13,387 research outputs found
Can Heavy WIMPs Be Captured by the Earth?
If weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in bound solar orbits are
systematically driven into the Sun by solar-system resonances (as Farinella et
al. have shown is the case for many Earth-crossing asteroids), then the capture
of high-mass WIMPs by the Earth would be affected dramatically because
high-mass WIMPs are captured primarily from bound orbits. WIMP capture would be
eliminated for M_x>630 GeV and would be highly suppressed for M_x>~150 GeV.
Annihilation of captured WIMPs and anti-WIMPs is expected to give rise to
neutrinos coming from the Earth's center. The absence of such a neutrino signal
has been used to place limits on WIMP parameters. At present, one does not know
if typical WIMP orbits are in fact affected by these resonances. Until this
question is investigated and resolved, one must (conservatively) assume that
they are. Hence, limits on high-mass WIMP parameters are significantly weaker
than previously believed.Comment: 8 pages + 1 figure. Submitted to Ap
Degenerate mixing of plasma waves on cold, magnetized single-species plasmas
In the cold-fluid dispersion relation ω = ω_p/[1+(k_⊥/k_z)^(2]1/2) for Trivelpiece-Gould waves on an infinitely long magnetized plasma cylinder, the transverse and axial wavenumbers appear only in the combination k_⊥/k_z. As a result, for any frequency ω<ω_p, there are infinitely many degenerate waves, all having the same value of k_⊥/k_z. On a cold finite-length plasma column, these degenerate waves reflect into one another at the ends; thus, each standing-wave normal mode of the bounded plasma is a mixture of many degenerate waves, not a single standing wave as is often assumed. A striking feature of the many-wave modes is that the short-wavelength waves often add constructively along resonance cones given by dz/dr = ±(ω_p^2/ω^2-1)^(1/2). Also, the presence of short wavelengths in the admixture for a predominantly long-wavelength mode enhances the viscous damping beyond what the single-wave approximation would predict. Here, numerical solutions are obtained for modes of a cylindrical plasma column with rounded ends. Exploiting the fact that the modes of a spheroidal plasma are known analytically (the Dubin modes), a perturbation analysis is used to investigate the mixing of low-order, nearly degenerate Dubin modes caused by small deformations of a plasma spheroid
Generalised Perk--Schultz models: solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation associated with quantised orthosymplectic superalgebras
The Perk--Schultz model may be expressed in terms of the solution of the
Yang--Baxter equation associated with the fundamental representation of the
untwisted affine extension of the general linear quantum superalgebra
, with a multiparametric co-product action as given by
Reshetikhin. Here we present analogous explicit expressions for solutions of
the Yang-Baxter equation associated with the fundamental representations of the
twisted and untwisted affine extensions of the orthosymplectic quantum
superalgebras . In this manner we obtain generalisations of the
Perk--Schultz model.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Stationary quantum Markov process for the Wigner function
As a stochastic model for quantum mechanics we present a stationary quantum
Markov process for the time evolution of the Wigner function on a lattice phase
space Z_N x Z_N with N odd. By introducing a phase factor extension to the
phase space, each particle can be treated independently. This is an improvement
on earlier methods that require the whole distribution function to determine
the evolution of a constituent particle. The process has branching and
vanishing points, though a finite time interval can be maintained between the
branchings. The procedure to perform a simulation using the process is
presented.Comment: 12 pages, no figures; replaced with version accepted for publication
in J. Phys. A, title changed, an example adde
Temporal and spatial plasma wave echoes
It is shown that, if a longitudinal wave is excited in a collision-free plasma and Landau-damps away, and later a second wave is excited and also damps away, then a third wave will spontaneously appear in the plasma. This wave appears long after the first two waves have damped away at a time proportional to the interval between the first two waves, and is in that sense an echo. It is also shown that, if a wave is continuously excited at one point in a plasma and a second wave is continuously excited many Landau damping lengths from the first point, then a third wave will spontaneously appear many Landau damping lengths from the second point. Fundamentally, plasma wave echoes are possible because of the reversible nature of Landau damping. However, small-angle Coulomb collisions are very effective in destroying the echo
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Increasing compliance with low tidal volume ventilation in the ICU with two nudge-based interventions: evaluation through intervention time-series analyses
Objectives: Low tidal volume (TVe) ventilation improves outcomes for ventilated patients, and the majority of clinicians state they implement it. Unfortunately, most patients never receive low TVes. ‘Nudges’ influence decision-making with subtle cognitive mechanisms and are effective in many contexts. There have been few studies examining their impact on clinical decision-making. We investigated the impact of 2 interventions designed using principles from behavioural science on the deployment of low TVe ventilation in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Setting: University Hospitals Bristol, a tertiary, mixed medical and surgical ICU with 20 beds, admitting over 1300 patients per year.
