Dust cyclone research in the 21st century

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Research to meet the demand for ever more efficient dust cyclones continues after some eighty years. Recent trends emphasize design optimization through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and testing design subtleties not modeled by semi-empirical equations. Improvements to current best available ...

Gender Equity: Still Knocking at the Classroom Door.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sadker, David

1999-01-01

Subtlety and complacency mask ongoing gender bias in today's classrooms. Updates are presented concerning career segregation; single-sex classrooms; safety and health problems; dropout rates; gifted programs; male/female stereotypes; classroom interactions; SAT scores; math, science and technology gender gaps; political reversals; and female…

Space Station man-machine automation trade-off analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zimmerman, W. F.; Bard, J.; Feinberg, A.

1985-01-01

The man machine automation tradeoff methodology presented is of four research tasks comprising the autonomous spacecraft system technology (ASST) project. ASST was established to identify and study system level design problems for autonomous spacecraft. Using the Space Station as an example spacecraft system requiring a certain level of autonomous control, a system level, man machine automation tradeoff methodology is presented that: (1) optimizes man machine mixes for different ground and on orbit crew functions subject to cost, safety, weight, power, and reliability constraints, and (2) plots the best incorporation plan for new, emerging technologies by weighing cost, relative availability, reliability, safety, importance to out year missions, and ease of retrofit. A fairly straightforward approach is taken by the methodology to valuing human productivity, it is still sensitive to the important subtleties associated with designing a well integrated, man machine system. These subtleties include considerations such as crew preference to retain certain spacecraft control functions; or valuing human integration/decision capabilities over equivalent hardware/software where appropriate.

Identifying Discrimination at Work: The Use of Field Experiments.

PubMed

Pager, Devah; Western, Bruce

2012-06-01

Antidiscrimination law offers protection to workers who have been treated unfairly on the basis of their race, gender, religion, or national origin. In order for these protections to be invoked, however, potential plaintiffs must be aware of and able to document discriminatory treatment. Given the subtlety of contemporary forms of discrimination, it is often difficult to identify discrimination when it has taken place. The methodology of field experiments offers one approach to measuring and detecting hiring discrimination, providing direct observation of discrimination in real-world settings. In this article, we discuss the findings of two recent field experiments measuring racial discrimination in low wage labor markets. This research provides several relevant findings for researchers and those interested in civil rights enforcement: (1) it produces estimates of the rate of discrimination at the point of hire; (2) it yields evidence about the interactions associated with discrimination (many of which reveal the subtlety with which contemporary discrimination is practiced); and (3) it provides a vehicle for both research on and enforcement of antidiscrimination law.

Applying Numerical Relativity to Gravitational Wave Astronomy using LISA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McWilliams, Sean T.

2007-12-01

We present recently calculated waveforms from numerical relativity and their application to the search for and precision measurement of black hole binary coalescences using LISA. In particular, we focus on the advances made in moving beyond the equal mass, nonspinning case into other regions of parameter space, particularly the case of nonspinning holes with ever-increasing mass ratios as the state of the art has progressed. Also, we investigate the potential contribution from the merger portion of the waveform to measurement uncertainties of the binary's parameters. Until now, only the inspiral has been investigated due to the lack of availability of mergers and the increased complexity required in moving beyond the low frequency approximation of the interferometer, which is necessary when mergers are included. We discuss the subtleties of the problem, and present preliminary results.

Simultaneous observation of free and defect-bound excitons in CH3NH3PbI3 using four-wave mixing spectroscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

March, Samuel A.; Clegg, Charlotte; Riley, Drew B.; Webber, Daniel; Hill, Ian G.; Hall, Kimberley C.

2016-12-01

Solar cells incorporating organic-inorganic perovskite, which may be fabricated using low-cost solution-based processing, have witnessed a dramatic rise in efficiencies yet their fundamental photophysical properties are not well understood. The exciton binding energy, central to the charge collection process, has been the subject of considerable controversy due to subtleties in extracting it from conventional linear spectroscopy techniques due to strong broadening tied to disorder. Here we report the simultaneous observation of free and defect-bound excitons in CH3NH3PbI3 films using four-wave mixing (FWM) spectroscopy. Due to the high sensitivity of FWM to excitons, tied to their longer coherence decay times than unbound electron- hole pairs, we show that the exciton resonance energies can be directly observed from the nonlinear optical spectra. Our results indicate low-temperature binding energies of 13 meV (29 meV) for the free (defect-bound) exciton, with the 16 meV localization energy for excitons attributed to binding to point defects. Our findings shed light on the wide range of binding energies (2-55 meV) reported in recent years.

Moon Technology for Skin Care

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1988-01-01

Estee Lauder uses digital image analyzer and software based on NASA lunar research in evaluation of cosmetic products for skincare. Digital image processing brings out subtleties otherwise undetectable, and allows better determination of product's effectiveness. Technique allows Estee Lauder to quantify changes in skin surface form and structure caused by application of cosmetic preparations.

Critical Thinking: Thinking with Concepts.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elder, Linda; Paul, Richard

2001-01-01

Urges education to help students learn through conceptual thinking. States that the first step must be to teach the subtleties of words--without a command of the language, important discriminations can be confused. Asserts that if students are to think well conceptually, surface language must dissolve, and alternative ways to communicate must be…

Interpretacion: The Lived Experience of Interpretation in the Bilingual Psychotherapist

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Melchor, Rosemary Laura

2008-01-01

To enhance the effectiveness of therapy for Spanish-speaking individuals and families requires an understanding of the subtleties of language use and interpretive processing. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the interpretive process in bilingual psychotherapists as they reflected upon their lived experiences of providing…

Vertebrate development: the subtle art of germ-layer specification.

PubMed

Stemple, D L

2001-10-30

Nodal signalling is essential for vertebrate germ-layer formation. How this single signal can generate such a diverse array of tissues remains a mystery and is an area of intense research. Three recent reports reveal unanticipated subtleties to the process and provide new mechanisms for generating distinct responses.

Improving Algebra Preparation: Implications from Research on Student Misconceptions and Difficulties

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Welder, Rachael M.

2012-01-01

Through historical and contemporary research, educators have identified widespread misconceptions and difficulties faced by students in learning algebra. Many of these universal issues stem from content addressed long before students take their first algebra course. Yet elementary and middle school teachers may not understand how the subtleties of…

Navigating between the Dimensions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fleron, Julian F.; Ecke, Volker

2011-01-01

Generations have been inspired by Edwin A. Abbott's profound tour of the dimensions in his novella "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" (1884). This well-known satire is the story of a flat land inhabited by geometric shapes trying to navigate the subtleties of their geometric, social, and political positions. In this article, the authors…

On the Clausius Equality and Inequality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anacleto, Joaquim

2011-01-01

This paper deals with subtleties and misunderstandings regarding the Clausius relation. We start by demonstrating the relation in a new and simple way, explaining clearly the assumptions made and the extent of its validity. Then follows a detailed discussion of some confusions and mistakes often found in the literature. The addressed points…

The Postcolonial Ghetto: Seeing Her Shape and His Hand

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paperson, La

2010-01-01

This article maps the ghostly outlines of urban postcolonial subjectivities by hinging together several moving parts/frontiers: connotations of postcolonial; applications and implications of ghettoed places and lives; a telling of the closure of a vibrant, innovative urban community high school; and literary depictions of the subtleties and…

An Updated Measure for Assessing Subtle Rape Myths

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McMahon, Sarah; Farmer, G. Lawrence

2011-01-01

Social workers responsible for developing rape prevention programs on college campuses must have valid evaluation instruments. This article presents the challenges encountered by the authors when they attempted to keep rape myth measures relevant to student populations by updating the language to reflect the subtleties involved with rape myths.…

Web-Based Assessment Tool for Communication and Active Listening Skill Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheon, Jongpil; Grant, Michael

2009-01-01

The website "Active Listening" was developed within a larger project--"Interactive Web-based training in the subtleties of communication and active listening skill development." The Active Listening site aims to provide beginning counseling psychology students with didactic and experimental learning activities and interactive tests so that…

Working through Children's Developmental and Existential Stress in Picture Books.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schwarcz, Joseph H.

The aesthetic quality and psychological subtlety of contemporary picture books give genuine expression to a child's conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions. Increasingly, themes of existential and developmental stress are appearing in picture books. Typical reactions aroused by such stress factors--and also by themes treated in picture…

Understanding Risk Management in the DoD

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-01-01

contract law that government specifications in a con- tract are accurate. Therefore, if a specifi- cation proves to be defective, a contactor is...accurate. THE ROLE OF THE CONTRACTING OFFICER Given the subtleties of the contract law that could impact the success of a Project’s risk management program

LITERARY TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

BROWN, CALVIN S.

LITERARY TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM CAN PROVOKE DISCUSSION WITH GREAT PEDAGOGICAL VALUE EVEN THOUGH A DEFINITIVE TRANSLATION IS NOT THE GOAL. A VERSE FROM HORACE AND ONE FROM DU BELLAY ILLUSTRATE THE POSSIBLE CHOICES OF VOCABULARY AND PHRASING WHICH EVEN TWO RELATIVELY STRAIGHTFORWARD LINES PRESENT. AN ALERT TEACHER CAN BRING OUT SUBTLETIES OF…

Museum, Memorial and Mall: Postcolonialism, Pedagogies, Racism and Reconciliation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crowley, Vicki; Matthews, Julie

2006-01-01

Through museum and shopping mall and the possibilities, subtleties, banalities and disparities of reconciliation in South Africa and Australia, this paper immerses itself in the question of pedagogies and in particular the pedagogies of reconciliation, public spaces and postcolonialism. In both Australia and South Africa postcolonialism as theory…

A Training Program in Breast Cancer Research Using NMR Techniques

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-07-01

subtlety, and location. Both the cranio-caudal (CC) and medio -lateral oblique (MLO) projec- tion views were used. The films were digitized with a com...thermal optical monitoring system used to monitor animals’ skin temperature, ambient temper- ature, and wall temperature of the device. For imaging

A Trick of Gravity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Newburgh, Ronald

2010-01-01

It's both surprising and rewarding when an old, standard problem reveals a subtlety that expands its pedagogic value. I realized recently that the role of gravity in the range equation for a projectile is not so simple as first appears. This realization may be completely obvious to others but was quite new to me.

Instructional Simulation of a Commercial Banking System.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hester, Donald D.

1991-01-01

Describes an instructional simulation of a commercial banking system. Identifies the teaching of portfolio theory, market robustness, and the subtleties of institutional constraints and decision making under uncertainty as the project's goals. Discusses the results of applying the simulation in an environment of local and national markets and a…

[Neurosis as a mental disease--controversies surrounding insurance certification].

PubMed

Jabłoński, Christian; Kobek, Mariusz; Kowalczyk-Jabłońska, Dorota

2011-01-01

In the years 2008-2009, experts from the Department of Forensic Medicine in Katowice issued a dozen of expert opinions on the nature of the neurosis, addressing the question whether neurosis is a mental disease as understood under the general insurance conditions or whether neurosis is a mental disease as such. All the submitted cases involved policemen who had been diagnosed as neurotic and were refused insurance payments since the insurance company claimed payments could not have been effected due to the diagnosis of mental disease, meaning neurosis in the discussed cases. The plaintiffs invoked the fact that medical terminology describes such states as "mental disorders". In the article, the authors present the adopted model of opinionating, make an attempt at explaining the controversy and discuss the subtleties of medical terminology and the core differences between the terms "mental disorder" and "mental disease" as employed in medico-legal opinionating in such cases.

Shape dependent phoretic propulsion of slender active particles

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ibrahim, Y.; Golestanian, R.; Liverpool, T. B.

2018-03-01

We theoretically study the self-propulsion of a thin (slender) colloid driven by asymmetric chemical reactions on its surface at vanishing Reynolds number. Using the method of matched asymptotic expansions, we obtain the colloid self-propulsion velocity as a function of its shape and surface physicochemical properties. The mechanics of self-phoresis for rod-like swimmers has a richer spectrum of behaviors than spherical swimmers due to the presence of two small length scales, the slenderness of the rod and the width of the slip layer. This leads to subtleties in taking the limit of vanishing slenderness. As a result, even for very thin rods, the distribution of curvature along the surface of the swimmer, namely, its shape, plays a surprising role in determining the efficiency of propulsion. We find that thin cylindrical self-phoretic swimmers with blunt ends move faster than thin prolate spheroid shaped swimmers with the same aspect ratio.

Investigating quantitation of phosphorylation using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry

PubMed Central

Parker, Laurie; Engel-Hall, Aaron; Drew, Kevin; Steinhardt, George; Helseth, Donald L.; Jabon, David; McMurry, Timothy; Angulo, David S.; Kron, Stephen J.

2010-01-01

Despite advances in methods and instrumentation for analysis of phosphopeptides using mass spectrometry, it is still difficult to quantify the extent of phosphorylation of a substrate due to physiochemical differences between unphosphorylated and phosphorylated peptides. Here we report experiments to investigate those differences using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for a set of synthetic peptides by creating calibration curves of known input ratios of peptides/phosphopeptides and analyzing their resulting signal intensity ratios. These calibration curves reveal subtleties in sequence-dependent differences for relative desorption/ionization efficiencies that cannot be seen from single-point calibrations. We found that the behaviors were reproducible with a variability of 5–10% for observed phosphopeptide signal. Although these data allow us to begin addressing the issues related to modeling these properties and predicting relative signal strengths for other peptide sequences, it is clear this behavior is highly complex and needs to be further explored. PMID:18064576

Let's keep metaphysics out of medical ethics: a critique of Poplawski and Gillett.

PubMed Central

Leavitt, F J

1992-01-01

I argue that the concept of 'longitudinal form', which Poplawski and Gillett have introduced into ethical discussions about embryos and gametes, involves too many metaphysical subtleties to be a useful aid to making moral decisions. I conclude by suggesting a criterion for relevance in medical ethics. PMID:1460650

A Symbiotic Relationship: The Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) Loop, Intuition, and Strategic Thought

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-03-01

Incompleteness Theorem (used in mathematics), and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle as it pertains to the mathematical foundations of quantum ...subtlety which normal consciousness cannot even see…”46 It is in our PME system where we can create the time to develop the unconscious realms of the

On Multidimensional Item Response Theory: A Coordinate-Free Approach. Research Report. ETS RR-07-30

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Antal, Tamás

2007-01-01

A coordinate-free definition of complex-structure multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) for dichotomously scored items is presented. The point of view taken emphasizes the possibilities and subtleties of understanding MIRT as a multidimensional extension of the classical unidimensional item response theory models. The main theorem of the…

Subtleties in Energy Calculations in the Image Method

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taddei, M. M.; Mendes, T. N. C.; Farina, C.

2009-01-01

In this pedagogical work, we point out a subtle mistake that can be made by undergraduate or graduate students in the computation of the electrostatic energy of a system containing charges and perfect conductors if they naively use the image method. Specifically, we show that naive expressions for the electrostatic energy for these systems…

Horace's Compromise. The Dilemma of the American High School.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sizer, Theodore R.

This book urges renewed public attention to the importance of teaching in high schools and to the complexity and subtlety of that craft. While our system of schools contains many consequential characteristics--for example, the subjects of the curriculum, the organization of programs for special groups--none is more important than who the teachers…

UNTAPPED RESOURCES OF NEGRO STUDENTS.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LA BRANT, LOU

WHAT NEGRO STUDENTS BRING, AS WELL AS WHAT THEY DO NOT BRING, TO THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE SHOULD BE OF CONCERN TO TEACHERS. INTONATION AND A NONSTANDARD VOCABULARY ARE TWO DEVICES WHICH ENABLE NEGROES TO MAKE SUBTLE LANGUAGE DISTINCTIONS WHICH TESTS DO NOT MEASURE OR SAMPLE. FURTHER LANGUAGE SUBTLETIES EXIST IN THE CONNOTATIONS OF MANY COMMON…

Thermodynamical Interactions: Subtleties of Heat and Work Concepts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anacleto, Joaquim; Anacleto, Joaquim Alberto C.

2008-01-01

This paper focuses on the determination of the final equilibrium state when two ideal gases, isolated from the exterior and starting from preset initial conditions, interact with each other through a piston. Depending on the piston properties, different processes take place and also different sets of equilibrium conditions must be satisfied. Three…

Linking stomatal sensitivity and whole-tree hydraulic architecture

Treesearch

Katherine A. McCulloh; David R. Woodruff

2012-01-01

Despite the complexity of the relationship between stomatal sensitivity, water loss and vulnerability to embolism, the goal of teasing apart the subtleties is a necessary one. As Litvak et al. (2012) mention, determining transpiration patterns based on vulnerability to embolism would be much easier than the lengthy and potentially expensive processes involved in sap...

The Samurai or the Cowboy? Toward an American Model of Quality Management.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beck, Mark W.

1994-01-01

The Japanese model of business management and Total Quality Management principles being applied to higher education as well as businesses are often ineffective because of the application of packaged ideas without consideration of the subtleties of individual organizations. The cowboy model of teamwork stresses the individual's role and better fits…

Interactions between Prefrontal Cortex and Cerebellum Revealed by Trace Eyelid Conditioning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kalmbach, Brian E.; Ohyama, Tatsuya; Kreider, Joy C.; Riusech, Frank; Mauk, Michael D.

2009-01-01

Eyelid conditioning has proven useful for analysis of learning and computation in the cerebellum. Two variants, delay and trace conditioning, differ only by the relative timing of the training stimuli. Despite the subtlety of this difference, trace eyelid conditioning is prevented by lesions of the cerebellum, hippocampus, or medial prefrontal…

Examining Mindfulness as a Conceptual Framework for Teaching and Learning: A Descriptive Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Michael, Christopher J.

2008-01-01

Mindfulness is ongoing scrutiny of existing expectations, continuous refinement of those expectations based on new experiences, appreciation of the subtleties of context, and identification of novel aspects of context that can improve foresight and functioning. This concept of mindfulness has been studied in the domain of business and in relation…

First-Principle Calculation of Quasiparticle Excitations and Optical Absorption in NiO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Je-Luen; Rignanese, Gian-Marco; Louie, Steven G.

2001-03-01

We present a first-principle study of the quasiparticle excitations and optical absorption spectrum in NiO. The ground state electronic structure is calculated with the generalized gradient approximation in density functional theory and ab initio pseudopotential. The quasiparticle energies are then computed employing the GW approximation. In addition to comparing to photoemisson result, comparison between the measured and calculated complex dielectric function helps to identify the onset of excitations in this system. We illustrate some subtleties of pseudopotential calculations: the effect of including 3 s and 3p electrons in Ni pseudopotential; the difference between using velocity and momentum operators in the RPA dielectric function. Finally, we discuss a recent effort to solve the Bethe-Salpeter equation for the optical spectrum in this spin polarized system to address the remaining discrepancy between theory and experiment.

OGLE-2017-BLG-0329L: A Microlensing Binary Characterized with Dramatically Enhanced Precision Using Data from Space-based Observations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, C.; Calchi Novati, S.; Udalski, A.; Lee, C.-U.; Gould, A.; Bozza, V.; Mróz, P.; Pietrukowicz, P.; Skowron, J.; Szymański, M. K.; Poleski, R.; Soszyński, I.; Kozłowski, S.; Ulaczyk, K.; Pawlak, M.; Rybicki, K.; Iwanek, P.; The OGLE Collaboration; Albrow, M. D.; Chung, S.-J.; Hwang, K.-H.; Jung, Y. K.; Ryu, Y.-H.; Shin, I.-G.; Shvartzvald, Y.; Yee, J. C.; Zang, W.; Zhu, W.; Cha, S.-M.; Kim, D.-J.; Kim, H.-W.; Kim, S.-L.; Lee, D.-J.; Lee, Y.; Park, B.-G.; Pogge, R. W.; Kim, W.-T.; The KMTNet Collaboration; Beichman, C.; Bryden, G.; Carey, S.; Gaudi, B. S.; Henderson, C. B.; The Spitzer Team; Dominik, M.; Helling, C.; Hundertmark, M.; Jørgensen, U. G.; Longa-Peña, P.; Lowry, S.; Sajadian, S.; Burgdorf, M. J.; Campbell-White, J.; Ciceri, S.; Evans, D. F.; Haikala, L. K.; Hinse, T. C.; Rahvar, S.; Rabus, M.; Snodgrass, C.; The MiNDSTEp Collaboration

2018-06-01

Mass measurements of gravitational microlenses require one to determine the microlens parallax π E, but precise π E measurement, in many cases, is hampered due to the subtlety of the microlens-parallax signal combined with the difficulty of distinguishing the signal from those induced by other higher-order effects. In this work, we present the analysis of the binary-lens event OGLE-2017-BLG-0329, for which π E is measured with a dramatically improved precision using additional data from space-based Spitzer observations. We find that while the parallax model based on the ground-based data cannot be distinguished from a zero-π E model at the 2σ level, the addition of the Spitzer data enables us to identify two classes of solutions, each composed of a pair of solutions according to the well-known ecliptic degeneracy. It is found that the space-based data reduce the measurement uncertainties of the north and east components of the microlens-parallax vector {{\\boldsymbol{π }}}{{E}} by factors ∼18 and ∼4, respectively. With the measured microlens parallax combined with the angular Einstein radius measured from the resolved caustic crossings, we find that the lens is composed of a binary with component masses of either (M 1, M 2) ∼ (1.1, 0.8) M ⊙ or ∼(0.4, 0.3) M ⊙ according to the two solution classes. The first solution is significantly favored but the second cannot be securely ruled out based on the microlensing data alone. However, the degeneracy can be resolved from adaptive optics observations taken ∼10 years after the event.

Developing an Interpretation of Item Parameters for Personality Items: Content Correlates of Parameter Estimates.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zickar, Michael J.; Ury, Karen L.

2002-01-01

Attempted to relate content features of personality items to item parameter estimates from the partial credit model of E. Muraki (1990) by administering the Adjective Checklist (L. Goldberg, 1992) to 329 undergraduates. As predicted, the discrimination parameter was related to the item subtlety ratings of personality items but the level of word…

Russian Children: As Seen in Literature and Real Life.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jones, Dianne

To know the culture of a nation one must try to understand the emotional side of a people's character. In considering Russian culture, a study of politics, economics, and geography is insufficient for even beginning to understand the subtleties of the national character. Despite 60 years of Soviet regime, traditional Russian values persist and are…

The Development of Emotion Recognition in Individuals with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rump, Keiran M.; Giovannelli, Joyce L.; Minshew, Nancy J.; Strauss, Mark S.

2009-01-01

Emotion recognition was investigated in typically developing individuals and individuals with autism. Experiment 1 tested children (5-7 years, n = 37) with brief video displays of facial expressions that varied in subtlety. Children with autism performed worse than the control children. In Experiment 2, 3 age groups (8-12 years, n = 49; 13-17…

An Economic Analysis of a Change in an Excise Tax

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barron, John M.; Blanchard, Kelly Hunt; Umbeck, John R.

2004-01-01

The authors present an example of the effect a change in the excise tax can have on retail gasoline prices. The findings provide support for standard economic theory, as well as provide a vehicle for illustrating some of the subtleties of the analysis, including the implicit assumptions regarding the implications for the buying and selling prices…

Sardonic Science? The Resistance to More Humanistic Forms of Science Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bryce, T. G. K.

2010-01-01

Resistance to more humanistic forms of science education is an endemic and persistent feature of university scientists as well as school science teachers. This article argues that science education researchers should pay more attention to its origins and to the subtleties of its stubborn influence. The paper explores some of the imperatives which…

Lakota Woman: Authentic Culture on Film or Exploitation?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Merritt, Judy

1994-01-01

Reviews the movie "Lakota Woman," the story of Mary Crow Dog, a young woman who gave birth to her first child during the American Indian Movement's occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973. Although the majority of the crew and cast were Native Americans, many subtleties and nuances of American Indian culture were overlooked.…

Development of Japanese Children's Narrative Skills: Linguistic Devices and Strategies To Encode Their Perspective and Emotion.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Minami, Masahiko

Studies on child language acquisition suggest that Japanese children begin to use a variety of linguistic signs very early. However, even if young Japanese children learned the social pragmatic functions and interactional dimensions of such linguistic means and communicative devices, they might not have acquired the subtleties of those devices…

Using Predictor-Corrector Methods in Numerical Solutions to Mathematical Problems of Motion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Jerome

2005-01-01

In this paper, the author looks at some classic problems in mathematics that involve motion in the plane. Many case problems like these are difficult and beyond the mathematical skills of most undergraduates, but computational approaches often require less insight into the subtleties of the problems and can be used to obtain reliable solutions.…

Does the No Child Left Behind Act Improve Schools and Increase Educational Opportunity? Point of View Essay

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berlak, Harold

2005-01-01

In this paper, the author questions whether the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) achieves its stated purpose: to raise standards of academic achievement. Deeper understanding, subtlety of thought, creativity, critical thinking, perseverance, leadership and sensibility about self and the world cannot be measured by multiple-choice technology. The…

Learning to Identify the Foreign in Developed Countries: The Example of Ireland

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ireland, Colin

2010-01-01

Among the responsibilities of international educators is to help students begin the process of identifying the foreign in their new environments in order to learn from it. The major obstacle for Americans studying abroad in developed economies, especially in English-speaking countries, is to become sensitive to the subtleties of foreignness. The…

Maxwell-Faraday Stresses in Electromagnetic Fields and the Self-Force on a Uniformly Accelerating Point Charge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rowland, D. R.

2007-01-01

The physical analysis of a uniformly accelerating point charge provides a rich problem to explore in advanced courses in electrodynamics and relativity since it brings together fundamental concepts in relation to electromagnetic radiation, Einstein's equivalence principle and the inertial mass of field energy in ways that reveal subtleties in each…

An emerging paradigm for managing protected areas with examples from Europe and the United States

Treesearch

James Absher; Carsten Mann

2010-01-01

Parks and Protected Areas (PPA) have become increasingly important for societal well-being in Europe and the United States. Urbanization, detachment from nature, and demographic changes are fostering discussions about strengthening the social and cultural dimensions of management. The complexities and subtleties of incorporating PPAs into existing government and...

Strong Numbers and Weak Perceptions: Understanding the "Rodney Dangerfield Economy"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wood, William C.

2006-01-01

Ordinary citizens, politicians, and economists alike regularly ask how the economy is doing. With a highly polarized electorate and media to match, it has become harder to get an honest answer. Social educators should understand the complexity of such a question--and the subtlety of the answers--as they approach the topic themselves. The American…

Conceptualizing Vectors in College Geometry: A New Framework for Analysis of Student Approaches and Difficulties

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kwon, Oh Hoon

2012-01-01

This dissertation documents a new way of conceptualizing vectors in college mathematics, especially in geometry. First, I will introduce three problems to show the complexity and subtlety of the construct of vectors with the classical vector representations. These highlight the need for a new framework that: (1) differentiates abstraction from a…

Visual Impairments, "Including Blindness." NICHCY Disability Fact Sheet #13

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, 2012

2012-01-01

Vision is one of the five senses. Being able to see gives tremendous access to learning about the world around--people's faces and the subtleties of expression, what different things look like and how big they are, and the physical environments, including approaching hazards. When a child has a visual impairment, it is cause for immediate…

Engaging with Mathematics in the Kindergarten. Orchestrating a Fairy Tale through Questioning and Use of Tools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carlsen, Martin

2013-01-01

The aim of this study is to analyse how a kindergarten teacher orchestrated a mathematical activity involving a fairy tale. Taking a sociocultural perspective on learning and development, naturally occurring talk-in-interaction has been analysed in order to scrutinise the subtleties of the orchestration. The fairy tale "Goldilocks and the…

A Textbook of Modern Western Armenian.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bardakjian, Kevork B.; Thomson, Robert W.

This textbook is designed as a first-year course at the undergraduate level. It is specifically aimed at students with no prior knowledge of Armenian, and emphasis has been placed on the numerous subtleties and nuances of Armenian which might seem strange or difficult to English speakers. In the text, stress has been put on explaining the grammar…

Subtleties of Hidden Quantifiers in Implication

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shipman, Barbara A.

2016-01-01

Mathematical conjectures and theorems are most often of the form P(x) ? Q(x), meaning ?x,P(x) ? Q(x). The hidden quantifier ?x is crucial in understanding the implication as a statement with a truth value. Here P(x) and Q(x) alone are only predicates, without truth values, since they contain unquantified variables. But standard textbook…

The influence of bacteria on multitrophic interactions among plants, psyllids, and pathogen.

PubMed

Tamborindeguy, Cecilia; Huot, Ordom Brian; Ibanez, Freddy; Levy, Julien

2017-12-01

The recent emergence of several plant diseases caused by psyllid-borne bacterial pathogens worldwide (Candidatus Liberibacter spp.) has created renewed interest on the interaction between psyllids and bacteria. In spite of these efforts to understand psyllid association with bacteria, many aspects of their interactions remain poorly understood. As more organisms are studied, subtleties on the molecular interactions as well as on the effects of the bacteria on the psyllid host are being uncovered. Additionally, psyllid-borne bacterial phytopathogens can also affect the host plant, which in turn can impact psyllid physiology and behavior. Here, we review the current literature on different aspects of the influence of bacteria on multitrophic interactions among plants, psyllids, and pathogens. We then highlight gaps that need to be addressed to advance this field, which can have significant implications for controlling these newly emergent and other plant diseases. © 2017 Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Sojourning with the Homogeneous Poisson Process.

PubMed

Liu, Piaomu; Peña, Edsel A

2016-01-01

In this pedagogical article, distributional properties, some surprising, pertaining to the homogeneous Poisson process (HPP), when observed over a possibly random window, are presented. Properties of the gap-time that covered the termination time and the correlations among gap-times of the observed events are obtained. Inference procedures, such as estimation and model validation, based on event occurrence data over the observation window, are also presented. We envision that through the results in this paper, a better appreciation of the subtleties involved in the modeling and analysis of recurrent events data will ensue, since the HPP is arguably one of the simplest among recurrent event models. In addition, the use of the theorem of total probability, Bayes theorem, the iterated rules of expectation, variance and covariance, and the renewal equation could be illustrative when teaching distribution theory, mathematical statistics, and stochastic processes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. This article is targeted towards both instructors and students.

Chirality Transfer in Gold(I)-Catalysed Direct Allylic Etherifications of Unactivated Alcohols: Experimental and Computational Study

PubMed Central

Barker, Graeme; Johnson, David G; Young, Paul C; Macgregor, Stuart A; Lee, Ai-Lan

2015-01-01

Gold(I)-catalysed direct allylic etherifications have been successfully carried out with chirality transfer to yield enantioenriched, γ-substituted secondary allylic ethers. Our investigations include a full substrate-scope screen to ascertain substituent effects on the regioselectivity, stereoselectivity and efficiency of chirality transfer, as well as control experiments to elucidate the mechanistic subtleties of the chirality-transfer process. Crucially, addition of molecular sieves was found to be necessary to ensure efficient and general chirality transfer. Computational studies suggest that the efficiency of chirality transfer is linked to the aggregation of the alcohol nucleophile around the reactive π-bound Au–allylic ether complex. With a single alcohol nucleophile, a high degree of chirality transfer is predicted. However, if three alcohols are present, alternative proton transfer chain mechanisms that erode the efficiency of chirality transfer become competitive. PMID:26248980

Interacting spin-2 fields in the Stückelberg picture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Noller, Johannes; Scargill, James H. C.; Ferreira, Pedro G.

2014-02-01

We revisit and extend the `Effective field theory for massive gravitons' constructed by Arkani-Hamed, Georgi and Schwartz in the light of recent progress in constructing ghost-free theories with multiple interacting spin-2 fields. We show that there exist several dual ways of restoring gauge invariance in such multi-gravity theories, find a generalised Fierz-Pauli tuning condition relevant in this context and highlight subtleties in demixing tensor and scalar modes. The generic multi-gravity feature of scalar mixing and its consequences for higher order interactions are discussed. In particular we show how the decoupling limit is qualitatively changed in theories of interacting spin-2 fields. We relate this to dRGT (de Rham, Gabadadze, Tolley) massive gravity, Hassan-Rosen bigravity and the multi-gravity constructions by Hinterbichler and Rosen. As an additional application we show that EBI (Eddington-Born-Infeld) bigravity and higher order generalisations thereof possess ghost-like instabilities.

Could Masked Conceptual Primes Increase Recollection? The Subtleties of Measuring Recollection and Familiarity in Recognition Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taylor, Jason R.; Henson, Richard N.

2012-01-01

We begin with a theoretical overview of the concepts of recollection and familiarity, focusing, in the spirit of this special issue, on the important contributions made by Andrew Mayes. In particular, we discuss the issue of when the generation of semantically-related information in response to a retrieval cue might be experienced as recollection…

Assaying Alpha-Dicarbonyl Compounds in Wine: A Complementary GC-MS, HPCL, and Visible Spectrophotometric Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dwyer, Tammy J.; Fillo, Jeremiah D.

2006-01-01

The analytical system to teach the subtleties of assaying alpha-dicarbonyl compounds in wine is described. Spectrophotometry is determined to be minimally useful in the experiment where the GC-MS (methyglyoxal) method proved to be ideal to confirm that the compounds analyzed in the wine samples were indeed the glyoxals based on the formation of…

"Who's in Charge Here?": Teaching Narrative Voice in Frank O'Connor's "My Oedipus Complex."

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wentworth, Michael

2001-01-01

Considers how Frank O'Connor's "My Oedipus Complex" provides a good introduction to the subtleties of narrative voice and control. Concludes by considering the notion of control and its relation to the narrative point of view in O'Connor's story and how it bears directly upon the value of reading literature and the reader's role. (SG)

Performance and Mass Modeling Subtleties in Closed-Brayton-Cycle Space Power Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Barrett, Michael J.; Johnson, Paul K.

2005-01-01

Contents include the following: 1. Closed-Brayton-cycle (CBC) thermal energy conversion is one available option for future spacecraft and surface systems. 2. Brayton system conceptual designs for milliwatt to megawatt power converters have been developed 3. Numerous features affect overall optimized power conversion system performance: Turbomachinery efficiency. Heat exchanger effectiveness. Working-fluid composition. Cycle temperatures and pressures.

The Subtlety of Age, Gender, and Race Barriers: A Case Study of Early Career African American Female Principals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jean-Marie, Gaetane

2013-01-01

While all educational leaders face challenges in achieving success, African American female principals often face a unique set of challenges associated with the complexity of their gender, race, and, as examined in this study, age. This case study investigates the experiences of two highly visible, early career African American female principals…

"Clearing the Sill of the World": Jane Eyre and the Power of Education in the Nineteenth-Century Novel

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis, Nancy L.; Rainey, William

2009-01-01

The idea of education in nineteenth-century women's writing revolves around social class, social mores, and the subtleties of the writer's imagination. Nowhere can this be seen more vividly and thoroughly than in Charlotte Bronte's novel, "Jane Eyre". The book's opening scene, striking in its symbolic detail, highlights and foreshadows the…

Exploring "Other Body(s)" of Knowledge: Getting to the Heart of the Story about Aging and Physical Activity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grant, Bevan C.; Kluge, Mary Ann

2007-01-01

Aging is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon subject to a continual redefining of the physical, social, psychological, and cultural self. The collective of these subtleties poses a number of challenges for policy makers, program and community leaders, health professionals, and researchers when trying to enhance quality of life for older…

Facilitating in a Demanding Environment: Experiences of Teaching in Virtual Classrooms Using Web Conferencing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cornelius, Sarah

2014-01-01

"How to" guides and software training resources support the development of the skills and confidence needed to teach in virtual classrooms using web-conferencing software. However, these sources do not often reveal the subtleties of what it is like to be a facilitator in such an environment--what it feels like, what issues might emerge…

The Role of Child Interests and Collaborative Parent-Child Interactions in Fostering Numeracy and Literacy Development in Canadian Homes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lukie, Ivanna K.; Skwarchuk, Sheri-Lynn; LeFevre, Jo-Anne; Sowinski, Carla

2014-01-01

Children's involvement in home literacy and numeracy activities has been linked to school achievement, but the subtleties in the home environment responsible for these gains have yet to be thoroughly investigated. The purpose of this study was to determine how children's interests and collaborative parent-child interactions affect exposure to home…

Coq Tacticals and PVS Strategies: A Small Step Semantics

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kirchner, Florent

2003-01-01

The need for a small step semantics and more generally for a thorough documentation and understanding of Coq's tacticals and PVS's strategies arise with their growing use and the progressive uncovering of their subtleties. The purpose of the following study is to provide a simple and clear formal framework to describe their detailed semantics, and highlight their differences and similarities.

A Quest for Equality: Title IX, The Second Year. Proceedings (Indiana University, Indiana, January 19-20, 1977).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aquila, Frank D., Ed.; Hummel, Judy, Ed.

The papers presented in this volume are the result of a conference designed to assist school personnel in understanding and developing plans to eradicate sex discrimination in schools. The works included are: "The Subtleties of Sexism: A Short, Short Story," by Sharon B. Lord; "Legal Ramifications and Concepts of Title IX," by…

On the putative essential discreteness of q-generalized entropies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Plastino, A.; Rocca, M. C.

2017-12-01

It has been argued in Abe (2010), entitled Essential discreteness in generalized thermostatistics with non-logarithmic entropy, that ;continuous Hamiltonian systems with long-range interactions and the so-called q-Gaussian momentum distributions are seen to be outside the scope of non-extensive statistical mechanics;. The arguments are clever and appealing. We show here that, however, some mathematical subtleties render them unconvincing.

Single-Molecule Spectroscopy Unmasks the Lowest Exciton State of the B850 Assembly in LH2 from Rps. acidophila

PubMed Central

Kunz, Ralf; Timpmann, Kõu; Southall, June; Cogdell, Richard J.; Freiberg, Arvi; Köhler, Jürgen

2014-01-01

We have recorded fluorescence-excitation and emission spectra from single LH2 complexes from Rhodopseudomonas (Rps.) acidophila. Both types of spectra show strong temporal spectral fluctuations that can be visualized as spectral diffusion plots. Comparison of the excitation and emission spectra reveals that for most of the complexes the lowest exciton transition is not observable in the excitation spectra due to the cutoff of the detection filter characteristics. However, from the spectral diffusion plots we have the full spectral and temporal information at hand and can select those complexes for which the excitation spectra are complete. Correlating the red most spectral feature of the excitation spectrum with the blue most spectral feature of the emission spectrum allows an unambiguous assignment of the lowest exciton state. Hence, application of fluorescence-excitation and emission spectroscopy on the same individual LH2 complex allows us to decipher spectral subtleties that are usually hidden in traditional ensemble spectroscopy. PMID:24806933

Employee Involvement: The Competitive Edge. Transactions of the IAQC Annual Conference and Resource Mart (9th, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 6-9, 1987).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Association for Quality and Participation, Cincinnati, OH.

Among the 96 papers presented at this conference are the following: "Team Building Techniques that Get Results" (Berg); "The Subtleties of Communication in Small Group Meetings" (Henry); "Feedback--Its Role in Team Building" (Lucas); "Group Dynamics--Success through Interaction" (Manning, Johnson); "The Able-Bodied Handicapped: Bridging the Gap"…

Fluid convection, constraint and causation

PubMed Central

Bishop, Robert C.

2012-01-01

Complexity—nonlinear dynamics for my purposes in this essay—is rich with metaphysical and epistemological implications but is receiving sustained philosophical analysis only recently. I will explore some of the subtleties of causation and constraint in Rayleigh–Bénard convection as an example of a complex phenomenon, and extract some lessons for further philosophical reflection on top-down constraint and causation particularly with respect to causal foundationalism. PMID:23386955

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Chia-Cheng; Jhang, Yuna; Chen, Li-mei; Relyea, George; Oller, D. Kimbrough

2017-01-01

Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8,…

Carbohydrate Analysis Experiment Involving Mono- and Disaccharides with a Twist of Glycobiology: Two New Tests for Distinguishing Pentoses and Glycosidic Bonds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herdman, Chelsea; Diop, Lamine; Dickman, Michael

2013-01-01

Carbohydrate analysis is an excellent way to expose second-year biochemistry majors to the subtlety and nuance of sugar chemistry. In one, 3-h practical period, students must identify an unknown mono- or disaccharide from a collection of three hexoses (glucose, galactose, and mannose), two pentoses (ribose and arabinose), and three disaccharides…

Teaching Thermodynamics of Ideal Solutions: An Entropy-Based Approach to Help Students Better Understand and Appreciate the Subtleties of Solution Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tomba, J. Pablo

2015-01-01

The thermodynamic formalism of ideal solutions is developed in most of the textbooks postulating a form for the chemical potential of a generic component, which is adapted from the thermodynamics of ideal gas mixtures. From this basis, the rest of useful thermodynamic properties can be derived straightforwardly without further hypothesis. Although…

Stochastic Processes in Physics: Deterministic Origins and Control

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Demers, Jeffery

Stochastic processes are ubiquitous in the physical sciences and engineering. While often used to model imperfections and experimental uncertainties in the macroscopic world, stochastic processes can attain deeper physical significance when used to model the seemingly random and chaotic nature of the underlying microscopic world. Nowhere more prevalent is this notion than in the field of stochastic thermodynamics - a modern systematic framework used describe mesoscale systems in strongly fluctuating thermal environments which has revolutionized our understanding of, for example, molecular motors, DNA replication, far-from equilibrium systems, and the laws of macroscopic thermodynamics as they apply to the mesoscopic world. With progress, however, come further challenges and deeper questions, most notably in the thermodynamics of information processing and feedback control. Here it is becoming increasingly apparent that, due to divergences and subtleties of interpretation, the deterministic foundations of the stochastic processes themselves must be explored and understood. This thesis presents a survey of stochastic processes in physical systems, the deterministic origins of their emergence, and the subtleties associated with controlling them. First, we study time-dependent billiards in the quivering limit - a limit where a billiard system is indistinguishable from a stochastic system, and where the simplified stochastic system allows us to view issues associated with deterministic time-dependent billiards in a new light and address some long-standing problems. Then, we embark on an exploration of the deterministic microscopic Hamiltonian foundations of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and we find that important results from mesoscopic stochastic thermodynamics have simple microscopic origins which would not be apparent without the benefit of both the micro and meso perspectives. Finally, we study the problem of stabilizing a stochastic Brownian particle with feedback control, and we find that in order to avoid paradoxes involving the first law of thermodynamics, we need a model for the fine details of the thermal driving noise. The underlying theme of this thesis is the argument that the deterministic microscopic perspective and stochastic mesoscopic perspective are both important and useful, and when used together, we can more deeply and satisfyingly understand the physics occurring over either scale.

On new physics searches with multidimensional differential shapes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ferreira, Felipe; Fichet, Sylvain; Sanz, Veronica

2018-03-01

In the context of upcoming new physics searches at the LHC, we investigate the impact of multidimensional differential rates in typical LHC analyses. We discuss the properties of shape information, and argue that multidimensional rates bring limited information in the scope of a discovery, but can have a large impact on model discrimination. We also point out subtleties about systematic uncertainties cancellations and the Cauchy-Schwarz bound on interference terms.

How about Teaching Literacy with Science? Strategies Employing Whiteboards Can Be Used to Address "Common Core" Literacy Standards While Including Science Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

West, Andrew; Sullivan, Kelsey; Kirchner, Jana

2016-01-01

To an outside observer, there is nothing really novel about whiteboarding. An observer passing a classroom would see students using dry-erase markers to write and sketch their ideas on large, dry-erase-type boards. However, like so many things in education, the subtleties that an outside observer might not notice are the precise things that make…

Open Education: A Look at the Subtleties. A Guide for the Unfamiliar Observer of Intermediate Education. Occasional Paper 90-1.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hager, Ronald A.

The open classroom model, enthusiastically adopted in American elementary schools based on the evident success of the British open primary schools, seemed to be an ideal educational concept for implementation into the middle school. But in the past 2 years, a growing number of educators, both at the middle school and the primary school level, have…

Trends in Array Antenna Research,

DTIC Science & Technology

1977-06-01

design, because it is possible to record this single mode parameter and still account for all of the subtleties that occur at the array face. 2.5...waveguide field, but did properly account for the full spatial harmonic series (grating lobe series) in the free space half space. Some earlier...described some approximate procedures to account for coupling in large arrays where the numerical evaluation of all the higher order terms would

A Theory of Conditional Information with Applications.

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-03-01

reviewing inStru#66ns, searching dsting data sources, gathering and the collection of elformation. Send comments regarding On burden estimate or any other...residing at the nexus of so final analysis all information has a common context, many intellectual subtleties that have come into scientific namely the...a A b = 0). There is all too little expli- useful in managing data bases, combining data , cit distinction made between absolutely true statements

Automated Video Based Facial Expression Analysis of Neuropsychiatric Disorders

PubMed Central

Wang, Peng; Barrett, Frederick; Martin, Elizabeth; Milanova, Marina; Gur, Raquel E.; Gur, Ruben C.; Kohler, Christian; Verma, Ragini

2008-01-01

Deficits in emotional expression are prominent in several neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. Available clinical facial expression evaluations provide subjective and qualitative measurements, which are based on static 2D images that do not capture the temporal dynamics and subtleties of expression changes. Therefore, there is a need for automated, objective and quantitative measurements of facial expressions captured using videos. This paper presents a computational framework that creates probabilistic expression profiles for video data and can potentially help to automatically quantify emotional expression differences between patients with neuropsychiatric disorders and healthy controls. Our method automatically detects and tracks facial landmarks in videos, and then extracts geometric features to characterize facial expression changes. To analyze temporal facial expression changes, we employ probabilistic classifiers that analyze facial expressions in individual frames, and then propagate the probabilities throughout the video to capture the temporal characteristics of facial expressions. The applications of our method to healthy controls and case studies of patients with schizophrenia and Asperger’s syndrome demonstrate the capability of the video-based expression analysis method in capturing subtleties of facial expression. Such results can pave the way for a video based method for quantitative analysis of facial expressions in clinical research of disorders that cause affective deficits. PMID:18045693

Flexible transparent and free-standing silicon nanowires paper.

PubMed

Pang, Chunlei; Cui, Hao; Yang, Guowei; Wang, Chengxin

2013-10-09

If the flexible transparent and free-standing paper-like materials that would be expected to meet emerging technological demands, such as components of transparent electrical batteries, flexible solar cells, bendable electronics, paper displays, wearable computers, and so on, could be achieved in silicon, it is no doubt that the traditional semiconductor materials would be rejuvenated. Bulk silicon cannot provide a solution because it usually exhibits brittleness at below their melting point temperature due to high Peierls stress. Fortunately, when the silicon's size goes down to nanoscale, it possesses the ultralarge straining ability, which results in the possibility to design flexible transparent and self-standing silicon nanowires paper (FTS-SiNWsP). However, realization of the FTS-SiNWsP is still a challenging task due largely to the subtlety in the preparation of a unique interlocking alignment with free-catalyst controllable growth. Herein, we present a simple synthetic strategy by gas flow directed assembly of a unique interlocking alignment of the Si nanowires (SiNWs) to produce, for the first time, the FTS-SiNWsP, which consisted of interconnected SiNWs with the diameter of ~10 nm via simply free-catalyst thermal evaporation in a vertical high-frequency induction furnace. This approach opens up the possibility for creating various flexible transparent functional devices based on the FTS-SiNWsP.

Performance of local correlation methods for halogen bonding: The case of Br{sub 2}–(H{sub 2}O){sub n},n = 4,5 clusters and Br{sub 2}@5{sup 12}6{sup 2} clathrate cage

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Batista-Romero, Fidel A.; Bernal-Uruchurtu, Margarita I.; Hernández-Lamoneda, Ramón, E-mail: ramon@uaem.mx

The performance of local correlation methods is examined for the interactions present in clusters of bromine with water where the combined effect of hydrogen bonding (HB), halogen bonding (XB), and hydrogen-halogen (HX) interactions lead to many interesting properties. Local methods reproduce all the subtleties involved such as many-body effects and dispersion contributions provided that specific methodological steps are followed. Additionally, they predict optimized geometries that are nearly free of basis set superposition error that lead to improved estimates of spectroscopic properties. Taking advantage of the local correlation energy partitioning scheme, we compare the different interaction environments present in small clustersmore » and those inside the 5{sup 12}6{sup 2} clathrate cage. This analysis allows a clear identification of the reasons supporting the use of local methods for large systems where non-covalent interactions play a key role.« less

Auroral particles

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Evans, David S.

1987-01-01

The problems concerning the aurora posed prior to the war are now either solved in principle or were restated in a more fundamental form. The pre-war hypothesis concerning the nature of the auroral particles and their energies was fully confirmed, with the exception that helium and oxygen ions were identified as participating in the auroral particle precipitation in addition to the protons. The nature of the near-Earth energization processes affecting auroral particles was clarified. Charged particle trajectories in various electric field geometries were modeled. The physical problems have now moved from determining the nature and geometry of the electric fields, which accelerate charged particles near the Earth, to accounting for the existence of these electric fields as a natural consequence of the solar wind's interaction with Earth. Ultimately the reward in continuing the work in auroral and magnetospheric particle dynamics will be a deeper understanding of the subtleties of classical electricity and magnetism as applied to situations not blessed with well-defined and invariant geometries.

