The Extremely Long-period X-Ray Source in a Young Supernova Remnant: A Thorne-Żytkow Object Descendant?
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: QUARK-CLUSTER STARS: HINTS FROM THE SURFACE
abstract: The matter inside pulsar-like compact stars could be in a quark-cluster phase since in cold dense matter at a few nuclear densities (ρ ~ 2 - 10ρ0), quarks could be coupled still very strongly and condensate in position space to form quark clusters. Quark-cluster stars are chromatically confined and could initially be bare, therefore the surface properties of quark-cluster stars would be quite different from that of conventional neutron stars. Some facts indicate that a bare and self-confined surface of pulsar-like compact stars might be necessary in order to naturally understand different observational manifestations. On one hand, as for explaining the drifting sub-pulse phenomena, the binding energy of particles on pulsar surface should be high enough to produce vacuum gaps, which indicates that pulsar's surface might be strongly self-confined. On the other hand, a bare surface of quark-cluster star can overcome the baryon contamination problem of γ-ray burst as well as promote a successful core-collapse supernova. What is more, the non-atomic thermal spectra of dead pulsars may indicate also a bare surface without atmosphere, and the hydro-cyclotron oscillation of the electron sea above the quark-cluster star surface could be responsible for those absorption features detected. These hints could reflect the property of compact star's surface and possibly the state of condensed matter inside, and then might finally result in identifying quark-cluster stars.

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: 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: On Hoyle-Narlikar-Wheeler mechanism of vibration energy powered magneto-dipole emission of neutron stars
abstract: We revisit the well-known Hoyle-Narlikar-Wheeler proposition that neutron star emerging in the magnetic-flux-conserving process of core-collapse supernova can convert the stored energy of Alfvén vibrations into power of magneto-dipole radiation. We show that the necessary requirement for the energy conversion is the decay of internal magnetic field. In this case the loss of vibration energy of the star causes its vibration period, equal to period of pulsating emission, to lengthen at a rate proportional to the rate of magnetic field decay. These prediction of the model of vibration powered neutron star are discussed in juxtaposition with data on pulsating emission of magnetars whose radiative activity is generally associated with the decay of ultra strong magnetic field.

title: An investigation into intermittency
abstract: AbstractThe results of an investigation based on ALEPH data,e+e− → hadrons at
$$\sqrt s = 91$$
 GeV, into fluctuations in rapidity space are presented. It is found that the behaviour of the factorial moments is well represented by the Lund parton shower model. An estimate is made of the scale of fluctuations needed to describe the data. Differential moments are introduced and are used to demonstrate that within the average represented by the traditional factorial moments the pattern of fluctuations is itself a strong function of rapidity. This pattern is shown to be primarily associated with the emission of hard gluons. The implied structure between the hadron clusters and partons is explored by the use of transverse mass moments. It is concluded that the principal features of the one-dimensional factorial moments, differential moments and transverse mass moments have their origin in theO(αs) matrix element, kinematic boundaries and the method of selection of the event axis.

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: A precise measurement of the average b hadron lifetime
abstract: An improved measurement of the average b hadron lifetime is performed using a sample of 1.5 million hadronic Z decays, collected during the 1991–1993 runs of ALEPH, with the silicon vertex detector fully operational. This uses the three-dimensional impact parameter distribution of lepton tracks coming from semileptonic b decays and yields an average b hadron lifetime of 1.533 ± 0.013 ± 0.022 ps.

title: Test of colour reconnection models using three-jet events in hadronic Z decays
abstract: Hadronic Z decays into three jets are used to test QCD models of colour reconnection (CR). A sensitive quantity is the rate of gluon jets with a gap in the particle rapidity distribution and zero jet charge. Gluon jets are identified by either energy-ordering or by tagging two b-jets. The rates predicted by two string-based tunable CR models, one implemented in JETSET (the GAL model), the other in ARIADNE, are too high and disfavoured by the data, whereas the rates from the corresponding non-CR standard versions of these generators are too low. The data can be described by the GAL model assuming a small value for the R0 parameter in the range 0.01-0.02.

title: Mass limit for the standard model Higgs boson with the full LEP I ALEPH data sample
abstract: The reaction e + e − → HZ ∗ is used to search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H ν ν and the Hl + l − channels. The data sample corresponds to about 4.5 million hadronic Z decays collected by the ALEPH experiment at LEP from 1989 to 1995 at centre-of-mass energies at and around the Z peak. Three candidate events are found in the H μ + μ − channel, in agreement with the expected background from the electroweak process e + e − l + l − q q . This search results in a 95% C.L. lower limit on the Higgs boson mass of 63.9 GeV/ c 2 .