Showing 221 - 230 of 2040 Items
Inelastic channels in WW scattering
Date: 1993-01-01
Creator: S. G. Naculich
C. P. Yuan
Access: Open access
- If the electroweak symmetry-breaking sector becomes strongly interacting at high energies, it can be probed through longitudinal W scattering. We present a model with many inelastic channels in the WLWL scattering process, corresponding to the production of heavy fermion pairs. These heavy fermions affect the elastic scattering of WL's by propagating in loops, greatly reducing the amplitudes in some charge channels. We conclude that the symmetry-breaking sector cannot be fully explored by using, for example, the WL±WL± mode alone, even when no resonance is present; all WLWL→WLWL scattering modes must be measured. © 1993 The American Physical Society.
With age comes immaturity: Do countries with older populations issue shorter maturity debt?
Date: 2021-12-01
Creator: Gonca Senel
Mark L.J. Wright
Access: Open access
- Recent work has found that countries with older populations face steeper yield curves and issue shorter maturity debt than do younger countries. We reexamine these findings using a new database of public debt maturity and yields for OECD countries. We first show that the behavior of eurozone countries in the pre-euro period drives these results. Next, including more recent data from the post-euro period, we show that the relationship between population age, maturity, and yield curve slopes disappears. This finding is robust to excluding high-credit-risk countries. Last, we show that these patterns reemerge after the European debt crisis, suggesting that eurozone capital markets have resegmented.
Molecular basis of the copulatory plug polymorphism in Caenorhabditis elegans
Date: 2008-08-21
Creator: Michael F. Palopoli
Matthew V. Rockman
Aye TinMaung
Camden Ramsay
Stephen, Curwen
Andrea Aduna
Jason Laurita
Leonid Kruglyak
Access: Open access
- Heritable variation is the raw material for evolutionary change, and understanding its genetic basis is one of the central problems in modern biology. We investigated the genetic basis of a classic phenotypic dimorphism in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Males from many natural isolates deposit a copulatory plug after mating, whereas males from other natural isolates-including the standard wild-type strain (N2 Bristol) that is used in most research laboratories-do not deposit plugs. The copulatory plug is a gelatinous mass that covers the hermaphrodite vulva, and its deposition decreases the mating success of subsequent males. We show that the plugging polymorphism results from the insertion of a retrotransposon into an exon of a novel mucin-like gene, plg-1, whose product is a major structural component of the copulatory plug. The gene is expressed in a subset of secretory cells of the male somatic gonad, and its loss has no evident effects beyond the loss of male mate-guarding. Although C. elegans descends from an obligate-outcrossing, male?female ancestor, it occurs primarily as self-fertilizing hermaphrodites. The reduced selection on male-male competition associated with the origin of hermaphroditism may have permitted the global spread of a loss-of-function mutation with restricted pleiotropy. ©2008 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
Partisan selective engagement: Evidence from Facebook
Date: 2020-09-01
Creator: Marcel Garz
Jil Sörensen
Daniel F. Stone
Access: Open access
- This study investigates the effects of variation in “congeniality” of news on Facebook user engagement (likes, shares, and comments). We compile an original data set of Facebook posts by 84 German news outlets on politicians that were investigated for criminal offenses from January 2012 to June 2017. We also construct an index of each outlet's media slant by comparing the language of the outlet with that of the main political parties, which allows us to measure the congeniality of the posts. We find that user engagement with congenial posts is higher than with uncongenial ones, especially in terms of likes. The within-outlet, within-topic design allows us to infer that the greater engagement with congenial news is likely driven by psychological and social factors, rather than a desire for accurate or otherwise instrumental information.
Aneuploid chromosomes are highly unstable during DNA transformation of candida albicans∇
Date: 2009-10-01
Creator: Kelly Bouchonville
Anja Forche
Karen E.S. Tang
Anna Selmecki
Judith, Berman
Access: Open access
- Candida albicans strains tolerate aneuploidy, historically detected as karyotype alterations by pulsed-fleld gel electrophoresis and more recently revealed by array comparative genome hybridization, which provides a comprehensive and detailed description of gene copy number. Here, we first retrospectively analyzed 411 expression array experiments to predict the frequency of aneuploidy in different strains. As expected, significant levels of aneuploidy were seen in strains exposed to stress conditions, including UV light and/or sorbose treatment, as well as in strains that are resistant to antifungal drugs. More surprisingly, strains that underwent transformation with DNA displayed the highest frequency of chromosome copy number changes, with strains that were initially aneuploid exhibiting ∼3-fold more copy number changes than strains that were initially diploid. We then prospectively analyzed the effect of lithium acetate (LiOAc) transformation protocols on the stability of trisomie chromosomes. Consistent with the retrospective analysis, the proportion of karyotype changes was highly elevated in strains carrying aneuploid chromosomes. We then tested the hypothesis that stresses conferred by heat and/or LiOAc exposure promote chromosome number changes during DNA transformation procedures. Indeed, a short pulse of very high temperature caused frequent gains and losses of multiple chromosomes or chromosome segments. Furthermore, milder heat exposure over longer periods caused increased levels of loss of heterozygosity. Nonetheless, aneuploid chromosomes were also unstable when strains were transformed by electroporation, which does not include a heat shock step. Thus, aneuploid strains are particularly prone to undergo changes in chromosome number during the stresses of DNA transformation protocols. Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Intron Size Correlates Positively with Recombination Rate in Caenorhabditis elegans
Date: 2004-03-01
Creator: Anuphap Prachumwat
Laura DeVincentis
Michael F. Palopoli
Access: Open access
- A negative correlation between intron size and recombination rate has been reported for the Drosophila melanogaster and human genomes. Population-genetic models suggest that this pattern could be caused by an interaction between recombination rate and the efficacy of natural selection. To test this idea, we examined variation in intron size and recombination rate across the genome of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Interestingly, we found that intron size correlated positively with recombination rate in this species.
