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At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources
PubMed2000

The discovery of the 27-nm Norwalk virus: an historic perspective.

In 1972, a 27-nm virus-like particle was discovered by use of immune electron microscopy (IEM) in an infectious stool filtrate derived from an outbreak of gastroenteritis in an elementary school in Norwalk, Ohio. IEM enabled the direct visualization of antigen-antibody interaction, as the particles were aggregated and coated by specific antibodies. This allowed the recognition and identification of a 27-nm virus-like particle that did not have a distinctive morphology, was low-titered, and was among the smallest viruses known. Serum antibody responses to the 27-nm particle were demonstrated in key individuals infected under natural or experimental conditions; this and other evidence suggested that this virus-like particle was the etiologic agent of the Norwalk gastroenteritis outbreak. The fastidious 27-nm Norwalk virus is now considered to be the prototype strain of a group of noncultivatable viruses that are important etiologic agents of epidemic gastroenteritis in adults and older children.

Gastroenteritis↗
PubMed2007

The role of supernova neutrinos on molecular homochirality.

Electroweak parity violating interaction between supernova (SN) neutrinos and electrons of a simple chiral molecule is studied related to the origin of molecular homochirality. Appearance of supernova remnants inside molecular clouds favours the interaction of SN-neutrinos with interstellar molecules, leading to a energetic difference between the two enantiomers of the order of 10(-5) eV. This energetic difference is closer to the thermic energy of the interstellar medium, so molecular homochirality could be enhanced in molecular clouds containing supernova remnants inside it due to neutrino interaction.

Elementary Particles↗
PubMed2001

Observation of high-energy neutrinos using Cerenkov detectors embedded deep in Antarctic ice.

Neutrinos are elementary particles that carry no electric charge and have little mass. As they interact only weakly with other particles, they can penetrate enormous amounts of matter, and therefore have the potential to directly convey astrophysical information from the edge of the Universe and from deep inside the most cataclysmic high-energy regions. The neutrino's great penetrating power, however, also makes this particle difficult to detect. Underground detectors have observed low-energy neutrinos from the Sun and a nearby supernova, as well as neutrinos generated in the Earth's atmosphere. But the very low fluxes of high-energy neutrinos from cosmic sources can be observed only by much larger, expandable detectors in, for example, deep water or ice. Here we report the detection of upwardly propagating atmospheric neutrinos by the ice-based Antarctic muon and neutrino detector array (AMANDA). These results establish a technology with which to build a kilometre-scale neutrino observatory necessary for astrophysical observations.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1987

Explanation of parity nonconservation.

Space inversion and other discrete symmetries are treated within the frame of a theory of fundamental forces based only on general considerations of causality, symmetry, and stability, without ad hoc differential equations. The basic space-time M is the Einstein universe R(1) x S(3) as a causal (or conformal) rather than a pseudo-Riemannian manifold. Its connected symmetry group is then a 15-parameter group G locally equivalent to SO(2, 4), while the isometry group K of the Einstein universe is a 7-parameter subgroup. Correlation with conventional relativistic theory is based on a canonical imbedding of Minkowski space M(0) into M, together with the unique extendability of all transformations of the scaling-extended Poincaré group P from M(0) to global transformations on M. The fundamental fermion field F and boson field B are here restricted to be real and are fully invariant under G(e), where the superscript e denotes the inclusion of space and time inversions. The role of C on F is taken over by a real matrix having the eigenvalues +/-i, that commutes with G but anticommutes with space inversion. The spin space for B consists of the real linear transformations on that for F. There is a corresponding natural total Lagrangian that is both G(e) and O(2)-gauge invariant, the latter leading to lepton and baryon number conservation, and which is nonparametric except for scale. The Weyl and Maxwell equations are deduced, and compelling identifications made for neutrinos and the photon. The e and mu neutrino pairs occur in strikingly inequivalent positions in F, appearing symmetric only in the conventional relativistic limit R --> infinity, where R is the ( G-invariant) fundamental length interpretable as the radius of the space S(3). The photon occurs as the lowest member of a coherent subfamily of B that includes natural candidates for bare versions of the W and Z particles. In the relativistic limit the interaction Lagrangian becomes a sum over all elementary processes, one of which appears as quantum electrodynamics with Majorana-type electrons.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1992

In search of a physical theory of time.

