Quark clusters in quark stars and possible astrophysical implications
A quark-cluster state, rather than the color-super-conductivity state, may appear in matter with low-temperature but high density, since the phase transition of chiral symmetry broken and that of color-confinement could not occur imultaneously. Such quark clusters might be stable in strange quark matter. Quark stars would have temperatures to be low enough to freeze by residual color interaction between the clusters, and become then solid ones.The charge numbers and the sizes of quark clusters, as well as the residual interactions in-between are investigated. The solid state properties of quark stars are constrained by observations.

title: The state of cold quark matter: a model-independent view
abstract: From a model-independent point of view, we address the possibility that quark clustering could occur in cold quark matter at realistic baryon densities because of the likely strong coupling between quarks in compact stars.

title: The Extremely Long-period X-Ray Source in a Young Supernova Remnant: A Thorne-Żytkow Object Descendant?
abstract: The origin of the 6.67 hr period X-ray source, 1E161348-5055, in the young supernova remnant RCW 103 is puzzling. We propose that it may be the descendant of a Thorne-Żytkow Object (TŻO). A TŻO may at its formation have a rapidly spinning neutron star as a core and a slowly rotating envelope. We found that the core could be braked quickly to an extremely long spin period by the coupling between its magnetic field and the envelope, and that the envelope could be disrupted by some powerful bursts or exhausted via stellar wind. If the envelope is disrupted after the core has spun down, the core will become an extremely long-period compact object, with a slow proper motion speed, surrounded by a supernova-remnant-like shell. These features all agree with the observations of 1E161348-5055. TŻOs are expected to have produced extraordinarily high abundances of lithium and rapid proton process elements that would remain in the remnants and could be used to test this scenario.

title: PSR B1257+12: a quark star with planets?
abstract: A recent observation has shown that PSR B1257+12 could have quite small X‐ray emitting area, only about 2000 m2, which is more than three orders smaller than the canonical polar cap size. We suggest here that PSR B1257+12 could be a low‐mass quark star with radius of R≃0.6 km and mass of M≃3×10−4 M⊙. Such a low‐mass quark star system may form in an accretion induced collapse process or a collision process of two quark stars.

title: H-cluster stars
abstract: The study of dense matter at ultra-high density has a very long history, which is meaningful for us to understand not only cosmic events in extreme circumstances but also fundamental laws of physics. It is well known that the state of cold matter at supra-nuclear density depends on the non-perturbative nature of quantum chromo-dynamics (QCD) and is essential for modeling pulsars. A so-called H-cluster matter is proposed in this paper as the nature of dense matter in reality. 
In compact stars at only a few nuclear densities but low temperature, quarks could be interacting strongly with each other there. That might render quarks grouped in clusters, although the hypothetical quark-clusters in cold dense matter has not been confirmed due to the lack of both theoretical and experimental evidence. Motivated by recent lattice QCD simulations of the H-dibaryons (with structure uuddss), we are therefore considering here a possible kind of quark-clusters, H-clusters, that could emerge inside compact stars during their initial cooling, as the dominant components inside (the degree of freedom could then be H-clusters there).Taking into account the in-medium stiffening effect, we find that at baryon densities of compact stars $H$-cluster matter could be more stable than nuclear matter. We also find that for the H-cluster matter with lattice structure, the equation of state could be so stiff that it would seem to be "superluminal" in most dense region. However, the real sound speed for H-cluster matter is in fact hard to calculate, so at this stage we do not put constraints on our model from the usual requirment of causality.

