The Nab experiment will measure the correlation a between the momenta of the beta particle and antineutrino in neutron decay as well as the Fierz term b which distorts the beta spectrum.
Synthetic photocontrolled proteins could be powerful tools for probing cellular chemistry. Several previous attempts to produce such systems by incorporating photoisomerizable chromophores into ...biomolecules have led to photocontrol but with incomplete reversibility, where the chromophore becomes trapped in one photoisomeric state. We report here the design of a modified GCN4-bZIP DNA-binding protein with an azobenzene chromophore introduced between Cys residues at positions 262 and 269 (S262C, N269C) within the zipper domain. As predicted, the trans form of the chromophore destabilizes the helical structure of the coiled-coil region of GCN4-bZIP, leading to diminished DNA binding relative to wild type. Trans-to-cis photoisomerization of the chromophore increases helical content and substantially enhances DNA binding. The system is observed to be readily reversible; thermal relaxation of the chromophore to the trans state and concomitant dissociation of the protein−DNA complex occurs with τ1/2 ∼10 min at 37 °C. It appears that conformational dynamics in the zipper domain make the transition state for isomerization readily available so that retention of reversible switching is observed.
Cross-section values for Compton scattering on the proton were measured at 25 kinematic settings over the range s=5-11 and -t=2-7 GeV2 with a statistical accuracy of a few percent. The scaling power ...for the s dependence of the cross section at fixed center-of-mass angle was found to be 8.0+/-0.2, strongly inconsistent with the prediction of perturbative QCD. The observed cross-section values are in fair agreement with the calculations using the handbag mechanism, in which the external photons couple to a single quark.
The mean square polarizability radii of the proton have been measured for the first time in a virtual-Compton-scattering experiment performed at the MIT-Bates out-of-plane scattering facility. ...Response functions and polarizabilities obtained from a dispersion analysis of the data at Q2 = 0.057 GeV2/c2 are in agreement with O(p3) heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. The data support the dominance of mesonic effects in the polarizabilities.
The beam-spin asymmetries in the hard exclusive electroproduction of photons on the proton (e p-->epgamma) were measured over a wide kinematic range and with high statistical accuracy. These ...asymmetries result from the interference of the Bethe-Heitler process and of deeply virtual Compton scattering. Over the whole kinematic range (x(B) from 0.11 to 0.58, Q2 from 1 to 4.8 GeV2, -t from 0.09 to 1.8 GeV2), the azimuthal dependence of the asymmetries is compatible with expectations from leading-twist dominance, A approximately a sinphi/(1+c cosphi). This extensive set of data can thus be used to constrain significantly the generalized parton distributions of the nucleon in the valence quark sector.
We report the first precision measurement of the parity-violating asymmetry in the direction of proton momentum with respect to the neutron spin, in the reaction 3He ( n , p )3H, using the capture of ...polarized cold neutrons in an unpolarized active 3He target. The asymmetry is a result of the weak interaction between nucleons, which remains one of the least well-understood aspects of electroweak theory. The measurement provides an important benchmark for modern effective field theory and potential model calculations. Measurements like this are necessary to determine the spin-isospin structure of the hadronic weak interaction. Our asymmetry result is APV = 1.55 ± 0.97 ( stat ) ± 0.24 ( sys ) × 10−8, which has the smallest uncertainty of any hadronic parity-violating asymmetry measurement so far.
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