Next-to-soft corrections to high energy scattering in QCD and gravity
Date: 2017-01-01
Creator: A. Luna
S. Melville
S. G. Naculich
C. D. White
Access: Open access
- We examine the Regge (high energy) limit of 4-point scattering in both QCD and gravity, using recently developed techniques to systematically compute all corrections up to next-to-leading power in the exchanged momentum i.e. beyond the eikonal approximation. We consider the situation of two scalar particles of arbitrary mass, thus generalising previous calculations in the literature. In QCD, our calculation describes power-suppressed corrections to the Reggeisation of the gluon. In gravity, we confirm a previous conjecture that next-to-soft corrections correspond to two independent deflection angles for the incoming particles. Our calculations in QCD and gravity are consistent with the well-known double copy relating amplitudes in the two theories.
Evolution in Candida albicans populations during a single passage through a mouse host
Date: 2009-07-01
Creator: Anja Forche
P. T. Magee
Anna Selmecki
Judith Berman
Georgiana, May
Access: Open access
- The mechanisms and rates by which genotypic and phenotypic variation is generated in opportunistic, eukaryotic pathogens during growth in hosts are not well understood. We evaluated genomewide genetic and phenotypic evolution in Candida albicans, an opportunistic fungal pathogen of humans, during passage through a mouse host (in vivo) and during propagation in liquid culture (in vitro). We found slower population growth and higher rates of chromosome-level genetic variation in populations passaged in vivo relative to those grown in vitro. Interestingly, the distribution of long-range loss of heterozygosity (LOH) and chromosome rearrangement events across the genome differed for the two growth environments, while rates of short-range LOH were comparable for in vivo and in vitro populations. Further, for the in vivo populations, there was a positive correlation of cells demonstrating genetic alterations and variation in colony growth and morphology. For in vitro populations, no variation in growth phenotypes was detected. Together, our results demonstrate that passage through a living host leads to slower growth and higher rates of genomic and phenotypic variation compared to in vitro populations. Results suggest that the dynamics of population growth and genomewide rearrangement contribute to the maintenance of a commensal and opportunistic life history of C. albicans. Copyright © 2009 by the Genetics Society of America.
Environmental issues in Russia
Date: 2008-12-01
Creator: Laura A. Henry
Vladimir Douhovnikoff
Access: Open access
- This review examines the literature available on the state of the environment and environmental protection in the Russian Federation. As the largest country on Earth, rich in natural resources and biodiversity, Russia's problems and policies have global consequences. Environmental quality and management are influenced by the legacy of Soviet economic planning and authoritarian governance, as well as by Russia's post-Soviet economic recession and current strategies of economic development. Russia achieved a reduction in some pollutants owing to the collapse of industrial production in the 1990s, but many environmental indicators suggest growing degradation. Russia has signed on to a number of international environmental agreements, but its record on implementation is mixed, and it discourages environmental activism. Scholarship on the Russian environment is a limited, but growing, field, constrained by challenges of data availability, yet it offers great potential for testing scientific and social scientific hypotheses. ©2008 by Annual Reviews.
Multistable solitons in higher-dimensional cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrödinger lattices
Date: 2009-01-15
Creator: C. Chong
R. Carretero-González
B. A. Malomed
P. G. Kevrekidis
Access: Open access
- We study the existence, stability, and mobility of fundamental discrete solitons in two- and three-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger lattices with a combination of cubic self-focusing and quintic self-defocusing onsite nonlinearities. Several species of stationary solutions are constructed, and bifurcations linking their families are investigated using parameter continuation starting from the anti-continuum limit, and also with the help of a variational approximation. In particular, a species of hybrid solitons, intermediate between the site- and bond-centered types of the localized states (with no counterpart in the 1D model), is analyzed in 2D and 3D lattices. We also discuss the mobility of multi-dimensional discrete solitons that can be set in motion by lending them kinetic energy exceeding the appropriately defined Peierls-Nabarro barrier; however, they eventually come to a halt, due to radiation loss. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.