Interacting spin-2 fields in the Stückelberg picture

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Noller, Johannes; Ferreira, Pedro G.; Scargill, James H.C., E-mail: noller@physics.ox.ac.uk, E-mail: james.scargill@physics.ox.ac.uk, E-mail: p.ferreira1@physics.ox.ac.uk

2014-02-01

We revisit and extend the 'Effective field theory for massive gravitons' constructed by Arkani-Hamed, Georgi and Schwartz in the light of recent progress in constructing ghost-free theories with multiple interacting spin-2 fields. We show that there exist several dual ways of restoring gauge invariance in such multi-gravity theories, find a generalised Fierz-Pauli tuning condition relevant in this context and highlight subtleties in demixing tensor and scalar modes. The generic multi-gravity feature of scalar mixing and its consequences for higher order interactions are discussed. In particular we show how the decoupling limit is qualitatively changed in theories of interacting spin-2 fields.more » We relate this to dRGT (de Rham, Gabadadze, Tolley) massive gravity, Hassan-Rosen bigravity and the multi-gravity constructions by Hinterbichler and Rosen. As an additional application we show that EBI (Eddington-Born-Infeld) bigravity and higher order generalisations thereof possess ghost-like instabilities.« less

CSI, optimal control, and accelerometers: Trials and tribulations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Benjamin, Brian J.; Sesak, John R.

1994-01-01

New results concerning optimal design with accelerometers are presented. These results show that the designer must be concerned with the stability properties of two Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) compensators, one of which does not explicitly appear in the closed-loop system dynamics. The new concepts of virtual and implemented compensators are introduced to cope with these subtleties. The virtual compensator appears in the closed-loop system dynamics and the implemented compensator appears in control electronics. The stability of one compensator does not guarantee the stability of the other. For strongly stable (robust) systems, both compensators should be stable. The presence of controlled and uncontrolled modes in the system results in two additional forms of the compensator with corresponding terms that are of like form, but opposite sign, making simultaneous stabilization of both the virtual and implemented compensator difficult. A new design algorithm termed sensor augmentation is developed that aids stabilization of these compensator forms by incorporating a static augmentation term associated with the uncontrolled modes in the design process.

Characterization of Lasers for Use in Analog Photonic Links

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-11-22

measurements. Trade-offs for each of the lasers characterized are discussed as well as their impact on analog photonic link performance. 22-11-2011... impact on the performance of a photonic link when it occurs with high intensity at radio and microwave frequencies such as decreased sensitivity and...from being straightforward. The first subtlety is the fact that the noise of the lasers will typically be below the noise floor of the electrical

Evolution of the concept of altruistic suicide in pre-Durkheim suicidology.

PubMed

Goldney, Robert D; Schioldann, Johan A

2004-01-01

Suicide as self-sacrifice was described by early nineteenth century authors before the delineation of altruism by the French Philosopher and Mathematician Auguste Comte. The concept evolved, leading to the categorization of altruistic suicide by Savage in England in 1892 and the elaboration of the term by Durkheim in France in 1897. Pre-Durkheim suicidologists were aware of the subtleties of sacrifice as opposed to revenge in this type of suicide.

Single-molecule spectroscopy unmasks the lowest exciton state of the B850 assembly in LH2 from Rps. acidophila.

PubMed

Kunz, Ralf; Timpmann, Kõu; Southall, June; Cogdell, Richard J; Freiberg, Arvi; Köhler, Jürgen

2014-05-06

We have recorded fluorescence-excitation and emission spectra from single LH2 complexes from Rhodopseudomonas (Rps.) acidophila. Both types of spectra show strong temporal spectral fluctuations that can be visualized as spectral diffusion plots. Comparison of the excitation and emission spectra reveals that for most of the complexes the lowest exciton transition is not observable in the excitation spectra due to the cutoff of the detection filter characteristics. However, from the spectral diffusion plots we have the full spectral and temporal information at hand and can select those complexes for which the excitation spectra are complete. Correlating the red most spectral feature of the excitation spectrum with the blue most spectral feature of the emission spectrum allows an unambiguous assignment of the lowest exciton state. Hence, application of fluorescence-excitation and emission spectroscopy on the same individual LH2 complex allows us to decipher spectral subtleties that are usually hidden in traditional ensemble spectroscopy. Copyright © 2014 Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Insights into the latent multinomial model through mark-resight data on female grizzly bears with cubs-of-the-year

USGS Publications Warehouse

Higgs, Megan D.; Link, William; White, Gary C.; Haroldson, Mark A.; Bjornlie, Daniel D.

2013-01-01

Mark-resight designs for estimation of population abundance are common and attractive to researchers. However, inference from such designs is very limited when faced with sparse data, either from a low number of marked animals, a low probability of detection, or both. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, yearly mark-resight data are collected for female grizzly bears with cubs-of-the-year (FCOY), and inference suffers from both limitations. To overcome difficulties due to sparseness, we assume homogeneity in sighting probabilities over 16 years of bi-annual aerial surveys. We model counts of marked and unmarked animals as multinomial random variables, using the capture frequencies of marked animals for inference about the latent multinomial frequencies for unmarked animals. We discuss undesirable behavior of the commonly used discrete uniform prior distribution on the population size parameter and provide OpenBUGS code for fitting such models. The application provides valuable insights into subtleties of implementing Bayesian inference for latent multinomial models. We tie the discussion to our application, though the insights are broadly useful for applications of the latent multinomial model.

Image segmentation and 3D visualization for MRI mammography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Lihua; Chu, Yong; Salem, Angela F.; Clark, Robert A.

2002-05-01

MRI mammography has a number of advantages, including the tomographic, and therefore three-dimensional (3-D) nature, of the images. It allows the application of MRI mammography to breasts with dense tissue, post operative scarring, and silicon implants. However, due to the vast quantity of images and subtlety of difference in MR sequence, there is a need for reliable computer diagnosis to reduce the radiologist's workload. The purpose of this work was to develop automatic breast/tissue segmentation and visualization algorithms to aid physicians in detecting and observing abnormalities in breast. Two segmentation algorithms were developed: one for breast segmentation, the other for glandular tissue segmentation. In breast segmentation, the MRI image is first segmented using an adaptive growing clustering method. Two tracing algorithms were then developed to refine the breast air and chest wall boundaries of breast. The glandular tissue segmentation was performed using an adaptive thresholding method, in which the threshold value was spatially adaptive using a sliding window. The 3D visualization of the segmented 2D slices of MRI mammography was implemented under IDL environment. The breast and glandular tissue rendering, slicing and animation were displayed.

Metaphysics and medical ethics.

PubMed Central

Parkin, C

1995-01-01

I take issue with Frank Leavitt's sketch of a pragmatic criterion for the relevance of metaphysics to medical ethics. I argue that appeal to the potential for confusion generated by metaphysical subtlety establishes a need for better communication rather than shows philosophical insight beside the point. I demonstrate that the proposed Criterion of Relevance has absurd consequences, and I claim that the relevance of philosophical doctrines, whether ethical or metaphysical, is best accounted for in terms of improved understanding. PMID:7608933

Fitting Prony Series To Data On Viscoelastic Materials

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hill, S. A.

1995-01-01

Improved method of fitting Prony series to data on viscoelastic materials involves use of least-squares optimization techniques. Based on optimization techniques yields closer correlation with data than traditional method. Involves no assumptions regarding the gamma'(sub i)s and higher-order terms, and provides for as many Prony terms as needed to represent higher-order subtleties in data. Curve-fitting problem treated as design-optimization problem and solved by use of partially-constrained-optimization techniques.

On integrating Jungian and other theories.

PubMed

Sedgwick, David

2015-09-01

This paper consists of reflections on some of the processes, subtleties, and 'eros' involved in attempting to integrate Jungian and other analytic perspectives. Assimilation of other theoretical viewpoints has a long history in analytical psychology, beginning when Jung met Freud. Since its inception, the Journal of Analytical Psychology has provided a forum for theoretical syntheses and comparative psychoanalysis. Such attempts at synthesizing other theories represent analytical psychology itself trying to individuate. © 2015, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

Relativistic quantum optics: The relativistic invariance of the light-matter interaction models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martín-Martínez, Eduardo; Rodriguez-Lopez, Pablo

2018-05-01

In this article we discuss the invariance under general changes of reference frame of all the physical predictions of particle detector models in quantum field theory in general and, in particular, of those used in quantum optics to model atoms interacting with light. We find explicitly how the light-matter interaction Hamiltonians change under general coordinate transformations, and analyze the subtleties of the Hamiltonians commonly used to describe the light-matter interaction when relativistic motion is taken into account.

Effects of potentization in aqueous solutions.

PubMed

Schulte, J

1999-10-01

Over the past two decades, research into structure formation and structure conservation in water has created a significant interest among the homeopathy research community. The formation of sustained static and dynamic structures in aqueous solutions is thought to be synonymous with the possible storage of information in associated liquids. Prominent models and experiments considering this possibility are presented in this paper, and some of their subtleties, which were not given much room in the respective original publications, will be elucidated in more detail here.

The Theory of Canonical Perturbations Applied to Attitude Dynamics and to the Earth Rotation. Osculating and Nonosculating Andoyer Variables

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-06-21

Hiroshi Kinoshita for his extremely valuable consultations on some subtleties of his theory. ME is also grateful to Pini Gurfil , George Kaplan, Jean...that the Andoyer elements are introduced 20 It can be shown ( Gurfil et al. 2007) that the body-frame-related components gi of the angular momentum are...oblate precessing planet. Astron. J. 70, 5–9 (1965) Goldstein, H.: Classical Mechanics. 2nd ed. Addison-Wesley, Reading MA (1981) Gurfil , P., Elipe

REMARKS ON THE MAXIMUM ENTROPY METHOD APPLIED TO FINITE TEMPERATURE LATTICE QCD.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

UMEDA, T.; MATSUFURU, H.

2005-07-25

We make remarks on the Maximum Entropy Method (MEM) for studies of the spectral function of hadronic correlators in finite temperature lattice QCD. We discuss the virtues and subtlety of MEM in the cases that one does not have enough number of data points such as at finite temperature. Taking these points into account, we suggest several tests which one should examine to keep the reliability for the results, and also apply them using mock and lattice QCD data.

CAUSAL INFERENCE WITH A GRAPHICAL HIERARCHY OF INTERVENTIONS

PubMed Central

Shpitser, Ilya; Tchetgen, Eric Tchetgen

2017-01-01

Identifying causal parameters from observational data is fraught with subtleties due to the issues of selection bias and confounding. In addition, more complex questions of interest, such as effects of treatment on the treated and mediated effects may not always be identified even in data where treatment assignment is known and under investigator control, or may be identified under one causal model but not another. Increasingly complex effects of interest, coupled with a diversity of causal models in use resulted in a fragmented view of identification. This fragmentation makes it unnecessarily difficult to determine if a given parameter is identified (and in what model), and what assumptions must hold for this to be the case. This, in turn, complicates the development of estimation theory and sensitivity analysis procedures. In this paper, we give a unifying view of a large class of causal effects of interest, including novel effects not previously considered, in terms of a hierarchy of interventions, and show that identification theory for this large class reduces to an identification theory of random variables under interventions from this hierarchy. Moreover, we show that one type of intervention in the hierarchy is naturally associated with queries identified under the Finest Fully Randomized Causally Interpretable Structure Tree Graph (FFRCISTG) model of Robins (via the extended g-formula), and another is naturally associated with queries identified under the Non-Parametric Structural Equation Model with Independent Errors (NPSEM-IE) of Pearl, via a more general functional we call the edge g-formula. Our results motivate the study of estimation theory for the edge g-formula, since we show it arises both in mediation analysis, and in settings where treatment assignment has unobserved causes, such as models associated with Pearl’s front-door criterion. PMID:28919652

CAUSAL INFERENCE WITH A GRAPHICAL HIERARCHY OF INTERVENTIONS.

PubMed

Shpitser, Ilya; Tchetgen, Eric Tchetgen

2016-12-01

Identifying causal parameters from observational data is fraught with subtleties due to the issues of selection bias and confounding. In addition, more complex questions of interest, such as effects of treatment on the treated and mediated effects may not always be identified even in data where treatment assignment is known and under investigator control, or may be identified under one causal model but not another. Increasingly complex effects of interest, coupled with a diversity of causal models in use resulted in a fragmented view of identification. This fragmentation makes it unnecessarily difficult to determine if a given parameter is identified (and in what model), and what assumptions must hold for this to be the case. This, in turn, complicates the development of estimation theory and sensitivity analysis procedures. In this paper, we give a unifying view of a large class of causal effects of interest, including novel effects not previously considered, in terms of a hierarchy of interventions, and show that identification theory for this large class reduces to an identification theory of random variables under interventions from this hierarchy. Moreover, we show that one type of intervention in the hierarchy is naturally associated with queries identified under the Finest Fully Randomized Causally Interpretable Structure Tree Graph (FFRCISTG) model of Robins (via the extended g-formula), and another is naturally associated with queries identified under the Non-Parametric Structural Equation Model with Independent Errors (NPSEM-IE) of Pearl, via a more general functional we call the edge g-formula. Our results motivate the study of estimation theory for the edge g-formula, since we show it arises both in mediation analysis, and in settings where treatment assignment has unobserved causes, such as models associated with Pearl's front-door criterion.

When does the gluon reggeize?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Caron-Huot, Simon

2015-05-01

We propose the eikonal approximation as a simple and reliable tool to analyze relativistic high-energy processes, provided that the necessary subtleties are accounted for. An important subtlety is the need to include eikonal phases for a rapidity-dependent collection of particles, as embodied by the Balitsky-JIMWLK rapidity evolution equation. In the first part of this paper, we review how the phenomenon of gluon reggeization and the BFKL equations can be understood simply (but not too simply) in the eikonal approach. We also work out some previously overlooked implications of BFKL dynamics, including the observation that starting from four loops it is incompatible with a recent conjecture regarding the structure of infrared divergences. In the second part of this paper, we propose that in the strict planar limit the theory can be developed to all orders in the coupling with no reference at all to the concept of "reggeized gluon." Rather, one can work directly with a finite, process-dependent, number of Wilson lines. We demonstrate consistency of this proposal by an exact computation in N=4 super Yang-Mills, which shows that in processes mediated with two Wilson lines the reggeized gluon appears in the weak coupling limit as a resonance whose width is proportional to the coupling. We also provide a precise operator definition of Lipatov's integrable spin chain, which is manifestly integrable at any value of the coupling as a result of the duality between scattering amplitudes and Wilson loops in this theory.

Chirality Transfer in Gold(I)-Catalysed Direct Allylic Etherifications of Unactivated Alcohols: Experimental and Computational Study.

PubMed

Barker, Graeme; Johnson, David G; Young, Paul C; Macgregor, Stuart A; Lee, Ai-Lan

2015-09-21

Gold(I)-catalysed direct allylic etherifications have been successfully carried out with chirality transfer to yield enantioenriched, γ-substituted secondary allylic ethers. Our investigations include a full substrate-scope screen to ascertain substituent effects on the regioselectivity, stereoselectivity and efficiency of chirality transfer, as well as control experiments to elucidate the mechanistic subtleties of the chirality-transfer process. Crucially, addition of molecular sieves was found to be necessary to ensure efficient and general chirality transfer. Computational studies suggest that the efficiency of chirality transfer is linked to the aggregation of the alcohol nucleophile around the reactive π-bound Au-allylic ether complex. With a single alcohol nucleophile, a high degree of chirality transfer is predicted. However, if three alcohols are present, alternative proton transfer chain mechanisms that erode the efficiency of chirality transfer become competitive. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Top-philic Z ' forces at the LHC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fox, Patrick J.; Low, Ian; Zhang, Yue

2018-03-01

Despite extensive searches for an additional neutral massive gauge boson at the LHC, a Z ' at the weak scale could still be present if its couplings to the first two generations of quarks are suppressed, in which case the production in hadron colliders relies on tree-level processes in association with heavy flavors or one-loop processes in association with a jet. We consider the low-energy effective theory of a top-philic Z ' and present possible UV completions. We clarify theoretical subtleties in evaluating the production of a top-philic Z ' at the LHC and examine carefully the treatment of ananomalous Z ' current in the low-energy effective theory. Recipes for properly computing the production rate in the Z ' + j channel are given. We discuss constraints from colliders and low-energy probes of new physics. As an application, we apply these considerations to models that use a weak-scale Z ' to explain possible violations of lepton universality in B meson decays, and show that the future running of a high luminosity LHC can potentially cover much of the remaining parameter space favored by this particular interpretation of the B physics anomaly.

Intersection Syndrome: The Subtle Squeak of an Overused Wrist.

PubMed

Skinner, Thomas M

2017-01-01

Patient histories that include wrist pain can be pivotal in the distinction between intersection syndrome (IS) and the more common de Quervain's tenosynovitis (DQT). Presented here is a 26-year-old pregnant woman with a history of rowing who developed left radial/dorsal wrist pain and a rubbing/squeaking sensation. Nine months of conservative DQT therapy and a landmark-guided corticosteroid injection failed to relieve her symptoms. An in-clinic ultrasound showed tenosynovitis at the intersection of the first and second compartments, confirming a diagnosis of IS. She found immediate relief with ultrasound-guided saline hydrodissection, the injection of saline into the intercompartmental space to reduce adhesions. Both DQT and IS are overuse injuries caused by repetitive wrist extension, as occurs in rowing, and either condition can worsen after pregnancy. Distinguishing the subtleties between DQT and IS can be challenging. Close attention to the patient's description of the pain can guide treatment, potentially expediting recovery. In addition, saline hydrodissection can be both a diagnostic tool and a potentially therapeutic alternative to steroid injections for such tendinopathies. © Copyright 2017 by the American Board of Family Medicine.

Development of a Computer-aided Diagnosis System for Early Detection of Masses Using Retrospectively Detected Cancers on Prior Mammograms

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-06-01

131 cases with 131 biopsy proven masses, of which 27 were malignant and 104 benign. The true locations of the masses were identified by an experi- enced ...two acquisitions would cause differ- ences in the subtlety of the masses on the FFDMs and SFMs. However, assuming that the differences are ran- dom... Lado , M. Souto, and J. J. Vidal, “Computer-aided diagnosis: Automatic detection of malignant masses in digitized mammograms,” Med. Phys. 25, 957–964

Development of a Computer-Aided Diagnosis System for Early Detection of Masses Using Retrospectively Detected Cancers on Prior Mammograms

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-06-01

the masses were identified by an experi- enced Mammography Quality Standards Act (MQSA) radiologist. The no-mass data set contained 98 cases. The time...force, and the difference in time between the two acquisitions would cause differ- ences in the subtlety of the masses on the FFDMs and SFMs. However...images," Medical Physics 18, 955-963 (1991). 20A. J. Mendez, P. G. Tahoces, M. J. Lado , M. Souto, and J. J. Vidal, "Computer-aided diagnosis: Automatic

A Possible Solution to the Smallness Problem of Dark Energy

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Chen, Pisin; /SLAC; Gu, Je-An

2005-07-08

The smallness of the dark energy density has been recognized as the most crucial difficulty in understanding dark energy and also one of the most important questions in the new century. In a recent paper[1], we proposed a new dark energy model in which the smallness of the cosmological constant is naturally achieved by invoking the Casimir energy in a supersymmetry-breaking brane-world. In this paper we review the basic notions of this model. Various implications, perspectives, and subtleties of this model are briefly discussed.

Determination of the top quark mass circa 2013: methods, subtleties, perspectives

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Juste, Aurelio; Mantry, Sonny; Mitov, Alexander; Penin, Alexander; Skands, Peter; Varnes, Erich; Vos, Marcel; Wimpenny, Stephen

2014-10-01

We present an up-to-date overview of the problem of top quark mass determination. We assess the need for precision in the top mass extraction in the LHC era together with the main theoretical and experimental issues arising in precision top mass determination. We collect and document existing results on top mass determination at hadron colliders and map the prospects for future precision top mass determination at e+e- colliders. We present a collection of estimates for the ultimate precision of various methods for top quark mass extraction at the LHC.

Tissue and cell-specific transcriptomes in cotton reveal the subtleties of gene regulation underlying the diversity of plant secondary cell walls

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

MacMillan, Colleen P.; Birke, Hannah; Chuah, Aaron

Knowledge of plant secondary cell wall (SCW) regulation and deposition is mainly based on the Arabidopsis model of a ‘typical’ lignocellulosic SCW. However, SCWs in other plants can vary from this. The SCW of mature cotton seed fibres is highly cellulosic and lacks lignification whereas xylem SCWs are lignocellulosic. We used cotton as a model to study different SCWs and the expression of the genes involved in their formation via RNA deep sequencing and chemical analysis of stem and seed fibre.

Peabody's "Care of the Patient" and the Nature of Medical Science.

PubMed

Brody, Howard

2014-01-01

Francis W. Peabody's 1927 essay "The Care of the Patient" is widely quoted, yet few appreciate the subtlety of its interweaving of medical science with its more obvious humanistic elements. Understanding the essay in context requires a recapitulation of Peabody's life story, a review of earlier work that led up to the culminating lecture in 1926, and a detailed analysis of the thread of argument Peabody wove through the lecture. A better understanding of the essay shows how Peabody anticipated several important later developments in medical thought.

Isomer-sensitive deboronation in reductive aminations of aryl boronic acids

DOE PAGES

Jones, Brad Howard; Wheeler, David R.; Wheeler, Jill S.; ...

2015-09-05

Deboronation is observed during the reductive amination of formylphenylboronic acid (FPBA) to the amine termini and side chains of peptides. This deboronation is sensitive to the isomerism of the boronic acid (BA), with ortho-FPBA yielding complete deboronation in the preparation of an N-terminally-modified dipeptide. The observed behavior is also clearly mediated by the chemical identity of the amine substrate. These results reveal a previously undocumented subtlety of BA functionalization and highlight the importance of thorough spectroscopic characterization in the preparation of peptide and small molecule BAs.

Lenz's Law Magic Trick

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ruiz, Michael J.

2006-02-01

The demonstration of Lenz's law by dropping a powerful magnet down a nonmagnetic metal pipe has become a classic lecture-hall demonstration.1,2 An inexpensive version is packaged as a professional magic trick3 called "Newton's Nightmare." Combining sleight-of-hand with a demonstration of Lenz's law is a surefire way to heighten student interest. The subsequent student discussion motivated by a desire to understand the magic trick can lead to a memorable physics lesson. This paper will discuss Lenz's law magic and review literature that reveals the subtlety of the physics.

Path integrals and the WKB approximation in loop quantum cosmology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ashtekar, Abhay; Campiglia, Miguel; Henderson, Adam

2010-12-01

We follow the Feynman procedure to obtain a path integral formulation of loop quantum cosmology starting from the Hilbert space framework. Quantum geometry effects modify the weight associated with each path so that the effective measure on the space of paths is different from that used in the Wheeler-DeWitt theory. These differences introduce some conceptual subtleties in arriving at the WKB approximation. But the approximation is well defined and provides intuition for the differences between loop quantum cosmology and the Wheeler-DeWitt theory from a path integral perspective.

Approach to the patient with dysphagia.

PubMed

Abdel Jalil, Ala' A; Katzka, David A; Castell, Donald O

2015-10-01

Dysphagia is a fascinating symptom. It is ostensibly simple when defined by trouble swallowing, yet its subtleties in deciphering and its variations in pathophysiology almost mandate a thorough knowledge of medicine itself. With patience and careful questioning, a multitude of various disorders may be suggested before an objective test is performed. Indeed, the ability to diligently and comprehensively explore the symptom of dysphagia is not only rewarding but also a real test for a physician who prides himself or herself on good history taking. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Tissue and cell-specific transcriptomes in cotton reveal the subtleties of gene regulation underlying the diversity of plant secondary cell walls

DOE PAGES

MacMillan, Colleen P.; Birke, Hannah; Chuah, Aaron; ...

2017-07-18

Knowledge of plant secondary cell wall (SCW) regulation and deposition is mainly based on the Arabidopsis model of a ‘typical’ lignocellulosic SCW. However, SCWs in other plants can vary from this. The SCW of mature cotton seed fibres is highly cellulosic and lacks lignification whereas xylem SCWs are lignocellulosic. We used cotton as a model to study different SCWs and the expression of the genes involved in their formation via RNA deep sequencing and chemical analysis of stem and seed fibre.

Clinical Application of Standardized Cognitive Assessment Using fMRI. I. Matrix Reasoning

PubMed Central

Allen, Mark D.; Fong, Alina K.

2008-01-01

Functional MRI is increasingly recognized for its potential as a powerful new tool in clinical neuropsychology. This is likely due to the fact that, with some degree of innovation, it is possible to convert practically any familiar cognitive test into one that can be performed in the MRI scanning environment. However, like any assessment approach, meaningful interpretation of fMRI data for the purpose of patient evaluation crucially requires normative data derived from a sample of unimpaired persons, against which individual patients may be compared. Currently, no such normative data are available for any fMRI-based cognitive testing protocol. In this paper, we report the first of a series of fMRI-compatible cognitive assessment protocols, a matrix reasoning test (f-MRT), for which normative samples of functional activation have been collected from unimpaired control subjects and structured in a manner that makes individual patient evaluation possible in terms of familiar z-score distributions. Practical application of the f-MRT is demonstrated via a contrastive case-study of two individuals with cognitive impairment in which fMRI data identifies subtleties in patient deficits otherwise missed by conventional measures of performance. PMID:19641250

Cosmological ensemble and directional averages of observables

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bonvin, Camille; Clarkson, Chris; Durrer, Ruth

We show that at second order, ensemble averages of observables and directional averages do not commute due to gravitational lensing—observing the same thing in many directions over the sky is not the same as taking an ensemble average. In principle this non-commutativity is significant for a variety of quantities that we often use as observables and can lead to a bias in parameter estimation. We derive the relation between the ensemble average and the directional average of an observable, at second order in perturbation theory. We discuss the relevance of these two types of averages for making predictions of cosmologicalmore » observables, focusing on observables related to distances and magnitudes. In particular, we show that the ensemble average of the distance in a given observed direction is increased by gravitational lensing, whereas the directional average of the distance is decreased. For a generic observable, there exists a particular function of the observable that is not affected by second-order lensing perturbations. We also show that standard areas have an advantage over standard rulers, and we discuss the subtleties involved in averaging in the case of supernova observations.« less

Non-Gaussianities due to relativistic corrections to the observed galaxy bispectrum

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dio, E. Di; Perrier, H.; Durrer, R.

2017-03-01

High-precision constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity (PNG) will significantly improve our understanding of the physics of the early universe. Among all the subtleties in using large scale structure observables to constrain PNG, accounting for relativistic corrections to the clustering statistics is particularly important for the upcoming galaxy surveys covering progressively larger fraction of the sky. We focus on relativistic projection effects due to the fact that we observe the galaxies through the light that reaches the telescope on perturbed geodesics. These projection effects can give rise to an effective f {sub NL} that can be misinterpreted as the primordial non-Gaussianity signalmore » and hence is a systematic to be carefully computed and accounted for in modelling of the bispectrum. We develop the technique to properly account for relativistic effects in terms of purely observable quantities, namely angles and redshifts. We give some examples by applying this approach to a subset of the contributions to the tree-level bispectrum of the observed galaxy number counts calculated within perturbation theory and estimate the corresponding non-Gaussianity parameter, f {sub NL}, for the local, equilateral and orthogonal shapes. For the local shape, we also compute the local non-Gaussianity resulting from terms obtained using the consistency relation for observed number counts. Our goal here is not to give a precise estimate of f {sub NL} for each shape but rather we aim to provide a scheme to compute the non-Gaussian contamination due to relativistic projection effects. For the terms considered in this work, we obtain contamination of f {sub NL}{sup loc} ∼ O(1).« less

Developmental tasks of early marriage: Barefoot in the Park (1967), Raising Arizona (1987), The Quiet Man (1952).

PubMed

Akhtar, Salman; Billinkoff, Zoe

2011-06-01

Using three Hollywood movies as a springboard, the authors offer a discussion of the psychosocial challenges faced by an individual entering a marital relationship. Keeping their attention on both intrapsychic and interpersonal factors, as well as the group matrix surrounding the couple, the authors discuss the subtleties of identity transformation, evolution of true mutuality, distance-related conflicts, and the deeper synthesis of affection and sensuality in the setting of early marriage. Their portrayal of this adult developmental phase is intended to help clinicians evolve greater empathy with newly married individuals.

Automated System for Early Breast Cancer Detection in Mammograms

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bankman, Isaac N.; Kim, Dong W.; Christens-Barry, William A.; Weinberg, Irving N.; Gatewood, Olga B.; Brody, William R.

1993-01-01

The increasing demand on mammographic screening for early breast cancer detection, and the subtlety of early breast cancer signs on mammograms, suggest an automated image processing system that can serve as a diagnostic aid in radiology clinics. We present a fully automated algorithm for detecting clusters of microcalcifications that are the most common signs of early, potentially curable breast cancer. By using the contour map of the mammogram, the algorithm circumvents some of the difficulties encountered with standard image processing methods. The clinical implementation of an automated instrument based on this algorithm is also discussed.

Quantum work statistics of charged Dirac particles in time-dependent fields

DOE PAGES

Deffner, Sebastian; Saxena, Avadh

2015-09-28

The quantum Jarzynski equality is an important theorem of modern quantum thermodynamics. We show that the Jarzynski equality readily generalizes to relativistic quantum mechanics described by the Dirac equation. After establishing the conceptual framework we solve a pedagogical, yet experimentally relevant, system analytically. As a main result we obtain the exact quantum work distributions for charged particles traveling through a time-dependent vector potential evolving under Schrödinger as well as under Dirac dynamics, and for which the Jarzynski equality is verified. Thus, special emphasis is put on the conceptual and technical subtleties arising from relativistic quantum mechanics.

Relativistic properties of a molecule: energy, linear momentum, angular momentum and boost momentum to order 1/c 2

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cameron, Robert P.; Cotter, J. P.

2018-05-01

We give an explicit and general description of the energy, linear momentum, angular momentum and boost momentum of a molecule to order 1/c 2, where it necessary to take account of kinetic contributions made by the electrons and nuclei as well as electromagnetic contributions made by the intramolecular field. A wealth of interesting subtleties are encountered that are not seen at order 1/c 0, including relativistic Hall shifts, anomalous velocities and hidden momenta. Some of these have well known analogues in solid state physics.

Probing quantum gravity through exactly soluble midi-superspaces I

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ashtekar, A.; Pierri, M.

1996-12-01

It is well-known that the Einstein-Rosen solutions to the 3+1- dimensional vacuum Einstein{close_quote}s equations are in one to one correspondence with solutions of 2+1-dimensional general relativity coupled to axi-symmetric, zero rest mass scalar fields. We first re-examine the quantization of this midi-superspace paying special attention to the asymptotically flat boundary conditions and to certain functional analytic subtleties associated with regularization. We then use the resulting quantum theory to analyze several conceptual and technical issues of quantum gravity. {copyright} {ital 1996 American Institute of Physics.}

In Situ Subtalar Arthrodesis for Posttraumatic Arthritis of the Calcaneus.

PubMed

Probe, Robert

2016-08-01

One of the most frequent complications after intraarticular fracture of the calcaneus is the development of posttraumatic arthritis of the subtalar joint. If conservative measures fail in the treatment of this condition, consideration of arthrodesis should be given. This video depicts the preoperative assessment and surgical technique applied to one such 54-year-old patient who had undergone internal fixation of a calcaneal fracture 9 years before. Shown within the video is exposure of the subtalar joint through a lateral incision, joint preparation, and the application of stable fixation. Subtleties of exposure, osteogenesis maximization, and postoperative management are covered.

Correlates of HIV risk-taking behaviors among African-American college students: the effect of HIV knowledge, motivation, and behavioral skills.

PubMed Central

Bazargan, M.; Kelly, E. M.; Stein, J. A.; Husaini, B. A.; Bazargan, S. H.

2000-01-01

This study identifies theoretically based predictors of condom use in a sample of 253 sexually active African-American college students recruited from two historically African-American colleges. The Information-Motivation-Behavioral (IMB) skills model of AIDS-preventive behavior was employed to delineate the roles of HIV/AIDS knowledge, experiences with and attitudes toward condom use, peer influences, perceived vulnerability, monogamy, and behavioral skills. A predictive structural equation model revealed significant predictors of more condom use including: male gender, more sexual HIV knowledge, positive experiences and attitudes about condom use, nonmonogamy, and greater behavioral skills. Results imply that attention to behavioral skills for negotiating safer sex and training in the proper use of condoms are key elements in reducing high risk behaviors. Increasing the specific knowledge level of college students regarding the subtleties of sexual transmission of HIV is important and should be addressed. Heightening students' awareness of the limited protection of serial monogamy, and the need to address gender-specific training regarding required behavior change to reduce transmission of HIV should be an additional goal of college health professionals. PMID:10992684

The External Globus Pallidus: Progress and Perspectives

PubMed Central

Hegeman, Daniel J.; Hong, Ellie S.; Hernández, Vivian M.; Chan, C. Savio

2016-01-01

The external globus pallidus (GPe) of the basal ganglia is in a unique and powerful position to influence processing of motor information by virtue of its widespread projections to all basal ganglia nuclei. Despite the clinical importance of the GPe in common motor disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, we have only limited information about its cellular composition and organizational principles. In this review, we describe recent advances in our understanding of the diversity in the molecular profile, anatomy, physiology, and corresponding behavior during movement of GPe neurons. Importantly, we attempt to build consensus and highlight commonalities of the cellular classification based on existing but contentious literature. Additionally, we provide an analysis of the literature concerning the intricate reciprocal loops formed between the GPe and major synaptic partners, including both the striatum and the subthalamic nucleus. In conclusion, the GPe has emerged as a crucial node in the basal ganglia macrocircuit. While subtleties in the cellular makeup and synaptic connection of the GPe create new challenges, modern research tools have shown promise in untangling such complexity and will provide better understanding of the roles of the GPe in encoding movements and their associated pathologies. PMID:26841063

The external globus pallidus: progress and perspectives.

PubMed

Hegeman, Daniel J; Hong, Ellie S; Hernández, Vivian M; Chan, C Savio

2016-05-01

The external globus pallidus (GPe) of the basal ganglia is in a unique and powerful position to influence processing of motor information by virtue of its widespread projections to all basal ganglia nuclei. Despite the clinical importance of the GPe in common motor disorders such as Parkinson's disease, there is only limited information about its cellular composition and organizational principles. In this review, recent advances in the understanding of the diversity in the molecular profile, anatomy, physiology and corresponding behaviour during movement of GPe neurons are described. Importantly, this study attempts to build consensus and highlight commonalities of the cellular classification based on existing but contentious literature. Additionally, an analysis of the literature concerning the intricate reciprocal loops formed between the GPe and major synaptic partners, including both the striatum and the subthalamic nucleus, is provided. In conclusion, the GPe has emerged as a crucial node in the basal ganglia macrocircuit. While subtleties in the cellular makeup and synaptic connection of the GPe create new challenges, modern research tools have shown promise in untangling such complexity, and will provide better understanding of the roles of the GPe in encoding movements and their associated pathologies. © 2016 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Quantitative morphometric analysis of the lumbar vertebral facets and evaluation of feasibility of lumbar spinal nerve root and spinal canal decompression using the Goel intraarticular facetal spacer distraction technique: A lumbar/cervical facet comparison

PubMed Central

Satoskar, Savni R.; Goel, Aimee A.; Mehta, Pooja H.; Goel, Atul

2014-01-01

Objective: The authors evaluate the anatomic subtleties of lumbar facets and assess the feasibility and effectiveness of use of ‘Goel facet spacer’ in the treatment of degenerative spinal canal stenosis. Materials and Methods: Twenty-five lumbar vertebral cadaveric dried bones were used for the purpose. A number of morphometric parameters were evaluated both before and after the introduction of Goel facet spacers within the confines of the facet joint. Results: The spacers achieved distraction of facets that was more pronounced in the vertical perspective. Introduction of spacers on both sides resulted in an increase in the intervertebral foraminal height and a circumferential increase in the spinal canal dimensions. Additionally, there was an increase in the disc space or intervertebral body height. The lumbar facets are more vertically and anteroposteriorly oriented when compared to cervical facets that are obliquely and transversely oriented. Conclusions: Understanding the anatomical peculiarities of the lumbar and cervical facets can lead to an optimum utilization of the potential of Goel facet distraction arthrodesis technique in the treatment of spinal degenerative canal stenosis. PMID:25558146

Top-philic Z' forces at the LHC

DOE PAGES

Fox, Patrick J.; Low, Ian; Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL; ...

2018-03-13

Despite extensive searches for an additional neutral massive gauge boson at the LHC, amore » $$Z^\\prime$$ at the weak scale could still be present if its couplings to the first two generations of quarks are suppressed, in which case the production in hadron colliders relies on tree-level processes in association with heavy flavors or one-loop processes in association with a jet. Here, we consider the low-energy effective theory of a top-philic $Z'$ and present possible UV completions. We clarify theoretical subtleties in evaluating the production of a top-philic $Z'$ at the LHC and examine carefully the treatment of an anomalous $Z'$ current in the low-energy effective theory. Recipes for properly computing the production rate in the $Z'+j$ channel are given. We discuss constraints from colliders and low-energy probes of new physics. As an application, we apply these considerations to models that use a weak-scale $Z'$ to explain possible violations of lepton universality in $B$ meson decays, and show that the future running of a high luminosity LHC can potentially cover much of the remaining parameter space favored by this particular interpretation of the $B$ physics anomaly.« less

A QUESTIONNAIRE TO ASSESS THE RELEVANCE AND CREDIBILITY OF OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES TO INFORM HEALTH CARE DECISION MAKING: AN ISPOR-AMCP-NPC GOOD PRACTICE TASK FORCE REPORT

PubMed Central

Berger, Marc L; Martin, Bradley C; Husereau, Don; Worley, Karen; Allen, Dan; Yang, Winnie; Mullins, C. Daniel; Kahler, Kristijan; Quon, Nicole C.; Devine, Scott; Graham, John; Cannon, Eric; Crown, William

2014-01-01

Evidence-based healthcare decisions are best informed by comparisons of all relevant interventions used to treat conditions in specific patient populations. Observational studies are being performed to help fill evidence gaps. However, widespread adoption of evidence from observational studies has been limited due to a variety of factors, including the lack of consensus regarding accepted principles for their evaluation and interpretation. Two Task Forces were formed to develop questionnaires to assist decision makers in evaluating observational studies, with one Task Force addressing retrospective research and the other prospective research. The intent was to promote a structured approach to reduce the potential for subjective interpretation of evidence and drive consistency in decision-making. Separately developed questionnaires were combined into a single questionnaire consisting of 33 items. These were divided into two domains: relevance and credibility. Relevance addresses the extent to which findings, if accurate, apply to the setting of interest to the decision maker. Credibility addresses the extent to which the study findings accurately answer the study question. The questionnaire provides a guide for assessing the degree of confidence that should be placed from observational studies and promotes awareness of the subtleties involved in evaluating those. PMID:24636373

First-trimester emergencies: a radiologist's perspective.

PubMed

Phillips, Catherine H; Wortman, Jeremy R; Ginsburg, Elizabeth S; Sodickson, Aaron D; Doubilet, Peter M; Khurana, Bharti

2018-02-01

The purpose of this article is to help the practitioner ensure early diagnosis and response to emergencies in the first trimester by reviewing anatomy of the developing embryo, highlighting the sonographic appearance of common first-trimester emergencies, and discussing key management pathways for treating emergent cases. First-trimester fetal development is a stepwise process that can be challenging to evaluate in the emergency department (ED) setting. This is due, in part, to the complex anatomy of early pregnancy, subtlety of the sonographic findings, and the fact that fewer than half of patients with ectopic pregnancy present with the classic clinical findings of a positive pregnancy test, vaginal bleeding, pelvic pain, and tender adnexa. Ultrasound (US) has been the primary approach to diagnostic imaging of first-trimester emergencies, with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) playing a supportive role in a small minority of cases. Familiarity with the sonographic findings diagnostic of and suspicious for early pregnancy failure, ectopic pregnancy, retained products of conception, gestational trophoblastic disease, failed intrauterine devices, and complications associated with assisted reproductive technology (ART) is critical for any emergency radiologist. Evaluation of first-trimester emergencies is challenging, and knowledge of key imaging findings and familiarity with management pathways are needed to ensure early diagnosis and response.

Listening and understanding

PubMed Central

Parrott, Linda J.

1984-01-01

The activities involved in mediating reinforcement for a speaker's behavior constitute only one phase of a listener's reaction to verbal stimulation. Other phases include listening and understanding what a speaker has said. It is argued that the relative subtlety of these activities is reason for their careful scrutiny, not their complete neglect. Listening is conceptualized as a functional relation obtaining between the responding of an organism and the stimulating of an object. A current instance of listening is regarded as a point in the evolution of similar instances, whereby one's history of perceptual activity may be regarded as existing in one's current interbehavior. Understanding reactions are similarly analyzed; however, they are considerably more complex than listening reactions due to the preponderance of implicit responding involved in reactions of this type. Implicit responding occurs by way of substitute stimulation, and an analysis of the serviceability of verbal stimuli in this regard is made. Understanding is conceptualized as seeing, hearing, or otherwise reacting to actual things in the presence of their “names” alone. The value of an inferential analysis of listening and understanding is also discussed, with the conclusion that unless some attempt is made to elaborate on the nature and operation of these activities, the more apparent reinforcement mediational activities of a listener are merely asserted without an explanation for their occurrence. PMID:22478594

PC-403: Pioneer Venus multiprobe spacecraft mission operational characteristics document, volume 1

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Barker, F. C.

1978-01-01

The operational characteristics of the multiprobe system and its subsystem are described. System level, description of the nominal phases, system interfaces, and the capabilities and limitations of system level performance are presented. Bus spacecraft functional and operational descriptions at the subsystem and unit level are presented. The subtleties of nominal operation as well as detailed capabilities and limitations beyond nominal performance are discussed. A command and telemetry logic flow diagram for each subsystem is included. Each diagram identifies in symbolic logic all signal conditioning encountered along each command signal path into, and each telemetry signal path out of the subsystem.

QCD corrections to massive color-octet vector boson pair production

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Freitas, Ayres; Wiegand, Daniel

2017-09-01

This paper describes the calculation of the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to massive color-octet vector boson pair production at hadron colliders. As a concrete framework, a two-site coloron model with an internal parity is chosen, which can be regarded as an effective low-energy approximation of Kaluza-Klein gluon physics in universal extra dimensions. The renormalization procedure involves several subtleties, which are discussed in detail. The impact of the NLO corrections is relatively modest, amounting to a reduction of 11-14% in the total cross-section, but they significantly reduce the scale dependence of the LO result.

Strategies for probing nonminimal dark sectors at colliders: The interplay between cuts and kinematic distributions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dienes, Keith R.; Su, Shufang; Thomas, Brooks

2015-03-01

In this paper, we examine the strategies and prospects for distinguishing between traditional dark-matter models and models with nonminimal dark sectors—including models of Dynamical Dark Matter—at hadron colliders. For concreteness, we focus on events with two hadronic jets and large missing transverse energy at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). As we discuss, simple "bump-hunting" searches are not sufficient; probing nonminimal dark sectors typically requires an analysis of the actual shapes of the distributions of relevant kinematic variables. We therefore begin by identifying those kinematic variables whose distributions are particularly suited to this task. However, as we demonstrate, this then leads to a number of additional subtleties, since cuts imposed on the data for the purpose of background reduction can at the same time have the unintended consequence of distorting these distributions in unexpected ways, thereby obscuring signals of new physics. We therefore proceed to study the correlations between several of the most popular relevant kinematic variables currently on the market, and investigate how imposing cuts on one or more of these variables can impact the distributions of others. Finally, we combine our results in order to assess the prospects for distinguishing nonminimal dark sectors in this channel at the upgraded LHC.

Magnetic resonance imaging analyses of varved marine sedimentary records of the Gulf of California

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Briskin, Madeleine; Robins, Jon; Riedel, William R.; Booker, Ron

1986-08-01

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging used for the first time to analyze marine sedimentary records of the Gulf of California is a remarkable improvement over the more conventional X-ray technique in the identification of organic rich layers. Analytical results indicate that NMRI differentiates clearly between organic rich (light) and organic poor (dark) deposits. It also provides a fine resolution of sedimentary structures, laminae and stratigraphic subtleties. It may be made to yield a three-dimensional stratigraphy; the procedure is nondestructive. The organic vs. inorganic resolution provided by NMRI technology complemented by X-ray when needed should facilitate future studies of paleoceanographic, paleoclimatic and biogeochemical cycles recorded in the vast deposits of marine clays.

Distinguishing Raman from strongly coupled Brillouin amplification for short pulses

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jia, Qing; Barth, Ido; Edwards, Matthew R.

2016-05-15

Plasma-based amplification by strongly coupled Brillouin scattering has recently been suggested for the compression of a short seed laser to ultrahigh intensities in sub-quarter-critical-density plasmas. However, by employing detailed spectral analysis of particle-in-cell simulations in the same parameter regime, we demonstrate that, in fact, Raman backscattering amplification is responsible for the growth and compression of the high-intensity, leading spike, where most of the energy compression occurs, while the ion mode only affects the low-intensity tail of the amplified pulse. The critical role of the initial seed shape is identified. A number of subtleties in the numerical simulations are also pointedmore » out.« less

In vitro uses of biological cryoprotectants.

PubMed Central

Lillford, Peter J; Holt, Chris B

2002-01-01

Ice can be anything from a highly destructive agent in agriculture to a useful building material. Established industries are based on the known rules of physics and chemistry which allow some control of amounts of ice or ice crystal geometry. However, organisms have much more subtle requirements to maintain their delicate internal structure if they are to survive freezing. As a result they have selected specific molecules for freezing-point depression, osmotic regulation, ice nucleation and crystal growth inhibition. All these active species may have potential commercial use once they are identified, understood and produced at economic scales. We examine the progress made so far in extending biological subtlety into commercial processes, and look for prospects for further innovation. PMID:12171658

Liquid?solid helium interface: some conceptual questions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Leggett, A. J.

2003-12-01

I raise, and discuss qualitatively, some conceptual issues concerning the interface between the crystalline solid and superfluid liquid phases of 4He emphasizing, in particular, the fact that the ground-state wave functions of the two phases are prima facie qualitatively quite different, in that the superfluid liquid phase possesses off-diagonal long-range order (ODLRO), while the crystalline solid does not. The fact that the statics and dynamics of the interface do not appear to be particularly sensitive to the presence of ODLRO in the liquid is tentatively explained by the fact that because of a subtlety associated with the Bose statistics obeyed by the atoms, the solid and liquid wave functions are not locally very different.

Galileo Galilei's vision of the senses.

PubMed

Piccolino, Marco; Wade, Nicholas J

2008-11-01

Neuroscientists have become increasingly aware of the complexities and subtleties of sensory processing. This applies particularly to the complex elaborations of nerve signals that occur in the sensory circuits, sometimes at the very initial stages of sensory pathways. Sensory processing is now known to be very different from a simple neural copy of the physical signal present in the external world, and this accounts for the intricacy of neural organization that puzzled great investigators of neuroanatomy such as Santiago Ramón Y Cajal a century ago. It will surprise present-day sensory neuroscientists, applying their many modern methods, that the conceptual basis of the contemporary approach to sensory function had been recognized four centuries ago by Galileo Galilei.

Sensitivity, optimal scaling and minimum roundoff errors in flexible structure models

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Skelton, Robert E.

1987-01-01

Traditional modeling notions presume the existence of a truth model that relates the input to the output, without advanced knowledge of the input. This has led to the evolution of education and research approaches (including the available control and robustness theories) that treat the modeling and control design as separate problems. The paper explores the subtleties of this presumption that the modeling and control problems are separable. A detailed study of the nature of modeling errors is useful to gain insight into the limitations of traditional control and identification points of view. Modeling errors need not be small but simply appropriate for control design. Furthermore, the modeling and control design processes are inevitably iterative in nature.

Glassy behaviour in simple kinetically constrained models: topological networks, lattice analogues and annihilation-diffusion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sherrington, David; Davison, Lexie; Buhot, Arnaud; Garrahan, Juan P.

2002-02-01

We report a study of a series of simple model systems with only non-interacting Hamiltonians, and hence simple equilibrium thermodynamics, but with constrained dynamics of a type initially suggested by foams and idealized covalent glasses. We demonstrate that macroscopic dynamical features characteristic of real and more complex model glasses, such as two-time decays in energy and auto-correlation functions, arise from the dynamics and we explain them qualitatively and quantitatively in terms of annihilation-diffusion concepts and theory. The comparison is with strong glasses. We also consider fluctuation-dissipation relations and demonstrate subtleties of interpretation. We find no FDT breakdown when the correct normalization is chosen.

Taboo and the different death? Perceptions of those bereaved by suicide or other traumatic death.

