Strangelets and the TeV-PeV cosmic-ray anisotropies

Several experiments (e.g., Milagro and IceCube) have reported the presence in the sky of regions with significant excess in the arrival direction distributions of Galactic cosmic rays in the TeV to PeV energy range. Here we study the possibility that these hotspots are a manifestation of the peculiar nature of these cosmic rays, and of the presence of molecular clouds near the sources. We propose that stable quark matter lumps or so-called "strangelets" can be emitted in the course of the transition of a neutron star to a more compact astrophysical object. A fraction of these massive particles would lose their charge by spallation or electron capture in molecular clouds located in the immediate neighborhood of their source, and propagate rectilinearly without decaying further, hence inducing anisotropies of the order of the cloud size. With reasonable astrophysical assumptions regarding the neutron star transition rate, strangelet injection and neutralization rates, we can reproduce successfully the observed hotspot characteristics and their distribution in the sky.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, submitted to PR

Scalable Similarity Search for Molecular Descriptors

Similarity search over chemical compound databases is a fundamental task in the discovery and design of novel drug-like molecules. Such databases often encode molecules as non-negative integer vectors, called molecular descriptors, which represent rich information on various molecular properties. While there exist efficient indexing structures for searching databases of binary vectors, solutions for more general integer vectors are in their infancy. In this paper we present a time- and space- efficient index for the problem that we call the succinct intervals-splitting tree algorithm for molecular descriptors (SITAd). Our approach extends efficient methods for binary-vector databases, and uses ideas from succinct data structures. Our experiments, on a large database of over 40 million compounds, show SITAd significantly outperforms alternative approaches in practice.Comment: To be appeared in the Proceedings of SISAP'1

A Simulation of Secondary Electron Trajectories in Solids

A Monte Carlo calculation model is introduced to simulate not only the primary electron behavior but also the secondary electron cascade in a specimen bombarded with an electron beam. Electrons having energy greater than 0.1keV are treated as fast electrons and the single scattering Monte Carlo model is adopted. Electrons having energy smaller than 0.1keV are treated as slow electrons and the electron cascade Monte Carlo model is used. The calculated results for the energy distribution of secondary electrons, and primary electron energy dependence of the total secondary yield and the backscattering yield are in good agreement with experimental results

Cross-Sections for Electron Scattering Accompanied by Ionization of Inner-Shells

A method is presented to describe the electron scattering process at an ionization of inner-shell electrons. The differential cross-section with the energy transfer and the momentum transfer is calculated using the expression of the generalized oscillator strength. This cross-section and the total ionization cross-section are fairly close to the results obtained by the Gryzinski equation. The photo-absorption cross-section obtained by the present treatment shows good agreement with the experimental data in a wide range of the photon energy. Based on the present treatment, the scattering angle distribution of the primary electron is calculated

Monte Carlo Simulation of Secondary Electrons in Solids and its Application for Scanning Electron Microscopy

A new Monte Carlo calculation model is introduced to simulate not only the primary electron behavior but also the secondary electron cascade in a specimen bombarded with an electron beam. Either the primary or the generated electron in a specimen having energy greater than 0.1 keV is defined as a fast electron and the single scattering model is used in the simulation which employs the Mott elastic scattering cross section and the Rao Sahib-Wittry energy loss equation. The electron having energy smaller than 0.1 keV is defined as a slow electron and the cascade model is used which takes into account the classical binary collision with the conduction electrons. The performance of this simulation is verified in comparison with experiments for energy and angular distributions of slow secondary electrons (\u3c50eV). Then, this simulation is applied in a discussion of the quantitative signal variation of the secondary and the backscattered electrons depending on a specimen surface topography. The maximum intensity of the secondary electron signal is obtained where the scanning electron beam reaches around 1nm beside the top edge of a surface step made of Cu with the vertical side wall of 500nm in height

E-zyme: predicting potential EC numbers from the chemical transformation pattern of substrate-product pairs

Motivation: The IUBMB's Enzyme Nomenclature system, commonly known as the Enzyme Commission (EC) numbers, plays key roles in classifying enzymatic reactions and in linking the enzyme genes or proteins to reactions in metabolic pathways. There are numerous reactions known to be present in various pathways but without any official EC numbers, most of which have no hope to be given ones because of the lack of the published articles on enzyme assays

PathPred: an enzyme-catalyzed metabolic pathway prediction server

The KEGG RPAIR database is a collection of biochemical structure transformation patterns, called RDM patterns, and chemical structure alignments of substrate-product pairs (reactant pairs) in all known enzyme-catalyzed reactions taken from the Enzyme Nomenclature and the KEGG PATHWAY database. Here, we present PathPred (http://www.genome.jp/tools/pathpred/), a web-based server to predict plausible pathways of muti-step reactions starting from a query compound, based on the local RDM pattern match and the global chemical structure alignment against the reactant pair library. In this server, we focus on predicting pathways for microbial biodegradation of environmental compounds and biosynthesis of plant secondary metabolites, which correspond to characteristic RDM patterns in 947 and 1397 reactant pairs, respectively. The server provides transformed compounds and reference transformation patterns in each predicted reaction, and displays all predicted multi-step reaction pathways in a tree-shaped graph

Calculation of a Topographic Contrast in the Scanning Electron Microscope

A direct simulation of electron scattering in solids is developed. Using this simulation, a topographic contrast found in the scanning electron microscope is quantitatively discussed. The surface topography studied here is a rectangular rod pattern and a rectangular groove pattern at an infinite horizontal plane surface of Al. We quantify characteristics of the secondary electron image and of the backscattered electron image at the topography. The intensity profile at the bottom surface of the groove pattern is roughly approximated by an analytical model

Positive psychology of Malaysian students: impacts of engagement, motivation, self-compassion and wellbeing on mental health

Malaysia plays a key role in education of the Asia Pacific, expanding its scholarly output rapidly. However, mental health of Malaysian students is challenging, and their help-seeking is low because of stigma. This study explored the relationships between mental health and positive psychological constructs (academic engagement, motivation, self-compassion, and wellbeing), and evaluated the relative contribution of each positive psychological construct to mental health in Malaysian students. An opportunity sample of 153 students completed the measures regarding these constructs. Correlation, regression, and mediation analyses were conducted. Engagement, amotivation, self-compassion, and wellbeing were associated with, and predicted large variance in mental health. Self-compassion was the strongest independent predictor of mental health among all the positive psychological constructs. Findings can imply the strong links between mental health and positive psychology, especially selfcompassion. Moreover, intervention studies to examine the effects of self-compassion training on mental health of Malaysian students appear to be warranted.N/