The variable time considered in science is a measurement. The relation of time to other variables is expressed in rates, and the variable time is seldom explicitly included in equations describing chemical reactions or radioactive decays. Recalling that the Greek word atom is applicable to indivisible particles in both spatial and temporal worlds, the term chronon is proposed to designate elementary particles of time in parallel to the atom in space. Considerations of interactions of chronons with material and nonmaterial objects could promote understanding of several paradoxes in physical and biological sciences.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2000

Collisional dark matter and the origin of massive black holes

If the cosmological dark matter is primarily in the form of an elementary particle which has mass m(p) and cross section for self-interaction sigma, then seed black holes (formed in stellar collapse) will grow in a Hubble time t(H) due to accretion of the dark matter to a mass, M(H) = sqrt[IC(9)(A)t(H)(sigma/G(3)m(p)c(2))] = 7.1x10(6)(sigma/m(p))(1/2)V(9/2)(c)t(1/2)(H,15) solar masses. Here I is a numerical factor, C(A) the galactic velocity dispersion, and V(c) its rotation velocity. For the same values of ( sigma/m(p)) that are attractive with respect to other cosmological desiderata, this produces massive black holes in the (10(6)-10(9))M( middle dot in circle) range observed, with the same dependence on a V(c) seen, and with a time dependence consistent with observations. Other astrophysical consequences of collisional dark matter and tests of the idea are noted.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2006

Transport on adaptive random lattices.

In this paper, we present a method for the solution of those linear transport processes that may be described by a master equation, such as electron, neutron, and photon transport, and more exotic variants thereof. We base our algorithm on a Markov process on a Voronoi-Delaunay grid, a nonperiodic lattice which is derived from a random point process that is chosen to optimally represent certain properties of the medium through which the transport occurs. Our grid is locally translation and rotation invariant in the mean. We illustrate our approach by means of a particular example, in which the expectation value of the length of a grid line corresponds to the local mean free path. In this example, the lattice is a direct representation of the "free path space" of the medium. Subsequently, transport is defined as simply moving particles from one node to the next, interactions taking place at each point. We derive the statistical properties of such lattices, describe the limiting behavior, and show how interactions are incorporated as global coefficients. Two elementary linear transport problems are discussed: that of free ballistic transport, and the transport of particles through a scattering medium. We also mention a combination of these two. We discuss the efficiency of our method, showing that it is much faster than most other methods because the operation count does not scale with the number of sources. We test our method by focusing on the transport of ionizing radiation through a static medium, and show that the computed results for the classical test case of an ionization front expanding in a homogeneous medium agree perfectly with the analytic solution. We finish by illustrating the efficiency and flexibility of our method with the results of a simulation of the reionization of the large scale structure of the Universe.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2003

Three-dimensional imaging of atomic four-body processes.

To understand the physical processes that occur in nature we need to obtain a solid concept about the 'fundamental' forces acting between pairs of elementary particles. It is also necessary to describe the temporal and spatial evolution of many mutually interacting particles under the influence of these forces. This latter step, known as the few-body problem, remains an important unsolved problem in physics. Experiments involving atomic collisions represent a useful testing ground for studying the few-body problem. For the single ionization of a helium atom by charged particle impact, kinematically complete experiments have been performed since 1969 (ref. 7). The theoretical analysis of such experiments was thought to yield a complete picture of the basic features of the collision process, at least for large collision energies. These conclusions are, however, almost exclusively based on studies of restricted electron-emission geometries. Here, we report three-dimensional images of the complete electron emission pattern for the single ionization of helium by the impact of C6+ ions of energy 100 MeV per a.m.u. (a four-body system) and observe features that have not been predicted by any published theoretical model. We propose a higher-order ionization mechanism, involving the interaction between the projectile and the target nucleus, to explain these features.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1996

Stochastic particle formulation of the vesicle hypothesis. Relevance to short-term phenomena.