PubMed

Chapple, Alison; Ziebland, Sue; Hawton, Keith

2015-05-01

Views differ on how far the subject of death has ever been taboo in Western Society. Walter (1991) criticised the way the 'taboo thesis' has been presented, arguing that it has often been 'grossly overdrawn and lacking in subtlety'. Research suggests that suicide and other traumatic death may be particularly difficult for people to talk about or even acknowledge. We interviewed 80 people bereaved due to suicide, or other traumatic death and used interpretative thematic analysis to consider whether the 'death taboo' is evident in these bereavement narratives. People referred to suicide as a different, even stigmatised, death but we also found that those bereaved through other traumatic death felt that their reactions had to be contained and relatively silent. The exception was those bereaved through terrorism or train crash, who were encouraged to grieve openly and angrily: reactions to deaths which are seen as 'private troubles' differ from reactions to deaths which are seen as 'public issues'. Using a symbolic interactionist approach we conclude that the shock and suddenness of the death is tied up both with the circumstances of the death (suicide, murder, accident, terrorism) and the attendant consequences for the social acceptance of public displays of mourning. © 2015 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

[Self-regulation systems to control tobacco advertising. An empirical analysis].

PubMed

Martín, Marta; Quiles, M del Carmen; López, Carmen

2004-01-01

Against the background of the debate aroused by the tobacco advertising ban as a result of Directive 98/43/EC and of the Proposed Directive of 5/9/2001, we aimed to evaluate how self-regulation of tobacco advertising systems has worked in the last 5 years and to evaluate its effectiveness and relevance as a potential tool in public health prevention. We performed a content and discourse analysis of all advertisements appearing in the Sunday supplements of the three weekly newspapers with the widest circulation in Spain (El Pais, El Mundo, and ABC) between January 1995 and January 2000 to detect infractions of the norms of the self-regulation code of the Spanish Tobacco Association (Asociacion Espanola de Tabaco [AET]) regarding: a) the identity of models used in advertising; b) direct or indirect claims for the therapeutic properties of smoking; c) depiction of cigarettes in advertisements, and d) printed warnings on advertisements. We examined 910 banners and 369 advertisements. Very few advertisements displayed rational arguments on elements such as price (13%) or product components (7%). Although the AET's code was generally respected, the advertisements displayed a series of subtleties that allowed the industry to get around the code: 10 of the 369 advertisements reviewed depicted famous people (mainly pilots and artists) and one third of them used iconic personages (Joe Camel or Marlboro Man); one advertisement suggested the therapeutic properties of tobacco and almost all linked smoking with social success and leisure. Although cigarettes were not depicted, 18% of the advertisements showed substitutes for cigarettes in various places (12%) and a large percentage infringed the code's recommendations on printed warnings. The industry's use of creative subtleties infringing its self-imposed norms begs the question of how far self-regulation is viable when a failure in the system can have serious consequences for public health.

Room temperature structures beyond 1.5 Å by serial femtosecond crystallography

PubMed Central

Schmidt, Marius; Pande, Kanupriya; Basu, Shibom; Tenboer, Jason

2015-01-01

About 2.5 × 106 snapshots on microcrystals of photoactive yellow protein (PYP) from a recent serial femtosecond crystallographic (SFX) experiment were reanalyzed to maximum resolution. The resolution is pushed to 1.46 Å, and a PYP structural model is refined at that resolution. The result is compared to other PYP models determined at atomic resolution around 1 Å and better at the synchrotron. By comparing subtleties such as individual isotropic temperature factors and hydrogen bond lengths, we were able to assess the quality of the SFX data at that resolution. We also show that the determination of anisotropic temperature factor ellipsoids starts to become feasible with the SFX data at resolutions better than 1.5 Å. PMID:26798807

Computation of NLO processes involving heavy quarks using Loop-Tree Duality

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Driencourt-Mangin, Félix

2017-03-01

We present a new method to compute higher-order corrections to physical cross-sections, at Next-to-Leading Order and beyond. This method, based on the Loop Tree Duality, leads to locally integrable expressions in four dimensions. By introducing a physically motivated momentum mapping between the momenta involved in the real and the virtual contributions, infrared singularities naturally cancel at integrand level, without the need to introduce subtraction counter-terms. Ultraviolet singularities are dealt with by using dual representations of suitable counter-terms, with some subtleties regarding the self-energy contributions. As an example, we apply this method to compute the 1 → 2 decay rate in the context of a scalar toy model with massive particles.

A classification scheme for the morphology of lava flow fields

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wilson, L.; Pinkerton, H.; Head, James W.; Roberts, K. Magee

1993-01-01

Analysis of the processes controlling the advance of lava flows shows that, if no other factors intervene, thermal constraints will act to limit the maximum length of a flow being fed at a given volume or mass effusion rate from a vent. These constraints can be characterized through the Gratz number, which takes on a large value at the vent and decreases down flow. Early application of this principle showed that, despite the many subtleties of modes of heat loss from flows, motion apparently ceases when the Gratz number has decreased to a value close to 300. Recent analyses of flow units from the 1983-86 Pu'u 'O'o eruption of Kilauea and of other, more silicic lava flow units confirm this finding.

The paradoxical politics of provider reempowerment.

PubMed

Brown, Lawrence D; Eagan, Elizabeth

2004-12-01

The recent decline, indeed perhaps dismantling, of managed care is sometimes treated as both consequence and cause of the political reempowerment of medical providers, whose professional dominance managed care had challenged. Drawing evidence from Round III of the Community Tracking Study of the Center for Studying Health System Change, this article reviews the politics of four "arenas" of managed care regulation--prompt payment, mandated benefits, external appeals, and financial solvency--and concludes that the power of providers is contingent on patterns of coalition and conflict that differ across the discrete arenas. The zero-sum connotations of the "de" and "re" empowerment of providers under managed care fail to capture the subtlety of providers' search for fresh cultural, economic, and political resources in shifting policy contexts.

Water Ice Clouds in the Martian Atmosphere: A Comparison of Two Methods

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hale, A. S.; Tamppari, L. K.; Christensen, P. R.; Smith, M. D.; Bass, Deborah; Pearl, J. C.

2003-01-01

To date, the only two data sets offer the potential to examine year-to-year changes in cloud features over an entire Martian year: the Viking Infrared Thermal Mapper (IRTM) data set and the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) data set. We have examined the TES data in the same way in which we examined the Viking IRTM data. This provides water-ice cloud information separated in time by 12 Martian years. Since the data are analyzed with the same method, we obtain a very accurate 'apples to apples' comparison, and can generate a historical record of the subtleties of this annual event. Consequently, it is desirable to compare their results to ours to see what differences exist.

Higher-order theories of gravity: diagnosis, extraction and reformulation via non-metric extra degrees of freedom—a review

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Belenchia, Alessio; Letizia, Marco; Liberati, Stefano; Di Casola, Eolo

2018-03-01

Modifications of Einstein’s theory of gravitation have been extensively considered in the past years, in connection to both cosmology and quantum gravity. Higher-curvature and higher-derivative gravity theories constitute the main examples of such modifications. These theories exhibit, in general, more degrees of freedom than those found in standard general relativity; counting, identifying, and retrieving the description/representation of such dynamical variables is currently an open problem, and a decidedly nontrivial one. In this work we review, via both formal arguments and custom-made examples, the most relevant methods to unveil the gravitational degrees of freedom of a given model, discussing the merits, subtleties and pitfalls of the various approaches.

Simulation and Analysis of Converging Shock Wave Test Problems

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ramsey, Scott D.; Shashkov, Mikhail J.

2012-06-21

Results and analysis pertaining to the simulation of the Guderley converging shock wave test problem (and associated code verification hydrodynamics test problems involving converging shock waves) in the LANL ASC radiation-hydrodynamics code xRAGE are presented. One-dimensional (1D) spherical and two-dimensional (2D) axi-symmetric geometric setups are utilized and evaluated in this study, as is an instantiation of the xRAGE adaptive mesh refinement capability. For the 2D simulations, a 'Surrogate Guderley' test problem is developed and used to obviate subtleties inherent to the true Guderley solution's initialization on a square grid, while still maintaining a high degree of fidelity to the originalmore » problem, and minimally straining the general credibility of associated analysis and conclusions.« less

Applications of neural networks to the studies of phase transitions of two-dimensional Potts models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, C.-D.; Tan, D.-R.; Jiang, F.-J.

2018-04-01

We study the phase transitions of two-dimensional (2D) Q-states Potts models on the square lattice, using the first principles Monte Carlo (MC) simulations as well as the techniques of neural networks (NN). We demonstrate that the ideas from NN can be adopted to study these considered phase transitions efficiently. In particular, even with a simple NN constructed in this investigation, we are able to obtain the relevant information of the nature of these phase transitions, namely whether they are first order or second order. Our results strengthen the potential applicability of machine learning in studying various states of matters. Subtlety of applying NN techniques to investigate many-body systems is briefly discussed as well.

Re-constructing our models of cellulose and primary cell wall assembly

PubMed Central

Cosgrove, Daniel J.

2014-01-01

The cellulose microfibril has more subtlety than is commonly recognized. Details of its structure may influence how matrix polysaccharides interact with its distinctive hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces to form a strong yet extensible structure. Recent advances in this field include the first structures of bacterial and plant cellulose synthases and revised estimates of microfibril structure, reduced from 36 to 18 chains. New results also indicate that cellulose interactions with xyloglucan are more limited than commonly believed, whereas pectin-cellulose interactions are more prevalent. Computational results indicate that xyloglucan binds tightest to the hydrophobic surface of cellulose microfibrils. Wall extensibility may be controlled at limited regions (“biomechanical hotspots”) where cellulose-cellulose contacts are made, potentially mediated by trace amounts of xyloglucan. PMID:25460077

Re-constructing our models of cellulose and primary cell wall assembly.

PubMed

Cosgrove, Daniel J

2014-12-01

The cellulose microfibril has more subtlety than is commonly recognized. Details of its structure may influence how matrix polysaccharides interact with its distinctive hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces to form a strong yet extensible structure. Recent advances in this field include the first structures of bacterial and plant cellulose synthases and revised estimates of microfibril structure, reduced from 36 to 18 chains. New results also indicate that cellulose interactions with xyloglucan are more limited than commonly believed, whereas pectin–cellulose interactions are more prevalent. Computational results indicate that xyloglucan binds tightest to the hydrophobic surface of cellulose microfibrils. Wall extensibility may be controlled at limited regions (‘biomechanical hotspots’) where cellulose–cellulose contacts are made, potentially mediated by trace amounts of xyloglucan.

Higher-order theories of gravity: diagnosis, extraction and reformulation via non-metric extra degrees of freedom-a review.

PubMed

Belenchia, Alessio; Letizia, Marco; Liberati, Stefano; Di Casola, Eolo

2018-03-01

Modifications of Einstein's theory of gravitation have been extensively considered in the past years, in connection to both cosmology and quantum gravity. Higher-curvature and higher-derivative gravity theories constitute the main examples of such modifications. These theories exhibit, in general, more degrees of freedom than those found in standard general relativity; counting, identifying, and retrieving the description/representation of such dynamical variables is currently an open problem, and a decidedly nontrivial one. In this work we review, via both formal arguments and custom-made examples, the most relevant methods to unveil the gravitational degrees of freedom of a given model, discussing the merits, subtleties and pitfalls of the various approaches.

Precision tools and models to narrow in on the 750 GeV diphoton resonance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Staub, Florian; Athron, Peter; Basso, Lorenzo; Goodsell, Mark D.; Harries, Dylan; Krauss, Manuel E.; Nickel, Kilian; Opferkuch, Toby; Ubaldi, Lorenzo; Vicente, Avelino; Voigt, Alexander

2016-09-01

The hints for a new resonance at 750 GeV from ATLAS and CMS have triggered a significant amount of attention. Since the simplest extensions of the standard model cannot accommodate the observation, many alternatives have been considered to explain the excess. Here we focus on several proposed renormalisable weakly-coupled models and revisit results given in the literature. We point out that physically important subtleties are often missed or neglected. To facilitate the study of the excess we have created a collection of 40 model files, selected from recent literature, for the Mathematica package SARAH. With SARAH one can generate files to perform numerical studies using the tailor-made spectrum generators FlexibleSUSY and SPheno. These have been extended to automatically include crucial higher order corrections to the diphoton and digluon decay rates for both CP-even and CP-odd scalars. Additionally, we have extended the UFO and CalcHep interfaces of SARAH, to pass the precise information about the effective vertices from the spectrum generator to a Monte-Carlo tool. Finally, as an example to demonstrate the power of the entire setup, we present a new supersymmetric model that accommodates the diphoton excess, explicitly demonstrating how a large width can be obtained. We explicitly show several steps in detail to elucidate the use of these public tools in the precision study of this model.

Digital terrain modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, John P.

2012-01-01

This article examines how the methods and data sources used to generate DEMs and calculate land surface parameters have changed over the past 25 years. The primary goal is to describe the state-of-the-art for a typical digital terrain modeling workflow that starts with data capture, continues with data preprocessing and DEM generation, and concludes with the calculation of one or more primary and secondary land surface parameters. The article first describes some of ways in which LiDAR and RADAR remote sensing technologies have transformed the sources and methods for capturing elevation data. It next discusses the need for and various methods that are currently used to preprocess DEMs along with some of the challenges that confront those who tackle these tasks. The bulk of the article describes some of the subtleties involved in calculating the primary land surface parameters that are derived directly from DEMs without additional inputs and the two sets of secondary land surface parameters that are commonly used to model solar radiation and the accompanying interactions between the land surface and the atmosphere on the one hand and water flow and related surface processes on the other. It concludes with a discussion of the various kinds of errors that are embedded in DEMs, how these may be propagated and carried forward in calculating various land surface parameters, and the consequences of this state-of-affairs for the modern terrain analyst.

An optimal adder-based hardware architecture for the DCT/SA-DCT

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kinane, Andrew; Muresan, Valentin; O'Connor, Noel

2005-07-01

The explosive growth of the mobile multimedia industry has accentuated the need for ecient VLSI implemen- tations of the associated computationally demanding signal processing algorithms. This need becomes greater as end-users demand increasingly enhanced features and more advanced underpinning video analysis. One such feature is object-based video processing as supported by MPEG-4 core profile, which allows content-based in- teractivity. MPEG-4 has many computationally demanding underlying algorithms, an example of which is the Shape Adaptive Discrete Cosine Transform (SA-DCT). The dynamic nature of the SA-DCT processing steps pose significant VLSI implementation challenges and many of the previously proposed approaches use area and power consumptive multipliers. Most also ignore the subtleties of the packing steps and manipulation of the shape information. We propose a new multiplier-less serial datapath based solely on adders and multiplexers to improve area and power. The adder cost is minimised by employing resource re-use methods. The number of (physical) adders used has been derived using a common sub-expression elimination algorithm. Additional energy eciency is factored into the design by employing guarded evaluation and local clock gating. Our design implements the SA-DCT packing with minimal switching using ecient addressing logic with a transpose mem- ory RAM. The entire design has been synthesized using TSMC 0.09µm TCBN90LP technology yielding a gate count of 12028 for the datapath and its control logic.

Singular lensing from the scattering on special space-time defects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mavromatos, Nick E.; Papavassiliou, Joannis

2018-01-01

It is well known that certain special classes of self-gravitating point-like defects, such as global (non gauged) monopoles, give rise to non-asymptotically flat space-times characterized by solid angle deficits, whose size depends on the details of the underlying microscopic models. The scattering of electrically neutral particles on such space-times is described by amplitudes that exhibit resonant behaviour when thescattering and deficit angles coincide. This, in turn, leads to ring-like structures where the cross sections are formally divergent ("singular lensing"). In this work, we revisit this particular phenomenon, with the twofold purpose of placing it in a contemporary and more general context, in view of renewed interest in the theory and general phenomenology of such defects, and, more importantly, of addressing certain subtleties that appear in the particular computation that leads to the aforementioned effect. In particular, by adopting a specific regularization procedure for the formally infinite Legendre series encountered, we manage to ensure the recovery of the Minkowski space-time, and thus the disappearance of the lensing phenomenon, in the no-defect limit, and the validity of the optical theorem for the elastic total cross section. In addition, the singular nature of the phenomenon is confirmed by means of an alternative calculation, which, unlike the original approach, makes no use of the generating function of the Legendre polynomials, but rather exploits the asymptotic properties of the Fresnel integrals.

Nanostructured Platforms for the Sustained and Local Delivery of Antibiotics in the Treatment of Osteomyelitis

PubMed Central

Uskoković, Vuk

2015-01-01

This article provides a critical view of the current state of the development of nanoparticulate and other solid-state carriers for the local delivery of antibiotics in the treatment of osteomyelitis. Mentioned are the downsides of traditional means for treating bone infection, which involve systemic administration of antibiotics and surgical debridement, along with the rather imperfect local delivery options currently available in the clinic. Envisaged are more sophisticated carriers for the local and sustained delivery of antimicrobials, including bioresorbable polymeric, collagenous, liquid crystalline, and bioglass- and nanotube-based carriers, as well as those composed of calcium phosphate, the mineral component of bone and teeth. A special emphasis is placed on composite multifunctional antibiotic carriers of a nanoparticulate nature and on their ability to induce osteogenesis of hard tissues demineralized due to disease. An ideal carrier of this type would prevent the long-term, repetitive, and systemic administration of antibiotics and either minimize or completely eliminate the need for surgical debridement of necrotic tissue. Potential problems faced by even hypothetically “perfect” antibiotic delivery vehicles are mentioned too, including (i) intracellular bacterial colonies involved in recurrent, chronic osteomyelitis; (ii) the need for mechanical and release properties to be adjusted to the area of surgical placement; (iii) different environments in which in vitro and in vivo testings are carried out; (iv) unpredictable synergies between drug delivery system components; and (v) experimental sensitivity issues entailing the increasing subtlety of the design of nanoplatforms for the controlled delivery of therapeutics. PMID:25746204

Cortical Thickness, Surface Area and Subcortical Volume Differentially Contribute to Cognitive Heterogeneity in Parkinson's Disease.

PubMed

Gerrits, Niels J H M; van Loenhoud, Anita C; van den Berg, Stan F; Berendse, Henk W; Foncke, Elisabeth M J; Klein, Martin; Stoffers, Diederick; van der Werf, Ysbrand D; van den Heuvel, Odile A

2016-01-01

Parkinson's disease (PD) is often associated with cognitive deficits, although their severity varies considerably between patients. Recently, we used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to show that individual differences in gray matter (GM) volume relate to cognitive heterogeneity in PD. VBM does, however, not differentiate between cortical thickness (CTh) and surface area (SA), which might be independently affected in PD. We therefore re-analyzed our cohort using the surface-based method FreeSurfer, and investigated (i) CTh, SA, and (sub)cortical GM volume differences between 93 PD patients and 45 matched controls, and (ii) the relation between these structural measures and cognitive performance on six neuropsychological tasks within the PD group. We found cortical thinning in PD patients in the left pericalcarine gyrus, extending to cuneus, precuneus and lingual areas and left inferior parietal cortex, bilateral rostral middle frontal cortex, and right cuneus, and increased cortical surface area in the left pars triangularis. Within the PD group, we found negative correlations between (i) CTh of occipital areas and performance on a verbal memory task, (ii) SA and volume of the frontal cortex and visuospatial memory performance, and, (iii) volume of the right thalamus and scores on two verbal fluency tasks. Our primary findings illustrate that i) CTh and SA are differentially affected in PD, and ii) VBM and FreeSurfer yield non-overlapping results in an identical dataset. We argue that this discrepancy is due to technical differences and the subtlety of the PD-related structural changes.

Reversible Adhesion with Polyelectrolyte Brushes Tailored via the Uptake and Release of Trivalent Lanthanum Ions

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Farina, Robert; Laugel, Nicolas; Yu, Jing

Applications of end-tethered polyelectrolyte “brushes” to modify solid surfaces have been developed and studied for their colloidal stabilization and high lubrication properties. Current efforts have expanded into biological realms and stimuli-responsive materials. Our work explores responsive and reversible aspects of polyelectrolyte brush behavior when polyelectrolyte chains interact with oppositely charged multivalent ions and complexes, which act as counterions. There is a significant void in the polyelectrolyte literature regarding interactions with multivalent species. This paper demonstrates that interactions between solid surfaces bearing negatively charged polyelectrolyte brushes are highly sensitive to the presence of trivalent lanthanum, La3+. Lanthanum cations have unique interactionsmore » with polyelectrolyte chains, in part due to their small size and hydration radius which results in a high local charge density. Using La3+ in conjunction with the surface forces apparatus (SFA), adhesion has been observed to reversibly appear and disappear upon the uptake and release, respectively, of these multivalent cations acting as counterions. In media of fixed ionic strength set by monovalent sodium salt, at I0 = 0.003 M and I0 = 0.3 M, the sign of the interaction forces between overlapping brushes changes from repulsive to attractive when La3+ concentrations reach 0.1 mol % of the total ion concentration. These results are also shown to be generally consistent with, but subtlety different from, previous polyelectrolyte brush experiments using trivalent ruthenium hexamine in the role of the multivalent counterion.« less

Emotion-prints: interaction-driven emotion visualization on multi-touch interfaces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cernea, Daniel; Weber, Christopher; Ebert, Achim; Kerren, Andreas

2015-01-01

Emotions are one of the unique aspects of human nature, and sadly at the same time one of the elements that our technological world is failing to capture and consider due to their subtlety and inherent complexity. But with the current dawn of new technologies that enable the interpretation of emotional states based on techniques involving facial expressions, speech and intonation, electrodermal response (EDS) and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), we are finally able to access real-time user emotions in various system interfaces. In this paper we introduce emotion-prints, an approach for visualizing user emotional valence and arousal in the context of multi-touch systems. Our goal is to offer a standardized technique for representing user affective states in the moment when and at the location where the interaction occurs in order to increase affective self-awareness, support awareness in collaborative and competitive scenarios, and offer a framework for aiding the evaluation of touch applications through emotion visualization. We show that emotion-prints are not only independent of the shape of the graphical objects on the touch display, but also that they can be applied regardless of the acquisition technique used for detecting and interpreting user emotions. Moreover, our representation can encode any affective information that can be decomposed or reduced to Russell's two-dimensional space of valence and arousal. Our approach is enforced by a BCI-based user study and a follow-up discussion of advantages and limitations.

Microwave Imaging Reflectometry for the study of Edge Harmonic Oscillations on DIII-D [Microwave Imaging Reflectometry (MIR) for the study of Edge Harmonic Oscillations (EHOs) on DIII-D

DOE PAGES

Ren, X.; Chen, M.; Chen, X.; ...

2015-10-23

Quiescent H-mode (QH) is an ELM free mode of operation in which edge-localized harmonic oscillations (EHOs) are believed to enhance particle transport, thereby stabilizing ELMs and preventing damage to the divertor and plasma facing components. Microwave Imaging Reflectometer (MIR) enabling direct comparison between the measured and simulated 2D images of density fluctuations near the edge can determine the 2D structure of density oscillation which can help to explain the physics behind EHO modes. MIR data sometimes indicates a counter-propagation between higher (n>1) and dominant (n=1) harmonics of coherent EHOs in the steep gradient regions of the pedestal. To preclude diagnosticmore » artifacts, we have performed forward modeling that includes possible optical misalignments to show that offsets between transmitting and receiving antennas do not account for this feature. We have also simulated the non-uniform rotation of the EHO structure, which induces multiple harmonics that are properly characterized in the synthetic diagnostic. Excluding these possible explanations for the data, the counter-propagation observed in MIR data, which is not corroborated by external Mirnov coil array measurements, may be due to subtleties of the eigenmode structure, such as an inversion radius consistent with a magnetic island. Similar effects are observed in analysis of internal ECE-Imaging and BES data. Furthermore, the identification of a non-ideal structure motivates further exploration of nonlinear models of this instability.« less

A new texture descriptor based on local micro-pattern for detection of architectural distortion in mammographic images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Oliveira, Helder C. R.; Moraes, Diego R.; Reche, Gustavo A.; Borges, Lucas R.; Catani, Juliana H.; de Barros, Nestor; Melo, Carlos F. E.; Gonzaga, Adilson; Vieira, Marcelo A. C.

2017-03-01

This paper presents a new local micro-pattern texture descriptor for the detection of Architectural Distortion (AD) in digital mammography images. AD is a subtle contraction of breast parenchyma that may represent an early sign of breast cancer. Due to its subtlety and variability, AD is more difficult to detect compared to microcalcifications and masses, and is commonly found in retrospective evaluations of false-negative mammograms. Several computer-based systems have been proposed for automatic detection of AD, but their performance are still unsatisfactory. The proposed descriptor, Local Mapped Pattern (LMP), is a generalization of the Local Binary Pattern (LBP), which is considered one of the most powerful feature descriptor for texture classification in digital images. Compared to LBP, the LMP descriptor captures more effectively the minor differences between the local image pixels. Moreover, LMP is a parametric model which can be optimized for the desired application. In our work, the LMP performance was compared to the LBP and four Haralick's texture descriptors for the classification of 400 regions of interest (ROIs) extracted from clinical mammograms. ROIs were selected and divided into four classes: AD, normal tissue, microcalcifications and masses. Feature vectors were used as input to a multilayer perceptron neural network, with a single hidden layer. Results showed that LMP is a good descriptor to distinguish AD from other anomalies in digital mammography. LMP performance was slightly better than the LBP and comparable to Haralick's descriptors (mean classification accuracy = 83%).

Factorization of standard model cross sections at ultrahigh energy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chien, Yang-Ting; Li, Hsiang-nan

2018-03-01

The factorization theorem for organizing multiple electroweak boson emissions at future colliders with energy far above the electroweak scale is formulated. Taking the inclusive muon-pair production in electron-positron collisions as an example, we argue that the summation over isospins is demanded for constructing the universal distributions of leptons and gauge bosons in an electron. These parton distributions are shown to have the same infrared structure in the phases of broken and unbroken electroweak symmetry, an observation consistent with the Goldstone equivalence theorem. The electroweak factorization of processes involving protons is sketched, with an emphasis on the subtlety of the scalar distributions. This formalism, in which electroweak shower effects are handled from the viewpoint of factorization theorem for the first time, is an adequate framework for collider physics at ultra high energy.

Awareness Information with Speech and Sound

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kainulainen, Anssi; Turunen, Markku; Hakulinen, Jaakko

In modern work environments, people have many tasks, collaborate with other people and use various equipment and services. Staying aware of other people, processes and situations in work environments is important. We naturally use our hearing to maintain this awareness; hearing other people talk let us know they are present, sounds of people walking, typing, etc. help us stay aware of overall situation almost without conscious effort. Such awareness can also be supported by technology; information can be presented with varying levels of subtlety ranging from loud warning signals to subtle cues, such as the sound of a hard drive indicating activity in a computer. Creating a computer system that supports our awareness of coworkers and overall situation in the workplace can increase our productivity and make the workplace a more social and enjoyable place.

Re-constructing our models of cellulose and primary cell wall assembly

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Cosgrove, Daniel J.

2014-11-16

The cellulose microfibril has more subtlety than is commonly recognized. Details of its structure may influence how matrix polysaccharides interact with its distinctive hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces to form a strong yet extensible structure. We report that recent advances in this field include the first structures of bacterial and plant cellulose synthases and revised estimates of microfibril structure, reduced from 36 to 18 chains. New results also indicate that cellulose interactions with xyloglucan are more limited than commonly believed, whereas pectin-cellulose interactions are more prevalent. Computational results indicate that xyloglucan binds tightest to the hydrophobic surface of cellulose microfibrils. Finally,more » wall extensibility may be controlled at limited regions (“biomechanical hotspots”) where cellulose-cellulose contacts are made, potentially mediated by trace amounts of xyloglucan.« less

PC-402 Pioneer Venus orbiter spacecraft mission operational characteristics document

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Barker, F. C.; Butterworth, L. W.; Daniel, R. E.; Drean, R. J.; Filetti, K. A.; Fisher, J. N.; Nowak, L. A.; Porzucki, J.; Salvatore, J. O.; Tadler, G. A.

1978-01-01

The operational characteristics of the Orbiter spacecraft and its subsystems are described. In extensive detail. Description of the nominal phases, system interfaces, and the capabilities and limitations of system level performance are included along with functional and operational descriptions at the subsystem and unit level the subtleties of nominal operation as well as detailed capabilities and limitations beyond nominal performance are discussed. A command and telemetry logic flow diagram for each subsystem is included. Each diagram encountered along each command signal path into, and each telemetry signal path out of the subsystem. Normal operating modes that correspond to the performance of specific functions at the time of specific events in the mission are also discussed. Principal backup means of performing the normal Orbiter operating modes are included.

Recoil Inversion in the Photodissociation of Carbonyl Sulfide near 234 nm.

PubMed

Sofikitis, Dimitris; Suarez, Jaime; Schmidt, Johan A; Rakitzis, T Peter; Farantos, Stavros C; Janssen, Maurice H M

2017-06-23

We report the observation of recoil inversion of the CO (v=0, J_{CO}=66) state in the UV dissociation of lab-frame oriented carbonyl sulfide (OCS). This state is ejected in the opposite direction with respect to all other (>30) states and in absence of any OCS rotation, thus resulting in spatial filtering of this particular high-J rovibrational state. This inversion is caused by resonances occurring in shallow local minima of the molecular potential, which bring the sulfur closer to the oxygen than the carbon atom, and is a striking example where such subtleties severely modify the photofragment trajectories. The resonant behavior is observed only in the photofragment trajectories and not in their population, showing that stereodynamic measurements from oriented molecules offer an indispensable probe for exploring energy landscapes.

Some issues and subtleties in numerical simulation of X-ray FEL's

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Fawley, William M.

Part of the overall design effort for x-ray FEL's such as the LCLS and TESLA projects has involved extensive use of particle simulation codes to predict their output performance and underlying sensitivity to various input parameters (e.g. electron beam emittance). This paper discusses some of the numerical issues that must be addressed by simulation codes in this regime. We first give a brief overview of the standard approximations and simulation methods adopted by time-dependent(i.e. polychromatic) codes such as GINGER, GENESIS, and FAST3D, including the effects of temporal discretization and the resultant limited spectral bandpass,and then discuss the accuracies and inaccuraciesmore » of these codes in predicting incoherent spontaneous emission (i.e. the extremely low gain regime).« less

The 360 photography: a new anatomical insight of the sphenoid bone. Interest for anatomy teaching and skull base surgery.

PubMed

Jacquesson, Timothée; Mertens, Patrick; Berhouma, Moncef; Jouanneau, Emmanuel; Simon, Emile

2017-01-01

Skull base architecture is tough to understand because of its 3D complex shape and its numerous foramen, reliefs or joints. It is especially true for the sphenoid bone whom central location hinged with most of skull base components is unique. Recently, technological progress has led to develop new pedagogical tools. This way, we bought a new real-time three-dimensional insight of the sphenoid bone that could be useful for the teacher, the student and the surgeon. High-definition photography was taken all around an isolated dry skull base bone prepared with Beauchêne's technique. Pictures were then computed to provide an overview with rotation and magnification on demand. From anterior, posterior, lateral or oblique views and from in out looks, anatomical landmarks and subtleties were described step by step. Thus, the sella turcica, the optic canal, the superior orbital fissure, the sphenoid sinus, the vidian canal, pterygoid plates and all foramen were clearly placed relative to the others at each face of the sphenoid bone. In addition to be the first report of the 360 Photography tool, perspectives are promising as the development of a real-time interactive tridimensional space featuring the sphenoid bone. It allows to turn around the sphenoid bone and to better understand its own special shape, numerous foramen, neurovascular contents and anatomical relationships. This new technological tool may further apply for surgical planning and mostly for strengthening a basic anatomical knowledge firstly introduced.

Gender and the experience of mental health expert witness testimony.

PubMed

Kaempf, Aimee C; Baxter, Prudence; Packer, Ira K; Pinals, Debra A

2015-03-01

Mental health expert witness testimony involves complex tasks, and the capacity to perform under pressure is a fundamental skill of a forensic professional. In this context, it is important to understand the nuances of the provision of expert witness testimony. There have been several efforts to examine gender bias across legal and medical systems. Despite these reviews, little is known about how men and women differ or are similar with regard to performing expert witness functions. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine whether the testimony experiences of psychiatry and psychology experts vary by gender. Differences across certain domains, such as the sense of never experiencing anxiety and the sense of one's impact on case outcome were seen across genders. Few other gender-based differences in the experience of providing expert witness testimony were seen. Although the findings of this study raise further questions, they highlight some of the important subtleties noted in forensic practice and the work of the expert witness. In future studies, researchers should continue to explore these findings on the influence of gender and expand to consider culture and race as additional factors in the experience of expert witness testimony. As forensic professional practice evolves, it is important to understand unique aspects of forensic practice, to improve training of forensic experts, and to assist forensic experts in anticipating what they may experience related to the provision of expert testimony. © 2015 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

The Role of Quantum Decoherence in FRET.

PubMed

Nelson, Philip C

2018-02-16

Resonance energy transfer has become an indispensable experimental tool for single-molecule and single-cell biophysics. Its physical underpinnings, however, are subtle: it involves a discrete jump of excitation from one molecule to another, and so we regard it as a strongly quantum-mechanical process. And yet its kinetics differ from what many of us were taught about two-state quantum systems, quantum superpositions of the states do not seem to arise, and so on. Although J. R. Oppenheimer and T. Förster navigated these subtleties successfully, it remains hard to find an elementary derivation in modern language. The key step involves acknowledging quantum decoherence. Appreciating that aspect can be helpful when we attempt to extend our understanding to situations in which Förster's original analysis is not applicable. Copyright © 2018 Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Detection principle of gravitational wave detectors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Congedo, Giuseppe

With the first two detections in late 2015, astrophysics has officially entered into the new era of gravitational wave (GW) observations. Since then, much has been going on in the field with a lot of work focusing on the observations and implications for astrophysics and tests of general relativity in the strong regime. However, much less is understood about how gravitational detectors really work at their fundamental level. For decades, the response to incoming signals has been customarily calculated using the very same physical principle, which has proved so successful in the first detections. In this paper, we review the physical principle that is behind such a detection at the very fundamental level, and we try to highlight the peculiar subtleties that make it so hard in practice. We will then mention how detectors are built starting from this fundamental measurement element.

Structural Search for High Pressure CS2 and Xe-Cl Compounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zarifi, Niloofar; Tse, John S.

2018-04-01

The recent successful implementation of several methodologies for the prediction of crystal structures based on the first-principles electronic structure have ushered in a new area of computational chemistry. In this study, the two most popular methods, namely genetic evolution and particle swarm optimization, were applied to the investigation of stable crystalline polymorphs of solid carbon disulfide and xenon halides at high pressure. It was found that both methods have their own merits. However, there are subtleties that need to be considered for the proper execution of the methods. We found a two-dimensional (2D) layered structure that may be responsible for the superconductivity in CS2. Except for XeCl2, no thermodynamically stable crystalline Xe halides were found under 60 GPa in the halide-rich region of the phase diagram.

Posttranscriptional RNA Modifications: playing metabolic games in a cell's chemical Legoland.

PubMed

Helm, Mark; Alfonzo, Juan D

2014-02-20

Nature combines existing biochemical building blocks, at times with subtlety of purpose. RNA modifications are a prime example of this, where standard RNA nucleosides are decorated with chemical groups and building blocks that we recall from our basic biochemistry lectures. The result: a wealth of chemical diversity whose full biological relevance has remained elusive despite being public knowledge for some time. Here, we highlight several modifications that, because of their chemical intricacy, rely on seemingly unrelated pathways to provide cofactors for their synthesis. Besides their immediate role in affecting RNA function, modifications may act as sensors and transducers of information that connect a cell's metabolic state to its translational output, carefully orchestrating a delicate balance between metabolic rate and protein synthesis at a system's level. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Things you never thought of that make a difference: personal goals, common sense, and good behavior in practice.

PubMed

Watson, J Tracy

2011-12-01

There are many aspects of your practice that you never think of when you first get into your new practice environment. You have spent the better part of your life training in a rigorous surgical residency and possibly fellowship. You have worked hard to get to this station in life. Because of your training and the obvious fact that you are a hard-driving individual, there are certain subtleties to a successful practice that you might have overlooked or never thought about during your training years. In many ways, it is the "little things" that you never learned or never thought of that will affect your overall long-term practice success, personal happiness, and relationships the most. This article reviews aspects of practice that at first glance are merely good common sense.

Teaching the gravitational redshift: lessons from the history and philosophy of physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Scott, Robert B.

2015-04-01

The equivalence principle and the notion of an ideal clock running independently of acceleration suggest that clocks are unaffected by gravity. The apparent contradiction with the gravitational redshift points to a subtlety in general relativity theory. Indeed, early attempts for a clear derivation of the gravitational redshift were fraught with errors and ambiguities, and much confusion endured for the next two decades. This suggests that the subject should be treated carefully in introductory textbooks on relativity theory. I analyze the weaknesses of the presentation in five otherwise excellent modern introductory general relativity books (by Rindler, Schutz, Hobson et al., Weinberg, and Carroll). I also present some analysis from an history and philosophy of physics article, which proves to be a great resource to learn about, anticipate, and clarify problems in teaching the redshift.

HGML: a hypertext guideline markup language.

PubMed Central

Hagerty, C. G.; Pickens, D.; Kulikowski, C.; Sonnenberg, F.

2000-01-01

Existing text-based clinical practice guidelines can be difficult to put into practice. While a growing number of such documents have gained acceptance in the medical community and contain a wealth of valuable information, the time required to digest them is substantial. Yet the expressive power, subtlety and flexibility of natural language pose challenges when designing computer tools that will help in their application. At the same time, formal computer languages typically lack such expressiveness and the effort required to translate existing documents into these languages may be costly. We propose a method based on the mark-up concept for converting text-based clinical guidelines into a machine-operable form. This allows existing guidelines to be manipulated by machine, and viewed in different formats at various levels of detail according to the needs of the practitioner, while preserving their originally published form. PMID:11079898

"Communication by impact" and other forms of non-verbal communication: a review of transference, countertransference and projective identification.

PubMed

Böhmer, M W

2010-07-01

This article aims to review the importance, place and especially the emotional impact of non-verbal communication in psychiatry. The paper argues that while biological psychiatry is in the ascendency with increasing discoveries being made about the functioning of the brain and psycho-pharmacology, it is important to try and understand what is happening between psychiatrist and patient. The importance of being aware of the subtleties of this interaction is argued, as are the roles of phenomena such as transference, counter-transference and projective identification. The workings and use of these phenomena are explored as central in the doctor-patient interaction, as well as the consequences of failure to utilize and understand these phenomena. The author reviews - amongst others - the work of the analysts Casement, Gabbard, Goldstein, Ogden and Symington.

Rehabilitation service utilization models: changes in the opportunity structure for disabled women.

PubMed

Altman, B M; Smith, R T

1990-01-01

The focus of this paper is the opportunity structure for rehabilitation and subsequent outcome for disabled women, in comparison with disabled men. From evidence cited in the literature the differential provision of rehabilitation and other supportive services to disabled women suggests variation in outcome, based on two analytic service utilization models of rehabilitation: medical and psychosocial. Aggregate trend data (1972 and 1978) were used in the analysis of adult disabled groups, by gender and selected disabling conditions. There are two striking results from the analysis of these data sets. One indicates that receipt of rehabilitation is greatly influenced by sociodemographic factors, particularly gender and age. A detailed examination of the combination effects of gender and other sociodemographic variables shows that there are subtleties, such as an interaction between race and gender and education and gender, as well as between age and gender, that put uneducated, younger, white women at a disadvantage in their access to rehabilitation resources. The analysis of these sociodemographic factors over two points in time, however, demonstrates what can be considered a diffusion of the distinctions of social inequality, probably due to changes in rehabilitation legislation that redefined eligibility criteria for rehabilitation services and expanded programme goals. The second result of note is that neither form of rehabilitation is associated with a positive outcome, in this case ability to work. In the earlier data set (1972), indications were that neither the medical model of rehabilitation nor the psychosocial model were effective in returning the individual to the work role. This was true for both men and women.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Evaluation of the King-Devick test as a concussion screening tool in high school football players.

PubMed

Seidman, Daniel H; Burlingame, Jennifer; Yousif, Lina R; Donahue, Xinh P; Krier, Joshua; Rayes, Lydia J; Young, Rachel; Lilla, Muareen; Mazurek, Rochelle; Hittle, Kristie; McCloskey, Charles; Misra, Saroj; Shaw, Michael K

2015-09-15

Concussion is the most common type of traumatic brain injury, and results from impact or impulsive forces to the head, neck or face. Due to the variability and subtlety of symptoms, concussions may go unrecognized or be ignored, especially with the pressure placed on athletes to return to competition. The King-Devick (KD) test, an oculomotor test originally designed for reading evaluation, was recently validated as a concussion screening tool in collegiate athletes. A prospective study was performed using high school football players in an attempt to study the KD as a concussion screening tool in this younger population. 343 athletes from four local high school football teams were recruited to participate. These athletes were given baseline KD tests prior to competition. Individual demographic information was collected on the subjects. Standard team protocol was employed to determine if a concussion had occurred during competition. Immediately after diagnosis, the KD test was re-administered to the concussed athlete for comparison to baseline. Post-season testing was also performed in non-concussed individuals. Of the 343 athletes, nine were diagnosed with concussions. In all concussed players, cumulative read times for the KD test were significantly increased (p<0.001). Post-season testing of non-concussed athletes revealed minimal change in read times relative to baseline. Univariate analysis revealed that history of concussion was the only demographic factor predictive of concussion in this cohort. The KD test is an accurate and easily administered sideline screening tool for concussion in adolescent football players. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Structure and stability insights into tumour suppressor p53 evolutionary related proteins.

PubMed

Pagano, Bruno; Jama, Abdullah; Martinez, Pierre; Akanho, Ester; Bui, Tam T T; Drake, Alex F; Fraternali, Franca; Nikolova, Penka V

2013-01-01

The p53 family of genes and their protein products, namely, p53, p63 and p73, have over one billion years of evolutionary history. Advances in computational biology and genomics are enabling studies of the complexities of the molecular evolution of p53 protein family to decipher the underpinnings of key biological conditions spanning from cancer through to various metabolic and developmental disorders and facilitate the design of personalised medicines. However, a complete understanding of the inherent nature of the thermodynamic and structural stability of the p53 protein family is still lacking. This is due, to a degree, to the lack of comprehensive structural information for a large number of homologous proteins and to an incomplete knowledge of the intrinsic factors responsible for their stability and how these might influence function. Here we investigate the thermal stability, secondary structure and folding properties of the DNA-binding domains (DBDs) of a range of proteins from the p53 family using biophysical methods. While the N- and the C-terminal domains of the p53 family show sequence diversity and are normally targets for post-translational modifications and alternative splicing, the central DBD is highly conserved. Together with data obtained from Molecular Dynamics simulations in solution and with structure based homology modelling, our results provide further insights into the molecular properties of evolutionary related p53 proteins. We identify some marked structural differences within the p53 family, which could account for the divergence in biological functions as well as the subtleties manifested in the oligomerization properties of this family.

Relations between people, relations about things: gendered investment and the case of the Lake Victoria fishery, Tanzania.

PubMed

Medard, Modesta

2012-01-01

Using the example of one of the African fisheries that has been most significantly transformed from family based to commercialized—that on Lake Victoria in Tanzania—this article considers the social nexus of decision making and focuses on analyzing women’s place. It is true that women have never been more than a minority in fisheries due to traditional inheritance patterns and new market structures, both of which bypass women in questions of ownership and decision making. We look in vain for fishwives, if this means female fish producers acting with a highly visible degree of economic and social autonomy. There is no vernacular term to identify women who work with fish or those rare women who own fishing vessels. And yet the absence of derogatory representation suggests that there have been few attempts to detract from women who are active in the fishery. Should we thus be aiming at more subtlety in our analytical approaches to fishing relations on Lake Victoria? The article unveils the ways in which women’s relations with fishermen are negotiated and how agreements are reached on behalf of their families. It explores for women’s empowerment via the customary social relations and management arrangements that exist in these riparian communities. The lake fishery has a basis for development, but its potential for the kind of growth that will have returns for future generations rests on an appreciation of how fisher-wives conceive of, and respond to, the opportunities, constraints and risks of investing in this fishery.

Some lessons learned in three years with ADS-33C. [rotorcraft handling qualities specification

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Key, David L.; Blanken, Chris L.; Hoh, Roger H.

1993-01-01

Three years of using the U.S. Army's rotorcraft handling qualities specification, Aeronautical Design Standard - 33, has shown it to be surprisingly robust. It appears to provide an excellent basis for design and for assessment, however, as the subtleties become more well understood, several areas needing refinement became apparent. Three responses to these needs have been documented in this paper: (1) The yaw-axis attitude quickness for hover target acquisition and tracking can be relaxed slightly. (2) Understanding and application of criteria for degraded visual environments needed elaboration. This and some guidelines for testing to obtain visual cue ratings have been documented. (3) The flight test maneuvers were an innovation that turned out to be very valuable. Their extensive use has made it necessary to tighten definitions and testing guidance. This was accomplished for a good visual environment and is underway for degraded visual environments.

Vision, knowledge, and assertion.

PubMed

Turri, John

2016-04-01

I report two experiments studying the relationship among explicit judgments about what people see, know, and should assert. When an object of interest was surrounded by visibly similar items, it diminished people's willingness to judge that an agent sees, knows, and should tell others that it is present. This supports the claim, made by many philosophers, that inhabiting a misleading environment intuitively decreases our willingness to attribute perception and knowledge. However, contrary to stronger claims made by some philosophers, inhabiting a misleading environment does not lead to the opposite pattern whereby people deny perception and knowledge. Causal modeling suggests a specific psychological model of how explicit judgments about perception, knowledge, and assertability are made: knowledge attributions cause perception attributions, which in turn cause assertability attributions. These findings advance understanding of how these three important judgments are made, provide new evidence that knowledge is the norm of assertion, and highlight some important subtleties in folk epistemology. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

N-ROSS: The dynamics and control issues

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lindberg, Robert E.

1986-01-01

The Navy Remote Ocean Sensing System (N-ROSS) Dynamic Stability Study team concluded that the frozen April 1985 design was viable and contained no show stoppers, although it was also clear from the study results that the configuration required further optimization. While the frozen N-ROSS configuration used has since been superceded, and the vehicle is now under competitive procurement, several other results remain from the study that will have lasting value to the N-ROSS program. The importance of constructing an integrated simulation, to serve as a design and verification aid, has been clearly established. The two team approach to the study afforded the Navy a higher degree of confidence in the results than could have been accomplished by a single simulation, and the approach led to results that highlighted subtleties in the model and simulation development that surely would have been overlookded without the benefit of an independent companion simulation with which to compare it.

Why is weapons grade plutonium more hazardous to work with than highly enriched uranium?

DOE PAGES

Cournoyer, Michael E.; Costigan, Stephen A.; Schake, Bradley S.

2015-08-01

Highly Enriched Uranium and Weapons grade plutonium have assumed positions of dominant importance among the actinide elements because of their successful uses as explosive ingredients in nuclear weapons and the place they hold as key materials in the development of industrial use of nuclear power. While most chemists are familiar with the practical interest concerning HEU and WG Pu, fewer know the subtleties among their hazards. In this study, a primer is provided regarding the hazards associated with working with HEU and WG Pu metals and oxides. The care that must be taken to safely handle these materials is emphasizedmore » and the extent of the hazards is described. The controls needed to work with HEU and WG Pu metals and oxides are differentiated. Given the choice, one would rather work with HEU metal and oxides than WG Pu metal and oxides.« less

Why is weapons grade plutonium more hazardous to work with than highly enriched uranium?

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Cournoyer, Michael E.; Costigan, Stephen A.; Schake, Bradley S.

Highly Enriched Uranium and Weapons grade plutonium have assumed positions of dominant importance among the actinide elements because of their successful uses as explosive ingredients in nuclear weapons and the place they hold as key materials in the development of industrial use of nuclear power. While most chemists are familiar with the practical interest concerning HEU and WG Pu, fewer know the subtleties among their hazards. In this study, a primer is provided regarding the hazards associated with working with HEU and WG Pu metals and oxides. The care that must be taken to safely handle these materials is emphasizedmore » and the extent of the hazards is described. The controls needed to work with HEU and WG Pu metals and oxides are differentiated. Given the choice, one would rather work with HEU metal and oxides than WG Pu metal and oxides.« less

Making people be healthy.

PubMed

Wilkinson, Timothy Martin

2009-09-01

How are we supposed to decide the rights and wrongs of banning smoking in bars, restricting adverts for junk food, nagging people into being screened for cancers, or banning the sale of party pills? The aim of this paper is to think through the political ethics of trying to make people healthier through influencing or restricting their choices. This paper covers: (1) Paternalism. What it is, what it assumes. (2) The place of health in well-being, and how this makes paternalism problematic. (3) The mistakes people make in acting in their own interests, and the implications for pro-health paternalism. (4) Autonomy objections to paternalism. The paper (5) finishes on a note of hope, by commending the currently fashionable libertarian paternalism: trying to have one's carrot cake and eat it too. A persistent theme is that thinking sensibly about making people healthier needs subtlety, not broad, ringing declarations.

The devil is in the details: an analysis of the subtleties between phosphodiesterase inhibitors for erectile dysfunction.

