Escherichia coli ATCC 35218 growth response was evaluated after repetitive cultivation in stepwise increasing antimicrobial agent concentrations (potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate) to observe its ...adaptation process to high weak-acid concentrations. The effect of antimicrobial (potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate) concentration (0 to 7,000 ppm) was tested using laboratory media. Cells adapted at 1,000 ppm were inoculated in media containing the same concentration of the antimicrobial; after that, cells were transferred to media containing a higher concentration, followed by repetitive cultivations. In every case, viable cells were determined by surface plating every hour up to 48 h. Logarithmic representations of survival or growing fraction were modeled using the Gompertz equation. Adapted and nonadapted cells were analyzed for plasmid presence as well as phosphofructokinase and succinate dehydrogenase activity. Bacterial growth was observed after adaptation processes in media formulated up to 7,000 ppm of potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate. Analyses of variance demonstrated that no significant difference (P > 0.05) in lag time or growth rate was observed among adapted cells cultured in media containing the studied concentrations for each of the antimicrobials tested. These results suggest that E. coli can be adapted to high weak-acid concentrations if the exposure is performed under sublethal conditions. Furthermore, there was demonstrated inhibition of the enzymes phosphofructokinase and succinate dehydrogenase by action of sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate, respectively. E. coli adaptation to antimicrobial agents was not related to plasmid presence but appears to be due to other action mechanisms.
A water-assisted microwave treatment was studied against the pathogenic bacterium Salmonella Typhimurium in fresh jalapeño peppers and coriander foliage. Vegetables were immersed in water and treated ...in a microwave oven at 950 W to reach up 63 °C: jalapeño pepper for 25 s and coriander foliage for 10 s. After the microwave heating, samples were cooled in water at 4 °C. Samples were observed with confocal microscope before and after treatment. The proposed protocols resulted in a reduction of 4–5 log cycles on the Salmonella population, which is the main issue from the microbiological viewpoint. Even color of the vegetables was affected by the treatments (p < 0.05) mainly by darkening in both vegetables and loss of greenness in jalapeño pepper, no changes in firmness were observed. Sensory acceptance of a salsa formulated with the treated vegetables had high scores (7.21 in a 9-points hedonic scale).
Missing-mass spectroscopy with the
3
H(
e
,
e′K
+
) reaction was carried out at Jefferson Lab’s (JLab) Hall A in Oct–Nov, 2018. The differential cross section for the
3
H(
γ
∗
,
K
+
)Λ
nn
was deduced ...at
ω
=
Ee
−
E
e′
= 2.102 GeV and at the forward
K
+
-scattering angle (0
°
≤ θ
γ
∗
K
≤ 5
°
) in the laboratory frame. Given typical predicted energies and decay widths, which are (
B
Λ
, Γ) = (−0.25, 0.8) and (−0.55, 4.7) MeV, the cross sections were found to be 11.2 ± 4.8(stat.)
+4.1
−2.1
(sys.) and 18.1 ± 6.8(stat.)
+4.2
−2.9
(sys.) nb/sr, respectively. The obtained result would impose a constraint for interaction models particularly between Λ and neutron by comparing to theoretical calculations.
The Electron Ion Collider (EIC) is the next generation of precision QCD facility to be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory in conjunction with Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory. There are a ...significant number of software and computing challenges that need to be overcome at the EIC. During the EIC detector proposal development period, the ECCE consortium began identifying and addressing these challenges in the process of producing a complete detector proposal based upon detailed detector and physics simulations. In this document, the software and computing efforts to produce this proposal are discussed; furthermore, the computing and software model and resources required for the future of ECCE are described.
We describe the design and performance the calorimeter systems used in the ECCE detector to achieve the overall performance specifications cost-effectively with careful consideration of appropriate ...technical and schedule risks. The calorimeter systems consist of three electromagnetic calorimeters, covering the combined pseudorapidity range from −3.7 to 3.8 and two hadronic calorimeters covering a combined range of −1.1<η<3.8. Key calorimeter performances which include energy and position resolutions, reconstruction efficiency, and particle identification will be presented.
This article presents a collection of simulation studies using the ECCE detector concept in the context of the EIC’s exclusive, diffractive, and tagging physics program, which aims to further explore ...the rich quark–gluon structure of nucleons and nuclei. To successfully execute the program, ECCE proposed to utilize the detector system close to the beamline to ensure exclusivity and tag ion beam/fragments for a particular reaction of interest. Preliminary studies confirm the proposed technology and design satisfy the requirements. The projected physics impact results are based on the projected detector performance from the simulation at 10 or 100 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. Additionally, insights related to a potential second EIC detector are documented, which could serve as a guidepost for future development.
The recently approved Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will provide a unique new opportunity for searches of charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) and other new physics scenarios. In contrast to the e↔μ ...CLFV transition for which very stringent limits exist, there is still a relatively large discovery space for the e→τ CLFV transition, potentially to be explored by the EIC. With the latest detector design of ECCE (EIC Comprehensive Chromodynamics Experiment) and projected integral luminosity of the EIC, we find the τ-leptons created in the DIS process ep→τX are expected to be identified with high efficiency. A first ECCE simulation study, restricted to the 3-prong τ-decay mode and with limited statistics for the Standard Model backgrounds, estimates that the EIC will be able to improve the current exclusion limit on e→τ CLFV by an order of magnitude. The very high vertex resolution of the ECCE detector configuration plays a critical role in τ identification.
The evaluation of the measurement of double-spin asymmetries for charge-separated pions and kaons produced in deep-inelastic scattering from the proton using the ECCE detector design concept is ...presented, for the combinations of lepton and hadron beam energies of 5 × 41 GeV2 and 18 × 275 GeV2. The study uses unpolarised simulated data that are processed through a full GEANT simulation of the detector. These data are then reweighted at the parton level with DSSV helicity distributions and DSS fragmentation functions, in order to generate the relevant asymmetries, and subsequently analysed. The performed analysis shows that the ECCE detector concept provides the resolution and acceptance, with a broad coverage in kinematic phase space, needed for a robust extraction of asymmetries. This, in turn, allows for a precise extraction of sea-quark helicity distributions.
The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is a cutting-edge accelerator facility that will study the nature of the “glue” that binds the building blocks of the visible matter in the universe. The proposed ...experiment will be realized at Brookhaven National Laboratory in approximately 10 years from now, with detector design and R&D currently ongoing. Notably, EIC is one of the first large-scale facilities to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) already starting from the design and R&D phases. The EIC Comprehensive Chromodynamics Experiment (ECCE) is a consortium that proposed a detector design based on a 1.5 T solenoid. The EIC detector proposal review concluded that the ECCE design will serve as the reference design for an EIC detector. Herein we describe a comprehensive optimization of the ECCE tracker using AI. The work required a complex parametrization of the simulated detector system. Our approach dealt with an optimization problem in a multidimensional design space driven by multiple objectives that encode the detector performance, while satisfying several mechanical constraints. We describe our strategy and show results obtained for the ECCE tracking system. The AI-assisted design is agnostic to the simulation framework and can be extended to other sub-detectors or to a system of sub-detectors to further optimize the performance of the EIC detector.