Based on the vesicle hypothesis, the modes of elementary quantum-vesicle interactions have been formulated in terms of probabilities of induced and spontaneous interstate quanta transitions and generalized within the framework of the previously developed theory of the double barrier synapse. Among the three allowed states for a quantum, the transition state is a novel formulation for the fraction of immediately available quanta governed by both vesicle and presynaptic membranes. The parameters of the model were determined by fitting solutions to the experimental curves representing effects of single pulse and short train activation on transmitter release at the frog neuromuscular junction. Qualitative differences in particle physics of transmitter release found under low quantal outputs on one hand and normal transmission on the other allowed the formulation of the uncertainty hypothesis and the quantum condition of synaptic homeostasis.

Computer Simulation↗
PubMed2007

Neutrino astrophysics: a new tool for exploring the universe.

In the past four decades a new type of astronomy has emerged, where instead of looking up into the sky, "telescopes" are buried miles underground or deep under water or ice and search not for photons (that is, light), but rather for particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are nearly massless particles that interact very weakly with matter. The detection of neutrinos emitted by the Sun and by a nearby supernova provided direct tests of the theory of stellar evolution and led to modifications of the standard model describing the properties of elementary particles. At present, several very large neutrino detectors are being constructed, aiming at the detection of the most powerful sources of energy and particles in the universe. The hope is that the detection of neutrinos from these sources, which are extra-Galactic and are most likely powered by mass accretion onto black holes, will not only allow study of the sources, but, much like solar neutrinos, will also provide new information about fundamental properties of matter.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Plasmon hybridization in spherical nanoparticles.

We show that the plasmon resonances in single metallic nanoshells and multiple concentric metallic shell particles can be understood in terms of interaction between the bare plasmon modes of the individual surfaces of the metallic shells. The interaction of these elementary plasmons results in hybridized plasmons whose energy can be tuned over a wide range of optical and infrared wavelengths. The approach can easily be generalized to more complex systems, such as dimers and small nanoparticle aggregates.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1983

[The applicability of pions to cancer radiotherapy. II. Theoretical analysis of the capture and absorption of pions in polymer].

A theoretical analysis was attempted to give a remaining number of pi meson, N(X), as function of depth X in a target, lucite as model, under a beam of pi meson. Under the assumption of three different elementary processes, pi-e Rutherford scattering, pi-decay and pi-nucleus interaction, N (X) was theoretically evaluated. It was shown that the estimated stopped points of pi particles agreed well with the experimentally obtained data if the pi-e Rutherford scattering were the main cause of pi momentum reduction. Since the decay of pi meson is negligible in the reduction of pi meson, N (X) is mainly due to pi-nucleus reaction in the region of a small depth but it is due to pi-nucleus Rutherford scattering at a point less than 1.5 cm before the stopped point of pi.

Elementary Particles↗
PubMed2006

Quasiparticle breakdown in a quantum spin liquid.