PubMed

Smith-Harrison, L I; Patel, Abhishek; Smith, Ryan P

2016-04-01

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a common sexual disorder with numerous etiologies involving multiple organ systems that leads to significant distress and decreased quality of life for the affected men. Fortunately, there are several modalities and interventions for treating ED. Oral medications, intra-urethral compounds, intracorporeal injections, vacuum-assist devices and surgically implanted prostheses are all part of the treatment algorithm. One of the first-lines and certainly the most widely used options for treating ED is the family of oral phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5I). The introduction of these medications in the late 1990s revolutionized the field of sexual medicine. Currently there are no guidelines and minimal literature to help providers choose among drugs in this class. This review will address differences in efficacy and side effects between various members of the oral selective phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor class of drugs.

Tabulation of asbestos-related terminology

USGS Publications Warehouse

Lowers, Heather; Meeker, Greg

2002-01-01

The term asbestos has been defined in numerous publications including many State and Federal regulations. The definition of asbestos often varies depending on the source or publication in which it is used. Differences in definitions also exist for the asbestos-related terms acicular, asbestiform, cleavage, cleavage fragment, fiber, fibril, fibrous, and parting. An inexperienced reader of the asbestos literature would have difficulty understanding these differences and grasping many of the subtleties that exist in the literature and regulatory language. Disagreement among workers from the industrial, medical, mineralogical, and regulatory communities regarding these definitions has fueled debate as to their applicability to various morphological structures and chemical compositions that exist in the amphibole and serpentine groups of minerals. This debate has significant public health, economic and legal implications. This report summarizes asbestos-related definitions taken from a variety of academic, industrial, and regulatory sources. This summary is by no means complete but includes the majority of significant definitions currently applied in the discipline.

Bayesian versus politically motivated reasoning in human perception of climate anomalies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ripberger, Joseph T.; Jenkins-Smith, Hank C.; Silva, Carol L.; Carlson, Deven E.; Gupta, Kuhika; Carlson, Nina; Dunlap, Riley E.

2017-11-01

In complex systems where humans and nature interact to produce joint outcomes, mitigation, adaptation, and resilience require that humans perceive feedback—signals of health and distress—from natural systems. In many instances, humans readily perceive feedback. In others, feedback is more difficult to perceive, so humans rely on experts, heuristics, biases, and/or identify confirming rationalities that may distort perceptions of feedback. This study explores human perception of feedback from natural systems by testing alternate conceptions about how individuals perceive climate anomalies, a form of feedback from the climate system. Results indicate that individuals generally perceive climate anomalies, especially when the anomalies are relatively extreme and persistent. Moreover, this finding is largely robust to political differences that generate predictable but small biases in feedback perception at extreme ends of the partisan spectrum. The subtlety of these biases bodes well for mitigation, adaptation, and resilience as human systems continue to interact with a changing climate system.

Gauge copies in the Landau-DeWitt gauge: A background invariant restriction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dudal, David; Vercauteren, David

2018-04-01

The Landau background gauge, also known as the Landau-DeWitt gauge, has found renewed interest during the past decade given its usefulness in accessing the confinement-deconfinement transition via the vacuum expectation value of the Polyakov loop, describable via an appropriate background. In this Letter, we revisit this gauge from the viewpoint of it displaying gauge (Gribov) copies. We generalize the Gribov-Zwanziger effective action in a BRST and background invariant way; this action leads to a restriction on the allowed gauge fluctuations, thereby eliminating the infinitesimal background gauge copies. The explicit background invariance of our action is in contrast with earlier attempts to write down and use an effective Gribov-Zwanziger action. It allows to address certain subtleties arising in these earlier works, such as a spontaneous and thus spurious Lorentz symmetry breaking, something which is now averted.

Beauty and the beast--a medical essay.

PubMed

Lawrence, G

1995-12-01

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, and the incidence of the cancer is on the rise. However, public education and screening have permitted the detection of this disease at an early stage. This early presentation has open opportunities for physicians to offer therapeutic options tailored both to the individual's disease process and the patient's desires. There is an increased responsibility on the doctor (s) to view an individual's breast cancer as a subset of the disease, for which one or more treatment modalities may be combined. The combination is designed to deliver the best cure rates with the least risk of acute complications and late morbidity. This paper outlines the pathological determinants of breast cancer and their impact on the behavior of the disease. Algorithms are presented to view and manage the patient's overall disease process. The subtleties in the medical literature on the management and clinical results of breast cancer are discussed.

Structure, Chemistry and Property Correlations in FeSe and 122 Pnictides

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cava, Robert

2010-03-01

Determining how crystal structure and chemical bonding influence the properties of solids is at the heart of collaborative research programs between materials physicists and solid state chemists. In some materials, the high Tc copper oxides and colossal magnetoresistance manganates, for example, the subtleties of how structure, bonding and properties are coupled yields an almost baffling complexity, while in others, such as many classical intermetallic superconductors, the properties are more easily understood, with bonding and structure playing a less profound role. The new superconducting pnictides appear to fall somewhere between these two limits, and have so far been the subject of relatively little study by solid state chemists. Here I will describe some of our recent work on superconducting FeSe and superconductor-related ``122'' (ThCr2Si2-type) solid solution phases as examples of the kinds of insights that structural and chemical studies can contribute to understanding these important materials.

A parapraxis in Hamlet. A note on the aesthetic genius of William Shakespeare.

PubMed

Mahon, E

1998-01-01

Shakespeare has placed a parapraxis in Hamlet's mouth in the soliloquy in Act I. Hamlet says, "But two months dead, nay not so much not two." The slip attributed to Hamlet is of course no slip at all when seen as an aesthetic contrivance of the bard's to suggest the tension between warring aspects of Hamlet's psychology. I argue that Shakespeare's artistic methodology, his aesthetic sleight of hand, so to speak, which layers this complex drama with meanings concealing other meanings, supports Freud's notion that an unconscious latent oedipal drama underlies the whole manifest content, imbuing it with subtle but substantial dramatic tension. The slip of the tongue is not only a window into the unconscious of Hamlet that sheds light on the hero's Oedipus complex and the complexities of his attempted resolutions, it is also an example of Shakespeare's aesthetic subtlety at its most refined.

Jamming in Disordered and Ordered States: From RLP to FCC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Silbert, Leonardo

2011-03-01

The concept of jamming was originally introduced in the context of zero-temperature, frictionless sphere packings through which the jamming transition was identified with the more familiar idea of random close packing. More recently, the jamming behaviour for particles with friction has led to a practical definition of the less well-defined random loose packed limit. However, there are a number of subtleties associated with jamming that extend these concepts further. Here we implement a range of protocols to generate jammed packings both with and without friction, and find that the jamming transition actually consists of a finite region in packing fraction depending on the protocol used to create the jammed state. Furthermore, we examine how it is possible to tune the structural properties of jammed packings from the disordered regime through to the ordered face centred cubic lattice, and the subsequent changes in the jamming properties as the structure is manipulated. Supported by NSF CBET-0828359.

Embracing a world of subtlety and nuance on coral reefs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mumby, Peter J.

2017-09-01

Climate change will homogenise the environment and generate a preponderance of mediocre reefs. Managing seascapes of mediocrity will be challenging because our science is ill prepared to deal with the `shades of grey' of reef health; we tend to study natural processes in the healthiest reefs available. Yet much can be gained by examining the drivers and implications of even subtle changes in reef state. Where strong ecological interactions are discovered, even small changes in abundance can have profound impacts on coral resilience. Indeed, if we are to develop effective early warnings of critical losses of resilience, then monitoring must place greater emphasis on measuring and interpreting changes in reef recovery rates. In terms of mechanism, a more nuanced approach is needed to explore the generality of what might be considered `dogma'. A more nuanced approach to science will serve managers needs well and help minimise the rise of mediocrity in coral reef ecosystems.

Investigating quantitation of phosphorylation using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry.

PubMed

Parker, Laurie; Engel-Hall, Aaron; Drew, Kevin; Steinhardt, George; Helseth, Donald L; Jabon, David; McMurry, Timothy; Angulo, David S; Kron, Stephen J

2008-04-01

Despite advances in methods and instrumentation for analysis of phosphopeptides using mass spectrometry, it is still difficult to quantify the extent of phosphorylation of a substrate because of physiochemical differences between unphosphorylated and phosphorylated peptides. Here we report experiments to investigate those differences using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for a set of synthetic peptides by creating calibration curves of known input ratios of peptides/phosphopeptides and analyzing their resulting signal intensity ratios. These calibration curves reveal subtleties in sequence-dependent differences for relative desorption/ionization efficiencies that cannot be seen from single-point calibrations. We found that the behaviors were reproducible with a variability of 5-10% for observed phosphopeptide signal. Although these data allow us to begin addressing the issues related to modeling these properties and predicting relative signal strengths for other peptide sequences, it is clear that this behavior is highly complex and needs to be further explored. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Digital Analysis of Sit-to-Stand in Masters Athletes, Healthy Old People, and Young Adults Using a Depth Sensor.

PubMed

Leightley, Daniel; Yap, Moi Hoon

2018-03-02

The aim of this study was to compare the performance between young adults ( n = 15), healthy old people ( n = 10), and masters athletes ( n = 15) using a depth sensor and automated digital assessment framework. Participants were asked to complete a clinically validated assessment of the sit-to-stand technique (five repetitions), which was recorded using a depth sensor. A feature encoding and evaluation framework to assess balance, core, and limb performance using time- and speed-related measurements was applied to markerless motion capture data. The associations between the measurements and participant groups were examined and used to evaluate the assessment framework suitability. The proposed framework could identify phases of sit-to-stand, stability, transition style, and performance between participant groups with a high degree of accuracy. In summary, we found that a depth sensor coupled with the proposed framework could identify performance subtleties between groups.

Digital Analysis of Sit-to-Stand in Masters Athletes, Healthy Old People, and Young Adults Using a Depth Sensor

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

The aim of this study was to compare the performance between young adults (n = 15), healthy old people (n = 10), and masters athletes (n = 15) using a depth sensor and automated digital assessment framework. Participants were asked to complete a clinically validated assessment of the sit-to-stand technique (five repetitions), which was recorded using a depth sensor. A feature encoding and evaluation framework to assess balance, core, and limb performance using time- and speed-related measurements was applied to markerless motion capture data. The associations between the measurements and participant groups were examined and used to evaluate the assessment framework suitability. The proposed framework could identify phases of sit-to-stand, stability, transition style, and performance between participant groups with a high degree of accuracy. In summary, we found that a depth sensor coupled with the proposed framework could identify performance subtleties between groups. PMID:29498644

Interaction quench dynamics in the Kondo model in the presence of a local magnetic field.

PubMed

Heyl, M; Kehrein, S

2010-09-01

In this work we investigate the quench dynamics in the Kondo model on the Toulouse line in the presence of a local magnetic field. It is shown that this setup can be realized by either applying the local magnetic field directly or by preparing the system in a macroscopically spin-polarized initial state. In the latter case, the magnetic field results from a subtlety in applying the bosonization technique where terms that are usually referred to as finite-size corrections become important in the present non-equilibrium setting. The transient dynamics are studied by analyzing exact analytical results for the local spin dynamics. The timescale for the relaxation of the local dynamical quantities turns out to be exclusively determined by the Kondo scale. In the transient regime, one observes damped oscillations in the local correlation functions with a frequency set by the magnetic field.

Ubiquity of non-geometry in heterotic compactifications

DOE PAGES

García-Etxebarria, Iñaki; Lüst, Dieter; Massai, Stefano; ...

2017-03-08

Here, we study the effect of quantum corrections on heterotic compactifications on elliptic fibrations away from the stable degeneration limit, elaborating on a recent observation by Malmendier and Morrison. We show that already for the simplest nontrivial elliptic fibration the effect is quite dramatic: the I 1 degeneration with trivial gauge background dynamically splits into two T-fects with monodromy around each T-fect being (conjugate to) T-duality along one of the legs of the T 2. This implies that almost every elliptic heterotic compactification becomes a non-geometric T-fold away from the stable degeneration limit. We also point out a subtlety duemore » to this non-geometric splitting at finite fiber size. It arises when determining, via heterotic/F-theory duality, the SCFTs associated to a small number of pointlike instantons probing heterotic ADE singularities. Along the way we resolve various puzzles in the literature.« less

Gender Differences in High-school Students' Views about Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miller, Patricia H.; Slawinski Blessing, Jennifer; Schwartz, Stephanie

2006-03-01

This study examined gender differences in 79 high-school students’ attitudes towards their science classes, their perceptions of science and scientists, and their views about majoring in science. The study identified some of the subtleties underlying females’ low participation in, and interest in, science documented in previous research. Four themes emerged from responses on the rating scales and questionnaire. First, even when females planned to major in science, they were more interested than males in the people-oriented aspects of their planned majors. Second, biology was the one exception to females’ low interest in science. Third, females often planned a science major mainly because they needed a science background in order to enter a health profession such as medicine or physical therapy. Fourth, females generally found science uninteresting and the scientific lifestyle (as perceived by them) unattractive. Implications for teaching science were discussed.

Bluffing promotes overconfidence on social networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Kun; Cong, Rui; Wu, Te; Wang, Long

2014-06-01

The overconfidence, a well-established bias, in fact leads to unrealistic expectations or faulty assessment. So it remains puzzling why such psychology of self-deception is stabilized in human society. To investigate this problem, we draw lessons from evolutionary game theory which provides a theoretical framework to address the subtleties of cooperation among selfish individuals. Here we propose a spatial resource competition model showing that, counter-intuitively, moderate values rather than large values of resource-to-cost ratio boost overconfidence level most effectively. In contrast to theoretical results in infinite well-mixed populations, network plays a role both as a ``catalyst'' and a ``depressant'' in the spreading of overconfidence, especially when resource-to-cost ratio is in a certain range. Moreover, when bluffing is taken into consideration, overconfidence evolves to a higher level to counteract its detrimental effect, which may well explain the prosperity of this ``erroneous'' psychology.

Distance learning: empathy and culture in Junot Diaz's "Wildwood".

PubMed

Garden, Rebecca

2013-12-01

This essay discusses critical approaches to culture, difference, and empathy in health care education through a reading of Junot Diaz's "Wildwood" chapter from the 2007 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I begin with an analysis of the way that Diaz's narrative invites readers to imagine and explore the experiences of others with subtlety and complexity. My reading of "Wildwood" illuminates its double-edged injunction to try to imagine another's perspective while recognizing the limits to-or even the impossibility of-that exercise. I draw on post-colonial theory and feminist science studies to illuminate a text that is created and interpreted in a post-colonial context-the Dominican diaspora in the United States. The essay offers a model of historical and critical analysis that health care educators can use to frame the concept of empathy in the classroom and the clinic.

Sintering in Ceramics and Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hunt, Clay Dale

Nature's propensity to minimize energy, and the change in energy with respect to position, drives diffusion. Diffusion is a means by which mass transport resulting in the bonding of the particles of a powder compact can be achieved without melting. This phenomenon occurs in powdered materials near their melting temperature, and is referred to as "sintering". Because of the extreme melting temperature of some materials, sintering might be the only practical means of processing. The complexity and subtlety of sintering ceramics motivated the evaluation of empirical data and existing sintering models. This project examined polycrystalline cubic-zirconia sintering with and without transition-metal oxide additions that change sintering behavior. This study was undertaken to determine how sintering aids affect the driving force, and activation energy, the energy barrier that must be overcome in order for an atom or ion to diffuse, of the densification occurring during sintering. Examination of commercially-available cubic-zirconia powder sintering behavior was undertaken with dilatometry, which allows monitoring of the length change a material undergoes as it sinters, and with scanning electron microscopy, which facilitates the study of sintered-sample microstructure. MATLAB algorithms quantifying sintering results were developed. Results from this work include proposed definitions of a 26-year-old undefined function of density factor in a well-accepted mathematical model of sintering. These findings suggest activation energy is not changing with density, as is suggested by recent published results. The first numerical integration of the studied sintering model has been performed. With these tools, a measure of the activation energy of densification of cubic-zirconia with and without the addition of cobalt-oxide as a sintering aid has been performed. The resulting MATLAB algorithms can be used in future sintering studies. It is concluded that sintering enhancement achieved with cobalt-oxide addition comes from reduction in activation energy of densification of cubic-zirconia. Further, it is suggested that the activation energy of densification does not change with material density. This conclusion is supported by the sensitivity of the numerical integration of the aforementioned sintering model to changes in activation energy.

Use of online recruitment strategies in a randomized trial of cancer survivors.

PubMed

Juraschek, Stephen P; Plante, Timothy B; Charleston, Jeanne; Miller, Edgar R; Yeh, Hsin-Chieh; Appel, Lawrence J; Jerome, Gerald J; Gayles, Debra; Durkin, Nowella; White, Karen; Dalcin, Arlene; Hermosilla, Manuel

2018-04-01

Despite widespread Internet adoption, online advertising remains an underutilized tool to recruit participants into clinical trials. Whether online advertising is a cost-effective method to enroll participants compared to other traditional forms of recruitment is not known. Recruitment for the Survivorship Promotion In Reducing IGF-1 Trial, a community-based study of cancer survivors, was conducted from June 2015 through December 2016 via in-person community fairs, advertisements in periodicals, and direct postal mailings. In addition, "Right Column" banner ads were purchased from Facebook to direct participants to the Survivorship Promotion In Reducing IGF-1 Trial website. Response rates, costs of traditional and online advertisements, and demographic data were determined and compared across different online and traditional recruitment strategies. Micro-trials optimizing features of online advertisements were also explored. Of the 406 respondents to our overall outreach efforts, 6% (24 of 406) were referred from online advertising. Facebook advertisements were shown over 3 million times (impressions) to 124,476 people, which resulted in 4401 clicks on our advertisement. Of these, 24 people ultimately contacted study staff, 6 underwent prescreening, and 4 enrolled in the study. The cost of online advertising per enrollee was $794 when targeting a general population versus $1426 when accounting for strategies that specifically targeted African Americans or men. By contrast, community fairs, direct mail, or periodicals cost $917, $799, or $436 per enrollee, respectively. Utilization of micro-trials to assess online ads identified subtleties (e.g. use of an advertisement title) that substantially impacted viewer interest in our trial. Online advertisements effectively directed a relevant population to our website, which resulted in new enrollees in the Survivorship Promotion In Reducing IGF-1 Trial at a cost comparable to traditional methods. Costs were substantially greater with online recruitment when targeting under-represented populations, however. Additional research using online micro-trial tools is needed to evaluate means of more precise recruitment to improve yields in under-represented groups. Potential gains from faster recruitment speed remain to be determined.

Unified bulk-boundary correspondence for band insulators

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rhim, Jun-Won; Bardarson, Jens H.; Slager, Robert-Jan

2018-03-01

The bulk-boundary correspondence, a topic of intensive research interest over the past decades, is one of the quintessential ideas in the physics of topological quantum matter. Nevertheless, it has not been proven in all generality and has in certain scenarios even been shown to fail, depending on the boundary profiles of the terminated system. Here, we introduce bulk numbers that capture the exact number of in-gap modes, without any such subtleties in one spatial dimension. Similarly, based on these 1D bulk numbers, we define a new 2D winding number, which we call the pole winding number, that specifies the number of robust metallic surface bands in the gap as well as their topological character. The underlying general methodology relies on a simple continuous extrapolation from the bulk to the boundary, while tracking the evolution of Green's function's poles in the vicinity of the bulk band edges. As a main result we find that all the obtained numbers can be applied to the known insulating phases in a unified manner regardless of the specific symmetries. Additionally, from a computational point of view, these numbers can be effectively evaluated without any gauge fixing problems. In particular, we directly apply our bulk-boundary correspondence construction to various systems, including 1D examples without a traditional bulk-boundary correspondence, and predict the existence of boundary modes on various experimentally studied graphene edges, such as open boundaries and grain boundaries. Finally, we sketch the 3D generalization of the pole winding number by in the context of topological insulators.

Reduction of false-positives in a CAD scheme for automated detection of architectural distortion in digital mammography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Oliveira, Helder C. R.; Mencattini, Arianna; Casti, Paola; Martinelli, Eugenio; di Natale, Corrado; Catani, Juliana H.; de Barros, Nestor; Melo, Carlos F. E.; Gonzaga, Adilson; Vieira, Marcelo A. C.

2018-02-01

This paper proposes a method to reduce the number of false-positives (FP) in a computer-aided detection (CAD) scheme for automated detection of architectural distortion (AD) in digital mammography. AD is a subtle contraction of breast parenchyma that may represent an early sign of breast cancer. Due to its subtlety and variability, AD is more difficult to detect compared to microcalcifications and masses, and is commonly found in retrospective evaluations of false-negative mammograms. Several computer-based systems have been proposed for automated detection of AD in breast images. The usual approach is automatically detect possible sites of AD in a mammographic image (segmentation step) and then use a classifier to eliminate the false-positives and identify the suspicious regions (classification step). This paper focus on the optimization of the segmentation step to reduce the number of FPs that is used as input to the classifier. The proposal is to use statistical measurements to score the segmented regions and then apply a threshold to select a small quantity of regions that should be submitted to the classification step, improving the detection performance of a CAD scheme. We evaluated 12 image features to score and select suspicious regions of 74 clinical Full-Field Digital Mammography (FFDM). All images in this dataset contained at least one region with AD previously marked by an expert radiologist. The results showed that the proposed method can reduce the false positives of the segmentation step of the CAD scheme from 43.4 false positives (FP) per image to 34.5 FP per image, without increasing the number of false negatives.

Long-range interactions of hydrogen atoms in excited states. III. n S -1 S interactions for n ≥3

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adhikari, C. M.; Debierre, V.; Jentschura, U. D.

2017-09-01

The long-range interaction of excited neutral atoms has a number of interesting and surprising properties such as the prevalence of long-range oscillatory tails and the emergence of numerically large van der Waals C6 coefficients. Furthermore, the energetically quasidegenerate n P states require special attention and lead to mathematical subtleties. Here we analyze the interaction of excited hydrogen atoms in n S states (3 ≤n ≤12 ) with ground-state hydrogen atoms and find that the C6 coefficients roughly grow with the fourth power of the principal quantum number and can reach values in excess of 240 000 (in atomic units) for states with n =12 . The nonretarded van der Waals result is relevant to the distance range R ≪a0/α , where a0 is the Bohr radius and α is the fine-structure constant. The Casimir-Polder range encompasses the interatomic distance range a0/α ≪R ≪ℏ c /L , where L is the Lamb shift energy. In this range, the contribution of quasidegenerate excited n P states remains nonretarded and competes with the 1 /R2 and 1 /R4 tails of the pole terms, which are generated by lower-lying m P states with 2 ≤m ≤n -1 , due to virtual resonant emission. The dominant pole terms are also analyzed in the Lamb shift range R ≫ℏ c /L . The familiar 1 /R7 asymptotics from the usual Casimir-Polder theory is found to be completely irrelevant for the analysis of excited-state interactions. The calculations are carried out to high precision using computer algebra in order to handle a large number of terms in intermediate steps of the calculation for highly excited states.

Alterations in Cortical Thickness and White Matter Integrity in Mild Cognitive Impairment Measured by Whole Brain Cortical Thickness Mapping and Diffusion Tensor Imaging

PubMed Central

Wang, Liya; Goldstein, Felicia C.; Veledar, Emir; Levey, Allan I.; Lah, James J.; Meltzer, Carolyn C.; Holder, Chad A.; Mao, Hui

2010-01-01

Background and Purpose Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and can be difficult to diagnose due to the subtlety of symptoms. This work attempted to examine gray and white matter changes with cortical thickness analysis and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in MCI patients and demographically-matched comparison subjects in order to test these measurements as possible imaging markers for diagnosis. Materials and Methods Subjects with amnestic MCI (n=10; age 72.2±7.1) and normal cognition (n=10; age 70.1±7.7) underwent DTI and T1 weighted MRI at 3T. Fractional anisotropy, apparent diffusion coefficient and cortical thickness were measured and compared between MCI and control groups. The diagnostic accuracy of two methods, either in combination or separately, was evaluated using binary logistic regression and nonparametric statistical analyses for sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. Results Decreased FA and increased ADC in white matter regions of frontal and temporal lobes and corpus callosum were observed in MCI patients. Cortical thickness was decreased in gray matter regions of the frontal, temporal, parietal lobes in MCI patients. Changes in white matter and cortical thickness appeared to be more pronounced in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere. Furthermore the combination of cortical thickness and DTI measurements in left temporal areas improved the accuracy of differentiating MCI patients from controls compared to either measure alone. Conclusion DTI and cortical thickness analyses may both serve imaging markers for differentiating MCI from normal aging. Combined use of two methods may improve the accuracy of MCI diagnosis. PMID:19279272

Dangerous subtlety: relationship-related determinants of consistency of condom use among female sex workers and their regular, non-commercial partners in Hai Phong, Viet Nam.

PubMed

Hoffman, Leah; Nguyen, Ha Thi Thu; Kershaw, Trace S; Niccolai, Linda M

2011-10-01

Research indicates female sex workers use condoms more consistently with their clients than with regular, non-commercial partners (partners). The purpose of this study was to better understand the relationship between couple communication and HIV risk behavior by examining (1) sex worker-partner divergence on communication measures and (2) the association between intra-couple communication divergence and consistent condom use. In this cross-sectional study, 50 sex workers and their partners in Hai Phong, Viet Nam were separately asked about their relationships and condom use. When asked about HIV risk communication in their relationship, sex workers reported significantly higher HIV communication content than their partners (p < 0.001). Higher communication divergence between partners was associated with a decreased likelihood of consistent condom use (OR 0.54 95% CI 0.30, 0.97). Sex workers urgently need interventions that build their communication skills and address their risk behavior in non-commercial relationships.

The performance and limitations of FPGA-based digital servos for atomic, molecular, and optical physics experiments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Shi Jing; Fajeau, Emma; Liu, Lin Qiao; Jones, David J.; Madison, Kirk W.

2018-02-01

In this work, we address the advantages, limitations, and technical subtleties of employing field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based digital servos for high-bandwidth feedback control of lasers in atomic, molecular, and optical physics experiments. Specifically, we provide the results of benchmark performance tests in experimental setups including noise, bandwidth, and dynamic range for two digital servos built with low and mid-range priced FPGA development platforms. The digital servo results are compared to results obtained from a commercially available state-of-the-art analog servo using the same plant for control (intensity stabilization). The digital servos have feedback bandwidths of 2.5 MHz, limited by the total signal latency, and we demonstrate improvements beyond the transfer function offered by the analog servo including a three-pole filter and a two-pole filter with phase compensation to suppress resonances. We also discuss limitations of our FPGA-servo implementation and general considerations when designing and using digital servos.

The Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts: Optimizing the Joint Science Return from LSST, Euclid and WFIRST

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jain, B.; Spergel, D.; Connolly, A.

2015-02-02

The scientific opportunity offered by the combination of data from LSST, WFIRST and Euclid goes well beyond the science enabled by any one of the data sets alone. The range in wavelength, angular resolution and redshift coverage that these missions jointly span is remarkable. With major investments in LSST and WFIRST, and partnership with ESA in Euclid, the US has an outstanding scientific opportunity to carry out a combined analysis of these data sets. It is imperative for us to seize it and, together with our European colleagues, prepare for the defining cosmological pursuit of the 21st century. The mainmore » argument for conducting a single, high-quality reference co-analysis exercise and carefully documenting the results is the complexity and subtlety of systematics that define this co-analysis. Falling back on many small efforts by different teams in selected fields and for narrow goals will be inefficient, leading to significant duplication of effort.« less

Applied extreme-value statistics

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kinnison, R.R.

1983-05-01

The statistical theory of extreme values is a well established part of theoretical statistics. Unfortunately, it is seldom part of applied statistics and is infrequently a part of statistical curricula except in advanced studies programs. This has resulted in the impression that it is difficult to understand and not of practical value. In recent environmental and pollution literature, several short articles have appeared with the purpose of documenting all that is necessary for the practical application of extreme value theory to field problems (for example, Roberts, 1979). These articles are so concise that only a statistician can recognise all themore » subtleties and assumptions necessary for the correct use of the material presented. The intent of this text is to expand upon several recent articles, and to provide the necessary statistical background so that the non-statistician scientist can recognize and extreme value problem when it occurs in his work, be confident in handling simple extreme value problems himself, and know when the problem is statistically beyond his capabilities and requires consultation.« less

Post-transcriptional trafficking and regulation of neuronal gene expression.

PubMed

Goldie, Belinda J; Cairns, Murray J

2012-02-01

Intracellular messenger RNA (mRNA) traffic and translation must be highly regulated, both temporally and spatially, within eukaryotic cells to support the complex functional partitioning. This capacity is essential in neurons because it provides a mechanism for rapid input-restricted activity-dependent protein synthesis in individual dendritic spines. While this feature is thought to be important for synaptic plasticity, the structures and mechanisms that support this capability are largely unknown. Certainly specialized RNA binding proteins and binding elements in the 3' untranslated region (UTR) of translationally regulated mRNA are important, but the subtlety and complexity of this system suggests that an intermediate "specificity" component is also involved. Small non-coding microRNA (miRNA) are essential for CNS development and may fulfill this role by acting as the guide strand for mediating complex patterns of post-transcriptional regulation. In this review we examine post-synaptic gene regulation, mRNA trafficking and the emerging role of post-transcriptional gene silencing in synaptic plasticity.

Diamictite from Nimrod Glacier area, Antarctica: Possible Proterozoic glaciation on the seventh continent

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stump, Edmund; Miller, Julia M. G.; Korsch, Russell J.; Edgerton, David G.

1988-03-01

Late Proterozoic glacial deposits have been found on all continents except Antarctica. Here we describe four units of Late Proterozoic diamictite, with a total thickness of about 10m, from Panorama Point, Nimrod Glacier area, Antarctica, which have characteristics compatible with glaciogenic origin. The diamictite occurs within the Goldie Formation, a sequence of marine turbidites, and is associated with a unit of mafic pillow lavas. The diamictite is commonly structureless and in places laminated. Coarse clasts occur as scattered pebbles and cobbles and as pebbly pods and beds. No striated or faceted clasts were found. A few pebbles may pierce the laminae, but a drop-stone origin is uncertain. Deformation and metamorphism have obscured subtleties of original sedimentary structure. Outsize clasts in laminated sandy siltstone (now schistose) suggest a glaciogenic origin for these diamictites, but deposition by mass-flow processes cannot be ruled out. The discovery in Antarctica of possible Late Proterozoic glaciogenic deposits extends their geographic distribution to all of the major continental masses.

The Thick Disk in the Galaxy NGC 4244 from S4G Imaging

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Comerón, Sébastien; Knapen, Johan H.; Sheth, Kartik; Regan, Michael W.; Hinz, Joannah L.; Gil de Paz, Armando; Menéndez-Delmestre, Karín; Muñoz-Mateos, Juan-Carlos; Seibert, Mark; Kim, Taehyun; Athanassoula, E.; Bosma, Albert; Buta, Ronald J.; Elmegreen, Bruce G.; Ho, Luis C.; Holwerda, Benne W.; Laurikainen, Eija; Salo, Heikki; Schinnerer, Eva

2011-03-01

If thick disks are ubiquitous and a natural product of disk galaxy formation and/or evolution processes, all undisturbed galaxies that have evolved during a significant fraction of a Hubble time should have a thick disk. The late-type spiral galaxy NGC 4244 has been reported as the only nearby edge-on galaxy without a confirmed thick disk. Using data from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G) we have identified signs of two disk components in this galaxy. The asymmetries between the light profiles on both sides of the mid-plane of NGC 4244 can be explained by a combination of the galaxy not being perfectly edge-on and a certain degree of opacity of the thin disk. We argue that the subtlety of the thick disk is a consequence of either a limited secular evolution in NGC 4244, a small fraction of stellar material in the fragments which built the galaxy, or a high amount of gaseous accretion after the formation of the galaxy.

IN SEARCH OF A FATHER: LEGAL CHALLENGES SURROUNDING POSTHUMOUS PATERNITY TESTING.

PubMed

Stirton, Ruth H; Wilkinson, Mark J

2015-01-01

This article interrogates the workings of the Human Tissue Act 2004, as it applies to paternity testing by DNA analysis after the death of the putative father. We use a case series methodology more usually seen in medical research, through which we present three real case studies involving posthumous paternity testing of retained tissue. We argue that the criminal offence in section 45 of the Human Tissue Act 2004, which is being used to regulate this activity, is inappropriate and inadequate to do so. The threat of the shadow of the criminal law is too blunt an instrument to address the subtleties of the issues that arise in the context of posthumous paternity testing. We call for reform of the Human Tissue Act 2004 and the creation of a specific exception to properly deal with requests of this nature. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Characterizing the three-orbital Hubbard model with determinant quantum Monte Carlo

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kung, Y. F.; Chen, C. -C.; Wang, Yao

Here, we characterize the three-orbital Hubbard model using state-of-the-art determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) simulations with parameters relevant to the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. The simulations find that doped holes preferentially reside on oxygen orbitals and that the (π,π) antiferromagnetic ordering vector dominates in the vicinity of the undoped system, as known from experiments. The orbitally-resolved spectral functions agree well with photoemission spectroscopy studies and enable identification of orbital content in the bands. A comparison of DQMC results with exact diagonalization and cluster perturbation theory studies elucidates how these different numerical techniques complement one another to produce a more complete understandingmore » of the model and the cuprates. Interestingly, our DQMC simulations predict a charge-transfer gap that is significantly smaller than the direct (optical) gap measured in experiment. Most likely, it corresponds to the indirect gap that has recently been suggested to be on the order of 0.8 eV, and demonstrates the subtlety in identifying charge gaps.« less

Characterizing the three-orbital Hubbard model with determinant quantum Monte Carlo

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kung, Y. F.; Chen, C. -C.; Wang, Yao

We characterize the three-orbital Hubbard model using state-of-the-art determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) simulations with parameters relevant to the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. The simulations find that doped holes preferentially reside on oxygen orbitals and that the (π,π) antiferromagnetic ordering vector dominates in the vicinity of the undoped system, as known from experiments. The orbitally-resolved spectral functions agree well with photoemission spectroscopy studies and enable identification of orbital content in the bands. A comparison of DQMC results with exact diagonalization and cluster perturbation theory studies elucidates how these different numerical techniques complement one another to produce a more complete understanding ofmore » the model and the cuprates. Interestingly, our DQMC simulations predict a charge-transfer gap that is significantly smaller than the direct (optical) gap measured in experiment. Most likely, it corresponds to the indirect gap that has recently been suggested to be on the order of 0.8 eV, and demonstrates the subtlety in identifying charge gaps.« less

Gas solubility in dilute solutions: A novel molecular thermodynamic perspective

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chialvo, Ariel A.

2018-05-01

We present an explicit molecular-based interpretation of the thermodynamic phase equilibrium underlying gas solubility in liquids, through rigorous links between the microstructure of the dilute systems and the relevant macroscopic quantities that characterize their solution thermodynamics. We apply the formal analysis to unravel and highlight the molecular-level nature of the approximations behind the widely used Krichevsky-Kasarnovsky [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 57, 2168 (1935)] and Krichevsky-Ilinskaya [Acta Physicochim. 20, 327 (1945)] equations for the modeling of gas solubility. Then, we implement a general molecular-based approach to gas solubility and illustrate it by studying Lennard-Jones binary systems whose microstructure and thermodynamic properties were consistently generated via integral equation calculations. Furthermore, guided by the molecular-based analysis, we propose a novel macroscopic modeling approach to gas solubility, emphasize some usually overlook modeling subtleties, and identify novel interdependences among relevant solubility quantities that can be used as either handy modeling constraints or tools for consistency tests.

Instanton tunneling for de Sitter space with real projective spatial sections

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ong, Yen Chin; Yeom, Dong-han, E-mail: ongyenchin@sjtu.edu.cn, E-mail: innocent.yeom@gmail.com

The physics of tunneling from one spacetime to another is often understood in terms of instantons. For some instantons, it was recently shown in the literature that there are two complementary ''interpretations'' for their analytic continuations. Dubbed ''something-to-something'' and ''nothing-to-something'' interpretations, respectively, the former involves situation in which the initial and final hypersurfaces are connected by a Euclidean manifold, whereas the initial and final hypersurfaces in the latter case are not connected in such a way. We consider a de Sitter space with real projective space RP{sup 3} spatial sections, as was originally understood by de Sitter himself. This originalmore » version of de Sitter space has several advantages over the usual de Sitter space with S{sup 3} spatial sections. In particular, the interpretation of the de Sitter entropy as entanglement entropy is much more natural. We discuss the subtleties involved in the tunneling of such a de Sitter space.« less

Atomic resolution crystal structures and quantum chemistry meet to reveal subtleties of hydroxynitrile lyase catalysis.

PubMed

Schmidt, Andrea; Gruber, Karl; Kratky, Christoph; Lamzin, Victor S

2008-08-01

Hydroxynitrile lyases are versatile enzymes that enantiospecifically cope with cyanohydrins, important intermediates in the production of various agrochemicals or pharmaceuticals. We determined four atomic resolution crystal structures of hydroxynitrile lyase from Hevea brasiliensis: one native and three complexes with acetone, isopropyl alcohol, and thiocyanate. We observed distinct distance changes among the active site residues related to proton shifts upon substrate binding. The combined use of crystallography and ab initio quantum chemical calculations allowed the determination of the protonation states in the enzyme active site. We show that His(235) of the catalytic triad must be protonated in order for catalysis to proceed, and we could reproduce the cyanohydrin synthesis in ab initio calculations. We also found evidence for the considerable pK(a) shifts that had been hypothesized earlier. We envision that this knowledge can be used to enhance the catalytic properties and the stability of the enzyme for industrial production of enantiomerically pure cyanohydrins.

Hydrophobic Hydration of Stimulus-Responsive Polyproteins Measured by Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zauscher, Stefan

2007-03-01

We present a new procedure to reduce and analyze force-extension data obtained by single molecule force spectroscopy (SMFS). This approach allows, for the first time, to infer effects of solvent quality and minor changes in molecular architecture on molecular-elasticity of individual (bio)macromolecules. Specifically, we show how changes in the effective Kuhn segment length can be used to interpret the hydrophobic hydration behavior of elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs).Our results are intriguing as they suggest that SMFS in combination with our analysis procedure can be used to study the subtleties of polypeptide-water interactions on the single molecule level. We also report on the force-induced cis-trans isomerization of prolines, which are repeated every fifth residue in the main chain of ELPs. We present evidence for this mechanism by Monte Carlo simulations of the force-extension curves using an elastically coupled two-state system. Our results suggest that SMFS could be used to assay proline cis-trans isomerization in proteins and may thus have significant potential diagnostic utility.

Hydration and conformational mechanics of single, end-tethered elastin-like polypeptides.

PubMed

Valiaev, Alexei; Lim, Dong Woo; Schmidler, Scott; Clark, Robert L; Chilkoti, Ashutosh; Zauscher, Stefan

2008-08-20

We investigated the effect of temperature, ionic strength, solvent polarity, and type of guest residue on the force-extension behavior of single, end-tethered elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs), using single molecule force spectroscopy (SMFS). ELPs are stimulus-responsive polypeptides that contain repeats of the five amino acids Val-Pro-Gly-Xaa-Gly (VPGXG), where Xaa is a guest residue that can be any amino acid with the exception of proline. We fitted the force-extension data with a freely jointed chain (FJC) model which allowed us to resolve small differences in the effective Kuhn segment length distributions that largely arise from differences in the hydrophobic hydration behavior of ELP. Our results agree qualitatively with predictions from recent molecular dynamics simulations and demonstrate that hydrophobic hydration modulates the molecular elasticity for ELPs. Furthermore, our results show that SMFS, when combined with our approach for data analysis, can be used to study the subtleties of polypeptide-water interactions and thus provides a basis for the study of hydrophobic hydration in intrinsically unstructured biomacromolecules.

The Final Results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

ScienceCinema

Bellerive, Alain

2017-12-15

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) was a water Cherenkov detector dedicated to investigate elementary particles called neutrinos. It successfully took data between 1999 and 2006. The detector was unique in its use of heavy water as a detection medium, permitting it to make a solar model-independent test of solar neutrino mixing. In fact, SNO conclusively showed that solar neutrinos oscillate on their way from the core of the Sun to the Earth. This groundbreaking observation was made during three independent phases of the experiment. Even if data taking ended, SNO is still in a mode of precise determination of the solar neutrino oscillation parameters because all along SNO had developed several methods to tell charged-current events apart from neutral-current events. This ability is crucial for the final and ultimate data analysis of all the phases. The physics reach of a combined three-phase solar analysis will be reviewed together with results and subtleties about solar neutrino physics.

Self-organization in the limb: a Turing mechanism for digit development.

PubMed

Cooper, Kimberly L

2015-06-01

The statistician George E. P. Box stated, 'Essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful.' (Box GEP, Draper NR: Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces. Wiley; 1987). Modeling biological processes is challenging for many of the reasons classically trained developmental biologists often resist the idea that black and white equations can explain the grayscale subtleties of living things. Although a simplified mathematical model of development will undoubtedly fall short of precision, a good model is exceedingly useful if it raises at least as many testable questions as it answers. Self-organizing Turing models that simulate the pattern of digits in the hand replicate events that have not yet been explained by classical approaches. The union of theory and experimentation has recently identified and validated the minimal components of a Turing network for digit pattern and triggered a cascade of questions that will undoubtedly be well-served by the continued merging of disciplines. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The performance and limitations of FPGA-based digital servos for atomic, molecular, and optical physics experiments.

PubMed

Yu, Shi Jing; Fajeau, Emma; Liu, Lin Qiao; Jones, David J; Madison, Kirk W

2018-02-01

In this work, we address the advantages, limitations, and technical subtleties of employing field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based digital servos for high-bandwidth feedback control of lasers in atomic, molecular, and optical physics experiments. Specifically, we provide the results of benchmark performance tests in experimental setups including noise, bandwidth, and dynamic range for two digital servos built with low and mid-range priced FPGA development platforms. The digital servo results are compared to results obtained from a commercially available state-of-the-art analog servo using the same plant for control (intensity stabilization). The digital servos have feedback bandwidths of 2.5 MHz, limited by the total signal latency, and we demonstrate improvements beyond the transfer function offered by the analog servo including a three-pole filter and a two-pole filter with phase compensation to suppress resonances. We also discuss limitations of our FPGA-servo implementation and general considerations when designing and using digital servos.

Characterizing the three-orbital Hubbard model with determinant quantum Monte Carlo

DOE PAGES

Kung, Y. F.; Chen, C. -C.; Wang, Yao; ...

2016-04-29

Here, we characterize the three-orbital Hubbard model using state-of-the-art determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) simulations with parameters relevant to the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. The simulations find that doped holes preferentially reside on oxygen orbitals and that the (π,π) antiferromagnetic ordering vector dominates in the vicinity of the undoped system, as known from experiments. The orbitally-resolved spectral functions agree well with photoemission spectroscopy studies and enable identification of orbital content in the bands. A comparison of DQMC results with exact diagonalization and cluster perturbation theory studies elucidates how these different numerical techniques complement one another to produce a more complete understandingmore » of the model and the cuprates. Interestingly, our DQMC simulations predict a charge-transfer gap that is significantly smaller than the direct (optical) gap measured in experiment. Most likely, it corresponds to the indirect gap that has recently been suggested to be on the order of 0.8 eV, and demonstrates the subtlety in identifying charge gaps.« less

Black holes in vector-tensor theories and their thermodynamics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fan, Zhong-Ying

2018-01-01

In this paper, we study Einstein gravity either minimally or non-minimally coupled to a vector field which breaks the gauge symmetry explicitly in general dimensions. We first consider a minimal theory which is simply the Einstein-Proca theory extended with a quartic self-interaction term for the vector field. We obtain its general static maximally symmetric black hole solution and study the thermodynamics using Wald formalism. The aspects of the solution are much like a Reissner-Nordstrøm black hole in spite of that a global charge cannot be defined for the vector. For non-minimal theories, we obtain a lot of exact black hole solutions, depending on the parameters of the theories. In particular, many of the solutions are general static and have maximal symmetry. However, there are some subtleties and ambiguities in the derivation of the first laws because the existence of an algebraic degree of freedom of the vector in general invalids the Wald entropy formula. The thermodynamics of these solutions deserves further studies.

Educating nurses for their future role in bioethics.

PubMed

Leavitt, F J

1996-03-01

The emerging new multidisciplinary and crosscultural field of bioethics will require sensitive, open-minded professionals to take the lead in hospital ethics, in genetic counselling, and in the teaching of bioethics to students in nursing, medicine and the basic sciences. Nurses with ward experience who return to university to gain an MA or PhD in bioethics are eminently suited for this leadership role, for they may be more likely than physicians to study for a liberal education to supplement their professional knowledge; their first-hand experience in nursing is an antidote to the pointless subtleties into which philosophical ethics so often degenerates. When teaching ethics to nurses one must remember that, while some will simply use this knowledge in their own clinical work, others will go on to be teachers and researchers in bioethics. Their training must therefore be broad and interdisciplinary, including real substantive philosophy (as opposed to philosophical ethics), as well as mystical bioethics, religious law, ethics of genetic counselling, clinical approaches to ethical pseudo problems, research skills, etc.

Formalizing the potential of stereoscopic 3D user experience in interactive entertainment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schild, Jonas; Masuch, Maic

2015-03-01

The use of stereoscopic 3D vision affects how interactive entertainment has to be developed as well as how it is experienced by the audience. The large amount of possibly impacting factors and variety as well as a certain subtlety of measured effects on user experience make it difficult to grasp the overall potential of using S3D vision. In a comprehensive approach, we (a) present a development framework which summarizes possible variables in display technology, content creation and human factors, and (b) list a scheme of S3D user experience effects concerning initial fascination, emotions, performance, and behavior as well as negative feelings of discomfort and complexity. As a major contribution we propose a qualitative formalization which derives dependencies between development factors and user effects. The argumentation is based on several previously published user studies. We further show how to apply this formula to identify possible opportunities and threats in content creation as well as how to pursue future steps for a possible quantification.

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

PubMed Central

Lee, Chia-Cheng; Jhang, Yuna; Chen, Li-mei; Relyea, George; Oller, D. Kimbrough

2016-01-01

Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8, 10, and 12 months and found listeners could not detect ambient-language effects in the vast majority of infant utterances, but only in items deemed to be words or to contain canonical syllables that may have made them sound like words with language-specific shapes. Thus, the present research suggests the earliest ambient-language effects may be found in emerging lexical items or in utterances influenced by language-specific features of lexical items. Even the ambient-language effects for infant canonical syllables and words were very small compared with ambient-language effects for meaningless but phonotactically well-formed syllable sequences spoken by adult native speakers of English and Chinese. PMID:28496393

Customizing chemotherapy for colon cancer: the potential of gene expression profiling.

PubMed

Mariadason, John M; Arango, Diego; Augenlicht, Leonard H

2004-06-01

The value of gene expression profiling, or microarray analysis, for the classification and prognosis of multiple forms of cancer is now clearly established. For colon cancer, expression profiling can readily discriminate between normal and tumor tissue, and to some extent between tumors of different histopathological stage and prognosis. While a definitive in vivo study demonstrating the potential of this methodology for predicting response to chemotherapy is presently lacking, the ability of microarrays to distinguish other subtleties of colon cancer phenotype, as well as recent in vitro proof-of-principle experiments utilizing colon cancer cell lines, illustrate the potential of this methodology for predicting the probability of response to specific chemotherapeutic agents. This review discusses some of the recent advances in the use of microarray analysis for understanding and distinguishing colon cancer subtypes, and attempts to identify challenges that need to be overcome in order to achieve the goal of using gene expression profiling for customizing chemotherapy in colon cancer.

Software for project-based learning of robot motion planning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moll, Mark; Bordeaux, Janice; Kavraki, Lydia E.

2013-12-01

Motion planning is a core problem in robotics concerned with finding feasible paths for a given robot. Motion planning algorithms perform a search in the high-dimensional continuous space of robot configurations and exemplify many of the core algorithmic concepts of search algorithms and associated data structures. Motion planning algorithms can be explained in a simplified two-dimensional setting, but this masks many of the subtleties and complexities of the underlying problem. We have developed software for project-based learning of motion planning that enables deep learning. The projects that we have developed allow advanced undergraduate students and graduate students to reflect on the performance of existing textbook algorithms and their own variations on such algorithms. Formative assessment has been conducted at three institutions. The core of the software used for this teaching module is also used within the Robot Operating System, a widely adopted platform by the robotics research community. This allows for transfer of knowledge and skills to robotics research projects involving a large variety robot hardware platforms.

Management of Osteochondritis Dissecans of the Femoral Condyle.

PubMed

Shea, Kevin G; Carey, James L; Brown, Gregory A; Murray, Jayson N; Pezold, Ryan; Sevarino, Kaitlyn S

2016-09-01

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons has developed the Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) document Management of Osteochondritis Dissecans of the Femoral Condyle. Evidence-based information, in conjunction with the clinical expertise of physicians, was used to develop the criteria to improve patient care and obtain the best outcomes while considering the subtleties and distinctions necessary in making clinical decisions. The AUC clinical patient scenarios were derived from patient indications that generally accompany osteochondritis dissecans of the femoral condyle, as well as from current evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and supporting literature. The 64 patient scenarios and 12 treatments were developed by the Writing Panel, a group of clinicians who are specialists in this AUC topic. Lastly, a separate, multidisciplinary Voting Panel (made up of specialists and nonspecialists) rated the appropriateness of treatment of each patient scenario using a 9-point scale to designate a treatment as Appropriate (median rating, 7 to 9), May Be Appropriate (median rating, 4 to 6), or Rarely Appropriate (median rating, 1 to 3).

