Sanjuan, R., Nebot, M., Chirico, N., Mansky, L. M., & Belshaw, R. (2010). Viral Mutation Rates. J. Virol., 84(19), 9733–9748.
Abstract: Accurate estimates of virus mutation rates are important to understand the evolution of the viruses and to combat them. However, methods of estimation are varied and often complex. Here, we critically review over 40 original studies and establish criteria to facilitate comparative analyses. The mutation rates of 23 viruses are presented as substitutions per nucleotide per cell infection (s/n/c) and corrected for selection bias where necessary, using a new statistical method. The resulting rates range from 10(-8) to 10(-6) s/n/c for DNA viruses and from 10(-6) to 10(-4) s/n/c for RNA viruses. Similar to what has been shown previously for DNA viruses, there appears to be a negative correlation between mutation rate and genome size among RNA viruses, but this result requires further experimental testing. Contrary to some suggestions, the mutation rate of retroviruses is not lower than that of other RNA viruses. We also show that nucleotide substitutions are on average four times more common than insertions/deletions (indels). Finally, we provide estimates of the mutation rate per nucleotide per strand copying, which tends to be lower than that per cell infection because some viruses undergo several rounds of copying per cell, particularly double-stranded DNA viruses. A regularly updated virus mutation rate data set will be available at www.uv.es/rsanjuan/virmut.
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Rafi Alam, M., Ruiz Simo, I., Sajjad Athar, M., & Vicente Vacas, M. J. (2010). Weak kaon production off the nucleon. Phys. Rev. D, 82(3), 033001–8pp.
Abstract: The weak kaon production off the nucleon induced by neutrinos is studied at the low and intermediate energies of interest for some ongoing and future neutrino oscillation experiments. This process is also potentially important for the analysis of proton decay experiments. We develop a microscopical model based on the SU(3) chiral Lagrangians. The basic parameters of the model are f pi, the pion decay constant, Cabibbo's angle, the proton and neutron magnetic moments, and the axial vector coupling constants for the baryons octet, D and F, that are obtained from the analysis of the semileptonic decays of neutron and hyperons. The studied mechanisms are the main source of kaon production for neutrino energies up to 1.2 to 1.5 GeV for the various channels and the cross sections are large enough to be amenable to be measured by experiments such as Minerva and T2K.
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BABAR Collaboration(del Amo Sanchez, P. et al), Azzolini, V., Lopez-March, N., Martinez-Vidal, F., Milanes, D. A., & Oyanguren, A. (2010). Observation of the rare decay B-0 -> K-S(0) K-+/-pi(-/+). Phys. Rev. D, 82(3), 031101–8pp.
Abstract: We report an analysis of charmless hadronic decays of neutral B mesons to the final state (KSK +/-)-K-0 pi(-/+) (sic), using a data sample of (465 +/- 5) x 10(6) B (B) over bar events collected with the BABAR detector at the Gamma(4S) resonance. We observe an excess of signal events with a significance of 5.2 standard deviations including systematic uncertainties and measure the branching fraction to be B(B-0 -> (KSK +/-)-K-0 pi(-/+) (sic) (3.2 +/- 0.5 +/- 0.3) x 10(-6), where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively.
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de Putter, R., & Takada, M. (2010). Halo-galaxy lensing: A full sky approach. Phys. Rev. D, 82(10), 103522–9pp.
Abstract: The halo-galaxy lensing correlation function or the average tangential shear profile over sampled halos is a very powerful means of measuring the halo masses, the mass profile, and the halo-mass correlation function of very large separations in the linear regime. We reformulate the halo-galaxy lensing correlation in harmonic space. We find that, counterintuitively, errors in the conventionally used flat-sky approximation remain at a percent level even at very small angles. The errors increase at larger angles and for lensing halos at lower redshifts: the effect is at a few percent level at the baryonic acoustic oscillation scales for lensing halos of z similar to 0.2, and comparable with the effect of primordial non-Gaussianity with f(NL) similar to 10 at large separations. Our results allow one to readily estimate/correct for the full-sky effect on a high-precision measurement of the average shear profile available from upcoming wide-area lensing surveys.
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KTeV Collaboration(Abouzaid, E. et al), & Passemar, E. (2010). Dispersive analysis of KLmu3 and KLe3 scalar and vector form factors using KTeV data. Phys. Rev. D, 81(5), 052001–9pp.
Abstract: Using the published KTeV samples of K-L -> pi(+/-)e(-/+)nu and K-L -> pi(+/-)mu(-/+)nu decays, we perform a reanalysis of the scalar and vector form factors based on the dispersive parametrization. We obtain phase-space integrals I-K(e) = 0.15446 +/- 0.00025 and I-K(mu) = 0.10219 +/- 0.00025. For the scalar form factor parametrization, the only free parameter is the normalized form factor value at the Callan-Treiman point (C); our best-fit results in InC = 0.1915 +/- 0.0122. We also study the sensitivity of C to different parametrizations of the vector form factor. The results for the phase-space integrals and C are then used to make tests of the standard model. Finally, we compare our results with lattice QCD calculations of F-K/F-pi and f(+)(0).
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