To What Inanimate Matter Are We Most Closely Related and Does the Origin of Life Harbor Meaning?

The question concerning the meaning of life is important, but it immediately confronts the present authors with insurmountable obstacles from a philosophical standpoint, as it would require us to define not only what we hold to be life, but what we hold to be meaning in addition, requiring us to do both in a properly researched context. We unconditionally surrender to that challenge. Instead, we offer a vernacular, armchair approach to life’s origin and meaning, with some layman’s thoughts on the meaning of origins as viewed from the biologist’s standpoint. One can observe that biologists generally approach the concept of biological meaning in the context of evolution. This is the basis for the broad resonance behind Dobzhansky’s appraisal that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Biologists try to understand living things in the historical context of how they arose, without giving much thought to the definition of what life or living things are, which for a biologist is usually not an interesting question in the practical context of daily dealings with organisms. Do humans generally understand life’s meaning in the context of history? If we consider the problem of life’s origin, the question of what constitutes a living thing becomes somewhat more acute for the biologist, though not more answerable, because it is inescapable that there was a time when there were no organisms on Earth, followed by a time when there were, the latter time having persisted in continuity to the present. This raises the question of where, in that transition, chemicals on Earth became alive, requiring, in turn, a set of premises for how life arose in order to conceptualize the problem in relation to organisms we know today, including ourselves, which brings us to the point of this paper: In the same way that cultural narratives for origins always start with a setting, scientific narratives for origins also always start with a setting, a place on Earth or elsewhere where we can imagine what happened for the sake of structuring both the problem and the narrative for its solution. This raises the question of whether scientific origins settings convey meaning to humans in that they suggest to us from what kind of place and what kinds of chemicals we are descended, that is, to which inanimate things we are most closely related.

Attenuation of airborne noise by wet and dry neoprene diving hoods

The insertion losses of five neoprene diving hoods of varying thicknesses (2 mm–9 mm) were measured in one-third octave bands using a Kemar manikin in a diffuse broadband noise field. The insertion losses were measured in air for both dry and wet hoods. The insertion loss was calculated as the sound level in each frequency band measured with the hood, minus the corresponding sound level measured without the hood. The insertion losses were similar for both ears of the manikin. Both wet and dry hoods neither attenuated nor amplified sound below 250 Hz. Between 315 Hz–1250 Hz, the insertion loss of each hood was negative, displaying a broad resonance with a gain of 6–8 dB. In this frequency range the hood acts as a mass-spring system, resonating like a drum skin when stretched over the ears. Above 1000 Hz, the insertion loss increased with frequency (10 dB per octave), reaching a maximum of 5000 Hz–6000 Hz. Wetting each hood did not significantly affect the insertion loss; the 'drum-skin' resonance frequency was marginally lower with a wet hood, and insertion losses may be marginally greater between 1000 Hz– 10 000 Hz. The resonance frequency decreased with increasing thicknesses of hood, and the insertion loss at frequencies above the resonance increased with hood thickness.

APPLICATION OF THE TRIANGULATED CATEGORY TO THE EXPLANATION OF FULLY-CHARM TETRAQUARK MASS

The discovery in July 2020 of fully-charm tetraquark led to the need for its theoretical explanation. For investigation of such complex four-quark formation, the modern mathematical apparatus of the theory of derived categories is used. By representing diquarks as solitonic objects in terms of sheaves, one can explain the measured mass of the broad resonance of fully-charm tetraquarks consisting of di-charmonia.

Hidden-Beauty Broad Resonance Yb(10890) in Thermal QCD

In this work, the mass and pole residue of resonance Yb is studied by using QCD sum rules approach at finite temperature. Resonance Yb is described by a diquark-antidiquark tetraquark current, and contributions to operator product expansion are calculated by including QCD condensates up to dimension six. Temperature dependencies of the mass mYb and the pole residue λYb are investigated. It is seen that near a critical temperature (Tc≃190 MeV), the values of mYb and λYb decrease to 87% and to 44% of their values at vacuum.

Evidence of the true Higgs boson HT at the LHC Run 2

The aim of this paper is to compare the recent LHC data at [Formula: see text] =13 TeV with our previous theoretical proposal that the true Higgs boson HT should be a broad heavy resonance with mass around 750 GeV. We focus on the so-called golden channel HT[Formula: see text]ZZ where the pair of Z bosons decay leptonically to [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] being either an electron or a muon. We use the data collected by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at [Formula: see text] = 13 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 36.1 and 77.4 fb[Formula: see text] respectively. We find that the experimental data from both the LHC collaborations do display in the golden channel a rather broad resonance structure around 700 GeV with a sizeable statistical significance. Our theoretical expectations seem to be in fair good agreement with the experimental observations. Combining the data from both the ATLAS and CMS collaborations we obtain an evidence of the heavy Higgs boson in this channel with an estimated statistical significance of more than five standard deviations.