Characterizing the three-orbital Hubbard model with determinant quantum Monte Carlo

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kung, Y. F.; Chen, C.-C.; Wang, Yao; Huang, E. W.; Nowadnick, E. A.; Moritz, B.; Scalettar, R. T.; Johnston, S.; Devereaux, T. P.

2016-04-01

We characterize the three-orbital Hubbard model using state-of-the-art determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) simulations with parameters relevant to the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. The simulations find that doped holes preferentially reside on oxygen orbitals and that the (π ,π ) antiferromagnetic ordering vector dominates in the vicinity of the undoped system, as known from experiments. The orbitally-resolved spectral functions agree well with photoemission spectroscopy studies and enable identification of orbital content in the bands. A comparison of DQMC results with exact diagonalization and cluster perturbation theory studies elucidates how these different numerical techniques complement one another to produce a more complete understanding of the model and the cuprates. Interestingly, our DQMC simulations predict a charge-transfer gap that is significantly smaller than the direct (optical) gap measured in experiment. Most likely, it corresponds to the indirect gap that has recently been suggested to be on the order of 0.8 eV, and demonstrates the subtlety in identifying charge gaps.

Ocean Modeling in an Eddying Regime

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hecht, Matthew W.; Hasumi, Hiroyasu

This monograph is the first to survey progress in realistic simulation in a strongly eddying regime made possible by recent increases in computational capability. Its contributors comprise the leading researchers in this important and constantly evolving field. Divided into three parts, • Oceanographic Processes and Regimes: Fundamental Questions • Ocean Dynamics and State: From Regional to Global Scale, and • Modeling at the Mesoscale: State of the Art and Future Directions the volume details important advances in physical oceanography based on eddy resolving ocean modeling. It captures the state of the art and discusses issues that ocean modelers must consider in order to effectively contribute to advancing current knowledge, from subtleties of the underlying fluid dynamical equations to meaningful comparison with oceanographic observations and leading-edge model development. It summarizes many of the important results which have emerged from ocean modeling in an eddying regime, for those interested broadly in the physical science. More technical topics are intended to address the concerns of those actively working in the field.

Power quality improvement of a stand-alone power system subjected to various disturbances

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lone, Shameem Ahmad; Mufti, Mairaj Ud-Din

In wind-diesel stand-alone power systems, the disturbances like random nature of wind power, turbulent wind, sudden changes in load demand and the wind park disconnection effect continuously the system voltage and frequency. The satisfactory operation of such a system is not an easy task and the control design has to take in to account all these subtleties. For maintaining the power quality, generally, a short-term energy storage device is used. In this paper, the performance of a wind-diesel system associated with a superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) system is studied. The effect of installing SMES at wind park bus/load bus, on the system performance is investigated. To control the exchange of real and reactive powers between the SMES unit and the wind-diesel system, a control strategy based on fuzzy logic is proposed. The dynamic models of the hybrid power system for most common scenarios are developed and the results presented.

Unwitnessed lithium ion disc battery ingestion: case report and review of best practice management of an increasing clinical concern.

PubMed

Dawe, N; Puvanendran, M; Flood, L

2013-01-01

To describe a case of unwitnessed lithium ion disc battery ingestion, with a review of radiology findings and current best practice management. A three-year-old girl presented following ingestion of a foreign body, which her four-year-old brother claimed was a one pound coin. The patient was managed non-urgently and transferred for specialist ENT assessment 6 hours following the initial ingestion, with no evidence of airway compromise. A corroded battery was removed from the level of the cricopharyngeus after 8 hours, with an associated circumferential mucosal burn. There is increasing concern regarding the acknowledged rising incidence of lithium ion disc battery ingestion. The lack of a high index of suspicion and the inability to recognise subtleties on imaging may lead to suboptimal management with a higher degree of unnecessary immediate and delayed morbidity. The recently published American Academy of Pediatrics Guidelines may guide the approach to managing battery ingestions.

Polarization and amplitude probes in Hanle effect EIT noise spectroscopy of a buffer gas cell

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

O'Leary, Shannon; Zheng, Aojie; Crescimanno, Michael

2015-05-01

Noise correlation spectroscopy on systems manifesting Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) holds promise as a simple, robust method for performing high-resolution spectroscopy used in applications such as EIT-based atomic magnetometry and clocks. While this noise conversion can diminish the precision of EIT applications, noise correlation techniques transform the noise into a useful spectroscopic tool that can improve the application's precision. We study intensity noise, originating from the large phase noise of a semiconductor diode laser's light, in Rb vapor EIT in the Hanle configuration. We report here on our recent experimental work on and complementary theoretical modeling of the effects of light polarization preparation and post-selection on the correlation spectrum and on the independent noise channel traces. We also explain methodology and recent results for delineating the effects of residual laser amplitude fluctuations on the correlation noise resonance as compared to other contributing processes. Understanding these subtleties are essential for optimizing EIT-noise applications.

On the equivalence among stress tensors in a gauge-fluid system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mitra, Arpan Krishna; Banerjee, Rabin; Ghosh, Subir

2017-12-01

In this paper, we bring out the subtleties involved in the study of a first-order relativistic field theory with auxiliary field variables playing an essential role. In particular, we discuss the nonisentropic Eulerian (or Hamiltonian) fluid model. Interactions are introduced by coupling the fluid to a dynamical Maxwell (U(1)) gauge field. This dynamical nature of the gauge field is crucial in showing the equivalence, on the physical subspace, of the stress tensor derived from two definitions, i.e. the canonical (Noether) one and the symmetric one. In the conventional equal-time formalism, we have shown that the generators of the space-time transformations obtained from these two definitions agree modulo the Gauss constraint. This equivalence in the physical sector has been achieved only because of the dynamical nature of the gauge fields. Subsequently, we have explicitly demonstrated the validity of the Schwinger condition. A detailed analysis of the model in lightcone formalism has also been done where several interesting features are revealed.

Entropy of the information retrieved from black holes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mersini-Houghton, Laura

2016-07-01

The retrieval of black hole information was recently presented in two interesting proposals in the ‘Hawking Radiation’ conference: a revised version by Hooft of a proposal he initially suggested 20 years ago and, a new proposal by Hawking. Both proposals address the problem of black hole information loss at the classical level and derive an expression for the scattering matrix. The former uses gravitation back reaction of incoming particles that imprints its information on the outgoing modes. The latter uses supertranslation symmetry of horizons to relate a phase delay of the outgoing wave packet compared to their incoming wave partners. The difficulty in both proposals is that the entropy obtained from them appears to be infinite. By including quantum effects into the Hawking and Hooft’s proposals, I show that a subtlety arising from the inescapable measurement process, the quantum Zeno effect, not only tames divergences but it actually recovers the correct 1/4 of the area Bekenstein-Hawking entropy law of black holes.

Gas solubility in dilute solutions: A novel molecular thermodynamic perspective.

PubMed

Chialvo, Ariel A

2018-05-07

We present an explicit molecular-based interpretation of the thermodynamic phase equilibrium underlying gas solubility in liquids, through rigorous links between the microstructure of the dilute systems and the relevant macroscopic quantities that characterize their solution thermodynamics. We apply the formal analysis to unravel and highlight the molecular-level nature of the approximations behind the widely used Krichevsky-Kasarnovsky [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 57, 2168 (1935)] and Krichevsky-Ilinskaya [Acta Physicochim. 20, 327 (1945)] equations for the modeling of gas solubility. Then, we implement a general molecular-based approach to gas solubility and illustrate it by studying Lennard-Jones binary systems whose microstructure and thermodynamic properties were consistently generated via integral equation calculations. Furthermore, guided by the molecular-based analysis, we propose a novel macroscopic modeling approach to gas solubility, emphasize some usually overlook modeling subtleties, and identify novel interdependences among relevant solubility quantities that can be used as either handy modeling constraints or tools for consistency tests.

Quantum clocks and the foundations of relativity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Davies, Paul C. W.

2004-05-01

The conceptual foundations of the special and general theories of relativity differ greatly from those of quantum mechanics. Yet in all cases investigated so far, quantum mechanics seems to be consistent with the principles of relativity theory, when interpreted carefully. In this paper I report on a new investigation of this consistency using a model of a quantum clock to measure time intervals; a topic central to all metric theories of gravitation, and to cosmology. Results are presented for two important scenarios related to the foundations of relativity theory: the speed of light as a limiting velocity and the weak equivalence principle (WEP). These topics are investigated in the light of claims of superluminal propagation in quantum tunnelling and possible violations of WEP. Special attention is given to the role of highly non-classical states. I find that by using a definition of time intervals based on a precise model of a quantum clock, ambiguities are avoided and, at least in the scenarios investigated, there is consistency with the theory of relativity, albeit with some subtleties.

Social determinants of adolescent depression: an examination of racial differences.

PubMed

Respress, Brandon N; Morris, Diana L; Gary, Faye A; Lewin, Linda C; Francis, Shelley A

2013-07-01

Conventional behavior theories that assert adolescent risk behaviors are determined by peer and parental relationships are being challenged as research begins to consider broader socioenvironmental factors. This study, using data from the Longitudinal Study for Adolescent Health (Add Health), Wave II, Public Use Data, and the Social Determinants of Adolescent Risk Behaviors (SDOARB) framework, examines relationships among socioeconomic status (SES), academic performance, perceived peer prejudice, and perceived teacher discrimination as predictors of depressive symptoms among high school adolescents. Overall, the study found that GPA was a significant predictor of depressive symptoms across all three racial groups (Black, White, and Other Minority). Teacher discrimination predicted depressive symptoms among White and Other minority adolescents, but not Black adolescents. These findings suggest the need for interventions within schools for both students and teachers around racial differences in perceptions of prejudice and discrimination. Failure to address overt and covert subtleties of discrimination and prejudice within schools and policies which affect these interpersonal dynamics may have a significant impact on the overall mental wellbeing of adolescents.

When a robot is social: spatial arrangements and multimodal semiotic engagement in the practice of social robotics.

PubMed

Alac, Morana; Movellan, Javier; Tanaka, Fumihide

2011-12-01

Social roboticists design their robots to function as social agents in interaction with humans and other robots. Although we do not deny that the robot's design features are crucial for attaining this aim, we point to the relevance of spatial organization and coordination between the robot and the humans who interact with it. We recover these interactions through an observational study of a social robotics laboratory and examine them by applying a multimodal interactional analysis to two moments of robotics practice. We describe the vital role of roboticists and of the group of preverbal infants, who are involved in a robot's design activity, and we argue that the robot's social character is intrinsically related to the subtleties of human interactional moves in laboratories of social robotics. This human involvement in the robot's social agency is not simply controlled by individual will. Instead, the human-machine couplings are demanded by the situational dynamics in which the robot is lodged.

Polarisation of the Balmer-α emission in crossed electric and magnetic fields

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thorman, Alex

2018-03-01

An analysis of the polarisation structure of the Balmer-α emission in the presence of electric and magnetic fields is presented, with an emphasis on motional Stark effect polarimetry for fusion plasma diagnostics. When the fields are orthogonal, as is the case for neutral heating beams injected into a magnetised plasma, some degeneracy remains in the Stark-Zeeman energy levels and the magnetic quantum number is not well defined. The polarisation structure from the degenerate states is underdetermined and therefore volatile to weaker interactions that resolve this degeneracy, a critical subtlety that has previously been overlooked. A perturbation theory analysis finds distinct polarisation structures for the σ emission that apply when the fine-structure and microscopic electric fields are considered. It is found that only the σ ± 1 polarisation orientation is sensitive to upper-state populations (which are non-statistically weighted for neutral beam injection into a target gas), but with appropriate viewing geometries and beam injection directions the effect can be made negligible.

A study of Minnesota land and water resources using remote sensing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1982-01-01

A pilot study of 60 lakes in Minnesota shows that LANDSAT data correlate very well with the Carlson trophic state index which is derived from measurements in the field. Nimbus satellite data reveal improvement in water quality in Lake Superior since the dumping of taconite tailings stopped in 1980. A feasibility study of using color infrared photography as a near real time tool for soil and crop management in corn and soybean areas of the state generated strong interest from farmers and agribusiness firms. The state geological survey had success in the use and applications of LANDSAT images. Subtleties of changes in vegetation, soil, and topography are such that ground water presence and depth to water table are nearly always impossible to qualify except for broad scale applications. Bedrock and structural differences as shown in lineaments offer great potential for resolution of some kinds of geologic studies. A synergistic concept is to be used to search for mineral resources in the northeastern part of the state.

Invisible realities: Caring for older Moroccan migrants with dementia in Belgium.

PubMed

Berdai Chaouni, Saloua; De Donder, Liesbeth

2018-01-01

The number of older Moroccan migrants reaching the age of high risk for dementia is increasing in Belgium. Yet no study has been performed to explore how Moroccan families facing dementia experience and manage the condition. The study employed a qualitative design using semi-structured interviews with 12 informal and 13 formal caregivers to answer this research question. Findings indicate that the experience of dementia includes several invisible realities that challenge the informal and formal caregivers: (1) the invisibility of dementia as a condition; (2) the invisible subtleties of the informal care execution; (3) the invisibility and inaccessibility of care services as explanation for these family's non-use of available services; and (4) the overlooking of culture, migration and religion as invisible influencers of the overall dementia experience. A better understanding of these hidden realities of migrant older people with dementia and their caregivers could lead to interventions to provide effective and tailored person-centred care that is sensitive to the individual's life experiences, culture and religious background.

Temperature and pH effects on feeding and growth of Antarctic krill

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saba, G.; Bockus, A.; Fantasia, R. L.; Shaw, C.; Sugla, M.; Seibel, B.

2016-02-01

Rapid warming in the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) region is occurring, and is associated with an overall decline in primary, secondary, and higher trophic levels, including Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), a key species in Antarctic food webs. Additionally, there are predictions that by the end of this century the Southern Ocean will be one of the first regions to be affected by seawater chemistry changes associated with enhanced CO2. Ocean acidification and warming may act synergistically to impair animal performance, which may negatively impact Antarctic krill. We assessed the effects of temperature (ambient temperature, ambient +3 degrees C) and pH (Experiment 1 = 8.0, 7.7; Experiment 2 = 8.0, 7.5, 7.1) on juvenile Antarctic krill feeding and growth (growth increment and intermolt period) during incubation experiments at Palmer Station, Antarctica. Food intake was lower in krill exposed to reduced pH. Krill intermolt period (IMP) was significantly lower in the elevated temperature treatments (16.9 days) compared to those at 0 degrees (22.8 days). Within the elevated temperature treatment, minor increases in IMP occurred in krill exposed reduced pH. Growth increment (GI) was lower with decreased pH at the first molt, and this was exacerbated at elevated temperature. However, differences in GI were eliminated between the first and second molts suggesting potential ability of Antarctic krill to acclimate to changes in temperature and pH. Reductions in juvenile krill growth and feeding under elevated temperature and reduced pH are likely caused by higher demands for internal acid-base regulation or a metabolic suppression. However, the subtlety of these feeding and growth responses leaves an open question as to how krill populations will tolerate prolonged future climate change in the Antarctic.

Promoter scanning of the Human COX-2 gene with 8-ring polyamides: unexpected weakening of polyamide-DNA binding and selectivity by replacing an internal N-Me-pyrrole with β-alanine

PubMed Central

Aston, Karl; Ramos, Joseph P.; Koeller, Kevin J.; Nanjunda, Rupesh; He, Gaofei

2012-01-01

Rules for polyamide DNA recognition have proved invaluable for the design of sequence-selective DNA-binding agents in cell-free systems. However, these rules are not fully transferrable to predicting activity in cells, tissues or animals, and additional refinements to our understanding of DNA recognition would help biomedical studies. Similar complexities are encountered when using internal β-alanines as polyamide building blocks in place of N-methyl pyrrole; β-alanines were introduced in polyamide designs to maintain good hydrogen bonding registry with the target DNA, especially for long polyamides or those with several GC bp (P.B. Dervan, A.R. Urbach, Essays Contemp. Chem. (2001) 327–339). Thus, to clarify important subtleties of molecular recognition, we studied the effects of replacing a single pyrrole with β-alanine in 8-ring polyamides designed against the Ets-1 transcription factor. Replacement of a single internal N-methylpyrrole with β-alanine to generate a β/Im pairing in two 8-ring polyamides causes a decrease in DNA binding affinity by two orders of magnitude and decreases DNA binding selectivity, contrary to expectations based on the literature. Measurements were made by fluorescence spectroscopy, quantitative DNA footprinting and surface plasmon resonance, with these vastly different techniques showing excellent agreement. Furthermore, results were validated for a range of DNA substrates from small hairpins to long dsDNA sequences. Docking studies helped show that β-alanine does not make efficient hydrophobic contacts with the rest of the polyamide or nearby DNA, in contrast to pyrrole. These results help refine design principles and expectations for polyamide-DNA recognition. PMID:23023196

Detecting the subtle shape differences in hemodynamic responses at the group level

PubMed Central

Chen, Gang; Saad, Ziad S.; Adleman, Nancy E.; Leibenluft, Ellen; Cox, Robert W.

2015-01-01

The nature of the hemodynamic response (HDR) is still not fully understood due to the multifaceted processes involved. Aside from the overall amplitude, the response may vary across cognitive states, tasks, brain regions, and subjects with respect to characteristics such as rise and fall speed, peak duration, undershoot shape, and overall duration. Here we demonstrate that the fixed-shape (FSM) or adjusted-shape (ASM) methods may fail to detect some shape subtleties (e.g., speed of rise or recovery, or undershoot). In contrast, the estimated-shape method (ESM) through multiple basis functions can provide the opportunity to identify some subtle shape differences and achieve higher statistical power at both individual and group levels. Previously, some dimension reduction approaches focused on the peak magnitude, or made inferences based on the area under the curve (AUC) or interaction, which can lead to potential misidentifications. By adopting a generic framework of multivariate modeling (MVM), we showcase a hybrid approach that is validated by simulations and real data. With the whole HDR shape integrity maintained as input at the group level, the approach allows the investigator to substantiate these more nuanced effects through the unique HDR shape features. Unlike the few analyses that were limited to main effect, two- or three-way interactions, we extend the modeling approach to an inclusive platform that is more adaptable than the conventional GLM. With multiple effect estimates from ESM for each condition, linear mixed-effects (LME) modeling should be used at the group level when there is only one group of subjects without any other explanatory variables. Under other situations, an approximate approach through dimension reduction within the MVM framework can be adopted to achieve a practical equipoise among representation, false positive control, statistical power, and modeling flexibility. The associated program 3dMVM is publicly available as part of the AFNI suite. PMID:26578853

Differences in neutral foot positions when measured barefoot compared to in shoes with varying stiffnesses.

PubMed

Shultz, R; Birmingham, T B; Jenkyn, T R

2011-12-01

This study examined the absolute differences in neutral positions of the joints of the foot with different footwear. This addresses the question of whether separate static trials should be collected for each footwear condition to establish neutral positions. A multi-segment kinematic foot model and optical motion analysis system measured four inter-segmental joints of the foot: (1) hindfoot-to-midfoot in the frontal plane, (2) forefoot-to-midfoot in the frontal plane, (3) hallux-to-forefoot in the sagittal plane, and (4) the height-to-length ratio of the medial longitudinal arch. Barefoot was compared to three shoe condition using Nike Free trainers of varying longitudinal torsional stiffness in ten male volunteers. There was high variability both within subjects and shoe conditions. Shoes in general tended to raise the medial longitudinal arch and dorsiflex the hallux compared to barefoot condition. For the hallux, a minimum important difference of 5° or more was found between shoe conditions and the barefoot condition for majority of the subjects in all three shoe conditions (90% for control, 60% for least stiff, 50% for most stiff). This was less for the frontal plane inter-segmental joints of the foot where 50% of the subjects experience a change above 5° for at least one of the conditions. The choice of using condition-specific neutral trials versus a single common neutral trials should be considered carefully. A single common trial allows for differences in absolute joint angles to be compared between footwear conditions. This can be important clinically to determine whether a joint is approaching its end-of-range and therefore at risk of injury. Several condition-specific neutral trials allows for subtleties in kinematic waveforms to be better compared between conditions, since absolute shifts in joint angles due to changing neutral position are removed and the waveforms are better aligned. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Essentials of building a career in nursing research.

PubMed

Cleary, Michelle; Sayers, Jan; Watson, Roger

2016-07-01

Nursing research is fundamental to driving evidence-based practice and achieving safe outcomes for patients. Underpinning the discussion in this paper are nurse researchers who thought strategically during their undergraduate and postgraduate studies to build a body of credible research influencing patient outcomes and, in so doing, establish their careers. To provide an overview of some of the career essentials that support a transition in role for the beginner or emerging researcher, otherwise known as the early career researcher. Early career researchers need to acquire research competencies, to get involved in research teams, and to understand the research landscape and the various associated subtleties/vagaries and career trajectories. This is fundamental for establishing their credibility as researchers, and enabling them to undertake research that will influence policy and practice. Establishing a research career is challenging, and takes time, effort, patience, perseverance and commitment. For beginner researchers, collegial support and mentoring are essential to support a viable, professional, sustainable, enquiring profession, and a satisfying career. Building individual capabilities and collaborative research teams together is fundamental to research success in adapting to new roles and workplaces.

Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study.

PubMed

Vaismoradi, Mojtaba; Turunen, Hannele; Bondas, Terese

2013-09-01

Qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis are two commonly used approaches in data analysis of nursing research, but boundaries between the two have not been clearly specified. In other words, they are being used interchangeably and it seems difficult for the researcher to choose between them. In this respect, this paper describes and discusses the boundaries between qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis and presents implications to improve the consistency between the purpose of related studies and the method of data analyses. This is a discussion paper, comprising an analytical overview and discussion of the definitions, aims, philosophical background, data gathering, and analysis of content analysis and thematic analysis, and addressing their methodological subtleties. It is concluded that in spite of many similarities between the approaches, including cutting across data and searching for patterns and themes, their main difference lies in the opportunity for quantification of data. It means that measuring the frequency of different categories and themes is possible in content analysis with caution as a proxy for significance. © 2013 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Negative Effects of Makeup Use on Perceptions of Leadership Ability Across Two Ethnicities.

PubMed

James, Esther A; Jenkins, Shauny; Watkins, Christopher D

2018-01-01

Cosmetics alter social perceptions, and prior work suggests that cosmetic use may aid female intrasexual competition, making women appear more dominant to other women but more prestigious to other men. It is unclear whether these findings reflect general improvements in perceptions of traits related to women's dominance or if they are specific to mating contexts only. Here, across two ethnicities, we examined effects of cosmetics used for a social night out on perceptions of women's leadership ability, a trait that denotes competence/high status outside of mating contexts. Participants of African and Caucasian ethnicity judged faces for leadership ability where half of the trials differed in ethnicity (own- vs. other-ethnicity face pairs) and the subtlety of the color manipulation (50% vs. 100%). Regardless of the participant's sex or ethnicity, makeup used for a social night out had a negative effect on perceptions of women's leadership ability. Our findings suggest that, in prior work, women are afforded traits related to dominance, as makeup enhances perceptions of traits that are important for successful female mating competition but not other components of social dominance such as leadership.

Role of the Euclidean signature in lattice calculations of quasidistributions and other nonlocal matrix elements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Briceño, Raúl A.; Hansen, Maxwell T.; Monahan, Christopher J.

2017-07-01

Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) provides the only known systematic, nonperturbative method for first-principles calculations of nucleon structure. However, for quantities such as light-front parton distribution functions (PDFs) and generalized parton distributions (GPDs), the restriction to Euclidean time prevents direct calculation of the desired observable. Recently, progress has been made in relating these quantities to matrix elements of spatially nonlocal, zero-time operators, referred to as quasidistributions. Still, even for these time-independent matrix elements, potential subtleties have been identified in the role of the Euclidean signature. In this work, we investigate the analytic behavior of spatially nonlocal correlation functions and demonstrate that the matrix elements obtained from Euclidean lattice QCD are identical to those obtained using the Lehmann-Symanzik-Zimmermann reduction formula in Minkowski space. After arguing the equivalence on general grounds, we also show that it holds in a perturbative calculation, where special care is needed to identify the lattice prediction. Finally we present a proof of the uniqueness of the matrix elements obtained from Minkowski and Euclidean correlation functions to all order in perturbation theory.

Unambiguous Spectral Evidence for High- (and Low-) Calcium Pyroxene in Asteroids and Meteorites

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sunshine, J. M.; Bus, S. J.; Burbine, T. H.; McCoy, T. J.; Binzel, R. P.

2001-01-01

Spectroscopy remains a powerful tool for inferring the modal mineralogy and mafic mineral composition of asteroid surfaces. Since similar measurements can be made on meteorite samples, spectroscopy can help link the two populations and add spatial and geologic context to detailed geochemical knowledge derived from meteorite samples. For example, analysis of the recent NEAR-Shoemaker mission to Eros include detailed study of NIS spectra to assess the affinity of Eros to ordinary chondrites. As discussed in these studies, pyroxene (PYX) and olivine (OLV) absorption are readily detectable in the spectra. Furthermore, subtleties in band parameters (position vs. area) suggest the presence of both low- and high-calcium pyroxene (LCP and HCP), as expected from the petrology of ordinary chondrites. However unambiguous identification and detailed compositional inferences for both LCP and HCP (and OLV) are difficult from band parameters analysis. In this study, we examine spectra of S-asteroids and meteorites with the Modified Gaussian Model (MGM), an absorption band model, to explore the role of HCP in these silicate-rich spectra.

Unambiguous Spectral Evidence for High- (and Low-) Calcium Pyroxene In Asteroids and Meteorites

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sunshine, J. M.; Bus, S. J.; Burbine, T. H.; McCoy, T. J.; Binzel, R. P.

2001-01-01

Spectroscopy remains a powerful tool for inferring the modal mineralogy and mafic mineral composition of asteroid surfaces. Since similar measurements can be made on meteorite samples, spectroscopy can help link the two populations and add spatial and geologic context to detailed geo knowledge derived from meteorite samples. For example, analysis of the recent NEAR-Shoemaker mission to Eros include detailed study of NIS spectra to assess the affinity of Eros to ordinary chondrites. As discussed in these studies, pyrox (PYX) and olivine (OLV) absorption are readily detectable in the spectra. Furthermore, subtleties in band parameters (position vs. area) suggest the presence of both low- and high-calcium pyroxene (LCP and HCP), as expected from the petrology of ordinary chondrites. However unambiguous identification and detailed compositional inferences for both LCP and HCP (and OLV) are difficult from band parameters analysis. In this study, we examine spectra of S-asteroids and meteorites with the Modified Gaussian Model (MGM), an absorption band model, to explore the role of HCP in these silicate-rich spectra.

Surface operators, chiral rings and localization in N =2 gauge theories

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ashok, S. K.; Billò, M.; Dell'Aquila, E.; Frau, M.; Gupta, V.; John, R. R.; Lerda, A.

2017-11-01

We study half-BPS surface operators in supersymmetric gauge theories in four and five dimensions following two different approaches. In the first approach we analyze the chiral ring equations for certain quiver theories in two and three dimensions, coupled respectively to four- and five-dimensional gauge theories. The chiral ring equations, which arise from extremizing a twisted chiral superpotential, are solved as power series in the infrared scales of the quiver theories. In the second approach we use equivariant localization and obtain the twisted chiral superpotential as a function of the Coulomb moduli of the four- and five-dimensional gauge theories, and find a perfect match with the results obtained from the chiral ring equations. In the five-dimensional case this match is achieved after solving a number of subtleties in the localization formulas which amounts to choosing a particular residue prescription in the integrals that yield the Nekrasov-like partition functions for ramified instantons. We also comment on the necessity of including Chern-Simons terms in order to match the superpotentials obtained from dual quiver descriptions of a given surface operator.

Particles and strings in six-dimensional (2, 0) theory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Henningson, Måns

2004-11-01

In 1995, we learned of the rather surprising existence of a completely new class of quantum theories in six space-time dimensions with(2,0)superconformal symmetry. Some important reasons to study these theories are: (i) Finding the right conceptual framework to define them is a very challenging problem, that will probably take a long time to solve. It is likely to involve new interesting mathematical structures with connections in particular to algebra and geometry. (ii) They give rise to certain Yang-Mills theories with maximally extended supersymmetry upon compactification on a two-torus. This may be a way to find an S-dual formulation of these lower dimensional theories. (iii) They arise within string/ M-theory as decoupled subsectors localized on certain space-time impurities such as branes or singularities. (This is in fact how these theories were first discovered (see Witten, hep-th/9507121).) This may provide an opportunity to study aspects of these higher dimensional theories without having to deal with the conceptual subtleties of quantum gravity. To cite this article: M. Henningson, C. R. Physique 5 (2004).

Magnetism: Principles and Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Craik, Derek J.

2003-09-01

If you are studying physics, chemistry, materials science, electrical engineering, information technology or medicine, then you'll know that understanding magnetism is fundamental to success in your studies and here is the key to unlocking the mysteries of magnetism....... You can: obtain a simple overview of magnetism, including the roles of B and H, resonances and special techniques take full advantage of modern magnets with a wealth of expressions for fields and forces develop realistic general design programmes using isoparametric finite elements study the subtleties of the general theory of magnetic moments and their dynamics follow the development of outstanding materials appreciate how magnetism encompasses topics as diverse as rock magnetism, chemical reaction rates, biological compasses, medical therapies, superconductivity and levitation understand the basis and remarkable achievements of magnetic resonance imaging In his new book, Magnetism, Derek Craik throws light on the principles and applications of this fascinating subject. From formulae for calculating fields to quantum theory, the secrets of magnetism are exposed, ensuring that whether you are a chemist or engineer, physicist, medic or materials scientist Magnetism is the book for our course.

Human service delivery in a multi-tier system: the subtleties of collaboration among partners.

PubMed

Mayhew, Fred

2012-01-01

This article examines the nature of interorganizational relationships that are formed within a multi-tier human service delivery system. Taking into account the hierarchical structure of a statewide initiative to support early childhood education, the study investigates the differences in the relationships between organizations at the service and administrative levels of the system. Forty-nine administrative level and 146 service delivery level relationships are evaluated. Findings indicate that organizations involved in direct service delivery form more collaborative relationships. Thus, when government provides funding for human services, policymakers must seek to balance public accountability with the advantages believed to be inherent in devolved service delivery. Furthermore, practitioners who appreciate the importance and nuances of interorganizational relationships will be in a position to better manage their organizations in an environment of increased collaborative activity and joint delivery of services. Going forward, human service systems will continue to involve organizations from the public, nonprofit, and private sector. A better understanding of how these organizations work together is crucial to the effective delivery of these essential services.

Curiosity as an approach to ethoexperimental analysis: Behavioral neuroscience as seen by students and colleagues of Bob Blanchard.

PubMed

Pearson, Brandon L; Crawley, Jacqueline N; Eilam, David; Pentkowski, Nathan S; Summers, Cliff H

2017-05-01

This review is a synopsis of an International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (IBNS) symposium which focused on the elements of Behavioral Neuroscience for which Robert J. Blanchard was a Pioneer, Leading Expert, Advocate, Mentor, and Sage. Bob Blanchard's work demonstrably changed our broad understanding of animal behavior, and led the way to experimental design and analysis for studies of animal behavior that helped to clarify the deep complexity and subtleties of behavior. Bob's impact on the field of Behavioral Neuroscience includes the behavior, neurocircuitry, neurochemistry, and pharmacology related to social interactions, aggressive behavior, defensive behaviors, flight, freezing, threat, attack, risk assessment, anxiety disorders, animal models, models of social behavior, and autism. The methods and designs developed by Bob Blanchard over a lifetime have been adopted by scientists around the world, and form a standard of excellence in the field. The article addresses these topics in a way that presents developments in the field, describes the newest research data, and pays tribute to a great scientist and founder of this field of work, Bob Blanchard. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Integrability of the Ad{{S}_{5}}\\times {{S}^{5}} superstring and its deformations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

van Tongeren, Stijn J.

2014-10-01

This article reviews the application of integrability to the spectral problem of strings on Ad{{S}5}× {{S}5} and its deformations. We begin with a pedagogical introduction to integrable field theories culminating in the description of their finite-volume spectra through the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz (TBA). Next, we apply these ideas to the Ad{{S}5}× {{S}5} string and in later sections discuss how to account for particular integrable deformations. Through the AdS/CFT correspondence this gives an exact description of anomalous scaling dimensions of single trace operators in planar N=4 supersymmetry Yang-Mills theory, its ‘orbifolds’, and β and γ-deformed supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We also touch upon some subtleties arising in these deformed theories. Furthermore, we consider complex excited states (bound states) in the su(2) sector and give their TBA description. Finally we discuss the TBA for a quantum deformation of the Ad{{S}5}× {{S}5} superstring S-matrix, with close relations to among others Pohlmeyer reduced string theory, and briefly indicate more recent developments in this area.

Sea Fog Research in the United Kingdom and United States: A Historical Essay Including Outlook.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lewis, J. M.; Korain, D.; Redmond, K. T.

2004-03-01

A historical review of research on sea fog is presented. The period of interest is essentially the twentieth century, beginning with the celebrated work of G. I. Taylor in the aftermath of the Titanic tragedy. It has been argued that relative maxima in fog frequency over the North Atlantic (including the Brit-ish Isles and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland) and the North Pacific (including the U.S. West Coast) has led to major contributions by scientists in England and the United States. The early work (pre World War II) tended to be phenomenological—that is, conceptual with broad inference from statistical summaries. Yet, this early work laid the foundation for the numerical modeling that came with the advent of computers in the postwar period. The subtleties associated with sea fog formation and maintenance are explored by analyzing some of the results from the numerical simulations. The essay ends with a speculative view on our prospects for a more complete understanding of sea fog in light of the earlier contributions.

Role of the Euclidean signature in lattice calculations of quasidistributions and other nonlocal matrix elements

DOE PAGES

Briceno, Raul A.; Hansen, Maxwell T.; Monahan, Christopher J.

2017-07-11

Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) provides the only known systematic, nonperturbative method for first-principles calculations of nucleon structure. However, for quantities such as light-front parton distribution functions (PDFs) and generalized parton distributions (GPDs), the restriction to Euclidean time prevents direct calculation of the desired observable. Recently, progress has been made in relating these quantities to matrix elements of spatially nonlocal, zero-time operators, referred to as quasidistributions. Still, even for these time-independent matrix elements, potential subtleties have been identified in the role of the Euclidean signature. In this work, we investigate the analytic behavior of spatially nonlocal correlation functions and demonstrate thatmore » the matrix elements obtained from Euclidean lattice QCD are identical to those obtained using the Lehmann-Symanzik-Zimmermann reduction formula in Minkowski space. After arguing the equivalence on general grounds, we also show that it holds in a perturbative calculation, where special care is needed to identify the lattice prediction. Lastly, we present a proof of the uniqueness of the matrix elements obtained from Minkowski and Euclidean correlation functions to all order in perturbation theory.« less

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Briceno, Raul A.; Hansen, Maxwell T.; Monahan, Christopher J.

Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) provides the only known systematic, nonperturbative method for first-principles calculations of nucleon structure. However, for quantities such as light-front parton distribution functions (PDFs) and generalized parton distributions (GPDs), the restriction to Euclidean time prevents direct calculation of the desired observable. Recently, progress has been made in relating these quantities to matrix elements of spatially nonlocal, zero-time operators, referred to as quasidistributions. Still, even for these time-independent matrix elements, potential subtleties have been identified in the role of the Euclidean signature. In this work, we investigate the analytic behavior of spatially nonlocal correlation functions and demonstrate thatmore » the matrix elements obtained from Euclidean lattice QCD are identical to those obtained using the Lehmann-Symanzik-Zimmermann reduction formula in Minkowski space. After arguing the equivalence on general grounds, we also show that it holds in a perturbative calculation, where special care is needed to identify the lattice prediction. Lastly, we present a proof of the uniqueness of the matrix elements obtained from Minkowski and Euclidean correlation functions to all order in perturbation theory.« less

Molecular hyperdiversity and evolution in very large populations.

PubMed

Cutter, Asher D; Jovelin, Richard; Dey, Alivia

2013-04-01

The genomic density of sequence polymorphisms critically affects the sensitivity of inferences about ongoing sequence evolution, function and demographic history. Most animal and plant genomes have relatively low densities of polymorphisms, but some species are hyperdiverse with neutral nucleotide heterozygosity exceeding 5%. Eukaryotes with extremely large populations, mimicking bacterial and viral populations, present novel opportunities for studying molecular evolution in sexually reproducing taxa with complex development. In particular, hyperdiverse species can help answer controversial questions about the evolution of genome complexity, the limits of natural selection, modes of adaptation and subtleties of the mutation process. However, such systems have some inherent complications and here we identify topics in need of theoretical developments. Close relatives of the model organisms Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster provide known examples of hyperdiverse eukaryotes, encouraging functional dissection of resulting molecular evolutionary patterns. We recommend how best to exploit hyperdiverse populations for analysis, for example, in quantifying the impact of noncrossover recombination in genomes and for determining the identity and micro-evolutionary selective pressures on noncoding regulatory elements. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Surface shear inviscidity of soluble surfactants

PubMed Central

Zell, Zachary A.; Nowbahar, Arash; Mansard, Vincent; Leal, L. Gary; Deshmukh, Suraj S.; Mecca, Jodi M.; Tucker, Christopher J.; Squires, Todd M.

2014-01-01

Foam and emulsion stability has long been believed to correlate with the surface shear viscosity of the surfactant used to stabilize them. Many subtleties arise in interpreting surface shear viscosity measurements, however, and correlations do not necessarily indicate causation. Using a sensitive technique designed to excite purely surface shear deformations, we make the most sensitive and precise measurements to date of the surface shear viscosity of a variety of soluble surfactants, focusing on SDS in particular. Our measurements reveal the surface shear viscosity of SDS to be below the sensitivity limit of our technique, giving an upper bound of order 0.01 μN·s/m. This conflicts directly with almost all previous studies, which reported values up to 103–104 times higher. Multiple control and complementary measurements confirm this result, including direct visualization of monolayer deformation, for SDS and a wide variety of soluble polymeric, ionic, and nonionic surfactants of high- and low-foaming character. No soluble, small-molecule surfactant was found to have a measurable surface shear viscosity, which seriously undermines most support for any correlation between foam stability and surface shear rheology of soluble surfactants. PMID:24563383

Fabrication and Theoretical Evaluation of Microlens Arrays on Layered Polymers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oder, Tom; McMaster, Michael; Merlo, Corey; Bagheri, Camron; Reakes, Clayton; Petrus, Joshua; Li, Dingqiang; Crescimanno, Michael; Andrews, James

2014-03-01

Arrays of microlens were fabricated on nano-layered polymers using reactive ion etching. Semi hemispherical patterns with diameters ranging from 20 to 80 micrometers were first formed on a thick photoresist film that was spin-coated on the layered polymers using standard photolithographic process employing a gray scale glass mask. These patterns were then transferred to the polymers using dry etching in a reactive ion etching system. The optimized etch condition included a mixture of sulfur hexafluoride and oxygen, which resulted in an etch depth of 5 micrometers and successfully exposed the individual sub-micron thick layers in the polymers. Physical characterization of the microlens arrays was done using atomic force microscope and scanning electron microscope. We combine basic physical optics theory with the transfer matrix analysis of optical transport in nano-layered polymers to address subtleties in the chromatic response of microlenses made from these materials. In particular this method explains the len's behavior in and around the reflection band of the materials. We wish to acknowledge support of funds from NSF through its Center for Layered Polymeric Systems (CLiPS) at Case Western Reserve University.

Simulation of the M13 life cycle II: Investigation of the control mechanisms of M13 infection and establishment of the carrier state.

PubMed

Smeal, Steven W; Schmitt, Margaret A; Pereira, Ronnie Rodrigues; Prasad, Ashok; Fisk, John D

2017-01-01

Bacteriophage M13 is a true parasite of bacteria, able to co-opt the infected cell and control the production of progeny across many cellular generations. Here, our genetically-structured simulation of M13 is applied to quantitatively dissect the interplay between the host cellular environment and the controlling interactions governing the phage life cycle during the initial establishment of infection and across multiple cell generations. Multiple simulations suggest that phage-encoded feedback interactions constrain the utilization of host DNA polymerase, RNA polymerase and ribosomes. The simulation reveals the importance of p5 translational attenuation in controlling the production of phage double-stranded DNA and suggests an underappreciated role for p5 translational self-attenuation in resource allocation. The control elements active in a single generation are sufficient to reproduce the experimentally-observed multigenerational curing of the phage infection. Understanding the subtleties of regulation will be important for maximally exploiting M13 particles as scaffolds for nanoscale devices. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unbiased All-Optical Random-Number Generator

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Steinle, Tobias; Greiner, Johannes N.; Wrachtrup, Jörg; Giessen, Harald; Gerhardt, Ilja

2017-10-01

The generation of random bits is of enormous importance in modern information science. Cryptographic security is based on random numbers which require a physical process for their generation. This is commonly performed by hardware random-number generators. These often exhibit a number of problems, namely experimental bias, memory in the system, and other technical subtleties, which reduce the reliability in the entropy estimation. Further, the generated outcome has to be postprocessed to "iron out" such spurious effects. Here, we present a purely optical randomness generator, based on the bistable output of an optical parametric oscillator. Detector noise plays no role and postprocessing is reduced to a minimum. Upon entering the bistable regime, initially the resulting output phase depends on vacuum fluctuations. Later, the phase is rigidly locked and can be well determined versus a pulse train, which is derived from the pump laser. This delivers an ambiguity-free output, which is reliably detected and associated with a binary outcome. The resulting random bit stream resembles a perfect coin toss and passes all relevant randomness measures. The random nature of the generated binary outcome is furthermore confirmed by an analysis of resulting conditional entropies.

Voronoi Cell Patterns: Application of the size distribution to societal systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sathiyanarayanan, Rajesh; González, Diego Luis; Pimpinelli, Alberto; Einstein, T. L.

2012-02-01

In studying the growth of islands on a surface subjected to a particle flux, we found it useful to characterize the distribution of the areas of associated Voronoi (proximity or Wigner-Seitz) cells in terms of the generalized Wigner surmiseootnotetextAP & TLE, PRL 99 (2007) 226102; PRL 104 (2010) 149602 and the gamma distributions. Here we show that the same concepts and distributions are useful in analyzing several problems arising in society.ootnotetextDLG et al., arXiv 1109.3994; RS, Ph.D. dissertation; RS et al., preprint We analyze the 1D problem of the distribution of gaps between parked cars, assuming that successive cars park in the middle of vacant spaces, and compare with published data. We study the formation of second-level administrative divisions, e.g. French arrondissements. We study the actual distribution of arrondissements and the Voronoi tessellation associated with the chief town in each. While generally applicable, there are subtleties in some cases. Lastly, we consider the pattern formed by Paris M'etro stations and show that near the central area, the associated Voronoi construction also has this sort of distribution.

Oblate-Earth Effects on the Calculation of Ec During Spacecraft Reentry

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bacon, John B.; Matney, Mark J.

2017-01-01

The bulge in the Earth at its equator has been shown to lead to a clustering of natural decays biased to occur towards the equator and away from the orbit's extreme latitudes. Such clustering must be considered when predicting the Expectation of Casualty (Ec) during a natural decay because of the clustering of the human population in the same lower latitudes. This study expands upon prior work, and formalizes the correction that must be made to the calculation of the average exposed population density as a result of this effect. Although a generic equation can be derived from this work to approximate the effects of gravitational and atmospheric perturbations on a final decay, such an equation averages certain important subtleties in achieving a best fit over all conditions. The authors recommend that direct simulation be used to calculate the true Ec for any specific entry as a more accurate method. A generic equation is provided, represented as a function of ballistic number and inclination of the entering spacecraft over the credible range of ballistic numbers.

Lessons Learned in Engineering

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Blair, J. C.; Ryan, R. S.; Schutzenhofer, L. A.

2011-01-01

This Contractor Report (CR) is a compilation of Lessons Learned in approximately 55 years of engineering experience by each James C. Blair, Robert S. Ryan, and Luke A. Schutzenhofer. The lessons are the basis of a course on Lessons Learned that has been taught at Marshall Space Flight Center. The lessons are drawn from NASA space projects and are characterized in terms of generic lessons learned from the project experience, which are further distilled into overarching principles that can be applied to future projects. Included are discussions of the overarching principles followed by a listing of the lessons associated with that principle. The lesson with sub-lessons are stated along with a listing of the project problems the lesson is drawn from, then each problem is illustrated and discussed, with conclusions drawn in terms of Lessons Learned. The purpose of this CR is to provide principles learned from past aerospace experience to help achieve greater success in future programs, and identify application of these principles to space systems design. The problems experienced provide insight into the engineering process and are examples of the subtleties one experiences performing engineering design, manufacturing, and operations.

Surgical Management of Osteoarthritis of the Knee.

PubMed

Quinn, Robert H; Murray, Jayson N; Pezold, Ryan; Sevarino, Kaitlyn S

2018-05-01

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons has developed Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) for Surgical Management of Osteoarthritis of the Knee. Evidence-based information, in conjunction with the clinical expertise of physicians, was used to develop the criteria to improve patient care and obtain best outcomes while considering the subtleties and distinctions necessary in making clinical decisions. The Surgical Management of Osteoarthritis of the Knee AUC clinical patient scenarios were derived from indications of patients under consideration for surgical treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee as well as from current evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and supporting literature to identify the appropriateness of the three treatments. The 864 patient scenarios and 3 treatments were developed by the writing panel, a group of clinicians who are specialists in this AUC topic. Next, a separate, multidisciplinary, voting panel (made up of specialists and nonspecialists) rated the appropriateness of treatment of each patient scenario using a 9-point scale to designate a treatment as Appropriate (median rating, 7 to 9), May Be Appropriate (median rating, 4 to 6), or Rarely Appropriate (median rating, 1 to 3).

Design of molecular imprinted polymers compatible with aqueous environment.

PubMed

Piletska, Elena V; Guerreiro, Antonio R; Romero-Guerra, Maria; Chianella, Iva; Turner, Anthony P F; Piletsky, Sergey A

2008-01-21

The main problem of poor water compatibility of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) was addressed in examples describing design of synthetic receptors with high affinity for drugs of abuse. An extensive potentiometric titration of 10 popular functional monomers and corresponding imprinted and blank polymers was conducted in order to evaluate the subtleties of functional groups ionisation under aqueous conditions. It was found that polymers prepared using 2-trifluoromethacrylic acid (TFMAA) in combination with toluene as porogen possess superior properties which make them suitable for effective template recognition in water. The potential impact of phase separation during polymerisation on formation of high quality imprints has been discussed. Three drugs of abuse such as cocaine, deoxyephedrine and methadone were used as template models in polymer preparation for the practical validation of obtained results. The polymer testing showed that synthesized molecularly imprinted polymers have high affinity and selectivity for corresponding templates in aqueous environment, with imprinting factors of 2.6 for cocaine and 1.4 for methadone and deoxyephedrine. Corresponding blank polymers were unable to differentiate between analytes, suggesting that imprinting phenomenon was responsible for the recognition properties.

Could masked conceptual primes increase recollection? The subtleties of measuring recollection and familiarity in recognition memory

PubMed Central

Taylor, Jason R.; Henson, Richard N.