Much of modern condensed matter physics is understood in terms of elementary excitations, or quasiparticles--fundamental quanta of energy and momentum. Various strongly interacting atomic systems are successfully treated as a collection of quasiparticles with weak or no interactions. However, there are interesting limitations to this description: in some systems the very existence of quasiparticles cannot be taken for granted. Like unstable elementary particles, quasiparticles cannot survive beyond a threshold where certain decay channels become allowed by conservation laws; their spectrum terminates at this threshold. Such quasiparticle breakdown was first predicted for an exotic state of matter--super-fluid 4He at temperatures close to absolute zero, a quantum Bose liquid where zero-point atomic motion precludes crystallization. Here we show, using neutron scattering, that quasiparticle breakdown can also occur in a quantum magnet and, by implication, in other systems with Bose quasiparticles. We have measured spin excitations in a two-dimensional quantum magnet, piperazinium hexachlorodicuprate (PHCC), in which spin-1/2 copper ions form a non-magnetic quantum spin liquid, and find remarkable similarities with excitations in superfluid 4He. We observe a threshold momentum beyond which the quasiparticle peak merges with the two-quasiparticle continuum. It then acquires a finite energy width and becomes indistinguishable from a leading-edge singularity, so that excited states are no longer quasiparticles but occupy a wide band of energy. Our findings have important ramifications for understanding excitations with gapped spectra in many condensed matter systems, ranging from band insulators to high-transition-temperature superconductors.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1976

A technique for measuring the variation of photon spectrum from X-ray generators over the mains voltage cycle.

The variation in current and accelerating voltage across an X-ray tube, that occurs over the mains voltage waveform cycle, produces changes in photon flux and spectrum shape. A knowledge of these changes is required to provide an understanding of the parameters affecting X-ray output. Variation in the photon flux will cause distortion of a measured 'mean' spectrum if the dead time of the spectrometry system employed varies over the waveform cycle. A system has been developed that enables the spectrometer to be synchronized to the mains voltage cycle so that variations in photon flux and the instantaneous spectra at selected parts of this cycle can be measured. The variation in photon flux is dependent upon the type of power supplies (both high and low tension). the tube current and the degree of filtration employed. Examples are given of the ripple of photon output due to the voltage and current ripple for a nominally constant potential generator and a half-wave rectified type. The way in which they interact to produce the measured variation is shown.

Elementary Particles↗
PubMed1975

Peculiarities of biological action of hadrons of space radiation.

Biological investigations in space enable one to make a significant contribution on high-energy hadrons to biological effects under the influence of factors of space flights. Physical and molecular principles of the action of high-energy hadrons are analysed. Genetic and somatic hadron effects produced by the secondary radiation from 70 GeV protons have been studied experimentally. The high biological effectiveness of hadrons, great variability in biological effects, and specifically of their action, are associated with strong interactions of high-energy hadrons. These are the probability of nuclear interaction with any atom nucleus, generation of a great number of secondary particles (among them, probably, highly effective multicharged and heavy nuclei, antiprotons, pi(-)-mesons), and the spatial distribution of secondary particles as a narrow cone with extremely high density of particles in its first part. The secondary radiation generated by high- and superhigh-energy hadrons upon their interaction with the spaceship is likely to be the greatest hazard of radiation to the crew during space flights.

Bacteriophage T4↗
PubMed2000

Effect of earth's orbital chirality on elementary particles and unification of chiral asymmetries in life on different levels.

Life is chirally asymmetric at all scales from microscopic elementary particles to molecular and macroscopic levels. How these chiral asymmetries in life on different levels are unified remains unanswered. It has been demonstrated that both the biomolecular homochirality and biological rhythms can be caused by the right-handed helical force-field of the Earth's orbital chirality (EOC). Similar to the helical biomolecules (1), it is here suggested that the right-handed EOC force-field could make the right-handed elementary particles more stable than their left-handed enantiomers to result in the symmetry violation of elementary particles, and the EOC could also cause the macroscopic predominant selection of right-handed asymmetries of living objects (e.g. the helical seashells and plants). Our studies indicated that the weak force in weak interaction may only be a form of the EOC force-field at the microscopic particle level, and the chiral asymmetries in life on various levels could be unified by the natural right-handed EOC force-field. Moreover, the chiral and quantum effects, time, mass, rhythms and relativity could also be unified by the interaction of the EOC force-field with chiral motions and structures under certain conditions.

Circadian Rhythm↗