title: Are AXPs/SGRs magnetars?
abstract: Anomalous X-ray Pulsars and Soft Gamma-Ray Repeaters have been generally recognized as neutron stars with super strong magnetic fields, namely "magnetars". The "magnetars" manifest that the luminosity in X-ray band are larger than the rotational energy loss rate, i.e. $L_{X}>\dot {E}_{\rm rot}$, and then the radiation energy is coming from the energy of magnetic field. Here it is argued that magnetars may not really exist. Some X-ray and radio observational results are contradicted with the magnetar model. 
(1) The X-ray luminosity of PSR J1852+0040 is much larger than the rotational energy loss rate ($L_{X}/\dot {E}_{\rm rot}\simeq 18)$, but the magnetic field is just $3.1\times 10^{11}$ G. Does this X-ray radiation energy come from the magnetic field? 
(2) In contrast to the above, the magnetic fields of radio pulsars J1847-0130 and PSR J1718-3718 are higher than that of AXP 1E 2259+586, why is the radiation energy of those two radio pulsars still coming from rotational energy? Furthermore, the magnetic field of the newly discovered SGR 0418+5729 with the lowest magnetic field is 3.0 e13 G, lower than the critical magnetic field $B_{\rm C}=4.414$ e13 G) (Esposito et al. 2010). 
(3) Some "magnetars" also emit normal transient radio pulses, what is the essential difference between radio pulsars and the "magnetars"? 
The observational fact arguments will be presented at first, then we discuss in what situation the conventional method to obtain magnetic field could not be correct.

title: Nucleon sea in the effective chiral quark model
abstract: The asymmetries of both light-flavor antiquark d(x)-u(x) and strange-antistrange s(x)-s(x) distributions of the nucleon sea are considered with more details in the effective chiral quark model. We find that the asymmetric distribution of light-flavor antiquarks d(x)-u(x) matches the experimental data well and that the asymmetry of strange and antistrange distributions can bring about 60%-100% correction to the NuTeV anomaly of sin{sup 2}{theta}{sub w}, which are 3 standard deviations from the world average value measured in other electroweak processes. The results on the correction to the NuTeV anomaly are insensitive to the inputs of the constituent quark distributions and the cutoff parameters. The ratios of d(x)/u(x) and s(x)/s(x) are also discussed, and it is found that the ratio s(x)/s(x) is compatible with the available experiments with an additional symmetric sea contribution being considered effectively.

title: Measurement of the inclusive decay properties of charmed mesons
abstract: We report a high statistics study of the inclusive decay properties of the charmed D 0 and D + mesons, and the first inclusive study of the charmed D s + . The data are collected at s =3.77 GeV and s =4.14 GeV with the Mark III detector at the e + e − storage ring SPEAR. For each charmed meson species, the charged-particle multiplicity, the strangeness content of the final state, and the average π 0 multiplicity are determined.

title: Production of D**s mesons in hadronic Z decays
abstract: The production rates of the orbitally excited Ds** mesons, Ds1 and Ds2*, are measured with the 4.1 million hadronic Z decays recorded by the ALEPH detector during 1991--1995. The Ds** mesons are reconstructed in the decay modes Ds1+ -> D*+ K0, Ds1+ -> D*0 K+ and Ds2*+ -> D0 K+. The production rate of the Ds1 is measured to be n(Z->Ds1+-)=(0.52+-0.09+-0.06)%, under the assumption that the two considered decay modes of the Ds1 saturate the branching ratio. The production rate of the Ds2* is determined to be n(Z->Ds2*+-)=(0.83+-0.29+0.07-0.13)%, assuming that the branching fraction of the decay Ds2*+ -> D0 K+ is 45%. The production rates in Z->cc and Z->bbar decays are measured separately.

title: Effect of asymmetric strange–antistrange sea to the NuTeV anomaly
abstract: We calculate the strange quark and antiquark distributions of the nucleon by using the effective chiral quark model, and find that the strange–antistrange asymmetry can bring a contribution of about 60–100% to the NuTeV deviation of sin 2 θ w from the standard value measured in other electroweak processes. The results are insensitive to different inputs. The light-flavor quark asymmetry of d ¯ – u ¯ is also investigated and found to be consistent with the experimental measurements. Therefore the chiral quark model provides a successful picture to understand the NuTeV anomaly, as well as the light-flavor quark asymmetry and the proton spin problem in previous studies.

title: Measurement of the tau lepton lifetime
abstract: The mean lifetime of the lepton is measured in a sample of 25700 pairs collected in 1992 with the ALEPH detector at LEP. A new analysis of the 1-1 topology events is introduced. In this analysis, the dependence of the impact parameter sum distribution on the daughter track momenta is taken into account, yielding improved precision compared to other impact parameter sum methods. Three other analyses of the oneand three-prong decays are updated with increased statistics. The measured lifetime is 293:5 3:1 1:7 fs. Including previous (1989{1991) ALEPH measurements, the combined lifetime is 293:7 2:7 1:6 fs.