Are you really my clone? Identity verification of the in-trust sweetpotato collection at the International Potato Center.

The global in-trust sweetpotato collection maintained by the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru consists of over 5,000 cultivated sweetpotato accessions maintained as clones in vitro as well as over 1,000 accessions from 67 species of Ipomoea maintained as seed populations. The clonal sweetpotato collection at CIP was initiated in the 1980’s and for 60% of the collection, original material still exists as potted plants in the greenhouse. This provides a unique opportunity where genetic integrity of a clonal collection, maintained in vitro for the past thirty years, can be confirmed by a side-by-side comparison of the same accession from the greenhouse. Initial molecular comparison is done using a set of twenty SSR primers followed by side-by-side comparison in the field using 30 morphological descriptors. Confirmation of identity requires both genetic and morphological analysis as a low percentage of the accessions appear to be duplicates based on SSR yet are morphologically distinct. Historical morphological descriptor data is used as a check to confirm identity and is being used as the sole check for accessions where we do not have original material for comparison. SSR results from 70% of the collection has confirmed that 85% of the in vitro accessions are true-to-type. In vitro accessions which are not true-to-type are reisolated and cleaned of viruses from the confirmed true-to-type greenhouse accessions. Accessions which are true-to-type are fingerprinted using DArTseq to provide a sequence-based fingerprint

Probing singularities in quantum cosmology with curvature scalars

We provide further evidence that the canonical quantization of cosmological models eliminates the classical Big Bang singularity, using the {\it DeBroglie-Bohm} interpretation of quantum mechanics. The usual criterion for absence of the Big Bang singularity in Friedmann-Robertson-Walker quantum cosmological models is the non-vanishing of the expectation value of the scale factor. We compute the `local expectation value' of the Ricci and Kretschmann scalars, for some quantum FRW models. We show that they are finite for all time. Since these scalars are elements of general scalar polynomials in the metric and the Riemann tensor, this result indicates that, for the quantum models treated here, the `local expectation value' of these general scalar polynomials should be finite everywhere. Therefore, we have further evidence that the quantization of the models treated here eliminates the classical Big Bang singularity. PACS: 04.40.Nr, 04.60.Ds, 98.80.Qc.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Evolution of density perturbations in a realistic universe

Prompted by the recent more precise determination of the basic cosmological parameters and growing evidence that the matter-energy content of the universe is now dominated by dark energy and dark matter we present the general solution of the equation that describes the evolution of density perturbations in the linear approximation. It turns out that as in the standard CDM model the density perturbations grow very slowly during the radiation dominated epoch and their amplitude increases by a factor of about 4000 in the matter and later dark energy dominated epoch of expansion of the universe.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

The Proton Spin and the Wigner Rotation

It is shown that in both the gluonic and strange sea explanations of the Ellis-Jaffe sum rule violation discovered by the European Muon Collaboration (EMC), the spin of the proton, when viewed in in its rest reference frame, could by fully provided by quarks and antiquarks within a simple quark model picture, taken into account the relativistic effect from the Wigner rotation.Comment: 13 latex page

Scalar Mesons in a Chiral Quark Model with Glueball

Ground-state scalar isoscalar mesons and a scalar glueball are described in a U(3)xU(3) chiral quark model of the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type with 't Hooft interaction. The latter interaction produces singlet-octet mixing in the scalar and pseudoscalar sectors. The glueball is introduced into the effective meson Lagrangian as a dilaton on the base of scale invariance. The mixing of the glueball with scalar isoscalar quarkonia and amplitudes of their decays into two pseudoscalar mesons are shown to be proportional to current quark masses, vanishing in the chiral limit. Mass spectra of the scalar mesons and the glueball and their main modes of strong decay are described.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX text, requires svjour.cls and svepj.cl