A hybrid model description of 13C(p,γ)14N capture reaction

The radiative capture reaction [Formula: see text] is analyzed using a hybrid model approach where the non-resonant component has been constructed employing the potential model with a folded M3Y potential. The one-level Breit–Wigner formula has been used to estimate the cross-sections of the resonant decays of dominant ([Formula: see text]) state of [Formula: see text]N at 8.06[Formula: see text]MeV. The contribution of the broad resonance at 8.77[Formula: see text]MeV ([Formula: see text]) has been dealt with differently. While Breit–Wigner formula has been used where the excitation function data exist, the [Formula: see text]-matrix prediction for the cross-section of decay to a bound state of [Formula: see text]N from the broad resonance has been used where excitation function data are not available. The single particle spectroscopic factors for ground and six excited states of [Formula: see text]N have been obtained from the fits. The resulting astrophysical [Formula: see text]-factor at zero relative energy is [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]keV b. The value is in good agreement with the previously reported [Formula: see text]-matrix result and also consistent within error bars with the published values.

KN scattering amplitude revisited in a chiral unitary approach and a possible broad resonance in S = +1 channel

We revisit the $KN$ scattering amplitude in order to investigate the possibility of the existence of a broad resonance in the $I=0$$KN$ channel around the energy of 1617 MeV with 305 MeV width. We use the chiral unitary model to describe the $KN$ scattering amplitudes and determine the model parameters so as to reproduce the differential cross sections of the $K^{+}N$ scatterings and the $I=0$ and 1 total cross sections up to $p_{\rm lab} = 800$ MeV/c, from which inelastic contributions start to be significant. Performing analytic continuation of the determined amplitude to the complex energy plane, we find a pole for a broad resonance state. We point out that the rapid increase appearing in the $I=0$ total cross section around $p_{\rm lab}=500$ MeV/c is a hint of the possible broad resonance of strangeness $S=+1$.

THEORETICAL STUDY OF THE 11Li β DECAY INTO THE DEUTERON CHANNEL IN A CLUSTER MODEL

The β-decay process of the 11 Li halo nucleus into 9 Li and d is reanalyzed within a three-body model. The 11 Li nucleus is described as a 9 Li +n+n system in hyperspherical coordinates. The transition probability per time and energy units measured in a recent experiment can be reproduced with a broad resonance located around 0.8 MeV and a weak absorption from the 9 Li + d final channel.

EXCLUSIVE PRODUCTION OF π+π- PAIRS IN PROTON-PROTON AND PROTON-ANTIPROTON COLLISIONS

We report on a detailed investigation of four-body pp → ppπ+π- and [Formula: see text] reactions which constitute an irreducible background to three-body processes pp → ppM, where M is a broad resonance in the π+π- channel, e.g. M = σ, ρ0, f0(980), f2(1275), f0(1500). We include double-diffractive contribution (both pomeron and reggeon exchanges) as well as the pion-pion rescattering contributions. The first process dominates at higher energies and small pion-pion invariant masses while the second becomes important at lower energies and higher pion-pion invariant masses. We compare our results with the experimental data. We make predictions for future experiments at PANDA, RHIC, Tevatron and LHC energies. The two-dimensional distribution in rapidity space of pions (yπ+, yπ-) is particularly interesting. The higher the incident energy, the higher preference for the same-hemisphere emission of pions. The processes considered constitute a sizeable contribution to the total nucleon-nucleon cross section as well as to pion inclusive cross section.

REEXAMINATION OF ASTROPHYSICAL RESONANCE-REACTION-RATE EQUATIONS FOR AN ISOLATED, NARROW RESONANCE

The well-known astrophysical resonant-reaction-rate (RRR) equations for an isolated narrow resonance induced by the charged particles have been reexamined. The validity of those assumptions used in deriving the classical analytic equations has been checked, and found that these analytic equations only hold for certain circumstances. It shows the customary definition of "narrow" is inappropriate or ambiguous in some sense, and it awakes us not to use those analytic equations without caution. As a suggestion, it is better to use the broad-resonance equation to calculate the RRR numerically even for a narrow resonance of a few keV width. The present conclusion may influence some work in which the classical narrow-resonant equations were used for calculating the RRRs, especially at low stellar temperatures for those previously defined "narrow" resonances.