Convergence of the chiral expansion in two-flavor lattice QCD.

We test the convergence property of the chiral perturbation theory using a lattice QCD calculation of pion mass and decay constant with two dynamical quark flavors. The lattice calculation is performed using the overlap fermion formulation, which realizes exact chiral symmetry at finite lattice spacing. By comparing various expansion prescriptions, we find that the chiral expansion is well saturated at the next-to-leading order for pions lighter than approximately 450 MeV. Better convergence behavior is found, in particular, for a resummed expansion parameter xi, with which the lattice data in the pion mass region 290-750 MeV can be fitted well with the next-to-next-to-leading order formulas. We obtain the results in two-flavor QCD for the low energy constants l[over ]_{3} and l[over ]_{4} as well as the pion decay constant, the chiral condensate, and the average up and down quark mass.

S parameter and pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson mass from lattice QCD.

We present a lattice calculation of L10, one of the low-energy constants in chiral perturbation theory, and the charged-neutral pion squared-mass splitting, using dynamical overlap fermion. The exact chiral symmetry of the overlap fermion allows us to reliably extract these quantities from the difference of the vacuum polarization functions for vector and axial-vector currents. In the context of the technicolor models, these two quantities are read as the S parameter and the pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson mass, respectively, and play an important role in discriminating the models from others. This calculation can serve as a feasibility study of the lattice techniques for more general technicolor gauge theories.

Control of lead polluted leachate in a box-scale phytoremediation test using common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench) grown on lead contaminated soil.

The remediation of heavy metal contaminated soil using plants is a technology worth developing. However, the overall effect of phytoremediation in high-density Pb polluted sites remains unknown. Especially, little information is available about the effects of using plants to control lead polluted leachate. Thus, we investigated the control of leachate in a box-scale phytoremediation test using common buckwheat, a Pb hyperaccumulator, grown on Pb contaminated soil. In the presence of buckwheat, the change in volumetric water content was smaller than that of the control with rainfall. The total amount of Pb in the leachate strongly correlated with the amount of leachate and the decrease in the density of Pb in the leachate. During the cultivation period, the total amount of Pb leached in the control was 1.28mg per container, while in the presence of buckwheat the total amount of Pb was approximately 22.7% of the control. Moreover, with buckwheat cultivation, Pb polluted leachate resulting from rainwater was prevented. The results suggested that buckwheat was a Pb hyperaccumulator and also had a high ability for phytostabilization. Control of Pb polluted leachate using buckwheat was shown to be a phytoremediation technology applicable to heavily Pb contaminated sites.

Three-Quark Potential in SU(3) Lattice QCD.

The static three-quark ( 3Q) potential is studied in SU(3) lattice QCD with 12(3)x24 and beta = 5.7 at the quenched level. From the 3Q Wilson loop, 3Q ground-state potential V(3Q) is extracted using the smearing technique for ground-state enhancement. With accuracy better than a few percent, V(3Q) is well described by a sum of a constant, the two-body Coulomb term, and the three-body linear confinement term sigma(3Q)L(min), with L(min) the minimal value of total length of color flux tubes linking the three quarks. Comparing with the Q-&Qmacr; potential, we find a universal feature of the string tension, sigma(3Q) approximately sigma(Q&Qmacr;), and the OGE result for Coulomb coefficients, A(3Q) approximately 1 / 2A(Q&Qmacr;).

Induced expression of sarcotoxin IA enhanced host resistance against both bacterial and fungal pathogens in transgenic tobacco.

We demonstrate here that induced expression of sarcotoxin IA, a bactericidal peptide from Sarcophaga peregrina, enhanced the resistance of transgenic tobacco plants to both bacterial and fungal pathogens. The peptide was produced with a modified PR1a promoter, which is further activated by salicylic acid treatment and necrotic lesion formation by pathogen infection. Host resistance to infection of bacteria Erwinia carotovora subsp. carotovora and Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci was shown to be dependent on the amounts of sarcotoxin IA expressed. Since we found antifungal activity of the peptide in vitro, transgenic seedlings were also inoculated with fungal pathogens Rhizoctonia solani and Pythium aphanidermatum. Transgenic plants expressing higher levels of sarcotoxin were able to withstand fungal infection and remained healthy even after 4 weeks, while control plants were dead by fungal infection after 2 weeks.