Noninteracting dark matter

Since an acceptable dark matter candidate may interact only weakly with ordinary matter and radiation, it is of interest to consider the limiting case where the dark matter interacts only with gravity and itself, the matter originating by the gravitational particle production at the end of inflation. We use the bounds on the present dark mass density and the measured large-scale fluctuations in the thermal cosmic background radiation to constrain the two parameters in a self-interaction potential that is a sum of quadratic and quartic terms in a single scalar dark matter field that is minimally coupled to gravity. In quintessential inflation, where the temperature at the end of inflation is relatively low, the field starts acting like cold dark matter relatively late, shortly before the epoch of equal mass densities in matter and radiation. This could have observable consequences for galaxy formation. We respond to recent criticisms of the quintessential inflation scenario, since these issues also apply to elements of the noninteracting dark matter picture.Comment: 37 pages, 3 figure

Plane waves with weak singularities

We study a class of time dependent solutions of the vacuum Einstein equations which are plane waves with weak null singularities. This singularity is weak in the sense that though the tidal forces diverge at the singularity, the rate of divergence is such that the distortion suffered by a freely falling observer remains finite. Among such weak singular plane waves there is a sub-class which do not exhibit large back reaction in the presence of test scalar probes. String propagation in these backgrounds is smooth and there is a natural way to continue the metric beyond the singularity. This continued metric admits string propagation without the string becoming infinitely excited. We construct a one parameter family of smooth metrics which are at a finite distance in the space of metrics from the extended metric and a well defined operator in the string sigma model which resolves the singularity.Comment: 22 pages, Added references and clarifying comment

Event Shape/Energy Flow Correlations

We introduce a set of correlations between energy flow and event shapes that are sensitive to the flow of color at short distances in jet events. These correlations are formulated for a general set of event shapes, which includes jet broadening and thrust as special cases. We illustrate the method for electron-positron annihilation dijet events, and calculate the correlation at leading logarithm in the energy flow and at next-to-leading-logarithm in the event shape.Comment: 43 pages, eight eps figures; minor changes, references adde

Conformal Invariance, Dark Energy, and CMB Non-Gaussianity

In addition to simple scale invariance, a universe dominated by dark energy naturally gives rise to correlation functions possessing full conformal invariance. This is due to the mathematical isomorphism between the conformal group of certain 3 dimensional slices of de Sitter space and the de Sitter isometry group SO(4,1). In the standard homogeneous isotropic cosmological model in which primordial density perturbations are generated during a long vacuum energy dominated de Sitter phase, the embedding of flat spatial sections in de Sitter space induces a conformal invariant perturbation spectrum and definite prediction for the shape of the non-Gaussian CMB bispectrum. In the case in which the density fluctuations are generated instead on the de Sitter horizon, conformal invariance of the horizon embedding implies a different but also quite definite prediction for the angular correlations of CMB non-Gaussianity on the sky. Each of these forms for the bispectrum is intrinsic to the symmetries of de Sitter space and in that sense, independent of specific model assumptions. Each is different from the predictions of single field slow roll inflation models which rely on the breaking of de Sitter invariance. We propose a quantum origin for the CMB fluctuations in the scalar gravitational sector from the conformal anomaly that could give rise to these non-Gaussianities without a slow roll inflaton field, and argue that conformal invariance also leads to the expectation for the relation n_S-1=n_T between the spectral indices of the scalar and tensor power spectrum. Confirmation of this prediction or detection of non-Gaussian correlations in the CMB of one of the bispectral shape functions predicted by conformal invariance can be used both to establish the physical origins of primordial density fluctuations and distinguish between different dynamical models of cosmological vacuum dark energy.Comment: 73 pages, 9 figures. Final Version published in JCAP. New Section 4 added on linearized scalar gravitational potentials; New Section 8 added on gravitational wave tensor perturbations and relation of spectral indices n_T = n_S -1; Table of Contents added; Eqs. (3.14) and (3.15) added to clarify relationship of bispectrum plotted to CMB measurements; Some other minor modification