2012-01-01

We begin with a theoretical overview of the concepts of recollection and familiarity, focusing, in the spirit of this special issue, on the important contributions made by Andrew Mayes. In particular, we discuss the issue of when the generation of semantically-related information in response to a retrieval cue might be experienced as recollection rather than familiarity. We then report a series of experiments in which two different types of masked prime, presented immediately prior to the test cue in a recognition memory paradigm, produced opposite effects on Remember vs. Know judgments. More specifically, primes that were conceptually related to the test item increased the incidence of Remember judgments, though only when intermixed with repetition primes (which increased the incidence of Know judgments instead, as in prior studies). One possible explanation—that the fluency of retrieval of item–context associations can be experienced as recollection, even when the source of that fluency is unknown—is counter to conventional views of recollection and familiarity, though it was anticipated by Andrew in his writings nearly two decades ago. PMID:22898644

Can neap-spring tidal cycles modulate biogeochemical fluxes in the abyssal near-seafloor water column?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Turnewitsch, Robert; Dale, Andrew; Lahajnar, Niko; Lampitt, Richard S.; Sakamoto, Kei

2017-05-01

Before particulate matter that settles as 'primary flux' from the interior ocean is deposited into deep-sea sediments it has to traverse the benthic boundary layer (BBL) that is likely to cover almost all parts of the seafloor in the deep seas. Fluid dynamics in the BBL differ vastly from fluid dynamics in the overlying water column and, consequently, have the potential to lead to quantitative and compositional changes between primary and depositional fluxes. Despite this potential and the likely global relevance very little is known about mechanistic and quantitative aspects of the controlling processes. Here, results are presented for a sediment-trap time-series study that was conducted on the Porcupine Abyssal Plain in the abyssal Northeast Atlantic, with traps deployed at 2, 40 and 569 m above bottom (mab). The two bottommost traps were situated within the BBL-affected part of the water column. The time series captured 3 neap and 4 spring tides and the arrival of fresh settling material originating from a surface-ocean bloom. In the trap-collected material, total particulate matter (TPM), particulate inorganic carbon (PIC), biogenic silica (BSi), particulate organic carbon (POC), particulate nitrogen (PN), total hydrolysable amino acids (AA), hexosamines (HA) and lithogenic material (LM) were determined. The biogeochemical results are presented within the context of time series of measured currents (at 15 mab) and turbidity (at 1 mab). The main outcome is evidence for an effect of neap/spring tidal oscillations on particulate-matter dynamics in BBL-affected waters in the deep sea. Based on the frequency-decomposed current measurements and numerical modelling of BBL fluid dynamics, it is concluded that the neap/spring tidal oscillations of particulate-matter dynamics are less likely due to temporally varying total free-stream current speeds and more likely due to temporally and vertically varying turbulence intensities that result from the temporally varying interplay of different rotational flow components (residual, tidal, near-inertial) within the BBL. Using information from previously published empirical and theoretical relations between fluid and biogeochemical dynamics at the scale of individual particle aggregates, a conceptual and semi-quantitative picture of a mechanism was derived that explains how the neap/spring fluid-dynamic oscillations may translate through particle dynamics into neap/spring oscillations of biogeochemical aggregate decomposition (microbially driven organic-matter breakdown, biomineral dissolution). It is predicted that, during transitions from neap into spring tides, increased aggregation in near-seafloor waters and/or reduced deposition of aggregates at the seafloor coincides with reduced biogeochemical particulate-matter decomposition in near-seafloor waters. By contrast, during transitions from spring into neap tides, enhanced biogeochemical particulate-matter decomposition in near-seafloor waters is predicted to coincide with increased deposition of particulate matter at the seafloor. This study suggests that, in addition to current speed, the specifics and subtleties of the interplay of different rotational flow components can be an important control on how the primary flux from the interior ocean is translated into the depositional flux, with potential implications for sedimentary carbon deposition, benthic food supply and possibly even the sedimentary records of environmental change.

Information extraction from multi-institutional radiology reports.

PubMed

Hassanpour, Saeed; Langlotz, Curtis P

2016-01-01

The radiology report is the most important source of clinical imaging information. It documents critical information about the patient's health and the radiologist's interpretation of medical findings. It also communicates information to the referring physicians and records that information for future clinical and research use. Although efforts to structure some radiology report information through predefined templates are beginning to bear fruit, a large portion of radiology report information is entered in free text. The free text format is a major obstacle for rapid extraction and subsequent use of information by clinicians, researchers, and healthcare information systems. This difficulty is due to the ambiguity and subtlety of natural language, complexity of described images, and variations among different radiologists and healthcare organizations. As a result, radiology reports are used only once by the clinician who ordered the study and rarely are used again for research and data mining. In this work, machine learning techniques and a large multi-institutional radiology report repository are used to extract the semantics of the radiology report and overcome the barriers to the re-use of radiology report information in clinical research and other healthcare applications. We describe a machine learning system to annotate radiology reports and extract report contents according to an information model. This information model covers the majority of clinically significant contents in radiology reports and is applicable to a wide variety of radiology study types. Our automated approach uses discriminative sequence classifiers for named-entity recognition to extract and organize clinically significant terms and phrases consistent with the information model. We evaluated our information extraction system on 150 radiology reports from three major healthcare organizations and compared its results to a commonly used non-machine learning information extraction method. We also evaluated the generalizability of our approach across different organizations by training and testing our system on data from different organizations. Our results show the efficacy of our machine learning approach in extracting the information model's elements (10-fold cross-validation average performance: precision: 87%, recall: 84%, F1 score: 85%) and its superiority and generalizability compared to the common non-machine learning approach (p-value<0.05). Our machine learning information extraction approach provides an effective automatic method to annotate and extract clinically significant information from a large collection of free text radiology reports. This information extraction system can help clinicians better understand the radiology reports and prioritize their review process. In addition, the extracted information can be used by researchers to link radiology reports to information from other data sources such as electronic health records and the patient's genome. Extracted information also can facilitate disease surveillance, real-time clinical decision support for the radiologist, and content-based image retrieval. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

On the diverse roles of fluid dynamic drag in animal swimming and flying

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

Questions of energy dissipation or friction appear immediately when addressing the problem of a body moving in a fluid. For the most simple problems, involving a constant steady propulsive force on the body, a straightforward relation can be established balancing this driving force with a skin friction or form drag, depending on the Reynolds number and body geometry. This elementary relation closes the full dynamical problem and sets, for instance, average cruising velocity or energy cost. In the case of finite-sized and time-deformable bodies though, such as flapping flyers or undulatory swimmers, the comprehension of driving/dissipation interactions is not straightforward. The intrinsic unsteadiness of the flapping and deforming animal bodies complicates the usual application of classical fluid dynamic forces balance. One of the complications is because the shape of the body is indeed changing in time, accelerating and decelerating perpetually, but also because the role of drag (more specifically the role of the local drag) has two different facets, contributing at the same time to global dissipation and to driving forces. This causes situations where a strong drag is not necessarily equivalent to inefficient systems. A lot of living systems are precisely using strong sources of drag to optimize their performance. In addition to revisiting classical results under the light of recent research on these questions, we discuss in this review the crucial role of drag from another point of view that concerns the fluid–structure interaction problem of animal locomotion. We consider, in particular, the dynamic subtleties brought by the quadratic drag that resists transverse motions of a flexible body or appendage performing complex kinematics, such as the phase dynamics of a flexible flapping wing, the propagative nature of the bending wave in undulatory swimmers, or the surprising relevance of drag-based resistive thrust in inertial swimmers. PMID:29445037

Botlhoko, botlhoko! How people talk about their musculoskeletal complaints in rural Botswana: a focused ethnography

PubMed Central

Hondras, Maria; Myburgh, Corrie; Hartvigsen, Jan; Johannessen, Helle

2015-01-01

Background Conflicting interpretations about the structure and function of the body contribute to discordance in communication between healthcare professionals and lay people. Understanding musculoskeletal (MSK) complaints presents additional complexities when discussed in more than one language or in cross-cultural settings. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), few healthcare professionals have specialist MSK training and not all practitioners speak the primary language of patients. Objective Our goal was to understand how people in rural Botswana perceive and express MSK complaints. Design Ethnographic fieldwork for 8 months in the Botswana Central District included participant observations and interviews with 34 community members with MSK complaints. Audio-recorded interviews were typically conducted in Setswana with an interpreter, transcribed verbatim, and contextually translated into English. Abductive qualitative analysis was used as the interpretive methodology. Results Whereas initial responses about MSK troubles yielded the exclamation botlhoko, botlhoko! combined with animated non-verbal gestures and facial expressions indicating widespread body pains, in-depth interviews revealed the complexities of pain expression among respondents. MSK pains were described as ‘bursting, exploding, aching, numbness, hot, pricking, stabbing, swollen, and pain in the heart’. Language subtleties manifested during interviews, where ‘meat’ or ‘flesh’ implied soft tissue pains; waist pains were voiced yet portrayed as low back or sacroiliac pain; and ‘veins’ variously referred to structural and functional types of pain. Psychological and social stressors accompanied many accounts of MSK troubles. Conclusions Respondents offered diverse MSK symptom descriptions consistent with biopsychosocial illness models, yet few communicated complaints using the biomedical language of healthcare providers. Although research interview and transcription processes may not be practical for clinicians, working with interpreters who communicate detailed patient accounts for MSK troubles will complement patient–provider encounters. Community member perceptions of their MSK pain and associated conditions should be explored and incorporated into healthcare interventions and innovations for rural communities in LMICs. PMID:26689457

Botlhoko, botlhoko! How people talk about their musculoskeletal complaints in rural Botswana: a focused ethnography.

PubMed

Hondras, Maria; Myburgh, Corrie; Hartvigsen, Jan; Johannessen, Helle

2015-01-01

Conflicting interpretations about the structure and function of the body contribute to discordance in communication between healthcare professionals and lay people. Understanding musculoskeletal (MSK) complaints presents additional complexities when discussed in more than one language or in cross-cultural settings. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), few healthcare professionals have specialist MSK training and not all practitioners speak the primary language of patients. Our goal was to understand how people in rural Botswana perceive and express MSK complaints. Ethnographic fieldwork for 8 months in the Botswana Central District included participant observations and interviews with 34 community members with MSK complaints. Audio-recorded interviews were typically conducted in Setswana with an interpreter, transcribed verbatim, and contextually translated into English. Abductive qualitative analysis was used as the interpretive methodology. Whereas initial responses about MSK troubles yielded the exclamation botlhoko, botlhoko! combined with animated non-verbal gestures and facial expressions indicating widespread body pains, in-depth interviews revealed the complexities of pain expression among respondents. MSK pains were described as 'bursting, exploding, aching, numbness, hot, pricking, stabbing, swollen, and pain in the heart'. Language subtleties manifested during interviews, where 'meat' or 'flesh' implied soft tissue pains; waist pains were voiced yet portrayed as low back or sacroiliac pain; and 'veins' variously referred to structural and functional types of pain. Psychological and social stressors accompanied many accounts of MSK troubles. Respondents offered diverse MSK symptom descriptions consistent with biopsychosocial illness models, yet few communicated complaints using the biomedical language of healthcare providers. Although research interview and transcription processes may not be practical for clinicians, working with interpreters who communicate detailed patient accounts for MSK troubles will complement patient-provider encounters. Community member perceptions of their MSK pain and associated conditions should be explored and incorporated into healthcare interventions and innovations for rural communities in LMICs.

A probabilistic approach to emission-line galaxy classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Souza, R. S.; Dantas, M. L. L.; Costa-Duarte, M. V.; Feigelson, E. D.; Killedar, M.; Lablanche, P.-Y.; Vilalta, R.; Krone-Martins, A.; Beck, R.; Gieseke, F.

2017-12-01

We invoke a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) to jointly analyse two traditional emission-line classification schemes of galaxy ionization sources: the Baldwin-Phillips-Terlevich (BPT) and WH α versus [N II]/H α (WHAN) diagrams, using spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 and SEAGal/STARLIGHT data sets. We apply a GMM to empirically define classes of galaxies in a three-dimensional space spanned by the log [O III]/H β, log [N II]/H α and log EW(H α) optical parameters. The best-fitting GMM based on several statistical criteria suggests a solution around four Gaussian components (GCs), which are capable to explain up to 97 per cent of the data variance. Using elements of information theory, we compare each GC to their respective astronomical counterpart. GC1 and GC4 are associated with star-forming galaxies, suggesting the need to define a new starburst subgroup. GC2 is associated with BPT's active galactic nuclei (AGN) class and WHAN's weak AGN class. GC3 is associated with BPT's composite class and WHAN's strong AGN class. Conversely, there is no statistical evidence - based on four GCs - for the existence of a Seyfert/low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) dichotomy in our sample. Notwithstanding, the inclusion of an additional GC5 unravels it. The GC5 appears associated with the LINER and passive galaxies on the BPT and WHAN diagrams, respectively. This indicates that if the Seyfert/LINER dichotomy is there, it does not account significantly to the global data variance and may be overlooked by standard metrics of goodness of fit. Subtleties aside, we demonstrate the potential of our methodology to recover/unravel different objects inside the wilderness of astronomical data sets, without lacking the ability to convey physically interpretable results. The probabilistic classifications from the GMM analysis are publicly available within the COINtoolbox at https://cointoolbox.github.io/GMM_Catalogue/.

Longitudinal relationship between fecal culture, fecal quantitative PCR, and milk ELISA in Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis-infected cows from low-prevalence dairy herds.

PubMed

Beaver, A; Sweeney, R W; Hovingh, E; Wolfgang, D R; Gröhn, Y T; Schukken, Y H

2017-09-01

Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP), the causative agent of ruminant Johne's disease, presents a particular challenge with regard to infection mitigation on dairy farms. Diagnostic testing strategies to identify and quantify MAP and associated antibodies are imperfect, and certain facets of the relationship between diagnostic tests remain to be explored. Additional repeated-measures data from known infected animals are needed to complement the body of cross-sectional research on Johne's disease-testing methods. Statistical models that accurately account for multiple diagnostic results while adjusting for the effects of individual animals and herds over time can provide a more detailed understanding of the interplay between diagnostic outcomes. Further, test results may be considered as continuous wherever possible so as to avoid the information loss associated with dichotomization. To achieve a broader understanding of the relationship between diagnostic tests, we collected a large number of repeated fecal and milk samples from 14 infected cows, in addition to bulk milk samples, from 2 low-prevalence dairy herds in the northeast United States. Predominately through the use of mixed linear modeling, we identified strong associations between milk ELISA optical density, fecal quantitative PCR, and fecal culture in individual animals while concurrently adjusting for variables that could alter these relationships. Notably, we uncovered subtleties in the predictive abilities of fecal shedding level on milk ELISA results, with animals categorized as disease progressors reaching higher ELISA optical density levels. Moreover, we observed that spikes in fecal shedding could predict subsequent high ELISA values up to 2 mo later. We also investigated the presence of MAP in individual milk samples via PCR and noted an association between poor udder hygiene and MAP positivity in milk, suggesting some level of environmental contamination. The paucity of positive milk samples and the complete absence of detectable MAP in the bulk tank throughout the study period indicate that contamination of milk with MAP may not be of chief concern in low-prevalence herds. An enhanced understanding of the interrelationships between diagnostic tests can only benefit the development of testing strategies and objectives, which in turn may lessen MAP infection prevalence in dairy herds. Copyright © 2017 American Dairy Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Evaluation of High-Temporal-Resolution Bedload Sensors for Tracking Channel Bed Movement and Transport Thresholds in Forested Mountain Headwater Catchments.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martin, S.; Conklin, M. H.; Bales, R. C.

2014-12-01

High temporal resolution data is required to take channel bed movement data beyond time integrated changes between measurements where many of the subtleties of bedload movement patterns are often missed. This study used continuous bedload scour sensors (flexible, fluid-filled pans connected to a pressure transducer) to collect high temporal resolution, long term bedload movement data for 4 high elevation (1500-1800 m) Sierra Nevada headwater streams draining 1 km2 catchments and to investigate the physical channel characteristics under which they perform best. Data collected by the scour sensors were used to investigate the disturbance and recovery patterns of these streams, to relate the observed patterns to channel bed stability, and to evaluate whether the channel bed is acting as a sediment source, sink, or storage across various temporal scales. Finally, attempts are made to identify discharge thresholds for bed movement from scour sensor and discharge data and to compare these threshold values to observed changes in the channel bed. Bedload scour data, turbidity data, and stream discharge data were collected at 15 minute intervals for (WY 2011 to WY 2014), including both above average (2011) and below average (2012, 2013, 2014) water years. Bedload scour sensors were found to have a relatively high (60%) failure rate in these systems. In addition, they required in situ calibrations as the factory and laboratory calibrations did not translate well to the field deployments. Data from the working sensors, showed patterns of abrupt channel bed disturbance (scour and/or fill) on an hour to day temporal scale followed by gradual recovery on a day to month scale back to a stable equilibrium bed surface elevation. These observed patterns suggest the bed acts as a short term source or sink for sediment, but is roughly sediment neutral over longer time periods implying the changes in bed elevation are reflective of fluctuations in storage rather than a true source or sink. Overall, these sensors show promise for collecting continuous data for high gradient, forested, mountain streams. Additional benefits include their relatively low cost both monetarily (under $1000) and in labor compared to traditional methods as well as not requiring the trade-off between temporal resolution and length of study that traditional methods do.

Remarks on entanglement entropy in string theory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Balasubramanian, Vijay; Parrikar, Onkar

2018-03-01

Entanglement entropy for spatial subregions is difficult to define in string theory because of the extended nature of strings. Here we propose a definition for bosonic open strings using the framework of string field theory. The key difference (compared to ordinary quantum field theory) is that the subregion is chosen inside a Cauchy surface in the "space of open string configurations." We first present a simple calculation of this entanglement entropy in free light-cone string field theory, ignoring subtleties related to the factorization of the Hilbert space. We reproduce the answer expected from an effective field theory point of view, namely a sum over the one-loop entanglement entropies corresponding to all the particle-excitations of the string, and further show that the full string theory regulates ultraviolet divergences in the entanglement entropy. We then revisit the question of factorization of the Hilbert space by analyzing the covariant phase-space associated with a subregion in Witten's covariant string field theory. We show that the pure gauge (i.e., BRST exact) modes in the string field become dynamical at the entanglement cut. Thus, a proper definition of the entropy must involve an extended Hilbert space, with new stringy edge modes localized at the entanglement cut.

Witten index for noncompact dynamics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Seung-Joo; Yi, Piljin

2016-06-01

Among gauged dynamics motivated by string theory, we find many with gapless asymptotic directions. Although the natural boundary condition for ground states is L 2, one often turns on chemical potentials or supersymmetric mass terms to regulate the infrared issues, instead, and computes the twisted partition function. We point out how this procedure generically fails to capture physical L 2 Witten index with often misleading results. We also explore how, nevertheless, the Witten index is sometimes intricately embedded in such twisted partition functions. For d = 1 theories with gapless continuum sector from gauge multiplets, such as non-primitive quivers and pure Yang-Mills, a further subtlety exists, leading to fractional expressions. Quite unexpectedly, however, the integral L 2 Witten index can be extracted directly and easily from the twisted partition function of such theories. This phenomenon is tied to the notion of the rational invariant that appears naturally in the wall-crossing formulae, and offers a general mechanism of reading off Witten index directly from the twisted partition function. Along the way, we correct early numerical results for some of mathcal{N} = 4 , 8 , 16 pure Yang-Mills quantum mechanics, and count threshold bound states for general gauge groups beyond SU( N ).

The value of visualizing tone of voice.

PubMed

Pullin, Graham; Cook, Andrew

2013-10-01

Whilst most of us have an innate feeling for tone of voice, it is an elusive quality that even phoneticians struggle to describe with sufficient subtlety. For people who cannot speak themselves this can have particularly profound repercussions. Augmentative communication often involves text-to-speech, a technology that only supports a basic choice of prosody based on punctuation. Given how inherently difficult it is to talk about more nuanced tone of voice, there is a risk that its absence from current devices goes unremarked and unchallenged. Looking ahead optimistically to more expressive communication aids, their design will need to involve more subtle interactions with tone of voice-interactions that the people using them can understand and engage with. Interaction design can play a role in making tone of voice visible, tangible, and accessible. Two projects that have already catalysed interdisciplinary debate in this area, Six Speaking Chairs and Speech Hedge, are introduced together with responses. A broader role for design is advocated, as a means to opening up speech technology research to a wider range of disciplinary perspectives, and also to the contributions and influence of people who use it in their everyday lives.

Anisotropic Etching of Hexagonal Boron Nitride and Graphene: Question of Edge Terminations.

PubMed

Stehle, Yijing Y; Sang, Xiahan; Unocic, Raymond R; Voylov, Dmitry; Jackson, Roderick K; Smirnov, Sergei; Vlassiouk, Ivan

2017-12-13

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been established as the most effective way to grow large area two-dimensional materials. Direct study of the etching process can reveal subtleties of this competing with the growth reaction and thus provide the necessary details of the overall growth mechanism. Here we investigate hydrogen-induced etching of hBN and graphene and compare the results with the classical kinetic Wulff construction model. Formation of the anisotropically etched holes in the center of hBN and graphene single crystals was observed along with the changes in the crystals' circumference. We show that the edges of triangular holes in hBN crystals formed at regular etching conditions are parallel to B-terminated zigzags, opposite to the N-terminated zigzag edges of hBN triangular crystals. The morphology of the etched hBN holes is affected by a disbalance of the B/N ratio upon etching and can be shifted toward the anticipated from the Wulff model N-terminated zigzag by etching in a nitrogen buffer gas instead of a typical argon. For graphene, etched hexagonal holes are terminated by zigzag, while the crystal circumference is gradually changing from a pure zigzag to a slanted angle resulting in dodecagons.

The role of emotion in musical improvisation: an analysis of structural features.

PubMed

McPherson, Malinda J; Lopez-Gonzalez, Monica; Rankin, Summer K; Limb, Charles J

2014-01-01

One of the primary functions of music is to convey emotion, yet how music accomplishes this task remains unclear. For example, simple correlations between mode (major vs. minor) and emotion (happy vs. sad) do not adequately explain the enormous range, subtlety or complexity of musically induced emotions. In this study, we examined the structural features of unconstrained musical improvisations generated by jazz pianists in response to emotional cues. We hypothesized that musicians would not utilize any universal rules to convey emotions, but would instead combine heterogeneous musical elements together in order to depict positive and negative emotions. Our findings demonstrate a lack of simple correspondence between emotions and musical features of spontaneous musical improvisation. While improvisations in response to positive emotional cues were more likely to be in major keys, have faster tempos, faster key press velocities and more staccato notes when compared to negative improvisations, there was a wide distribution for each emotion with components that directly violated these primary associations. The finding that musicians often combine disparate features together in order to convey emotion during improvisation suggests that structural diversity may be an essential feature of the ability of music to express a wide range of emotion.

Cations Form Sequence Selective Motifs within DNA Grooves via a Combination of Cation-Pi and Ion-Dipole/Hydrogen Bond Interactions

PubMed Central

Stewart, Mikaela; Dunlap, Tori; Dourlain, Elizabeth; Grant, Bryce; McFail-Isom, Lori

2013-01-01

The fine conformational subtleties of DNA structure modulate many fundamental cellular processes including gene activation/repression, cellular division, and DNA repair. Most of these cellular processes rely on the conformational heterogeneity of specific DNA sequences. Factors including those structural characteristics inherent in the particular base sequence as well as those induced through interaction with solvent components combine to produce fine DNA structural variation including helical flexibility and conformation. Cation-pi interactions between solvent cations or their first hydration shell waters and the faces of DNA bases form sequence selectively and contribute to DNA structural heterogeneity. In this paper, we detect and characterize the binding patterns found in cation-pi interactions between solvent cations and DNA bases in a set of high resolution x-ray crystal structures. Specifically, we found that monovalent cations (Tl+) and the polarized first hydration shell waters of divalent cations (Mg2+, Ca2+) form cation-pi interactions with DNA bases stabilizing unstacked conformations. When these cation-pi interactions are combined with electrostatic interactions a pattern of specific binding motifs is formed within the grooves. PMID:23940752

Making Sense of the Yeast Sphingolipid Pathway.

PubMed

Megyeri, Márton; Riezman, Howard; Schuldiner, Maya; Futerman, Anthony H

2016-12-04

Sphingolipids (SL) and their metabolites play key roles both as structural components of membranes and as signaling molecules. Many of the key enzymes and regulators of SL metabolism were discovered using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and based on the high degree of conservation, a number of mammalian homologs were identified. Although yeast continues to be an important tool for SL research, the complexity of SL structure and nomenclature often hampers the ability of new researchers to grasp the subtleties of yeast SL biology and discover new modulators of this intricate pathway. Moreover, the emergence of lipidomics by mass spectrometry has enabled the rapid identification of SL species in yeast and rendered the analysis of SL composition under various physiological and pathophysiological conditions readily amenable. However, the complex nomenclature of the identified species renders much of the data inaccessible to non-specialists. In this review, we focus on parsing both the classical SL nomenclature and the nomenclature normally used during mass spectrometry analysis, which should facilitate the understanding of yeast SL data and might shed light on biological processes in which SLs are involved. Finally, we discuss a number of putative roles of various yeast SL species. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

High-Level Performance Modeling of SAR Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chen, Curtis

2006-01-01

SAUSAGE (Still Another Utility for SAR Analysis that s General and Extensible) is a computer program for modeling (see figure) the performance of synthetic- aperture radar (SAR) or interferometric synthetic-aperture radar (InSAR or IFSAR) systems. The user is assumed to be familiar with the basic principles of SAR imaging and interferometry. Given design parameters (e.g., altitude, power, and bandwidth) that characterize a radar system, the software predicts various performance metrics (e.g., signal-to-noise ratio and resolution). SAUSAGE is intended to be a general software tool for quick, high-level evaluation of radar designs; it is not meant to capture all the subtleties, nuances, and particulars of specific systems. SAUSAGE was written to facilitate the exploration of engineering tradeoffs within the multidimensional space of design parameters. Typically, this space is examined through an iterative process of adjusting the values of the design parameters and examining the effects of the adjustments on the overall performance of the system at each iteration. The software is designed to be modular and extensible to enable consideration of a variety of operating modes and antenna beam patterns, including, for example, strip-map and spotlight SAR acquisitions, polarimetry, burst modes, and squinted geometries.

Resource Letter GrW-1: Gravitational Waves

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

White, Nicholas E. (Technical Monitor); Centrella, Joan M.

2003-01-01

The phenomenon of gravitational radiation was one of the first predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Progress in understanding this radiation theoretically was slow at first, owing to the difficulty of the nonlinear field equations and the subtleties of their physical effects. The experimental side of this subject also has taken a long time to develop, with efforts at detection severely challenged by the extreme weakness of the waves impinging on the Earth. However, as the 21st century begins, observations of the gravitational waves from astrophysical sources such as black holes, neutron stars, and stellar collapse are expected to open a new window on the universe. Vigorous experimental programs centered on ground-based detectors are being carried out worldwide, and a space-based detector is in the planning stages. On the theoretical side, much effort is being expended to produce robust models of the astrophysical sources and accurate calculations of the waveforms they produce. In this Resource Letter, a set of basic references will be presented first, to provide a general introduction to and overview of the literature in this field. The focus then will shift to highlighting key resources in more specialized areas at the forefront of current research.

Pore-scale modeling of capillary trapping in water-wet porous media: A new cooperative pore-body filling model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ruspini, L. C.; Farokhpoor, R.; Øren, P. E.

2017-10-01

We present a pore-network model study of capillary trapping in water-wet porous media. The amount and distribution of trapped non-wetting phase is determined by the competition between two trapping mechanisms - snap-off and cooperative pore-body filling. We develop a new model to describe the pore-body filling mechanism in geologically realistic pore-networks. The model accounts for the geometrical characteristics of the pore, the spatial location of the connecting throats and the local fluid topology at the time of the displacement. We validate the model by comparing computed capillary trapping curves with published data for four different water-wet rocks. Computations are performed on pore-networks extracted from micro-CT images and process-based reconstructions of the actual rocks used in the experiments. Compared with commonly used stochastic models, the new model describes more accurately the experimental measurements, especially for well connected porous systems where trapping is controlled by subtleties of the pore structure. The new model successfully predicts relative permeabilities and residual saturation for Bentheimer sandstone using in-situ measured contact angles as input to the simulations. The simulated trapped cluster size distributions are compared with predictions from percolation theory.

The Role of Emotion in Musical Improvisation: An Analysis of Structural Features

PubMed Central

McPherson, Malinda J.; Lopez-Gonzalez, Monica; Rankin, Summer K.; Limb, Charles J.

2014-01-01

One of the primary functions of music is to convey emotion, yet how music accomplishes this task remains unclear. For example, simple correlations between mode (major vs. minor) and emotion (happy vs. sad) do not adequately explain the enormous range, subtlety or complexity of musically induced emotions. In this study, we examined the structural features of unconstrained musical improvisations generated by jazz pianists in response to emotional cues. We hypothesized that musicians would not utilize any universal rules to convey emotions, but would instead combine heterogeneous musical elements together in order to depict positive and negative emotions. Our findings demonstrate a lack of simple correspondence between emotions and musical features of spontaneous musical improvisation. While improvisations in response to positive emotional cues were more likely to be in major keys, have faster tempos, faster key press velocities and more staccato notes when compared to negative improvisations, there was a wide distribution for each emotion with components that directly violated these primary associations. The finding that musicians often combine disparate features together in order to convey emotion during improvisation suggests that structural diversity may be an essential feature of the ability of music to express a wide range of emotion. PMID:25144200

Lessons Learned in Engineering. Supplement

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Blair, James C.; Ryan, Robert S.; Schultzenhofer, Luke A.

2011-01-01

This Contractor Report (CR) is a compilation of Lessons Learned in approximately 55 years of engineering experience by each James C. Blair, Robert S. Ryan, and Luke A. Schutzenhofer. The lessons are the basis of a course on Lessons Learned that has been taught at Marshall Space Flight Center. The lessons are drawn from NASA space projects and are characterized in terms of generic lessons learned from the project experience, which are further distilled into overarching principles that can be applied to future projects. Included are discussions of the overarching principles followed by a listing of the lessons associated with that principle. The lesson with sub-lessons are stated along with a listing of the project problems the lesson is drawn from, then each problem is illustrated and discussed, with conclusions drawn in terms of Lessons Learned. The purpose of this CR is to provide principles learned from past aerospace experience to help achieve greater success in future programs, and identify application of these principles to space systems design. The problems experienced provide insight into the engineering process and are examples of the subtleties one experiences performing engineering design, manufacturing, and operations. The supplemental CD contains accompanying PowerPoint presentations.

On the security of two remote user authentication schemes for telecare medical information systems.

PubMed

Kim, Kee-Won; Lee, Jae-Dong

2014-05-01

The telecare medical information systems (TMISs) support convenient and rapid health-care services. A secure and efficient authentication scheme for TMIS provides safeguarding patients' electronic patient records (EPRs) and helps health care workers and medical personnel to rapidly making correct clinical decisions. Recently, Kumari et al. proposed a password based user authentication scheme using smart cards for TMIS, and claimed that the proposed scheme could resist various malicious attacks. However, we point out that their scheme is still vulnerable to lost smart card and cannot provide forward secrecy. Subsequently, Das and Goswami proposed a secure and efficient uniqueness-and-anonymity-preserving remote user authentication scheme for connected health care. They simulated their scheme for the formal security verification using the widely-accepted automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool to ensure that their scheme is secure against passive and active attacks. However, we show that their scheme is still vulnerable to smart card loss attacks and cannot provide forward secrecy property. The proposed cryptanalysis discourages any use of the two schemes under investigation in practice and reveals some subtleties and challenges in designing this type of schemes.

Computed torque control of a free-flying cooperat ing-arm robot

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Koningstein, Ross; Ullman, Marc; Cannon, Robert H., Jr.

1989-01-01

The unified approach to solving free-floating space robot manipulator end-point control problems is presented using a control formulation based on an extension of computed torque. Once the desired end-point accelerations have been specified, the kinematic equations are used with momentum conservation equations to solve for the joint accelerations in any of the robot's possible configurations: fixed base or free-flying with open/closed chain grasp. The joint accelerations can then be used to calculate the arm control torques and internal forces using a recursive order N algorithm. Initial experimental verification of these techniques has been performed using a laboratory model of a two-armed space robot. This fully autonomous spacecraft system experiences the drag-free, zero G characteristics of space in two dimensions through the use of an air cushion support system. Results of these initial experiments are included which validate the correctness of the proposed methodology. The further problem of control in the large where not only the manipulator tip positions but the entire system consisting of base and arms must be controlled is also presented. The availability of a physical testbed has brought a keener insight into the subtleties of the problem at hand.

Visualizing protein partnerships in living cells and organisms.

PubMed

Lowder, Melissa A; Appelbaum, Jacob S; Hobert, Elissa M; Schepartz, Alanna

2011-12-01

In recent years, scientists have expanded their focus from cataloging genes to characterizing the multiple states of their translated products. One anticipated result is a dynamic map of the protein association networks and activities that occur within the cellular environment. While in vitro-derived network maps can illustrate which of a multitude of possible protein-protein associations could exist, they supply a falsely static picture lacking the subtleties of subcellular location (where) or cellular state (when). Generating protein association network maps that are informed by both subcellular location and cell state requires novel approaches that accurately characterize the state of protein associations in living cells and provide precise spatiotemporal resolution. In this review, we highlight recent advances in visualizing protein associations and networks under increasingly native conditions. These advances include second generation protein complementation assays (PCAs), chemical and photo-crosslinking techniques, and proximity-induced ligation approaches. The advances described focus on background reduction, signal optimization, rapid and reversible reporter assembly, decreased cytotoxicity, and minimal functional perturbation. Key breakthroughs have addressed many challenges and should expand the repertoire of tools useful for generating maps of protein interactions resolved in both time and space. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cations form sequence selective motifs within DNA grooves via a combination of cation-pi and ion-dipole/hydrogen bond interactions.

PubMed

Stewart, Mikaela; Dunlap, Tori; Dourlain, Elizabeth; Grant, Bryce; McFail-Isom, Lori

2013-01-01

The fine conformational subtleties of DNA structure modulate many fundamental cellular processes including gene activation/repression, cellular division, and DNA repair. Most of these cellular processes rely on the conformational heterogeneity of specific DNA sequences. Factors including those structural characteristics inherent in the particular base sequence as well as those induced through interaction with solvent components combine to produce fine DNA structural variation including helical flexibility and conformation. Cation-pi interactions between solvent cations or their first hydration shell waters and the faces of DNA bases form sequence selectively and contribute to DNA structural heterogeneity. In this paper, we detect and characterize the binding patterns found in cation-pi interactions between solvent cations and DNA bases in a set of high resolution x-ray crystal structures. Specifically, we found that monovalent cations (Tl⁺) and the polarized first hydration shell waters of divalent cations (Mg²⁺, Ca²⁺) form cation-pi interactions with DNA bases stabilizing unstacked conformations. When these cation-pi interactions are combined with electrostatic interactions a pattern of specific binding motifs is formed within the grooves.

Management of Pediatric Supracondylar Humerus Fractures With Vascular Injury.

PubMed

Sanders, James O; Heggeness, Michael H; Murray, Jayson N; Pezold, Ryan C; Sevarino, Kaitlyn S

2016-02-01

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons has developed the Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) document Management of Pediatric Supracondylar Humerus Fractures With Vascular Injury. Evidence-based information, in conjunction with the clinical expertise of physicians, was used to develop the criteria to improve patient care and obtain the best outcomes while considering the subtleties and distinctions necessary in making clinical decisions. The AUC clinical patient scenarios were derived from patient indications that generally accompany a pediatric supracondylar humerus fracture with vascular injury, as well as from current evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and supporting literature. The 6 patient scenarios and 18 treatments were developed by the Writing Panel, a group of clinicians who are specialists in this AUC topic. Next, the Review Panel, a separate group of volunteer physicians, independently reviewed these materials to ensure that they were representative of patient scenarios that clinicians are likely to encounter in daily practice. Finally, the multidisciplinary Voting Panel (made up of specialists and nonspecialists) rated the appropriateness of treatment of each patient scenario using a 9-point scale to designate a treatment as Appropriate (median rating, 7 to 9), May Be Appropriate (median rating, 4 to 6), or Rarely Appropriate (median rating, 1 to 3).

Matching the bipolar patient and the mood stabilizer.

PubMed

Gelenberg, Alan J; Pies, Ronald

2003-01-01

Bipolar disorder poses many treatment challenges, including "matching" a particular patient with the optimal treatment regimen. Although there are a number of extant guidelines to assist the clinician in selecting treatment, these recommendations are largely based on general variables and fail to take into account the subtleties and complications that confront a clinician in practice. An analysis of predictors of medication response in bipolar disorder provides a basis for matching patients with optimal medication regimens. Response to treatment may depend on the polarity of an episode or on clinical features such as mixed or psychotic symptomatology and rate of cycling. Comorbid psychiatric disorders such as substance abuse, anxiety disorders, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder should also be considered in designing a treatment regimen. Similarly, medical conditions, especially metabolic abnormalities or kidney insufficiency, must be taken into account. Selection of medication may also involve an analysis of demographic factors, including family and personal history of response to a particular agent. When selecting the most appropriate mood stabilizer for a patient--particularly when polypharmacy is required--the clinician should keep potential side effects and drug interactions in mind. Randomized, controlled studies in bipolar populations are needed to further characterize optimal matching of patient and medication.

Management of Patients with Orthopaedic Implants Undergoing Dental Procedures.

PubMed

Quinn, Robert H; Murray, Jayson N; Pezold, Ryan; Sevarino, Kaitlyn S

2017-07-01

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, in collaboration with the American Dental Association, has developed Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) for the Management of Patients with Orthopaedic Implants Undergoing Dental Procedures. Evidence-based information, in conjunction with the clinical expertise of physicians, was used to develop the criteria to improve patient care and obtain best outcomes while considering the subtleties and distinctions necessary in making clinical decisions. The Management of Patients with Orthopaedic Implants Undergoing Dental Procedures AUC clinical patient scenarios were derived from indications of patients with orthopaedic implants presenting for dental procedures, as well as from current evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and supporting literature to identify the appropriateness of the use of prophylactic antibiotics. The 64 patient scenarios and 1 treatment were developed by the writing panel, a group of clinicians who are specialists in this AUC topic. Next, a separate, multidisciplinary, voting panel (made up of specialists and nonspecialists) rated the appropriateness of treatment of each patient scenario using a 9-point scale to designate a treatment as Appropriate (median rating, 7 to 9), May Be Appropriate (median rating, 4 to 6), or Rarely Appropriate (median rating, 1 to 3).

Poster — Thur Eve — 72: Clinical Subtleties of Flattening-Filter-Free Beams

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Corns, Robert; Thomas, Steven; Huang, Vicky

2014-08-15

Flattening-filter-free (fff) beams offer superior dose rates, reducing treatment times for important techniques that utilize small field sizes, such as stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR). The impact of ion collection efficiency (P{sub ion}) on the percent depth dose (PDD) has been discussed at length in the literature. Relative corrections of the order of l%–2% are possible. In the process of commissioning 6fff and 10fff beams, we identified a number of other important details that influence commissioning. We looked at the absolute dose difference between corrected and uncorrected PDD. We discovered a curve with a broad maximum between 10 and 20 cm.more » We wondered about the consequences of this PDD correction on the absolute dose calibration of the linac because the TG-51 protocol does not correct the PDD curve. The quality factor k{sub Q} depends on the PDD, so in principle, a correction to the PDD will alter the absolute calibration of the linac. Finally, there are other clinical tables, such as TMR, which are derived from PDD. Attention to details on how this computation is performed is important because different corrections are possible depending the method of calculation.« less

Sherlock Holmes and the case of the plagiarised paper.

PubMed

Kennedy, David

2011-07-01

Narrative pedagogy has the power to explore issues in a way that expository teaching cannot match. Moon and Fowler (2008, p.236), for example, point out that fiction has much to offer in focusing creatively on issues, exploring subtleties and discussing related emotional dynamics. But they comment that in nurse education fiction is 'a relatively untapped' (though valuable) resource for teaching. 'Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Plagiarised Paper' is a fictional account that responds to Moon and Fowler's challenge. It explores a controversial issue--student plagiarism. The narrative sets the discussion in a fictional context--an interaction between fictional characters and a real character. It explores difficulties that novice writers have in avoiding plagiarism. It debates how teachers may respond to student plagiarism. It contextualises student plagiarism in the wider world of academic plagiarism. Its purpose is to enable the reader to identify and act on these issues in a way that an expository examination of student plagiarism could not achieve. In response to suggestions from reviewers, the article has an Appendix which outlines some of the issues and techniques associated with the use of fiction in nursing education. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Three Portraits, 2 Artists, and 1 Harvard Department of Anaesthesia: the Brigham Chairs and the Artists Who Rendered Them.

PubMed

Fox, John A; Poor, Erin; Desai, Sukumar P

2016-04-01

Many forms of art accurately depict physical attributes of their subjects. But how precisely do portraits capture personal, emotional, and behavioral aspects of individuals holding leadership positions in academic departments of anesthesiology? We examined formal portraits of the first three academic chairmen of anesthesiology in our department - Leroy D. Vandam, Benjamin G. Covino, and Simon Gelman and obtained information about the artists (George Augusta and Marc Klionsky) regarding how they conducted research on their subjects, and the methods they used to depict significant character traits into their art. We then correlated the artistic depiction with known biographical and behavioral qualities of these leaders. We found that the artists were remarkably astute in their observations and that they successfully captured both physical and emotional aspects of these chairmen in their portraits. Moreover, in one instance, significant early life experiences were added to the composition with subtlety. Individuals familiar with these chairmen and aware of their management style can easily appreciate the techniques employed by the artists. We conclude that art successfully depicted personal and executive attributes of these three academic anesthesia chairmen. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

On exact solutions for disturbances to the asymptotic suction boundary layer: transformation of Barnes integrals to convolution integrals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Russell, John

2000-11-01

A modified Orr-Sommerfeld equation that applies to the asymptotic suction boundary layer was reported by Bussmann & Münz in a wartime report dated 1942 and by Hughes & Reid in J.F.M. ( 23, 1965, p715). Fundamental systems of exact solutions of the Orr-Sommerfeld equation for this mean velocity distribution were reported by D. Grohne in an unpublished typescript dated 1950. Exact solutions of the equation of Bussmann, Münz, Hughes, & Reid were reported by P. Baldwin in Mathematika ( 17, 1970, p206). Grohne and Baldwin noticed that these exact solutions may be expressed either as Barnes integrals or as convolution integrals. In a later paper (Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A, 399, 1985, p321), Baldwin applied the convolution integrals in the contruction of large-Reynolds number asymptotic approximations that hold uniformly. The present talk discusses the subtleties that arise in the construction of such convolution integrals, including several not reported by Grohne or Baldwin. The aim is to recover the full set of seven solutions (one well balanced, three balanced, and three dominant-recessive) postulated by W.H. Reid in various works on the uniformly valid solutions.

Johannes Vermeer of Delft [1632-1675] and vision in neuroendoscopy

PubMed Central

Azab, Waleed A.; Prevedello, Daniel M.; Carrau, Ricardo L.

2014-01-01

Background: Johannes Vermeer of Delft [1632-1675] was one of the greatest Masters of the Dutch Golden Age who was intensely preoccupied with the behavior of light and other optical effects and was entitled “The Master of Light”. He fastidiously attended to the subtleties of visual expression through geometry, composition, and precise mastery of the rules of perspective. It has been our impression that some visual similarity does exist between neuroendoscopic images and some of Vermeer's paintings. Such a relation could be explained by the fact that optical devices are utilized in producing both types of display. Methods: We reviewed the pertinent medical and art literature, observed some video clips of our endoscopy cases, and inspected digital high resolution images of Vermeer's paintings in order to elaborate on shared optical phenomena between neuroendoscopic views and Vermeer's paintings. Results: Specific optical phenomena are indeed shared by Johannes Vermeer's works and neuroendoscopic vision, namely light and color effects as well as the rules of perspective. Conclusion: From the physical point of view, the possibility that a camera obscura inspired Vermeer's artistic creation makes the existence of a visual link between his paintings and the endoscopic views of the intracranial cavity comprehensible. PMID:25140282

Autopoiesis 40 years later. A review and a reformulation.

PubMed

Razeto-Barry, Pablo

2012-12-01

The concept of autopoiesis was proposed 40 years ago as a definition of a living being, with the aim of providing a unifying concept for biology. The concept has also been extended to the theory of knowledge and to different areas of the social and behavioral sciences. Given some ambiguities of the original definitions of autopoiesis, the concept has been criticized and has been interpreted in diverse and even contradictory ways, which has prevented its integration into the biological sciences where it originated. Here I present a critical review and conceptual analysis of the definition of autopoiesis, and propose a new definition that is more precise, clear, and concise than the original ones. I argue that the difficulty in understanding the term lies in its refined conceptual subtlety and not, as has been claimed by some authors, because it is a vacuous, trivial or very complex concept. I also relate the concept of autopoiesis to the concepts of closed systems, boundaries, homeostasis, self-reproduction, causal circularity, organization and multicellularity. I show that under my proposed definition the concept of a molecular autopoietic system is a good demarcation criterion of a living being, allowing its general integration into the biological sciences and enhancing its interdisciplinary use.

Going Outside the TonB Box: Identification of Novel FepA-TonB Interactions In Vivo.

PubMed

Gresock, Michael G; Postle, Kathleen

2017-05-15

In Gram-negative bacteria, the cytoplasmic membrane protein TonB transmits energy derived from proton motive force to energize transport of important nutrients through TonB-dependent transporters in the outer membrane. Each transporter consists of a beta barrel domain and a lumen-occluding cork domain containing an essential sequence called the TonB box. To date, the only identified site of transporter-TonB interaction is between the TonB box and residues ∼158 to 162 of TonB. While the mechanism of ligand transport is a mystery, a current model based on site-directed spin labeling and molecular dynamics simulations is that, following ligand binding, the otherwise-sequestered TonB box extends into the periplasm for recognition by TonB, which mediates transport by pulling or twisting the cork. In this study, we tested that hypothesis with the outer membrane transporter FepA using in vivo photo-cross-linking to explore interactions of its TonB box and determine whether additional FepA-TonB interaction sites exist. We found numerous specific sites of FepA interaction with TonB on the periplasmic face of the FepA cork in addition to the TonB box. Two residues, T32 and A33, might constitute a ligand-sensitive conformational switch. The facts that some interactions were enhanced in the absence of ligand and that other interactions did not require the TonB box argued against the current model and suggested that the transport process is more complex than originally conceived, with subtleties that might provide a mechanism for discrimination among ligand-loaded transporters. These results constitute the first study on the dynamics of TonB-gated transporter interaction with TonB in vivo IMPORTANCE The TonB system of Gram-negative bacteria has a noncanonical active transport mechanism involving signal transduction and proteins integral to both membranes. To achieve transport, the cytoplasmic membrane protein TonB physically contacts outer membrane transporters such as FepA. Only one contact between TonB and outer membrane transporters has been identified to date: the TonB box at the transporter amino terminus. The TonB box has low information content, raising the question of how TonB can discriminate among multiple different TonB-dependent transporters present in the bacterium if it is the only means of contact. Here we identified several additional sites through which FepA contacts TonB in vivo , including two neighboring residues that may explain how FepA signals to TonB that ligand has bound. Copyright © 2017 American Society for Microbiology.

Biological relevance of effects following chronic administration of octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4) in Fischer 344 rats.

PubMed

Dekant, Wolfgang; Scialli, Anthony R; Plotzke, Kathy; Klaunig, James E

2017-10-20

Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4) is a cyclic siloxane primarily used as a monomer or intermediate in the production of silicone polymers resulting in potential exposure of workers, and potential low level inhalation or dermal exposure for consumers and the general public. Following a two-year inhalation toxicity study with D4 in rats, increases in uterine endometrial cystic hyperplasia and adenomas were observed at the highest concentration of D4 administered (700ppm). No other neoplasms were increased with D4 treatment. In addition, chronic inhalation exposure of rats to D4 induced changes in relative liver and kidney weights, and produced a chronic nephropathy. This manuscript examines the biological relevance and possible modes of action for the effects observed in the F344 rat following chronic inhalation exposure to D4. D4 is not genotoxic and appears to exert its effects through a nongenotoxic mode of action. An alteration in the estrous cycle in the aging F344 rat was the most likely mode of action for the observed uterine effects following chronic inhalation exposure. Data support the conclusion that D4 acts indirectly via a dopamine-like mechanism leading to alteration of the pituitary control of the estrous cycle in aging F344 rats with a decrease in progesterone and an increase in the estrogen/progesterone ratio most likely induced by a decrease in prolactin concentration. D4 also inhibited the pre-ovulatory LH surge causing a delay in ovulation, persistent follicles and thus a prolonged exposure to elevated estrogen in the adult Sprague Dawely rat. A lengthening of the estrous cycle in the F344 rat with an increase in endogenous estrogen was also induced by D4 inhalation. Although the mode of action responsible for induction of uterine adenomas in the female F344 rat has not been clearly confirmed, the subtlety of effects on the effects of D4 on cyclicity may prevent further assessment and definition of the mode of action. The occurrence of uterine endometrial adenoma in the rat is not relevant for human risk characterization because (1) there are differences in ovulatory cycle regulation in rats compared to humans, (2) cystic hyperplasia without atypia in women is not a cancer precursor, and (3) there is no endometrial lesion in women that is directly analogous to endometrial adenoma in the rat. The effects of D4 on liver are due to a phenobarbital-like mechanism that results in induction of cytochrome P450 and other enzymes of xenobiotic biotransformation. The liver effects are adaptive and not adverse. Kidney findings included chonic progressive nephropathy, a rat lesion that has no counterpart in the human and that should not be used in human risk assessment. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

On being a Gulf veteran: an anthropological perspective

PubMed Central

Kilshaw, Susie

2006-01-01

There is no doubt that Gulf service has affected the well-being of some of the members of the UK armed forces who served in that conflict, yet the reason for this remain unclear. At present, the debate surrounding Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) has become stagnant and highly polarized. This paper argues that a new perspective is needed to further improve our understanding of the problem and suggests that the methods and theories of anthropology, with its focus on nuances and subtleties, can provide new insights. Data were generated from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the UK including participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. Anthropology provides a unique way of approaching and understanding somatic symptoms and suggests that GWS symptom reporting can be seen as a form of communication. The work focuses on the sufferers' accounts, the symptoms themselves and the context within which we find them in order to better understand what was being expressed and commented upon. Although necessary to contextualize GWS through situating it among other emergent illnesses and widespread health beliefs, this paper shows there is a need to bring back the particular. This work seeks to make sense of the cultural circumstances, specific and general, which gave rise to the illness. PMID:16687272

A Random Walk in the Park: An Individual-Based Null Model for Behavioral Thermoregulation.