Participants: Data were collected from 2144 consecutive patients receiving controlled mechanical ventilation for more than 1 hour between October 2010 and September 2014. Patients on controlled mechanical ventilation for more than 20 hours were included in the final analysis.
Interventions: (1) Default ventilator settings were adjusted to comply with low TVe targets from the initiation of ventilation unless actively changed by a clinician. (2) A large dashboard was deployed displaying TVes in the format mL/kg ideal body weight (IBW) with alerts when TVes were excessive.
Primary outcome measure: TVe in mL/kg IBW.
Findings: TVe was significantly lower in the defaults group. In the dashboard intervention, TVe fell more quickly and by a greater amount after a TVe of 8 mL/kg IBW was breached when compared with controls. This effect improved in each subsequent year for 3 years.
Conclusions: This study has demonstrated that adjustment of default ventilator settings and a dashboard with alerts for excessive TVe can significantly influence clinical decision-making. This offers a promising strategy to improve compliance with low TVe ventilation, and suggests that using insights from behavioural science has potential to improve the translation of evidence into practice
Replication enhancer elements within the open reading frame of tick-borne encephalitis virus and their evolution within the Flavivirus genus
We provide experimental evidence of a replication enhancer element (REE) within the capsid gene of tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV, genus Flavivirus). Thermodynamic and phylogenetic analyses predicted that the REE folds as a long stable stem–loop (designated SL6), conserved among all tick-borne flaviviruses (TBFV). Homologous sequences and potential base pairing were found in the corresponding regions of mosquito-borne flaviviruses, but not in more genetically distant flaviviruses. To investigate the role
of SL6, nucleotide substitutions were introduced which changed a conserved hexanucleotide motif, the conformation of the terminal loop and the base-paired dsRNA stacking. Substitutions were made within a TBEV reverse genetic system and recovered mutants were compared for plaque
morphology, single-step replication kinetics and cytopathic effect. The greatest phenotypic changes were observed in mutants with a destabilized stem. Point mutations in the conserved hexanucleotide motif of the terminal loop caused
moderate virus attenuation. However, all mutants
eventually reached the titre of wild-type virus late post-infection. Thus, although not essential for growth in tissue culture, the SL6 REE acts to up-regulate virus replication. We hypothesize that this modulatory role may be important for TBEV survival in nature, where the virus circulates by non-viraemic transmission between infected and
non-infected ticks, during co-feeding on local rodents
Kinetic modelling and molecular dynamics simulation of ultracold neutral plasmas including ionic correlations
A kinetic approach for the evolution of ultracold neutral plasmas including
interionic correlations and the treatment of ionization/excitation and
recombination/deexcitation by rate equations is described in detail. To assess
the reliability of the approximations inherent in the kinetic model, we have
developed a hybrid molecular dynamics method. Comparison of the results reveals
that the kinetic model describes the atomic and ionic observables of the
ultracold plasma surprisingly well, confirming our earlier findings concerning
the role of ion-ion correlations [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 68}, 010703]. In addition,
the molecular dynamics approach allows one to study the relaxation of the ionic
plasma component towards thermodynamical equilibrium
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