is larger than about 0.01 eV. The super--weak wash--out regime is
obtained for T_r << M/100, and includes the case when T_r is close to the
nucleosynthesis temperature ~ 1 MeV. Irrespective of T_r, we always find a
sufficient window above the electroweak temperature T ~ 100 GeV for the
sphaleron transition to thermalize, so that the lepton asymmetry can always be
converted to the observed baryon asymmetry.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
Reversible changes in protein phosphorylation during germinal vesicle breakdown and pronuclear formation in bovine oocytes in vitro
This study examined the event of protein phosphorylation in bovine oocytes during germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) and formation of pronuclei following fertilisation in vitro. Immature oocytes were obtained from abattoir materials and cultured in vitro. The oocytes were labelled with [32P]orthophosphate at 3 h intervals from 0 to 12 h following maturation in culture or from 3 to 18 h following insemination. One-dimensional gel electrophoresis indicated that levels of protein phosphorylation are low prior to GVBD. However, the levels of protein phosphorylation at approximately 40 kDa, 27 kDa, 23 kDa and 18 kDa increased substantially following GVBD and then decreased gradually as maturation in culture progressed. In contrast, the levels of protein phosphorylation increased gradually in the oocytes following pronucleus formation. Further, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis indicated that the protein at approximately 18 kDa reversibly changed in the oocytes during maturation and fertilisation. These results indicate that the reversible changes of this phosphoprotein may be related to either cell cycle transition or pronucleus formation during maturation and fertilisation in bovine oocytes.</p
Analytic results on the geometric entropy for free fields
The trace of integer powers of the local density matrix corresponding to the
vacuum state reduced to a region V can be formally expressed in terms of a
functional integral on a manifold with conical singularities. Recently, some
progress has been made in explicitly evaluating this type of integrals for free
fields. However, finding the associated geometric entropy remained in general a
difficult task involving an analytic continuation in the conical angle. In this
paper, we obtain this analytic continuation explicitly exploiting a relation
between the functional integral formulas and the Chung-Peschel expressions for
the density matrix in terms of correlators. The result is that the entropy is
given in terms of a functional integral in flat Euclidean space with a cut on V
where a specific boundary condition is imposed. As an example we get the exact
entanglement entropies for massive scalar and Dirac free fields in 1+1
dimensions in terms of the solutions of a non linear differential equation of
the Painleve V type.Comment: 7 pages, minor change
KMT-2018-BLG-1292: A Super-Jovian Microlens Planet in the Galactic Plane
We report the discovery of KMT-2018-BLG-1292Lb, a super-Jovian planet orbiting an F or G dwarf , which lies physically within {\cal O}(10\,\pc) of the
Galactic plane. The source star is a heavily extincted luminous
giant that has the lowest Galactic latitude, , of any planetary
microlensing event. The relatively blue blended light is almost certainly
either the host or its binary companion, with the first explanation being
substantially more likely. This blend dominates the light at band and
completely dominates at and bands. Hence, the lens system can be probed
by follow-up observations immediately, i.e., long before the lens system and
the source separate due to their relative proper motion. The system is well
characterized despite the low cadence -- of
observations and short viewing windows near the end of the bulge season. This
suggests that optical microlensing planet searches can be extended to the
Galactic plane at relatively modest cost.Comment: 35 pages, 3 Tables, 8 figure
QCD Sum Rules and Applications to Nuclear Physics
Applications of QCD sum-rule methods to the physics of nuclei are reviewed,
with an emphasis on calculations of baryon self-energies in infinite nuclear
matter. The sum-rule approach relates spectral properties of hadrons
propagating in the finite-density medium, such as optical potentials for
quasinucleons, to matrix elements of QCD composite operators (condensates). The
vacuum formalism for QCD sum rules is generalized to finite density, and the
strategy and implementation of the approach is discussed. Predictions for
baryon self-energies are compared to those suggested by relativistic nuclear
physics phenomenology. Sum rules for vector mesons in dense nuclear matter are
also considered.Comment: 92 pages, ReVTeX, 9 figures can be obtained upon request (to Xuemin
Jin
Predicative Ability of QCD Sum Rules for Decuplet Baryons
QCD sum rules for decuplet baryon two-point functions are investigated using
a comprehensive Monte-Carlo based procedure. In this procedure, all
uncertainties in the QCD input parameters are incorporated simultaneously,
resulting in realistic estimates of the uncertainties in the extracted
phenomenological parameters. Correlations between the QCD input parameters and
the phenomenological parameters are studied by way of scatter plots. The
predicted couplings are useful in evaluating matrix elements of decuplet
baryons in the QCD sum rule approach. They are also used to check a cubic
scaling law between baryon couplings and masses, as recently found by Dey and
coworkers. The results show a significant reduction in the scaling constant and
some possible deviations from the cubic law.Comment: 13 pages, RevTeX, 5 PS figures embedded with psfig.st
3D time series analysis of cell shape using Laplacian approaches
Background:
Fundamental cellular processes such as cell movement, division or food uptake critically depend on cells being able to change shape. Fast acquisition of three-dimensional image time series has now become possible, but we lack efficient tools for analysing shape deformations in order to understand the real three-dimensional nature of shape changes.
Results:
We present a framework for 3D+time cell shape analysis. The main contribution is three-fold: First, we develop a fast, automatic random walker method for cell segmentation. Second, a novel topology fixing method is proposed to fix segmented binary volumes without spherical topology. Third, we show that algorithms used for each individual step of the analysis pipeline (cell segmentation, topology fixing, spherical parameterization, and shape representation) are closely related to the Laplacian operator. The framework is applied to the shape analysis of neutrophil cells.
Conclusions:
The method we propose for cell segmentation is faster than the traditional random walker method or the level set method, and performs better on 3D time-series of neutrophil cells, which are comparatively noisy as stacks have to be acquired fast enough to account for cell motion. Our method for topology fixing outperforms the tools provided by SPHARM-MAT and SPHARM-PDM in terms of their successful fixing rates. The different tasks in the presented pipeline for 3D+time shape analysis of cells can be solved using Laplacian approaches, opening the possibility of eventually combining individual steps in order to speed up computations
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