PubMed

Vickers, Mathew; Schwarzkopf, Lin

2016-04-01

Behavioral thermoregulators leverage environmental temperature to control their body temperature. Habitat thermal quality therefore dictates the difficulty and necessity of precise thermoregulation, and the quality of behavioral thermoregulation in turn impacts organism fitness via the thermal dependence of performance. Comparing the body temperature of a thermoregulator with a null (non-thermoregulating) model allows us to estimate habitat thermal quality and the effect of behavioral thermoregulation on body temperature. We define a null model for behavioral thermoregulation that is a random walk in a temporally and spatially explicit thermal landscape. Predicted body temperature is also integrated through time, so recent body temperature history, environmental temperature, and movement influence current body temperature; there is no particular reliance on an organism's equilibrium temperature. We develop a metric called thermal benefit that equates body temperature to thermally dependent performance as a proxy for fitness. We measure thermal quality of two distinct tropical habitats as a temporally dynamic distribution that is an ergodic property of many random walks, and we compare it with the thermal benefit of real lizards in both habitats. Our simple model focuses on transient body temperature; as such, using it we observe such subtleties as shifts in the thermoregulatory effort and investment of lizards throughout the day, from thermoregulators to thermoconformers.

Anisotropic Etching of Hexagonal Boron Nitride and Graphene: Question of Edge Terminations

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Stehle, Yijing Y.; Sang, Xiahan; Unocic, Raymond R.

Here, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been established as the most effective way to grow large area two-dimensional materials. Direct study of the etching process can reveal subtleties of this competing with the growth reaction and thus provide the necessary details of the overall growth mechanism. Here we investigate hydrogen-induced etching of hBN and graphene and compare the results with the classical kinetic Wulff construction model. Formation of the anisotropically etched holes in the center of hBN and graphene single crystals was observed along with the changes in the crystals' circumference. We show that the edges of triangular holes inmore » hBN crystals formed at regular etching conditions are parallel to B-terminated zigzags, opposite to the N-terminated zigzag edges of hBN triangular crystals. The morphology of the etched hBN holes is affected by a disbalance of the B/N ratio upon etching and can be shifted toward the anticipated from the Wulff model N-terminated zigzag by etching in a nitrogen buffer gas instead of a typical argon. For graphene, etched hexagonal holes are terminated by zigzag, while the crystal circumference is gradually changing from a pure zigzag to a slanted angle resulting in dodecagons.« less

A virtual caravan--A metaphor for home-internationalization through social media: A qualitative content analysis.

PubMed

Chan, Engle A; Nyback, Maj-Helen

2015-06-01

An internationalized curriculum in nursing education was created in response to the rise of globalization and the need to provide nursing care to people of diverse cultures. Through technology, internationalization at home can facilitate intercultural experiences for more nursing students. The aim of this study is to explore and describe how a virtual course in intercultural communication between students of two universities, through internationalization at home, can support the development of cultural competence. Qualitative research Junior year nursing students Qualitative content analysis of transcribed written and oral presentations during a course on intercultural communication. Four major themes, which are not mutually exclusive, were identified. Through this intercultural experience, without leaving home, students uncovered their cultural selves and others based on their own reflective understanding and collaborative discourse with each other and the use of social media for communication. Through experiential intercultural encounters beyond textbook and online materials, they learned to appreciate each other as people with cultural differences yet with much in common, and to recognize their assumptions and the value of subtleties and nuances. They were able to explore solutions within an unfamiliar context through their own efforts and with the support of peers and teachers. This led to a deeper understanding of cultural sensitivity and competence. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Statistical analysis and interpolation of compositional data in materials science.

PubMed

Pesenson, Misha Z; Suram, Santosh K; Gregoire, John M

2015-02-09

Compositional data are ubiquitous in chemistry and materials science: analysis of elements in multicomponent systems, combinatorial problems, etc., lead to data that are non-negative and sum to a constant (for example, atomic concentrations). The constant sum constraint restricts the sampling space to a simplex instead of the usual Euclidean space. Since statistical measures such as mean and standard deviation are defined for the Euclidean space, traditional correlation studies, multivariate analysis, and hypothesis testing may lead to erroneous dependencies and incorrect inferences when applied to compositional data. Furthermore, composition measurements that are used for data analytics may not include all of the elements contained in the material; that is, the measurements may be subcompositions of a higher-dimensional parent composition. Physically meaningful statistical analysis must yield results that are invariant under the number of composition elements, requiring the application of specialized statistical tools. We present specifics and subtleties of compositional data processing through discussion of illustrative examples. We introduce basic concepts, terminology, and methods required for the analysis of compositional data and utilize them for the spatial interpolation of composition in a sputtered thin film. The results demonstrate the importance of this mathematical framework for compositional data analysis (CDA) in the fields of materials science and chemistry.

Angles-only navigation for autonomous orbital rendezvous

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Woffinden, David C.

The proposed thesis of this dissertation has both a practical element and theoretical component which aim to answer key questions related to the use of angles-only navigation for autonomous orbital rendezvous. The first and fundamental principle to this work argues that an angles-only navigation filter can determine the relative position and orientation (pose) between two spacecraft to perform the necessary maneuvers and close proximity operations for autonomous orbital rendezvous. Second, the implementation of angles-only navigation for on-orbit applications is looked upon with skeptical eyes because of its perceived limitation of determining the relative range between two vehicles. This assumed, yet little understood subtlety can be formally characterized with a closed-form analytical observability criteria which specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for determining the relative position and velocity with only angular measurements. With a mathematical expression of the observability criteria, it can be used to (1) identify the orbital rendezvous trajectories and maneuvers that ensure the relative position and velocity are observable for angles-only navigation, (2) quantify the degree or level of observability and (3) compute optimal maneuvers that maximize observability. In summary, the objective of this dissertation is to provide both a practical and theoretical foundation for the advancement of autonomous orbital rendezvous through the use of angles-only navigation.

A hierarchy of granular continuum models: Why flowing grains are both simple and complex

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kamrin, Ken

2017-06-01

Granular materials have a strange propensity to behave as either a complex media or a simple media depending on the precise question being asked. This review paper offers a summary of granular flow rheologies for well-developed or steady-state motion, and seeks to explain this dichotomy through the vast range of complexity intrinsic to these models. A key observation is that to achieve accuracy in predicting flow fields in general geometries, one requires a model that accounts for a number of subtleties, most notably a nonlocal effect to account for cooperativity in the flow as induced by the finite size of grains. On the other hand, forces and tractions that develop on macro-scale, submerged boundaries appear to be minimally affected by grain size and, barring very rapid motions, are well represented by simple rate-independent frictional plasticity models. A major simplification observed in experiments of granular intrusion, which we refer to as the `resistive force hypothesis' of granular Resistive Force Theory, can be shown to arise directly from rate-independent plasticity. Because such plasticity models have so few parameters, and the major rheological parameter is a dimensionless internal friction coefficient, some of these simplifications can be seen as consequences of scaling.

Nuclear genomes distinguish cryptic species suggested by their DNA barcodes and ecology

PubMed Central

Janzen, Daniel H.; Burns, John M.; Cong, Qian; Hallwachs, Winnie; Dapkey, Tanya; Manjunath, Ramya; Hajibabaei, Mehrdad; Hebert, Paul D. N.; Grishin, Nick V.

2017-01-01

DNA sequencing brings another dimension to exploration of biodiversity, and large-scale mitochondrial DNA cytochrome oxidase I barcoding has exposed many potential new cryptic species. Here, we add complete nuclear genome sequencing to DNA barcoding, ecological distribution, natural history, and subtleties of adult color pattern and size to show that a widespread neotropical skipper butterfly known as Udranomia kikkawai (Weeks) comprises three different species in Costa Rica. Full-length barcodes obtained from all three century-old Venezuelan syntypes of U. kikkawai show that it is a rainforest species occurring from Costa Rica to Brazil. The two new species are Udranomia sallydaleyae Burns, a dry forest denizen occurring from Costa Rica to Mexico, and Udranomia tomdaleyi Burns, which occupies the junction between the rainforest and dry forest and currently is known only from Costa Rica. Whereas the three species are cryptic, differing but slightly in appearance, their complete nuclear genomes totaling 15 million aligned positions reveal significant differences consistent with their 0.00065-Mbp (million base pair) mitochondrial barcodes and their ecological diversification. DNA barcoding of tropical insects reared by a massive inventory suggests that the presence of cryptic species is a widespread phenomenon and that further studies will substantially increase current estimates of insect species richness. PMID:28716927

Dynamical stability of the one-dimensional rigid Brownian rotator: the role of the rotator’s spatial size and shape

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jeknić-Dugić, Jasmina; Petrović, Igor; Arsenijević, Momir; Dugić, Miroljub

2018-05-01

We investigate dynamical stability of a single propeller-like shaped molecular cogwheel modelled as the fixed-axis rigid rotator. In the realistic situations, rotation of the finite-size cogwheel is subject to the environmentally-induced Brownian-motion effect that we describe by utilizing the quantum Caldeira-Leggett master equation. Assuming the initially narrow (classical-like) standard deviations for the angle and the angular momentum of the rotator, we investigate the dynamics of the first and second moments depending on the size, i.e. on the number of blades of both the free rotator as well as of the rotator in the external harmonic field. The larger the standard deviations, the less stable (i.e. less predictable) rotation. We detect the absence of the simple and straightforward rules for utilizing the rotator’s stability. Instead, a number of the size-related criteria appear whose combinations may provide the optimal rules for the rotator dynamical stability and possibly control. In the realistic situations, the quantum-mechanical corrections, albeit individually small, may effectively prove non-negligible, and also revealing subtlety of the transition from the quantum to the classical dynamics of the rotator. As to the latter, we detect a strong size-dependence of the transition to the classical dynamics beyond the quantum decoherence process.

Surveying the expanding prokaryotic Rubisco multiverse.

PubMed

Liu, Di; Ramya, Ramaswamy Chettiyan Seetharaman; Mueller-Cajar, Oliver

2017-09-01

The universal, but catalytically modest, CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco is currently experiencing intense interest by researchers aiming to enhance crop photosynthesis. These efforts are mostly focused on the highly conserved hexadecameric enzyme found in land plants. In comparison, prokaryotic organisms harbor a far greater diversity in Rubisco forms. Recent work towards improving our appreciation of microbial Rubisco properties and harnessing their potential is surveyed. New structural models are providing informative glimpses into catalytic subtleties and diverse oligomeric states. Ongoing characterization is informing us about the conservation of constraints, such as sugar phosphate inhibition and the associated dependence on Rubisco activase helper proteins. Prokaryotic Rubiscos operate under a far wider range of metabolic contexts than the photosynthetic function of higher plant enzymes. Relaxed selection pressures may have resulted in the exploration of a larger volume of sequence space than permitted in organisms performing oxygenic photosynthesis. To tap into the potential of microbial Rubiscos, in vivo selection systems are being used to discover functional metagenomic Rubiscos. Various directed evolution systems to optimize their function have been developed. It is anticipated that this approach will provide access to biotechnologically valuable enzymes that cannot be encountered in the higher plant Rubisco space. © FEMS 2017. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Evidence for cultural differences between neighboring chimpanzee communities.

PubMed

Luncz, Lydia V; Mundry, Roger; Boesch, Christophe

2012-05-22

The majority of evidence for cultural behavior in animals has come from comparisons between populations separated by large geographical distances that often inhabit different environments. The difficulty of excluding ecological and genetic variation as potential explanations for observed behaviors has led some researchers to challenge the idea of animal culture. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, crack Coula edulis nuts using stone and wooden hammers and tree root anvils. In this study, we compare for the first time hammer selection for nut cracking across three neighboring chimpanzee communities that live in the same forest habitat, which reduces the likelihood of ecological variation. Furthermore, the study communities experience frequent dispersal of females at maturity, which eliminates significant genetic variation. We compared key ecological factors, such as hammer availability and nut hardness, between the three neighboring communities and found striking differences in group-specific hammer selection among communities despite similar ecological conditions. Differences were found in the selection of hammer material and hammer size in response to changes in nut resistance over time. Our findings highlight the subtleties of cultural differences in wild chimpanzees and illustrate how cultural knowledge is able to shape behavior, creating differences among neighboring social groups. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analytical psychology and the ghost of Lamarck: did Jung believe in the inheritance of acquired characteristics?

PubMed

Rensma, Ritske

2013-04-01

Whether Jung was a Lamarckian or not has always been a hotly debated topic, both within the post-Jungian community and amongst scholars with an interest in Jung in the wider academic community. Yet surprisingly few substantial pieces of work have been dedicated to it and, to my mind, no one has yet managed to do justice to all the subtleties involved. The scholars who have claimed that Jung is a Lamarckian have, for the most part, oversimplified the debate by failing to discuss the passages in which Jung appears to be defending himself against Lamarckism; the scholars who have defended Jung against Lamarckism, however, have as a rule not adequately dealt with the question of whether these passages actually get Jung off the hook. This paper will attempt to correct this imbalance by putting forward four key passages spanning Jung's career that all represent conclusive evidence that Jung was indeed a Lamarckian. After discussing these, it will then deal in detail with the passages in which Jung appears to be defending himself against Lamarckism, making the case that they do not represent a defence against Lamarckism at all and have therefore generally been misinterpreted by many scholars. © 2013, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

Modeling and evaluating user behavior in exploratory visual analysis

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Reda, Khairi; Johnson, Andrew E.; Papka, Michael E.

Empirical evaluation methods for visualizations have traditionally focused on assessing the outcome of the visual analytic process as opposed to characterizing how that process unfolds. There are only a handful of methods that can be used to systematically study how people use visualizations, making it difficult for researchers to capture and characterize the subtlety of cognitive and interaction behaviors users exhibit during visual analysis. To validate and improve visualization design, however, it is important for researchers to be able to assess and understand how users interact with visualization systems under realistic scenarios. This paper presents a methodology for modeling andmore » evaluating the behavior of users in exploratory visual analysis. We model visual exploration using a Markov chain process comprising transitions between mental, interaction, and computational states. These states and the transitions between them can be deduced from a variety of sources, including verbal transcripts, videos and audio recordings, and log files. This model enables the evaluator to characterize the cognitive and computational processes that are essential to insight acquisition in exploratory visual analysis, and reconstruct the dynamics of interaction between the user and the visualization system. We illustrate this model with two exemplar user studies, and demonstrate the qualitative and quantitative analytical tools it affords.« less

Advanced Bode Plot Techniques for Ultrasonic Transducers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

DeAngelis, D. A.; Schulze, G. W.

The Bode plot, displayed as either impedance or admittance versus frequency, is the most basic test used by ultrasonic transducer designers. With simplicity and ease-of-use, Bode plots are ideal for baseline comparisons such as spacing of parasitic modes or impedance, but quite often the subtleties that manifest as poor process control are hard to interpret or are nonexistence. In-process testing of transducers is time consuming for quantifying statistical aberrations, and assessments made indirectly via the workpiece are difficult. This research investigates the use of advanced Bode plot techniques to compare ultrasonic transducers with known "good" and known "bad" process performance, with the goal of a-priori process assessment. These advanced techniques expand from the basic constant voltage versus frequency sweep to include constant current and constant velocity interrogated locally on transducer or tool; they also include up and down directional frequency sweeps to quantify hysteresis effects like jumping and dropping phenomena. The investigation focuses solely on the common PZT8 piezoelectric material used with welding transducers for semiconductor wire bonding. Several metrics are investigated such as impedance, displacement/current gain, velocity/current gain, displacement/voltage gain and velocity/voltage gain. The experimental and theoretical research methods include Bode plots, admittance loops, laser vibrometry and coupled-field finite element analysis.

Anisotropic Etching of Hexagonal Boron Nitride and Graphene: Question of Edge Terminations

DOE PAGES

Stehle, Yijing Y.; Sang, Xiahan; Unocic, Raymond R.; ...

2017-11-14

Here, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been established as the most effective way to grow large area two-dimensional materials. Direct study of the etching process can reveal subtleties of this competing with the growth reaction and thus provide the necessary details of the overall growth mechanism. Here we investigate hydrogen-induced etching of hBN and graphene and compare the results with the classical kinetic Wulff construction model. Formation of the anisotropically etched holes in the center of hBN and graphene single crystals was observed along with the changes in the crystals' circumference. We show that the edges of triangular holes inmore » hBN crystals formed at regular etching conditions are parallel to B-terminated zigzags, opposite to the N-terminated zigzag edges of hBN triangular crystals. The morphology of the etched hBN holes is affected by a disbalance of the B/N ratio upon etching and can be shifted toward the anticipated from the Wulff model N-terminated zigzag by etching in a nitrogen buffer gas instead of a typical argon. For graphene, etched hexagonal holes are terminated by zigzag, while the crystal circumference is gradually changing from a pure zigzag to a slanted angle resulting in dodecagons.« less

Power lines: Derrida, discursive psychology and the management of accusations of teacher bullying.

PubMed

Hepburn, A

2000-12-01

This study connects broad issues of classroom control and the disciplining of pupils by teachers with a detailed examination of the way teachers deal with an implied accusation that they have been bullying. The analysis of interviews develops with reference to discursive psychology and Derrida's development of deconstruction. Billig's (1992) insights into ways that participants' accounts can neutralize threats to established social arrangements are employed in relating detailed analytic points to the broader power relations between teacher and pupil. Interviews were conducted with Scottish secondary school teachers, and subjected to close textual analysis. This resulted in the development of three themes: (1) Subjectivity Construction, in which the functional role of the construction of mental entities is examined; (2) Normalizing Techniques, identifying strategies whereby intimidation can be constructed as normal; and (3) Figuration, examining the utility of figurative language--metaphors, maxims, and so on. These themes display the subtlety and complexity of teachers' strategies for distancing themselves from being held accountable for reported intimidation. To conclude, three broader features of the study are discussed: the contribution to discursive psychology that Derrida's deconstructive philosophy can make; the respecification of psychology and subjectivity as participants' resources for action; and the contribution that this type of detailed study can make to issues of power and social critique.

"Further Effects"

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kinigstein, Steven Michael

In writing Further Effects, I intended to illustrate the benefits that are to be had from the use of effects - processing, when applied at the compositional level, rather than as a post-compositional afterthought. When effects are used creatively in the compositional stage, they will influence the very nature of a piece. They are capable of expressing rhythmic and metric ideas. They can alter the natural timbre of an instrument. This can be done on levels of abstraction ranging from discreet subtlety to disguise beyond recognition. There is one effect (known as "pitch shift.") that allows an instrument to play pitches that are well outside of its range. In Further Effects, I direct the performers to use a volume pedal (which I view as a tool, rather than an effect) for the broadened creative use of dynamics that it so efficiently grants. The use of an effects processor and volume pedal creates a need for ancillary equipment. An amplifier, cables, and an electric hook-up (a microphone or a pickup) will be required for each instrument. While an amplifier serves to project the processed sound, there must also be a device or method to suppress unprocessed sound. A great deal of thought and work goes into the use of effects; yet I feel it is wasteful to use this musical resource merely as post-compositional decoration.

Bio-mimicking of Proline-Rich Motif Applied to Carbon Nanotube Reveals Unexpected Subtleties Underlying Nanoparticle Functionalization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Yuanzhao; Jimenez-Cruz, Camilo A.; Wang, Jian; Zhou, Bo; Yang, Zaixing; Zhou, Ruhong

2014-11-01

Here, we report computational studies of the SH3 protein domain interacting with various single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) either bare or functionalized by mimicking the proline-rich motif (PRM) ligand (PPPVPPRR) and compare it to the SH3-PRM complex binding. With prolines or a single arginine attached, the SWCNT gained slightly on specificity when compared with the bare control, whereas with multi-arginine systems the specificity dropped dramatically to our surprise. Although the electrostatic interaction provided by arginines is crucial in the recognition between PRM and SH3 domain, our results suggest that attaching multiple arginines to the SWCNT has a detrimental effect on the binding affinity. Detailed analysis of the MD trajectories found two main factors that modulate the specificity of the binding: the existence of competing acidic patches at the surface of SH3 that leads to ``trapping and clamping'' by the arginines, and the rigidity of the SWCNT introducing entropic penalties in the proper binding. Further investigation revealed that the same ``clamping'' phenomenon exits in the PRM-SH3 system, which has not been reported in previous literature. The competing effects between nanoparticle and its functionalization components revealed by our model system should be of value to current and future nanomedicine designs.

Effects of nonequilibrated topological charge distributions on pseudoscalar meson masses and decay constants

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bernard, C.; Toussaint, D.

2018-04-01

We study the effects of failure to equilibrate the squared topological charge Q2 on lattice calculations of pseudoscalar masses and decay constants. The analysis is based on chiral perturbation theory calculations of the dependence of these quantities on the QCD vacuum angle θ . For the light-light partially quenched case, we rederive the known chiral perturbation theory results of Aoki and Fukaya, but using the nonperturbatively valid chiral theory worked out by Golterman, Sharpe and Singleton, and by Sharpe and Shoresh. We then extend these calculations to heavy-light mesons. Results when staggered taste violations are important are also presented. The derived Q2 dependence is compared to that of simulations using the MILC Collaboration's ensembles of lattices with four flavors of dynamical highly improved staggered quarks. We find agreement, albeit with large statistical errors. These results can be used to correct for the leading effects of unequilibrated Q2, or to make estimates of the systematic error coming from the failure to equilibrate Q2. In an appendix, we show that the partially quenched chiral theory may be extended beyond a lower bound on valence masses discovered by Sharpe and Shoresh. Subtleties occurring when a sea-quark mass vanishes are discussed in another appendix.

Communicability across evolving networks.

PubMed

Grindrod, Peter; Parsons, Mark C; Higham, Desmond J; Estrada, Ernesto

2011-04-01

Many natural and technological applications generate time-ordered sequences of networks, defined over a fixed set of nodes; for example, time-stamped information about "who phoned who" or "who came into contact with who" arise naturally in studies of communication and the spread of disease. Concepts and algorithms for static networks do not immediately carry through to this dynamic setting. For example, suppose A and B interact in the morning, and then B and C interact in the afternoon. Information, or disease, may then pass from A to C, but not vice versa. This subtlety is lost if we simply summarize using the daily aggregate network given by the chain A-B-C. However, using a natural definition of a walk on an evolving network, we show that classic centrality measures from the static setting can be extended in a computationally convenient manner. In particular, communicability indices can be computed to summarize the ability of each node to broadcast and receive information. The computations involve basic operations in linear algebra, and the asymmetry caused by time's arrow is captured naturally through the noncommutativity of matrix-matrix multiplication. Illustrative examples are given for both synthetic and real-world communication data sets. We also discuss the use of the new centrality measures for real-time monitoring and prediction.

Calculation of the critical overdensity in the spherical-collapse approximation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Herrera, D.; Waga, I.; Jorás, S. E.

2017-03-01

Critical overdensity δc is a key concept in estimating the number count of halos for different redshift and halo-mass bins, and therefore, it is a powerful tool to compare cosmological models to observations. There are currently two different prescriptions in the literature for its calculation, namely, the differential-radius and the constant-infinity methods. In this work we show that the latter yields precise results only if we are careful in the definition of the so-called numerical infinities. Although the subtleties we point out are crucial ingredients for an accurate determination of δc both in general relativity and in any other gravity theory, we focus on f (R )-modified gravity models in the metric approach; in particular, we use the so-called large (F =1 /3 ) and small-field (F =0 ) limits. For both of them, we calculate the relative errors (between our method and the others) in the critical density δc, in the comoving number density of halos per logarithmic mass interval nln M, and in the number of clusters at a given redshift in a given mass bin Nbin, as functions of the redshift. We have also derived an analytical expression for the density contrast in the linear regime as a function of the collapse redshift zc and Ωm 0 for any F .

Finding Statistically Significant Communities in Networks

PubMed Central

Lancichinetti, Andrea; Radicchi, Filippo; Ramasco, José J.; Fortunato, Santo

2011-01-01

Community structure is one of the main structural features of networks, revealing both their internal organization and the similarity of their elementary units. Despite the large variety of methods proposed to detect communities in graphs, there is a big need for multi-purpose techniques, able to handle different types of datasets and the subtleties of community structure. In this paper we present OSLOM (Order Statistics Local Optimization Method), the first method capable to detect clusters in networks accounting for edge directions, edge weights, overlapping communities, hierarchies and community dynamics. It is based on the local optimization of a fitness function expressing the statistical significance of clusters with respect to random fluctuations, which is estimated with tools of Extreme and Order Statistics. OSLOM can be used alone or as a refinement procedure of partitions/covers delivered by other techniques. We have also implemented sequential algorithms combining OSLOM with other fast techniques, so that the community structure of very large networks can be uncovered. Our method has a comparable performance as the best existing algorithms on artificial benchmark graphs. Several applications on real networks are shown as well. OSLOM is implemented in a freely available software (http://www.oslom.org), and we believe it will be a valuable tool in the analysis of networks. PMID:21559480

Egg colour matching in an African cuckoo, as revealed by ultraviolet-visible reflectance spectrophotometry.

PubMed Central

Cherry, M I; Bennett, A T

2001-01-01

Despite major differences between human and avian colour vision, previous studies of cuckoo egg mimicry have used human colour vision (or standards based thereon) to assess colour matching. Using ultraviolet-visible reflectance spectrophotometry (300-700 nm), we measured museum collections of eggs of the red-chested cuckoo and its hosts. The first three principal components explained more than 99% of the variance in spectra, and measures of cuckoo host egg similarity derived from these transformations were compared with measures of cuckoo host egg similarity estimated by human observers unaware of the hypotheses we were testing. Monte Carlo methods were used to simulate laying of cuckoo eggs at random in nests. Results showed that host and cuckoo eggs were very highly matched for an ultraviolet versus greenness component, which was not detected by humans. Furthermore, whereas cuckoo and host were dissimilar in achromatic brightness, humans did not detect this difference. Our study thus reveals aspects of cuckoo-host egg colour matching which have hitherto not been described. These results suggest subtleties and complexities in the evolution of host-cuckoo egg mimicry that were not previously suspected. Our results also have the potential to explain the longstanding paradox that some host species accept cuckoo eggs that are non-mimetic to the human eye. PMID:11297172

Management of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

PubMed

Mooar, Pekka A; Doherty, William J; Murray, Jayson N; Pezold, Ryan; Sevarino, Kaitlyn S

2018-03-15

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) has developed Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) for Management of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Evidence-based information, in conjunction with the clinical expertise of physicians, was used to develop the criteria to improve patient care and obtain best outcomes while considering the subtleties and distinctions necessary in making clinical decisions. To provide the evidence foundation for this AUC, the AAOS Evidence-Based Medicine Unit provided the writing panel and voting panel with the 2016 AAOS Clinical Practice Guideline titled Management of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guideline. The Management of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome AUC clinical patient scenarios were derived from indications typical of patients with suspected carpal tunnel syndrome in clinical practice, as well as from current evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and supporting literature to identify the appropriateness of treatments. The 135 patient scenarios and 6 treatments were developed by the writing panel, a group of clinicians who are specialists in this AUC topic. Next, a separate, multidisciplinary, voting panel (made up of specialists and nonspecialists) rated the appropriateness of treatment of each patient scenario using a 9-point scale to designate a treatment as Appropriate (median rating, 7 to 9), May Be Appropriate (median rating, 4 to 6), or Rarely Appropriate (median rating, 1 to 3).

mer and fac isomerism in tris chelate diimine metal complexes.

PubMed

Dabb, Serin L; Fletcher, Nicholas C

2015-03-14

In this perspective, we highlight the issue of meridional (mer) and facial (fac) orientation of asymmetrical diimines in tris-chelate transition metal complexes. Diimine ligands have long been the workhorse of coordination chemistry, and whilst there are now good strategies to isolate materials where the inherent metal centered chirality is under almost complete control, and systematic methodologies to isolate heteroleptic complexes, the conceptually simple geometrical isomerism has not been widely investigated. In systems where the two donor atoms are significantly different in terms of the σ-donor and π-accepting ability, the fac isomer is likely to be the thermodynamic product. For the diimine complexes with two trigonal planar nitrogen atoms there is much more subtlety to the system, and external factors such as the solvent, lattice packing and the various steric considerations play a delicate role in determining the observed and isolable product. In this article we discuss the possibilities to control the isomeric ratio in labile systems, consider the opportunities to separate inert complexes and discuss the observed differences in their spectroscopic properties. Finally we report on the ligand orientation in supramolecular systems where facial coordination leads to simple regular structures such as helicates and tetrahedra, but the ability of the ligand system to adopt a mer orientation enables self-assembled structures of considerable beauty and complexity.

Bio-mimicking of Proline-Rich Motif Applied to Carbon Nanotube Reveals Unexpected Subtleties Underlying Nanoparticle Functionalization

PubMed Central

Zhang, Yuanzhao; Jimenez-Cruz, Camilo A.; Wang, Jian; Zhou, Bo; Yang, Zaixing; Zhou, Ruhong

2014-01-01

Here, we report computational studies of the SH3 protein domain interacting with various single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) either bare or functionalized by mimicking the proline-rich motif (PRM) ligand (PPPVPPRR) and compare it to the SH3-PRM complex binding. With prolines or a single arginine attached, the SWCNT gained slightly on specificity when compared with the bare control, whereas with multi-arginine systems the specificity dropped dramatically to our surprise. Although the electrostatic interaction provided by arginines is crucial in the recognition between PRM and SH3 domain, our results suggest that attaching multiple arginines to the SWCNT has a detrimental effect on the binding affinity. Detailed analysis of the MD trajectories found two main factors that modulate the specificity of the binding: the existence of competing acidic patches at the surface of SH3 that leads to “trapping and clamping” by the arginines, and the rigidity of the SWCNT introducing entropic penalties in the proper binding. Further investigation revealed that the same “clamping” phenomenon exits in the PRM-SH3 system, which has not been reported in previous literature. The competing effects between nanoparticle and its functionalization components revealed by our model system should be of value to current and future nanomedicine designs. PMID:25427563

Decision Making in the PICU: An Examination of Factors Influencing Participation Decisions in Phase III Randomized Clinical Trials

PubMed Central

Slosky, Laura E.; Burke, Natasha L.; Siminoff, Laura A.

2014-01-01

Background. In stressful situations, decision making processes related to informed consent may be compromised. Given the profound levels of distress that surrogates of children in pediatric intensive care units (PICU) experience, it is important to understand what factors may be influencing the decision making process beyond the informed consent. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of clinician influence and other factors on decision making regarding participation in a randomized clinical trial (RCT). Method. Participants were 76 children under sedation in a PICU and their surrogate decision makers. Measures included the Post Decision Clinician Survey, observer checklist, and post-decision interview. Results. Age of the pediatric patient was related to participation decisions in the RCT such that older children were more likely to be enrolled. Mentioning the sponsoring institution was associated with declining to participate in the RCT. Type of health care provider and overt recommendations to participate were not related to enrollment. Conclusion. Decisions to participate in research by surrogates of children in the PICU appear to relate to child demographics and subtleties in communication; however, no modifiable characteristics were related to increased participation, indicating that the informed consent process may not be compromised in this population. PMID:25161672

The Production of PET Tracers Utilizing Small Accelerators.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Votaw, John Ralph

The goal of positron emission tomographic (PET) studies is to utilize radiotracers to provide fundamental information that will lead to a better understanding of the physiology in both diseased and healthy tissue. In order for PET to become a viable clinical modality, these tracers must be produced reliably and efficiently. Work has concentrated on developing a cyclotron laboratory dedicated to the efficient production of the most commonly used PET tracers. Considerable effort has been directed towards understanding the subtleties of all of the subprocedures involved. As a result of this work, the success rate of delivering radiopharmaceuticals on demand to the nuclear medicine clinic is now above 95%. In order to further facilitate performing PET studies with minimal professional support, a time-of-flight detector system has been developed to noninvasively measure input functions that are required in applying compartmental models to the data. Its potential utility has been demonstrated with phantoms; testing and evaluation is currently being studied in human patients. The feasibility of producing PET tracers in a manner consistent with the operation of a clinical PET center has been demonstrated. Since FDG is the tracer in highest demand (over 50% of all studies), the effort has concentrated on the production of this model compound. As a result of this work, the amount of FDG that may be produced in a single synthesis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has increased by a factor of 25 in the last five years. During the same period, the number of man-hours needed to perform a FDG synthesis has decreased by a factor of 10 and the radiation dose received by the chemist per mCi of starting material has decreased by a factor of 100. In addition to these advances, the number of successful syntheses between failures has increased by a factor of 20. This improvement has been made possible by a thorough understanding of all aspects of the production of PET tracers and by intelligent monitoring of the parameters that have the greatest effect on the outcome of the synthesis.

Hematite ``Blueberry`` Concretion Doublet and Triplets on Mars: Iron Oxide Twin Analogs From Utah

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chan, M. A.; Parry, W. T.; Park, A. S.

2005-12-01

Spherical concretions on Earth and Mars comprise a record of diagenetic history that may not otherwise be preserved in the more common host rock. Hematite spherules of Meridiani Planum show some joined forms of twos and threes. Joined iron oxide concretions making doublets and triplets also occur in the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of southern Utah, and can serve as an analog to understanding why joined forms occur on Mars. The geometries of in situ Utah examples suggest two processes for creating connected forms. In one concretion growth mechanism, occasional coalescing of single forms may result from the growth of doublets or triplets in overly close proximity (typically less than 15% of a population). Joined concretions of roughly equal sizes can be aligned in a row; unequal size concretions take on the shapes of ``snowmen``, or attached ``satellites``. Where cementation is pervasive, individual concretions may grow and coalesce into a lumpy layer or cemented mass along preferential flow paths or preferential nucleation sites. In the second mechanism, nearly all (more than 75%) of the concretions form doublets that are conjoined. The occurrence of dominant twins indicates that these concretions are not coincidental as in the first mechanism. Dominant twin concretions occur regularly and evenly throughout fairly homogeneous host rock. More unusual twins show additional small twin warts suggesting duplicated nucleation and precipitation. Normally, iron oxide concretion precipitation begins when the oxide saturation reaches a precipitation threshold. Precipitation produces chemical gradients, and competition between reaction and diffusion rates determines the spacing between concretions. These factors in combination with reactant supply, competitive growth phenomena and a complex self-organizing processes may contribute to development of internal structure with varying layers of iron-depleted zones to resistant iron-cemented shells. The pervasive nature of sandstone coloration and iron concretion formation throughout much of the Navajo Sandstone indicates a favorable environment for iron mobilization and precipitation. However, the spectrum of sedimentologic, hydrologic, chemical, and nucleation parameters involved in producing the varying concretion forms shows the potential diagenetic subtleties that may be involved to precipitate similar joined concretion forms on Mars.

Stationary phase method and delay times for relativistic and non-relativistic tunneling particles

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bernardini, A.E.

2009-06-15

The stationary phase method is frequently adopted for calculating tunneling phase times of analytically-continuous Gaussian or infinite-bandwidth step pulses which collide with a potential barrier. This report deals with the basic concepts on deducing transit times for quantum scattering: the stationary phase method and its relation with delay times for relativistic and non-relativistic tunneling particles. After reexamining the above-barrier diffusion problem, we notice that the applicability of this method is constrained by several subtleties in deriving the phase time that describes the localization of scattered wave packets. Using a recently developed procedure - multiple wave packet decomposition - for somemore » specifical colliding configurations, we demonstrate that the analytical difficulties arising when the stationary phase method is applied for obtaining phase (traversal) times are all overcome. In this case, we also investigate the general relation between phase times and dwell times for quantum tunneling/scattering. Considering a symmetrical collision of two identical wave packets with an one-dimensional barrier, we demonstrate that these two distinct transit time definitions are explicitly connected. The traversal times are obtained for a symmetrized (two identical bosons) and an antisymmetrized (two identical fermions) quantum colliding configuration. Multiple wave packet decomposition shows us that the phase time (group delay) describes the exact position of the scattered particles and, in addition to the exact relation with the dwell time, leads to correct conceptual understanding of both transit time definitions. At last, we extend the non-relativistic formalism to the solutions for the tunneling zone of a one-dimensional electrostatic potential in the relativistic (Dirac to Klein-Gordon) wave equation where the incoming wave packet exhibits the possibility of being almost totally transmitted through the potential barrier. The conditions for the occurrence of accelerated and, eventually, superluminal tunneling transmission probabilities are all quantified and the problematic superluminal interpretation based on the non-relativistic tunneling dynamics is revisited. Lessons concerning the dynamics of relativistic tunneling and the mathematical structure of its solutions suggest revealing insights into mathematically analogous condensed-matter experiments using electrostatic barriers in single- and bi-layer graphene, for which the accelerated tunneling effect deserves a more careful investigation.« less

Presenting Critical Space Weather Information to Customers and Stakeholders (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Viereck, R. A.; Singer, H. J.; Murtagh, W. J.; Rutledge, B.

2013-12-01

Space weather involves changes in the near-Earth space environment that impact technological systems such as electric power, radio communication, satellite navigation (GPS), and satellite opeartions. As with terrestrial weather, there are several different kinds of space weather and each presents unique challenges to the impacted technologies and industries. But unlike terrestrial weather, many customers are not fully aware of space weather or how it impacts their systems. This issue is further complicated by the fact that the largest space weather events occur very infrequently with years going by without severe storms. Recent reports have estimated very large potential costs to the economy and to society if a geomagnetic storm were to cause major damage to the electric power transmission system. This issue has come to the attention of emergency managers and federal agencies including the office of the president. However, when considering space weather impacts, it is essential to also consider uncertainties in the frequency of events and the predicted impacts. The unique nature of space weather storms, the specialized technologies that are impacted by them, and the disparate groups and agencies that respond to space weather forecasts and alerts create many challenges to the task of communicating space weather information to the public. Many customers that receive forecasts and alerts are highly technical and knowledgeable about the subtleties of the space environment. Others know very little and require ongoing education and explanation about how a space weather storm will affect their systems. In addition, the current knowledge and understanding of the space environment that goes into forecasting storms is quite immature. It has only been within the last five years that physics-based models of the space environment have played important roles in predictions. Thus, the uncertainties in the forecasts are quite large. There is much that we don't know about space weather and this influences our forecasts. In this presentation, I will discuss the unique challenges that space weather forecasters face when explaining what we know and what we don't know about space weather events to customers and policy makers.

Mass detection with digitized screening mammograms by using Gabor features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Yufeng; Agyepong, Kwabena

2007-03-01

Breast cancer is the leading cancer among American women. The current lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is 13.4% (one in seven). Mammography is the most effective technology presently available for breast cancer screening. With digital mammograms computer-aided detection (CAD) has proven to be a useful tool for radiologists. In this paper, we focus on mass detection that is a common category of breast cancers relative to calcification and architecture distortion. We propose a new mass detection algorithm utilizing Gabor filters, termed as "Gabor Mass Detection" (GMD). There are three steps in the GMD algorithm, (1) preprocessing, (2) generating alarms and (3) classification (reducing false alarms). Down-sampling, quantization, denoising and enhancement are done in the preprocessing step. Then a total of 30 Gabor filtered images (along 6 bands by 5 orientations) are produced. Alarm segments are generated by thresholding four Gabor images of full orientations (Stage-I classification) with image-dependent thresholds computed via histogram analysis. Next a set of edge histogram descriptors (EHD) are extracted from 24 Gabor images (6 by 4) that will be used for Stage-II classification. After clustering EHD features with fuzzy C-means clustering method, a k-nearest neighbor classifier is used to reduce the number of false alarms. We initially analyzed 431 digitized mammograms (159 normal images vs. 272 cancerous images, from the DDSM project, University of South Florida) with the proposed GMD algorithm. And a ten-fold cross validation was used for testing the GMD algorithm upon the available data. The GMD performance is as follows: sensitivity (true positive rate) = 0.88 at false positives per image (FPI) = 1.25, and the area under the ROC curve = 0.83. The overall performance of the GMD algorithm is satisfactory and the accuracy of locating masses (highlighting the boundaries of suspicious areas) is relatively high. Furthermore, the GMD algorithm can successfully detect early-stage (with small values of Assessment & low Subtlety) malignant masses. In addition, Gabor filtered images are used in both stages of classifications, which greatly simplifies the GMD algorithm.

Mimosa: Mixture Model of Co-expression to Detect Modulators of Regulatory Interaction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hansen, Matthew; Everett, Logan; Singh, Larry; Hannenhalli, Sridhar

Functionally related genes tend to be correlated in their expression patterns across multiple conditions and/or tissue-types. Thus co-expression networks are often used to investigate functional groups of genes. In particular, when one of the genes is a transcription factor (TF), the co-expression-based interaction is interpreted, with caution, as a direct regulatory interaction. However, any particular TF, and more importantly, any particular regulatory interaction, is likely to be active only in a subset of experimental conditions. Moreover, the subset of expression samples where the regulatory interaction holds may be marked by presence or absence of a modifier gene, such as an enzyme that post-translationally modifies the TF. Such subtlety of regulatory interactions is overlooked when one computes an overall expression correlation. Here we present a novel mixture modeling approach where a TF-Gene pair is presumed to be significantly correlated (with unknown coefficient) in a (unknown) subset of expression samples. The parameters of the model are estimated using a Maximum Likelihood approach. The estimated mixture of expression samples is then mined to identify genes potentially modulating the TF-Gene interaction. We have validated our approach using synthetic data and on three biological cases in cow and in yeast. While limited in some ways, as discussed, the work represents a novel approach to mine expression data and detect potential modulators of regulatory interactions.

Finding Autonomy in Birth*

PubMed Central

Kukla, Rebecca; Kuppermann, Miriam; Little, Margaret; Lyerly, Anne Drapkin; Mitchell, Lisa M; Armstrong, Elizabeth M.; Harris, Lisa

2009-01-01

Over the last several years, as cesarean deliveries have grown increasingly common, there has been a great deal of public and professional interest in the phenomenon of women ‘choosing’ to deliver by cesarean section in the absence of any specific medical indication. The issue has sparked intense conversation, as it raises questions about the nature of autonomy in birth. Whereas mainstream bioethical discourse is used to associating autonomy with having a large array of choices, this conception of autonomy does not seem adequate to capture concerns and intuitions that have a strong grip outside of this discourse. An empirical and conceptual exploration of how delivery decisions ought to be negotiated must be guided by a rich understanding of women’s agency and its placement within a complicated set of cultural meanings and pressures surrounding birth. It is too early to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ women’s access to cesarean delivery in the absence of traditional medical indications - and indeed, a simple pro- or con- position is never going to do justice to the subtlety of the issue. The right question is not whether women ought to be allowed to choose their delivery approach, but rather, taking the value of women’s autonomy in decision-making around birth as a given, what sorts of guidelines, practices, and social conditions will best promote and protect women’s full inclusion in a safe and positive birth process. PMID:19076937

A Meta-Analysis and Multisite Time-Series Analysis of the Differential Toxicity of Major Fine Particulate Matter Constituents

PubMed Central

Levy, Jonathan I.; Diez, David; Dou, Yiping; Barr, Christopher D.; Dominici, Francesca

2012-01-01

Health risk assessments of particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5) often assume that all constituents of PM2.5 are equally toxic. While investigators in previous epidemiologic studies have evaluated health risks from various PM2.5 constituents, few have conducted the analyses needed to directly inform risk assessments. In this study, the authors performed a literature review and conducted a multisite time-series analysis of hospital admissions and exposure to PM2.5 constituents (elemental carbon, organic carbon matter, sulfate, and nitrate) in a population of 12 million US Medicare enrollees for the period 2000–2008. The literature review illustrated a general lack of multiconstituent models or insight about probabilities of differential impacts per unit of concentration change. Consistent with previous results, the multisite time-series analysis found statistically significant associations between short-term changes in elemental carbon and cardiovascular hospital admissions. Posterior probabilities from multiconstituent models provided evidence that some individual constituents were more toxic than others, and posterior parameter estimates coupled with correlations among these estimates provided necessary information for risk assessment. Ratios of constituent toxicities, commonly used in risk assessment to describe differential toxicity, were extremely uncertain for all comparisons. These analyses emphasize the subtlety of the statistical techniques and epidemiologic studies necessary to inform risk assessments of particle constituents. PMID:22510275

A Gauge Invariant Description for the General Conic Constrained Particle from the FJBW Iteration Algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barbosa, Gabriel D.; Thibes, Ronaldo

2018-06-01

We consider a second-degree algebraic curve describing a general conic constraint imposed on the motion of a massive spinless particle. The problem is trivial at classical level but becomes involved and interesting concerning its quantum counterpart with subtleties in its symplectic structure and symmetries. We start with a second-class version of the general conic constrained particle, which encompasses previous versions of circular and elliptical paths discussed in the literature. By applying the symplectic FJBW iteration program, we proceed on to show how a gauge invariant version for the model can be achieved from the originally second-class system. We pursue the complete constraint analysis in phase space and perform the Faddeev-Jackiw symplectic quantization following the Barcelos-Wotzasek iteration program to unravel the essential aspects of the constraint structure. While in the standard Dirac-Bergmann approach there are four second-class constraints, in the FJBW they reduce to two. By using the symplectic potential obtained in the last step of the FJBW iteration process, we construct a gauge invariant model exhibiting explicitly its BRST symmetry. We obtain the quantum BRST charge and write the Green functions generator for the gauge invariant version. Our results reproduce and neatly generalize the known BRST symmetry of the rigid rotor, clearly showing that this last one constitutes a particular case of a broader class of theories.

Comparative Metabolite Fingerprinting of the Rumen System during Colonisation of Three Forage Grass (Lolium perenne L.) Varieties

PubMed Central

Kingston-Smith, Alison H.; Davies, Teri E.; Rees Stevens, Pauline; Mur, Luis A. J.

2013-01-01

The rumen microbiota enable ruminants to degrade complex ligno-cellulosic compounds to produce high quality protein for human consumption. However, enteric fermentation by domestic ruminants generates negative by-products: greenhouse gases (methane) and environmental nitrogen pollution. The current lack of cultured isolates representative of the totality of rumen microbial species creates an information gap about the in vivo function of the rumen microbiota and limits our ability to apply predictive biology for improvement of feed for ruminants. In this work we took a whole ecosystem approach to understanding how the metabolism of the microbial population responds to introduction of its substrate. Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR) spectroscopy-based metabolite fingerprinting was used to discriminate differences in the plant-microbial interactome of the rumen when using three forage grass varieties (Lolium perenne L. cv AberDart, AberMagic and Premium) as substrates for microbial colonisation and fermentation. Specific examination of spectral regions associated with fatty acids, amides, sugars and alkanes indicated that although the three forages were apparently similar by traditional nutritional analysis, patterns of metabolite flux within the plant-microbial interactome were distinct and plant genotype dependent. Thus, the utilisation pattern of forage nutrients by the rumen microbiota can be influenced by subtleties determined by forage genotypes. These data suggest that our interactomic approach represents an important means to improve forages and ultimately the livestock environment. PMID:24312434

EP-DNN: A Deep Neural Network-Based Global Enhancer Prediction Algorithm.

PubMed

Kim, Seong Gon; Harwani, Mrudul; Grama, Ananth; Chaterji, Somali

2016-12-08

We present EP-DNN, a protocol for predicting enhancers based on chromatin features, in different cell types. Specifically, we use a deep neural network (DNN)-based architecture to extract enhancer signatures in a representative human embryonic stem cell type (H1) and a differentiated lung cell type (IMR90). We train EP-DNN using p300 binding sites, as enhancers, and TSS and random non-DHS sites, as non-enhancers. We perform same-cell and cross-cell predictions to quantify the validation rate and compare against two state-of-the-art methods, DEEP-ENCODE and RFECS. We find that EP-DNN has superior accuracy with a validation rate of 91.6%, relative to 85.3% for DEEP-ENCODE and 85.5% for RFECS, for a given number of enhancer predictions and also scales better for a larger number of enhancer predictions. Moreover, our H1 → IMR90 predictions turn out to be more accurate than IMR90 → IMR90, potentially because H1 exhibits a richer signature set and our EP-DNN model is expressive enough to extract these subtleties. Our work shows how to leverage the full expressivity of deep learning models, using multiple hidden layers, while avoiding overfitting on the training data. We also lay the foundation for exploration of cross-cell enhancer predictions, potentially reducing the need for expensive experimentation.

Eating behavior: lessons from the real world of humans.

PubMed

de Castro, J M

2000-10-01

Food intake by normal humans has been investigated both in the laboratory and under free-living conditions in the natural environment. For measurement of real-world intake, the diet-diary technique is imperfect and tends to underestimate actual intakes but it appears to be sensitive, can detect subtle influences on eating behavior, and produces reliable and valid measures. Research studies in the real world show the multivariate richness of the natural environment, which allows investigation of the complexities of intake regulation, and even causation can be investigated. Real-world research can overcome some of the weaknesses of laboratory studies, where constraints on eating are often removed or missing, facilitatory influences on eating are often controlled or eliminated, the importance of variables can be overestimated, and important influences can be missed because of the short durations of the studies. Real-world studies have shown a wide array of physiologic, psychological, and social variables that can have potent and immediate effects on intake. Compensatory mechanisms, including some that operate with a 2- to 3-d delay, adjust for prior excesses. Heredity affects all aspect of food-intake regulation, from the determination of body size to the subtleties of the individual preferences and social proclivities and the extent to which environmental factors affect the individual. Hence, real-world research teaches valuable lessons, and much more is needed to complement laboratory studies.

