Radial excitations of mesons and nucleons from QCD sum rules

Within the framework QCD sum rules, we use the least square fitting method to investigate the first radial excitations of the nucleon and light mesons such as $\rho$, $K^{*}$, $\pi$ , $\varphi$. The extracted masses of these radial excitations are consistent with the experimental data. Especially we find that the decay constant of $\pi(1300)$, which is the the first radial excitation of $\pi$, is tiny and strongly suppressed as a consequence of chiral symmetry.Comment: 19 page

New predictions on the mass of the 1−+1^{-+} light hybrid meson from QCD sum rules

We calculate the coefficients of the dimension-8 quark and gluon condensates in the current-current correlator of $1^{-+}$ light hybrid current $g\bar{q}(x)\gamma_{\nu}iG_{\mu\nu}(x)q{(x)}$. With inclusion of these higher-power corrections and updating the input parameters, we re-analyze the mass of the $1^{-+}$ light hybrid meson from Monte-Carlo based QCD sum rules. Considering the possible violation of factorization of higher dimensional condensates and variation of $\langle g^3G^3\rangle$, we obtain a conservative mass range 1.72--2.60\,GeV, which favors $\pi_{1}(2015)$ as a better hybrid candidate compared with $\pi_{1}(1600)$ and $\pi_{1}(1400)$.Comment: 12pages, 2 figures, the version appearing in JHE

CO preferential oxidation in a novel Au@ZrO₂ flow-through catalytic membrane reactor with high stability and efficiency

CO preferential oxidation (CO-PROX) achieves much interest as a strategy to remove trace CO in reformed gases for hydrogen utilization. Herein, we reported a novel Au@ZrO₂ catalytic membrane reactor by embedding gold nano-particles in ZrO₂ hollow fiber membrane for CO-PROX. The flow-through catalytic membrane exhibited high catalytic activity and oxygen selectivity, which gave a turnover frequency of 4.73 s⁻¹ at 60 °C, 2–3 times higher than conventional catalyst pellets. CO conversion of >95% was achieved over the catalytic membrane, which maintained great operational stability during 500-h operation even CO₂ and H₂O were added in the feed stream. The excellent catalytic performance of the flow-through catalytic membrane makes gold catalyst possible for practical application in the removal of CO from hydrogen

A mosaic of eyes

Autonomous navigation is a traditional research topic in intelligent robotics and vehicles, which requires a robot to perceive its environment through onboard sensors such as cameras or laser scanners, to enable it to drive to its goal. Most research to date has focused on the development of a large and smart brain to gain autonomous capability for robots. There are three fundamental questions to be answered by an autonomous mobile robot: 1) Where am I going? 2) Where am I? and 3) How do I get there? To answer these basic questions, a robot requires a massive spatial memory and considerable computational resources to accomplish perception, localization, path planning, and control. It is not yet possible to deliver the centralized intelligence required for our real-life applications, such as autonomous ground vehicles and wheelchairs in care centers. In fact, most autonomous robots try to mimic how humans navigate, interpreting images taken by cameras and then taking decisions accordingly. They may encounter the following difficulties