The pion form factor: Sudakov suppressions and intrinsic transverse momentum

It is demonstrated that any attempt to calculate the perturbative QCD contribution to the pion form factor requires the inclusion of intrinsic transverse momentum besides Sudakov form factors. For momentum transfers of the order of a few GeV the intrinsic transverse momentum leads to a substantial suppression of the perturbative QCD contribution.Comment: LaTeX, 12 pages, 3 figures included with epsf-style option (postscript files added as uuencoded tar-compressed file), CERN-TH.6900, WU-B 93-1

Semi-inclusive structure functions in the spectator model

We establish the relationship between distribution and fragmentation functions and the structure functions appearing in the cross section of polarized 1-particle inclusive deep-inelastic scattering. We present spectator model evaluations of these structure functions focusing on the case of an outgoing spin-1/2 baryon. Distribution functions obtained in the spectator model are known to fairly agree at low energy scales with global parameterizations extracted, for instance, from totally inclusive DIS data. Therefore, we expect it to give good hints on the functional dependence of the structure functions on the scaling variables x(Bjorken), z and on the transverse momentum of the observed outgoing hadron, P_{h\perp}. Presently, this dependence is not very well known, but experiments are planned in the near future.Comment: 19 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Eur. Phys. J.

Transfer of antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus is a serious human pathogen with remarkable adaptive powers. Antibiotic-resistant clones rapidly emerge mainly by acquisition of antibiotic-resistance genes from other S. aureus strains or even from other genera. Transfer is mediated by a diverse complement of mobile genetic elements and occurs primarily by conjugation or bacteriophage transduction, with the latter traditionally being perceived as the primary route. Recent work on conjugation and transduction suggests that transfer by these mechanisms may be more extensive than previously thought, in terms of the range of plasmids that can be transferred by conjugation and the efficiency with which transduction occurs. Here, we review the main routes of antibiotic resistance gene transfer in S. aureus in the context of its biology as a human commensal and a life-threatening pathogen

The Overlap Representation of Skewed Quark and Gluon Distributions

Within the framework of light-cone quantisation we derive the complete and exact overlap representation of skewed parton distributions for unpolarised and polarised quarks and gluons. Symmetry properties and phenomenological applications are discussed.Comment: LaTex, 36 pages. v2: incorrect paper attached originally. v3: erratum adde

Classification of Big Data with Application to Imaging Genetics

Big data applications, such as medical imaging and genetics, typically generate datasets that consist of few observations n on many more variables p, a scenario that we denote as p>>n. Traditional data processing methods are often insufficient for extracting information out of big data. This calls for the development of new algorithms that can deal with the size, complexity, and the special structure of such datasets. In this paper, we consider the problem of classifying p>>n data and propose a classification method based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Traditional LDA depends on the covariance estimate of the data, but when p>>n the sample covariance estimate is singular. The proposed method estimates the covariance by using a sparse version of noisy principal component analysis (nPCA). The use of sparsity in this setting aims at automatically selecting variables that are relevant for classification. In experiments, the new method is compared to state-of-the art methods for big data problems using both simulated datasets and imaging genetics datasets

Calculation of fragmentation functions in two-hadron semi-inclusive processes

We investigate the properties of interference fragmentation functions arising from the emission of two leading hadrons inside the same jet for inclusive lepton-nucleon deep-inelastic scattering. Using an extended spectator model for the mechanism of the hadronization, we give a complete calculation and numerical estimates for the examples of a proton-pion pair produced with invariant mass on the Roper resonance, and of two pions produced with invariant mass close to the $\rho$ mass. We discuss azimuthal angular dependence of the leading order cross section to point up favourable conditions for extracting transversity from experimental data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures in .eps format, AIP and epsfig styles included, to appear in proceedings of "Second Workshop on Physics with an Electron Polarized Light Ion Collider", MIT, Sept. 14-16, 200