Dioxins: diagnostic and prognostic challenges arising from complex mechanisms

PubMed Central

Rysavy, Noel M.; Maaetoft-Udsen, Kristina; Turner, Helen

2013-01-01

Dioxins are ubiquitous environmental challenges to humans, with a pervasiveness that arises from two hundred years of rapid industrialization and mechanization of Western societies and which is now extending into the developing world. Despite their penetrance of the human biota, these compounds are poorly understood in terms of their true physiological potential for harm, and the mechanisms by which they impact cellular and organ level function are only recently becoming clear. Emerging awareness that chronic exposures to toxins may have generational and subtle effects on the outcomes of diseases such as cancer and diabetes, which are already multifactorial and highly complex, creates the context for the current review paper. Here, we summarize dioxin exposure paradigms and the resulting physiological effects that have been documented in animals and humans. Novel insights into potential endogenous end exogenous ligands, as well as the mechanisms by which these ligands impact acute and chronic cellular processes, are discussed. We develop the idea that the diagnosis of dioxin exposure, the subtleties of the cellular effects of the compounds and prognosis of the long term effects of exposure are problems requiring that researchers leverage the power of genomics and epigenetics. However, the continuation of longitudinal epidemiological studies and development of a firmer basis from which to extrapolate animal studies will be critical in ensuring optimal insight from these resource-intensive techniques. PMID:22610997

Fused man-machine classification schemes to enhance diagnosis of breast microcalcifications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andreadis, Ioannis; Sevastianos, Chatzistergos; George, Spyrou; Konstantina, Nikita

2017-11-01

Computer aided diagnosis (CAD x ) approaches are developed towards the effective discrimination between benign and malignant clusters of microcalcifications. Different sources of information are exploited, such as features extracted from the image analysis of the region of interest, features related to the location of the cluster inside the breast, age of the patient and descriptors provided by the radiologists while performing their diagnostic task. A series of different CAD x schemes are implemented, each of which uses a different category of features and adopts a variety of machine learning algorithms and alternative image processing techniques. A novel framework is introduced where these independent diagnostic components are properly combined according to features critical to a radiologist in an attempt to identify the most appropriate CAD x schemes for the case under consideration. An open access database (Digital Database of Screening Mammography (DDSM)) has been elaborated to construct a large dataset with cases of varying subtlety, in order to ensure the development of schemes with high generalization ability, as well as extensive evaluation of their performance. The obtained results indicate that the proposed framework succeeds in improving the diagnostic procedure, as the achieved overall classification performance outperforms all the independent single diagnostic components, as well as the radiologists that assessed the same cases, in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and area under the curve following receiver operating characteristic analysis.

Male cleaner wrasses adjust punishment of female partners according to the stakes

PubMed Central

Raihani, Nichola J.; Pinto, Ana I.; Grutter, Alexandra S.; Wismer, Sharon; Bshary, Redouan

2012-01-01

Punishment is an important deterrent against cheating in cooperative interactions. In humans, the severity of cheating affects the strength of punishment which, in turn, affects the punished individual's future behaviour. Here, we show such flexible adjustments for the first time in a non-human species, the cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus), where males are known to punish female partners. We exposed pairs of cleaners to a model client offering two types of food, preferred ‘prawn’ items and less-preferred ‘flake’ items. Analogous to interactions with real clients, eating a preferred prawn item (‘cheating’) led to model client removal. We varied the extent to which female cheating caused pay-off reduction to the male and measured the corresponding severity of male punishment. Males punished females more severely when females cheated during interactions with high value, rather than low value, model clients; and when females were similar in size to the male. This pattern may arise because, in this protogynous hermaphrodite, cheating by similar-sized females may reduce size differences to the extent that females change sex and become reproductive competitors. In response to more severe punishment from males, females behaved more cooperatively. Our results show that punishment can be adjusted to circumstances and that such subtleties can have an important bearing on the outcome of cooperative interactions. PMID:21676980

Dissecting pigment architecture of individual photosynthetic antenna complexes in solution

DOE PAGES

Wang, Quan; Moerner, W. E.

2015-10-05

Oligomerization plays a critical role in shaping the light-harvesting properties of many photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes, but a detailed understanding of this process at the level of individual pigments is still lacking. To study the effects of oligomerization, we designed a single-molecule approach to probe the photophysical properties of individual pigment sites as a function of protein assembly state. Our method, based on the principles of anti-Brownian electrokinetic trapping of single fluorescent proteins, step-wise photobleaching, and multiparameter spectroscopy, allows pigment-specific spectroscopic information on single multipigment antennae to be recorded in a nonperturbative aqueous environment with unprecedented detail. We focus on themore » monomer-to-trimer transformation of allophycocyanin (APC), an important antenna protein in cyanobacteria. Here, our data reveal that the two chemically identical pigments in APC have different roles. One (α) is the functional pigment that red-shifts its spectral properties upon trimer formation, whereas the other (β) is a "protective" pigment that persistently quenches the excited state of α in the prefunctional, monomer state of the protein. These results show how subtleties in pigment organization give rise to functionally important aspects of energy transfer and photoprotection in antenna complexes. Finally, the method developed here should find immediate application in understanding the emergent properties of other natural and artificial light-harvesting systems.« less

What drives high flow events in the Swiss Alps? Recent developments in wavelet spectral analysis and their application to hydrology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schaefli, B.; Maraun, D.; Holschneider, M.

2007-12-01

Extreme hydrological events are often triggered by exceptional co-variations of the relevant hydrometeorological processes and in particular by exceptional co-oscillations at various temporal scales. Wavelet and cross wavelet spectral analysis offers promising time-scale resolved analysis methods to detect and analyze such exceptional co-oscillations. This paper presents the state-of-the-art methods of wavelet spectral analysis, discusses related subtleties, potential pitfalls and recently developed solutions to overcome them and shows how wavelet spectral analysis, if combined to a rigorous significance test, can lead to reliable new insights into hydrometeorological processes for real-world applications. The presented methods are applied to detect potentially flood triggering situations in a high Alpine catchment for which a recent re-estimation of design floods encountered significant problems simulating the observed high flows. For this case study, wavelet spectral analysis of precipitation, temperature and discharge offers a powerful tool to help detecting potentially flood producing meteorological situations and to distinguish between different types of floods with respect to the prevailing critical hydrometeorological conditions. This opens very new perspectives for the analysis of model performances focusing on the occurrence and non-occurrence of different types of high flow events. Based on the obtained results, the paper summarizes important recommendations for future applications of wavelet spectral analysis in hydrology.

A questionnaire to assess the relevance and credibility of observational studies to inform health care decision making: an ISPOR-AMCP-NPC Good Practice Task Force report.

PubMed

Berger, Marc L; Martin, Bradley C; Husereau, Don; Worley, Karen; Allen, J Daniel; Yang, Winnie; Quon, Nicole C; Mullins, C Daniel; Kahler, Kristijan H; Crown, William

2014-03-01

Evidence-based health care decisions are best informed by comparisons of all relevant interventions used to treat conditions in specific patient populations. Observational studies are being performed to help fill evidence gaps. Widespread adoption of evidence from observational studies, however, has been limited because of various factors, including the lack of consensus regarding accepted principles for their evaluation and interpretation. Two task forces were formed to develop questionnaires to assist decision makers in evaluating observational studies, with one Task Force addressing retrospective research and the other Task Force addressing prospective research. The intent was to promote a structured approach to reduce the potential for subjective interpretation of evidence and drive consistency in decision making. Separately developed questionnaires were combined into a single questionnaire consisting of 33 items. These were divided into two domains: relevance and credibility. Relevance addresses the extent to which findings, if accurate, apply to the setting of interest to the decision maker. Credibility addresses the extent to which the study findings accurately answer the study question. The questionnaire provides a guide for assessing the degree of confidence that should be placed from observational studies and promotes awareness of the subtleties involved in evaluating those. Copyright © 2014 International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The subtlety of simple eyes: the tuning of visual fields to perceptual challenges in birds

PubMed Central

Martin, Graham R.

2014-01-01

Birds show interspecific variation both in the size of the fields of individual eyes and in the ways that these fields are brought together to produce the total visual field. Variation is found in the dimensions of all main parameters: binocular region, cyclopean field and blind areas. There is a phylogenetic signal with respect to maximum width of the binocular field in that passerine species have significantly broader field widths than non-passerines; broadest fields are found among crows (Corvidae). Among non-passerines, visual fields show considerable variation within families and even within some genera. It is argued that (i) the main drivers of differences in visual fields are associated with perceptual challenges that arise through different modes of foraging, and (ii) the primary function of binocularity in birds lies in the control of bill position rather than in the control of locomotion. The informational function of binocular vision does not lie in binocularity per se (two eyes receiving slightly different information simultaneously about the same objects from which higher-order depth information is extracted), but in the contralateral projection of the visual field of each eye. Contralateral projection ensures that each eye receives information from a symmetrically expanding optic flow-field from which direction of travel and time to contact targets can be extracted, particularly with respect to the control of bill position. PMID:24395967

Rotational motion of elongated particles in isotropic turbulent flow: statistical perspective

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Lihao; Andersson, Helge; Variano, Evan

2014-11-01

We consider the rotational motion of non-spherical particles in turbulent flow, comparing the statistics of particles' angular velocity to the corresponding quantities computed in the fluid phase. We use numerical (DNS) and laboratory measurements for particles that are both larger and smaller than the Kolmogorov lengthscale. The particles are spheroids or rods, with aspect ratios between 1 and 10. We will discuss the subtleties of defining a meaningful Stokes number for these particles, focusing on the effect of asphericity and the fact that our interest is in rotation and not translation. Comparing the probability density function of angular velocity between fluid and particle phase indicates that the angular velocity of particles has a narrower distribution than that of the fluid phase, and that. particles do respond to extreme events in the fluid phase. The first four moments of the PDFs are analyzed, and these show that the ``filtering'' effect is very similar between DNS and lab experiments, despite differences in particle sizes and mass. We propose a nondimensional curve for predicting the magnitude of the filtering effect, and discuss the implications of this curve for the definition of Stokes number, as discussed earlier. This work has been supported by grants from the Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study at UC Berkeley and from the Research Council of Norway (Contract No. 213917/F20).

Towards defining the role of glycans as hardware in information storage and transfer: basic principles, experimental approaches and recent progress.

PubMed

Solís, D; Jiménez-Barbero, J; Kaltner, H; Romero, A; Siebert, H C; von der Lieth, C W; Gabius, H J

2001-01-01

The term 'code' in biological information transfer appears to be tightly and hitherto exclusively connected with the genetic code based on nucleotides and translated into functional activities via proteins. However, the recent appreciation of the enormous coding capacity of oligosaccharide chains of natural glycoconjugates has spurred to give heed to a new concept: versatile glycan assembly by the genetically encoded glycosyltransferases endows cells with a probably not yet fully catalogued array of meaningful messages. Enciphered by sugar receptors such as endogenous lectins the information of code words established by a series of covalently linked monosaccharides as letters for example guides correct intra- and intercellular routing of glycoproteins, modulates cell proliferation or migration and mediates cell adhesion. Evidently, the elucidation of the structural frameworks and the recognition strategies within the operation of the sugar code poses a fascinating conundrum. The far-reaching impact of this recognition mode on the level of cells, tissues and organs has fueled vigorous investigations to probe the subtleties of protein-carbohydrate interactions. This review presents information on the necessarily concerted approach using X-ray crystallography, molecular modeling, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, thermodynamic analysis and engineered ligands and receptors. This part of the treatise is flanked by exemplarily chosen insights made possible by these techniques. Copyright 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel

EP-DNN: A Deep Neural Network-Based Global Enhancer Prediction Algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, Seong Gon; Harwani, Mrudul; Grama, Ananth; Chaterji, Somali

2016-12-01

We present EP-DNN, a protocol for predicting enhancers based on chromatin features, in different cell types. Specifically, we use a deep neural network (DNN)-based architecture to extract enhancer signatures in a representative human embryonic stem cell type (H1) and a differentiated lung cell type (IMR90). We train EP-DNN using p300 binding sites, as enhancers, and TSS and random non-DHS sites, as non-enhancers. We perform same-cell and cross-cell predictions to quantify the validation rate and compare against two state-of-the-art methods, DEEP-ENCODE and RFECS. We find that EP-DNN has superior accuracy with a validation rate of 91.6%, relative to 85.3% for DEEP-ENCODE and 85.5% for RFECS, for a given number of enhancer predictions and also scales better for a larger number of enhancer predictions. Moreover, our H1 → IMR90 predictions turn out to be more accurate than IMR90 → IMR90, potentially because H1 exhibits a richer signature set and our EP-DNN model is expressive enough to extract these subtleties. Our work shows how to leverage the full expressivity of deep learning models, using multiple hidden layers, while avoiding overfitting on the training data. We also lay the foundation for exploration of cross-cell enhancer predictions, potentially reducing the need for expensive experimentation.

Finding autonomy in birth.

PubMed

Kukla, Rebecca; Kuppermann, Miriam; Little, Margaret; Lyerly, Anne Drapkin; Mitchell, Lisa M; Armstrong, Elizabeth M; Harris, Lisa

2009-01-01

Over the last several years, as cesarean deliveries have grown increasingly common, there has been a great deal of public and professional interest in the phenomenon of women 'choosing' to deliver by cesarean section in the absence of any specific medical indication. The issue has sparked intense conversation, as it raises questions about the nature of autonomy in birth. Whereas mainstream bioethical discourse is used to associating autonomy with having a large array of choices, this conception of autonomy does not seem adequate to capture concerns and intuitions that have a strong grip outside this discourse. An empirical and conceptual exploration of how delivery decisions ought to be negotiated must be guided by a rich understanding of women's agency and its placement within a complicated set of cultural meanings and pressures surrounding birth. It is too early to be 'for' or 'against' women's access to cesarean delivery in the absence of traditional medical indications--and indeed, a simple pro- or con- position is never going to do justice to the subtlety of the issue. The right question is not whether women ought to be allowed to choose their delivery approach but, rather, taking the value of women's autonomy in decision-making around birth as a given, what sorts of guidelines, practices, and social conditions will best promote and protect women's full inclusion in a safe and positive birth process.

Exercise and environment: New qualitative work to link popular practice and public health.

PubMed

Hitchings, Russell; Latham, Alan

2017-07-01

The health benefits of physical activity are many and well known. Those hoping to promote public health are therefore understandably keen on encouraging physical exercise. This commentary considers the role of qualitative research in this undertaking, given a context in which medical researchers have more commonly taken a quantitative approach to the motivations that are thought to underpin exercise. Our core argument is that studies concerned with how particular environments are inhabited by particular groups of exercisers could play a more central part in public health promotion. In making this case, and by way of an introduction to this Health and Place special issue, we present a series of statements that we think could usefully guide the further development of this work. Specifically, we argue for further attention to: the ways in which different material settings play into the exercise experience; how many of the exercise practices that we may hope to understand sit rather uneasily with the idea of sport; the subtleties of how sociality features in contemporary exercise practices; the physical pleasures that come from exercise; and how exercise practices are both acquired by individuals and evolve as a whole. In so doing, the aim is to encourage relevant researchers to engage more directly in conversation with health promoters instead of either being indifferent to, or critical of, them. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Extracting and compensating dispersion mismatch in ultrahigh-resolution Fourier domain OCT imaging of the retina

PubMed Central

Choi, WooJhon; Baumann, Bernhard; Swanson, Eric A.; Fujimoto, James G.

2012-01-01

We present a numerical approach to extract the dispersion mismatch in ultrahigh-resolution Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging of the retina. The method draws upon an analogy with a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. By exploiting mathematical similarities between the expressions for aberration in optical imaging and dispersion mismatch in spectral / Fourier domain OCT, Shack-Hartmann principles can be extended from the two-dimensional paraxial wavevector space (or the x-y plane in the spatial domain) to the one-dimensional wavenumber space (or the z-axis in the spatial domain). For OCT imaging of the retina, different retinal layers, such as the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL), the photoreceptor inner and outer segment junction (IS/OS), or all the retinal layers near the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) can be used as point source beacons in the axial direction, analogous to point source beacons used in conventional two-dimensional Shack-Hartman wavefront sensors for aberration characterization. Subtleties regarding speckle phenomena in optical imaging, which affect the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor used in adaptive optics, also occur analogously in this application. Using this approach and carefully suppressing speckle, the dispersion mismatch in spectral / Fourier domain OCT retinal imaging can be successfully extracted numerically and used for numerical dispersion compensation to generate sharper, ultrahigh-resolution OCT images. PMID:23187353

Shadows alter facial expressions of Noh masks.

PubMed

Kawai, Nobuyuki; Miyata, Hiromitsu; Nishimura, Ritsuko; Okanoya, Kazuo

2013-01-01

A Noh mask, worn by expert actors during performance on the Japanese traditional Noh drama, conveys various emotional expressions despite its fixed physical properties. How does the mask change its expressions? Shadows change subtly during the actual Noh drama, which plays a key role in creating elusive artistic enchantment. We here describe evidence from two experiments regarding how attached shadows of the Noh masks influence the observers' recognition of the emotional expressions. In Experiment 1, neutral-faced Noh masks having the attached shadows of the happy/sad masks were recognized as bearing happy/sad expressions, respectively. This was true for all four types of masks each of which represented a character differing in sex and age, even though the original characteristics of the masks also greatly influenced the evaluation of emotions. Experiment 2 further revealed that frontal Noh mask images having shadows of upward/downward tilted masks were evaluated as sad/happy, respectively. This was consistent with outcomes from preceding studies using actually tilted Noh mask images. Results from the two experiments concur that purely manipulating attached shadows of the different types of Noh masks significantly alters the emotion recognition. These findings go in line with the mysterious facial expressions observed in Western paintings, such as the elusive qualities of Mona Lisa's smile. They also agree with the aesthetic principle of Japanese traditional art "yugen (profound grace and subtlety)", which highly appreciates subtle emotional expressions in the darkness.

On being understood: clarity and jargon in radiation protection.

PubMed

Strom, Daniel J; Watson, Charles R

2002-03-01

While much of the language used to express the concepts of radiation protection works effectively, there are many ill-chosen names and phrases and much jargon that permeate our professional speech and writing. From the oxymoron "internal exposure" to the "snarl word" "decay," there is much room for improvement. This essay identifies many of the problems and suggests solutions. We examine the kinds of confusions that can result from using familiar words with unfamiliar meanings and the need for neology. We offer insights into specific and unambiguous naming of physical quantities and explore the seemingly unlimited kinds of "dose." We disaggregate exposure from irradiation following intakes, and unmask units like "gram rad per microcurie hour." We call for a definition of radiation weighting factor that doesn't result in a violation of the law of conservation of energy. We examine the subtleties of distinguishing between radiation and radioactive materials. Some words, such as "exposure," have multiple meanings, while at other times there are different words or phrases with the same meaning, such as "critical level" and "decision level" or "detection level" and "minimum detectable amount." Sometimes phrases are used whose meaning is unclear or not agreed upon, such as "lower limit of detection." Sometimes there are words that are simply not apt, such as "disintegration" applied to the emission of a subatomic particle from a nucleus.

Any Two Learning Algorithms Are (Almost) Exactly Identical

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wolpert, David H.

2000-01-01

This paper shows that if one is provided with a loss function, it can be used in a natural way to specify a distance measure quantifying the similarity of any two supervised learning algorithms, even non-parametric algorithms. Intuitively, this measure gives the fraction of targets and training sets for which the expected performance of the two algorithms differs significantly. Bounds on the value of this distance are calculated for the case of binary outputs and 0-1 loss, indicating that any two learning algorithms are almost exactly identical for such scenarios. As an example, for any two algorithms A and B, even for small input spaces and training sets, for less than 2e(-50) of all targets will the difference between A's and B's generalization performance of exceed 1%. In particular, this is true if B is bagging applied to A, or boosting applied to A. These bounds can be viewed alternatively as telling us, for example, that the simple English phrase 'I expect that algorithm A will generalize from the training set with an accuracy of at least 75% on the rest of the target' conveys 20,000 bytes of information concerning the target. The paper ends by discussing some of the subtleties of extending the distance measure to give a full (non-parametric) differential geometry of the manifold of learning algorithms.

Effects of various additives on sintering of aluminum nitride

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Komeya, K.; Inoue, H.; Tsuge, A.

1982-01-01

Effects of thirty additives on sintering A/N were investigated. The addition of alkali earth oxides and rare earth oxides gave fully densified aluminum nitride. This is due to the formation of nitrogen-containing aluminate liquid in the system aluminum nitride-alkali earth oxides or rare earth oxides. Microstructural studies of the sintered specimens with the above two types of additives suggested that the densification was due to the liquid phase sintering. Additions of silicon compounds resulted in poor densification by the formation of highly refractory compounds such as A/N polytypes.

Phylogenetic evidence for an ancient rapid radiation of Caribbean sponge-dwelling snapping shrimps (Synalpheus)

USGS Publications Warehouse

Morrison, C.L.; Rios, R.; Duffy, J.E.

2004-01-01

A common challenge in reconstructing phylogenies involves a high frequency of short internal branches, which makes basal relationships difficult to resolve. Often it is not clear whether this pattern results from insufficient or inappropriate data, versus from a rapid evolutionary radiation. The snapping shrimp genus Synalpheus, which contains in excess of 100 species and is a prominent component of coral-reef faunas worldwide, provides an example. Its taxonomy has long been problematic due to the subtlety of diagnostic characters and apparently widespread variability within species. Here we use partial mt COI and 16S rRNA sequences and morphological characters to reconstruct relationships among 31 species in the morphologically well-defined gambarelloides species group, a putative clade of obligate sponge associates that is mostly endemic to the Caribbean and contains the only known eusocial marine animals. Analysis of the combined data produced a single tree with good support for many terminal clades and for relationships with outgroups, but poor support for branches near the base of the gambarelloides group. Most basal branches are extremely short and terminal branches are long, suggesting a relatively ancient, but rapid radiation of the gambarelloides group. This hypothesis is supported by significant departure from a null model of temporally random cladogenesis. Calibration of divergence times among gambarelloides-group species using data from three geminate pairs of Synalpheus species separated by the isthmus of Panama suggests a major radiation between ???5 and 7 Mya, a few My before final closure of the Panamanian seaway during a period of spreading carbonate environments in the Caribbean; a second, smaller radiation occurred ???4 Mya. This molecular evidence for a rapid radiation among Caribbean marine organisms in the late Miocene/early Pliocene is strikingly similar to patterns documented from fossil data for several other Caribbean reef-associated invertebrate taxa. The similar patterns and timing of cladogenesis evidenced by molecular and fossil data for different Caribbean and East Pacific taxa suggests that the radiation involved a wide range of organisms, and strengthens the case that poor basal resolution in the gambarelloides group of Synalpheus reflects a real evolutionary phenomenon. The rapid radiation also helps explain the historical difficulty of diagnosing species in Synalpheus. ?? 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Implementing Badhwar-O'Neill Galactic Cosmic Ray Model for the Analysis of Space Radiation Exposure

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kim, Myung-Hee Y.; O'Neill, Patrick M.; Slaba, Tony C.

2014-01-01

For the analysis of radiation risks to astronauts and planning exploratory space missions, accurate energy spectrum of galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) is necessary. Characterization of the ionizing radiation environment is challenging because the interplanetary plasma and radiation fields are modulated by solar disturbances and the radiation doses received by astronauts in interplanetary space are likewise influenced. A model of the Badhwar-O'Neill 2011 (BO11) GCR environment, which is represented by GCR deceleration potential theta, has been derived by utilizing all of the GCR measurements from balloons, satellites, and the newer NASA Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). In the BO11 model, the solar modulation level is derived from the mean international sunspot numbers with time-delay, which has been calibrated with actual flight instrument measurements to produce better GCR flux data fit during solar minima. GCR fluxes provided by the BO11 model were compared with various spacecraft measurements at 1 AU, and further comparisons were made for the tissue equivalent proportional counters measurements at low Earth orbits using the high-charge and energy transport (HZETRN) code and various GCR models. For the comparison of the absorbed dose and dose equivalent calculations with the measurements by Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) at Gale crater on Mars, the intensities and energies of GCR entering the heliosphere were calculated by using the BO11 model, which accounts for time-dependent attenuation of the local interstellar spectrum of each element. The BO11 model, which has emphasized for the last 24 solar minima, showed in relatively good agreement with the RAD data for the first 200 sols, but it was resulted in to be less well during near the solar maximum of solar cycle 24 due to subtleties in the changing heliospheric conditions. By performing the error analysis of the BO11 model and the optimization in reducing overall uncertainty, the resultant BO13 model corrects the fit at solar maxima as well as being accurate at solar minima. The BO13 model is implemented to the NASA Space Cancer Risk model for the assessment of radiation risks. Overall cumulative probability distribution of solar modulation parameters represents the percentile rank of the average interplanetary GCR environment, and the probabilistic radiation risks can be assessed for various levels of GCR environment to support mission design and operational planning for future manned space exploration missions.

Ultrafast far-infrared studies of vanadates &mdash Multiple routes for an insulator to metal transition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Mengkun

The metal insulator transition in vanadates has been studied for decades and yet new discoveries still spring up revealing new physics, especially among two of the most studied members: Vanadium sesquioxide (V20 3) and Vanadium dioxide (VO2). Although subtleties abound, both of the materials have first order insulator to metal phase transitions that are considered to be related to strong electron-electron (e-e) correlation. Further, ultrafast spectroscopy of strongly correlated materials has generated great interest in the field given the potential to dynamically distinguish the difference between electronic (spin) response versus lattice responses due to the associated characteristic energy and time scales. In this thesis, I mainly focus on utilizing ultrafast optical and THz spectroscopy to study phase transition dynamics in high quality V20 3 and VO2 thin films epitaxially grown on different substrates. The main findings of the thesis are: (1) Despite the fact that the insulator to metal transition (IMT) in V203 is electron-correlation driven, lattice distortion plays an important role. Coherent oscillations in the far-infrared conductivity are observed resulting from coherent acoustic phonon modulation of the bandwidth W. The same order of lattice distortion induces less of an effect on the electron transport in VO2 in comparison to V203. This is directly related to the difference in latent heat of the phase transitions in VO2 and V203. (2) It is possible for the IMT to occur with very little structural change in epitaxial strained VO2 films, like in the case of Cr doped or strained V203. However, in V02, this necessitates a large strain which is only possible by clamping to a substrate with larger c axis parameter through epitaxial growth. This is demonstrated for VO 2 films on TiO2 substrates. (3) Initiating an ultrafast photo-induced insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) is not only possible with above bandgap excitation, but also possible with high-field far-infrared excitation. With the help of the field enhancement in metamaterial split ring resonator gaps, we obtain picosecond THz electric field transients of several MV/cm which is sufficient to drive the insulator to metal transition in V02.

76 FR 27684 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; BATS Exchange, Inc.; Notice of Filing of a Proposed Rule Change To...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-05-12

... Program Related to Trading Pauses Due to Extraordinary Market Volatility May 6, 2011. Pursuant to Section... Extraordinary Market Volatility,'' to include additional securities in the pilot by which such rule operates... Rule 11.18, entitled ``Trading Halts Due to Extraordinary Market Volatility,'' to include additional...

Dealing with foreign cultural paradigms: A systematic review on intercultural challenges of international medical graduates

PubMed Central

Farhan, Nabeel; Motschall, Edith; Vach, Werner; Boeker, Martin

2017-01-01

Objectives An increasing number of International Medical Graduates (IMG), who are defined to be physicians working in a country other than their country of origin and training, immigrate to Western countries. In order to ensure safe and high-quality patient care, they have to take medical and language tests. This systematic review aims to (1) collect all empiric research on intercultural communication of IMGs in medical settings, (2) identify and categorize all text passages mentioning intercultural issues in the included studies, and (3) describe the most commonly reported intercultural areas of communication of IMGs. Methods This review was based on the PRISMA-Guidelines for systematic reviews. We conducted a broad and systematic electronic literature search for empiric research in the following databases: MEDLINE, BIOSIS Citation Index, BIOSIS Previews, KCI-Korean Journal Database and SciELO Citation Index. The search results were synthesized and analyzed with the aid of coding systems. These coding systems were based on textual analysis and derived from the themes and topics of the results and discussion sections from the included studies. A quality assessment was performed, comparing the studies with their corresponding checklist (COREQ or STROBE). Textual results of the studies were extracted and categorized. Results Among 10,630 search results, 47 studies were identified for analysis. 31 studies were qualitative, 12 quantitative and 4 studies used mixed methods. The quality assessment revealed a low level of quality of the studies in general. The following intercultural problems were identified: IMGs were not familiar with shared decision-making and lower hierarchies in the health care system in general. They had difficulties with patient-centered care, the subtleties of the foreign language and with the organizational structures of the new health care system. In addition, they described the medical education in their home countries as science-oriented, without focusing on psychosocial aspects. Conclusion There is a need for a better training of IMGs on culture-related and not culture-related topics in the new workplace country. The topics that emerged in this review constitute a basis for developing these courses. Further empiric research is needed to describe the findings of this review more precisely and should be in accordance with the existing reporting guidelines. PMID:28715467

Dealing with foreign cultural paradigms: A systematic review on intercultural challenges of international medical graduates.

PubMed

Michalski, Kerstin; Farhan, Nabeel; Motschall, Edith; Vach, Werner; Boeker, Martin

2017-01-01

An increasing number of International Medical Graduates (IMG), who are defined to be physicians working in a country other than their country of origin and training, immigrate to Western countries. In order to ensure safe and high-quality patient care, they have to take medical and language tests. This systematic review aims to (1) collect all empiric research on intercultural communication of IMGs in medical settings, (2) identify and categorize all text passages mentioning intercultural issues in the included studies, and (3) describe the most commonly reported intercultural areas of communication of IMGs. This review was based on the PRISMA-Guidelines for systematic reviews. We conducted a broad and systematic electronic literature search for empiric research in the following databases: MEDLINE, BIOSIS Citation Index, BIOSIS Previews, KCI-Korean Journal Database and SciELO Citation Index. The search results were synthesized and analyzed with the aid of coding systems. These coding systems were based on textual analysis and derived from the themes and topics of the results and discussion sections from the included studies. A quality assessment was performed, comparing the studies with their corresponding checklist (COREQ or STROBE). Textual results of the studies were extracted and categorized. Among 10,630 search results, 47 studies were identified for analysis. 31 studies were qualitative, 12 quantitative and 4 studies used mixed methods. The quality assessment revealed a low level of quality of the studies in general. The following intercultural problems were identified: IMGs were not familiar with shared decision-making and lower hierarchies in the health care system in general. They had difficulties with patient-centered care, the subtleties of the foreign language and with the organizational structures of the new health care system. In addition, they described the medical education in their home countries as science-oriented, without focusing on psychosocial aspects. There is a need for a better training of IMGs on culture-related and not culture-related topics in the new workplace country. The topics that emerged in this review constitute a basis for developing these courses. Further empiric research is needed to describe the findings of this review more precisely and should be in accordance with the existing reporting guidelines.

Movement patterns and study area boundaries: Influences on survival estimation in capture-mark-recapture studies

USGS Publications Warehouse

Horton, G.E.; Letcher, B.H.

2008-01-01

The inability to account for the availability of individuals in the study area during capture-mark-recapture (CMR) studies and the resultant confounding of parameter estimates can make correct interpretation of CMR model parameter estimates difficult. Although important advances based on the Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS) model have resulted in estimators of true survival that work by unconfounding either death or recapture probability from availability for capture in the study area, these methods rely on the researcher's ability to select a method that is correctly matched to emigration patterns in the population. If incorrect assumptions regarding site fidelity (non-movement) are made, it may be difficult or impossible as well as costly to change the study design once the incorrect assumption is discovered. Subtleties in characteristics of movement (e.g. life history-dependent emigration, nomads vs territory holders) can lead to mixtures in the probability of being available for capture among members of the same population. The result of these mixtures may be only a partial unconfounding of emigration from other CMR model parameters. Biologically-based differences in individual movement can combine with constraints on study design to further complicate the problem. Because of the intricacies of movement and its interaction with other parameters in CMR models, quantification of and solutions to these problems are needed. Based on our work with stream-dwelling populations of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar, we used a simulation approach to evaluate existing CMR models under various mixtures of movement probabilities. The Barker joint data model provided unbiased estimates of true survival under all conditions tested. The CJS and robust design models provided similarly unbiased estimates of true survival but only when emigration information could be incorporated directly into individual encounter histories. For the robust design model, Markovian emigration (future availability for capture depends on an individual's current location) was a difficult emigration pattern to detect unless survival and especially recapture probability were high. Additionally, when local movement was high relative to study area boundaries and movement became more diffuse (e.g. a random walk), local movement and permanent emigration were difficult to distinguish and had consequences for correctly interpreting the survival parameter being estimated (apparent survival vs true survival). ?? 2008 The Authors.

Three-dimensional flow structures past a bio-prosthetic valve in an in-vitro model of the aortic root.

PubMed

Hasler, David; Obrist, Dominik

2018-01-01

The flow field past a prosthetic aortic valve comprises many details that indicate whether the prosthesis is functioning well or not. It is, however, not yet fully understood how an optimal flow scenario would look, i.e. which subtleties of the fluid dynamics in place are essential regarding the durability and compatibility of a prosthetic valve. In this study, we measured and analyzed the 3D flow field in the vicinity of a bio-prosthetic heart valve in function of the aortic root size. The measurements were conducted within aortic root phantoms of different size, mounted in a custom-built hydraulic setup, which mimicked physiological flow conditions in the aorta. Tomographic particle image velocimetry was used to measure the 3D instantaneous velocity field at various instances. Several 3D fields (e.g. instantaneous and mean velocity, 3D shear rate) were analyzed and compared focusing on the impact of the aortic root size, but also in order to gain general insight in the 3D flow structure past the bio-prosthetic valve. We found that the diameter of the aortic jet relative to the diameter of the ascending aorta is the most important parameter in determining the characteristics of the flow. A large aortic cross-section, relative to the cross-section of the aortic jet, was associated with higher levels of turbulence intensity and higher retrograde flow in the ascending aorta.

Host-Seeking Behavior in the Bed Bug, Cimex lectularius.

PubMed

Suchy, James T; Lewis, Vernard R

2011-03-07

The reemergence of the bed bug, Cimex lectularius Linnaeus, has recently spawned a frenzy of public, media, and academic attention. In response to the growing rate of infestation, considerable work has been focused on identifying the various host cues utilized by the bed bug in search of a meal. Most of these behavioral studies examine movement within a confined environment, such as a Petri dish. This has prevented a more complete understanding of the insect's host-seeking process. This work describes a novel method for studying host-seeking behavior, using various movement parameters, in a time-lapse photography system. With the use of human breath as an attractant, we qualitatively and quantitatively assessed how bed bugs navigate their environment between its harborage and the host. Levels of behavioral activity varied dramatically between bed bugs in the presence and absence of host odor. Bed bugs demonstrated not simply activation, but attraction to the chemical components of breath. Localized, stop-start host-seeking behavior or alternating periods of movement and pause were observed among bed bugs placed in the environment void of human breath, while those exposed to human breath demonstrated long range, stop-start host-seeking behavior. A more comprehensive understanding of bed bug host-seeking can lead to the development of traps and monitors that account for unique subtleties in their behavior. The time-lapse photography system uses a large, artificial environment and could also be employed to study other aspects of the insect's behavioral patterns.

Physics and the Art of Dance - Understanding Movement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Swope, Kenneth Laws

2005-03-01

Written by a physicist with professional dance training, Physics and the Art of Dance explains how dancers can achieve better, safer performances through an understanding of physics in motion. Using simple, non-technical terms, Kenneth Laws combines his knowledge of both physics and dance to describe how the laws of gravity, momentum, and energy affect dancing bodies. The book explores the natural laws that govern the subtleties of balance, the techniques of leaps and pirouettes, and the impressive lifts and turns executed by ballet partners. Finally, Laws offers insight into two current discussions in the dance world--the effect of body size on ballet technique, and the relationship between science and the art of dance. Beautiful, original stop-action photographs by Martha Swope, along with clear diagrams, illustrate the concepts described in the text. Plus, an intriguing "puzzler" at the beginning of each chapter provides an engaging entree into the topics presented. For those who want a more advanced understanding of the physics, extensive appendices are provided. This new book combines the best features of Laws's widely acclaimed The Physics of Dance and Physics, Dance, and the Pas de Deux by Laws and Cynthia Harvey. Its expert application of the basic principles of physics to the art of dance will be an invaluable resource for dancers and dance instructors and will open a new level of appreciation for lovers of the form. It will also appeal to physicists who seek to include the arts in their scientific pursuits.

Shadows Alter Facial Expressions of Noh Masks

PubMed Central

Kawai, Nobuyuki; Miyata, Hiromitsu; Nishimura, Ritsuko; Okanoya, Kazuo

2013-01-01

Background A Noh mask, worn by expert actors during performance on the Japanese traditional Noh drama, conveys various emotional expressions despite its fixed physical properties. How does the mask change its expressions? Shadows change subtly during the actual Noh drama, which plays a key role in creating elusive artistic enchantment. We here describe evidence from two experiments regarding how attached shadows of the Noh masks influence the observers’ recognition of the emotional expressions. Methodology/Principal Findings In Experiment 1, neutral-faced Noh masks having the attached shadows of the happy/sad masks were recognized as bearing happy/sad expressions, respectively. This was true for all four types of masks each of which represented a character differing in sex and age, even though the original characteristics of the masks also greatly influenced the evaluation of emotions. Experiment 2 further revealed that frontal Noh mask images having shadows of upward/downward tilted masks were evaluated as sad/happy, respectively. This was consistent with outcomes from preceding studies using actually tilted Noh mask images. Conclusions/Significance Results from the two experiments concur that purely manipulating attached shadows of the different types of Noh masks significantly alters the emotion recognition. These findings go in line with the mysterious facial expressions observed in Western paintings, such as the elusive qualities of Mona Lisa’s smile. They also agree with the aesthetic principle of Japanese traditional art “yugen (profound grace and subtlety)”, which highly appreciates subtle emotional expressions in the darkness. PMID:23940748

ClimatePad: Enabling public exploration of climate data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walsh, J. E.; Chapman, W. L.

2012-12-01

Informal learners interested in climate issues can find a wealth of information in the print and online media related to climate and climate change. Throughout these resources, the equal use of generic terms like 'global warming' and 'climate change' suggest a level of nuance in the science that is not easy to convey in this conventional media. Perhaps more than any other discipline, climate literacy has the most potential to be enhanced via the process of cognitive construction and reconstruction, rather than simple transmission of knowledge. Constructionism suggests that meaningful learning happens most effectively if the learner is actively engaged in constructing a product in the real world rather than absorbing information passively. Recent technological innovations have introduced mobile computing devices with sufficient power to do serious data analysis. The potential of these devices to augment climate literacy by turning citizens into scientists has yet to be exploited. We introduce ClimatePad, an iPad application that permits students and public to actively browse climate datasets, construct trends, plot time series, create composite differences and view animations of real-world climate data. Interactions with the ClimatePad permits varying the starting and ending dates of trends and differences. Climate analysis maps and animations can be customized with different color palettes, enticing the user to delve into and absorb the subtleties of the regional and temporal variations of the recent climate record. Finally, user-generated climate visualizations created with ClimatePad can be emailed to friends and shared via Facebook, entraining even more active learners.

[INVITED] Non-intrusive optical imaging of face to probe physiological traits in Autism Spectrum Disorder

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Samad, Manar D.; Bobzien, Jonna L.; Harrington, John W.; Iftekharuddin, Khan M.

2016-03-01

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) can impair non-verbal communication including the variety and extent of facial expressions in social and interpersonal communication. These impairments may appear as differential traits in the physiology of facial muscles of an individual with ASD when compared to a typically developing individual. The differential traits in the facial expressions as shown by facial muscle-specific changes (also known as 'facial oddity' for subjects with ASD) may be measured visually. However, this mode of measurement may not discern the subtlety in facial oddity distinctive to ASD. Earlier studies have used intrusive electrophysiological sensors on the facial skin to gauge facial muscle actions from quantitative physiological data. This study demonstrates, for the first time in the literature, novel quantitative measures for facial oddity recognition using non-intrusive facial imaging sensors such as video and 3D optical cameras. An Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved that pilot study has been conducted on a group of individuals consisting of eight participants with ASD and eight typically developing participants in a control group to capture their facial images in response to visual stimuli. The proposed computational techniques and statistical analyses reveal higher mean of actions in the facial muscles of the ASD group versus the control group. The facial muscle-specific evaluation reveals intense yet asymmetric facial responses as facial oddity in participants with ASD. This finding about the facial oddity may objectively define measurable differential markers in the facial expressions of individuals with ASD.

Predictive capabilities of statistical learning methods for lung nodule malignancy classification using diagnostic image features: an investigation using the Lung Image Database Consortium dataset

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hancock, Matthew C.; Magnan, Jerry F.

2017-03-01

To determine the potential usefulness of quantified diagnostic image features as inputs to a CAD system, we investigate the predictive capabilities of statistical learning methods for classifying nodule malignancy, utilizing the Lung Image Database Consortium (LIDC) dataset, and only employ the radiologist-assigned diagnostic feature values for the lung nodules therein, as well as our derived estimates of the diameter and volume of the nodules from the radiologists' annotations. We calculate theoretical upper bounds on the classification accuracy that is achievable by an ideal classifier that only uses the radiologist-assigned feature values, and we obtain an accuracy of 85.74 (+/-1.14)% which is, on average, 4.43% below the theoretical maximum of 90.17%. The corresponding area-under-the-curve (AUC) score is 0.932 (+/-0.012), which increases to 0.949 (+/-0.007) when diameter and volume features are included, along with the accuracy to 88.08 (+/-1.11)%. Our results are comparable to those in the literature that use algorithmically-derived image-based features, which supports our hypothesis that lung nodules can be classified as malignant or benign using only quantified, diagnostic image features, and indicates the competitiveness of this approach. We also analyze how the classification accuracy depends on specific features, and feature subsets, and we rank the features according to their predictive power, statistically demonstrating the top four to be spiculation, lobulation, subtlety, and calcification.

Does lean muddy the quality improvement waters? A qualitative study of how a hospital management team understands lean in the context of quality improvement.

PubMed

Savage, Carl; Parke, Louise; von Knorring, Mia; Mazzocato, Pamela

2016-10-19

Health care has experimented with many different quality improvement (QI) approaches with greater variation in name than content. This has been dubbed pseudoinnovation. However, it could also be that the subtleties and differences are not clearly understood. To explore this further, the purpose of this study was to explore how hospital managers perceive lean in the context of QI. We used a qualitative study design with semi-structured interviews to explore twelve top managers' perceptions of the relationship between lean and quality improvement (QI) at a university-affiliated hospital. Managers described that QI and lean shared the same overall purpose: focus on patient needs and improve efficiency and effectiveness. Employee involvement was emphasized in both strategies, as well as the support offered by managers of staff initiatives. QI was perceived as a strategy that could support structural changes at the organizational level whereas lean was seen as applicable at the operational level. Moreover, lean carried a negative connotation, lacked the credibility of QI, and was perceived as a management fad. Aspects of QI and lean were misunderstood. In a context where lean remains an abstract term, and staff associate lean with automotive applications and cost reduction, it may be fruitful for managers to invest time and resources to develop a strategy for continual improvement and utilize vocabulary that resonates with health care staff. This could reduce the risk that improvement efforts are rejected out of hand.

Effects of 2G and 3G mobile phones on performance and electrophysiology in adolescents, young adults and older adults.

PubMed

Leung, S; Croft, R J; McKenzie, R J; Iskra, S; Silber, B; Cooper, N R; O'Neill, B; Cropley, V; Diaz-Trujillo, A; Hamblin, D; Simpson, D

2011-11-01

This study examined sensory and cognitive processing in adolescents, young adults and older adults, when exposed to 2nd (2G) and 3rd (3G) generation mobile phone signals. Tests employed were the auditory 3-stimulus oddball and the N-back. Forty-one 13-15 year olds, forty-two 19-40 year olds and twenty 55-70 year olds were tested using a double-blind cross-over design, where each participant received Sham, 2G and 3G exposures, separated by at least 4 days. 3-Stimulus oddball task: Behavioural: accuracy and reaction time of responses to targets were not affected by exposure. Electrophysiological: augmented N1 was found in the 2G condition (independent of age group). N-back task: Behavioural: the combined groups performed less accurately during the 3G exposure (compared to Sham), with post hoc tests finding this effect separately in the adolescents only. Electrophysiological: delayed ERD/ERS responses of the alpha power were found in both 3G and 2G conditions (compared to Sham; independent of age group). Employing tasks tailored to each individual's ability level, this study provides support for an effect of acute 2G and 3G exposure on human cognitive function. The subtlety of mobile phone effect on cognition in our study suggests that it is important to account for individual differences in future mobile phone research. Copyright © 2011 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. All rights reserved.

Soil pH and extractable sulfate-sulfur distribution as influenced by tree species and distance from the stem. [Acer rubrum; Quercus coccinea

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wolfe, M.H.; Kelly, J.M.; Wolt, J.D.

Stemflow influence on the distribution of soil (NaH/sub 2/PO/sub 4/ extractable) SO/sub 4/-S and pH was evaluated as a function of tree size class and distance from the stem for red maple (Acer rubrum L.) and scarlet oak (Quercus coccinea Muenchh.) at two locations in Tennessee which have received different historical inputs of S from atmospheric sources. Soil profiles around the base of each study tree were sampled by horizon at 25, 50, 100, and 200 cm from the stem along four transects radiating from the stem at 90/sup 0/ angles. Distance from the stem influenced soil pH of Amore » horizons at 25 cm from the stem of red maple and scarlet oak at both sites. Species had an effect on Bt2 and Bt3 soil SO/sub 4/-S concentrations. The Bt2 (0.49 cmol kg/sup -1/) and Bt3 (0.67 cmol kg/sup -1/) horizons beneath scarlet oaks had greater SO/sub 4/-S concentrations than corresponding horizons beneath red maple (0.29 and 0.43 cmol kg/sup -1/, respectively). The results of this study indicate that increased sampling intensity combined with tracer studies will be need to clearly determine the effect of stemflow, tree species, and tree size on subtlety-manifested soil properties such as pH and SO/sub 4/-S as well as other elements of interest.« less

Digital Clock Drawing: differentiating "thinking" versus "doing" in younger and older adults with depression.

PubMed

Cohen, Jamie; Penney, Dana L; Davis, Randall; Libon, David J; Swenson, Rodney A; Ajilore, Olusola; Kumar, Anand; Lamar, Melissa

2014-10-01

Psychomotor slowing has been documented in depression. The digital Clock Drawing Test (dCDT) provides: (i) a novel technique to assess both cognitive and motor aspects of psychomotor speed within the same task and (ii) the potential to uncover subtleties of behavior not previously detected with non-digitized modes of data collection. Using digitized pen technology in 106 participants grouped by Age (younger/older) and Affect (euthymic/unmedicated depressed), we recorded cognitive and motor output by capturing how the clock is drawn rather than focusing on the final product. We divided time to completion (TTC) for Command and Copy conditions of the dCDT into metrics of percent of drawing (%Ink) versus non-drawing (%Think) time. We also obtained composite Z-scores of cognition, including attention/information processing (AIP), to explore associations of %Ink and %Think times to cognitive and motor performance. Despite equivalent TTC, %Ink and %Think Command times (Copy n.s.) were significant (AgeXAffect interaction: p=.03)-younger depressed spent a smaller proportion of time drawing relative to thinking compared to the older depressed group. Command %Think time negatively correlated with AIP in the older depressed group (r=-.46; p=.02). Copy %Think time negatively correlated with AIP in the younger depressed (r=-.47; p=.03) and older euthymic groups (r=-.51; p=.01). The dCDT differentiated aspects of psychomotor slowing in depression regardless of age, while dCDT/cognitive associates for younger adults with depression mimicked patterns of older euthymics.

Portraiture in the Large Lecture: Storying One Chemistry Professor's Practical Knowledge

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eddleton, Jeannine E.

Practical knowledge, as defined by Freema Elbaz (1983), is a complex, practically oriented set of understandings which teachers use to actively shape and direct their work. The goal of this study is the construction of a social science portrait that illuminates the practical knowledge of a large lecture professor of general chemistry at a public research university in the southeast. This study continues Elbaz's (1981) work on practical knowledge with the incorporation of a qualitative and intentionally interventionist methodology which "blurs the boundaries of aesthetics and empiricism in an effort to capture the complexity, dynamics, and subtlety of human experience and organizational life," (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997). This collection of interviews, observations, writings, and reflections is designed for an eclectic audience with the intent of initiating conversation on the topic of the large lecture and is a purposeful attempt to link research and practice. Social science portraiture is uniquely suited to this intersection of researcher and researched, the perfect combination of methodology and analysis for a project that is both product and praxis. The following research questions guide the study. • Are aspects of Elbaz's practical knowledge identifiable in the research conversations conducted with a large lecture college professor? • Is practical knowledge identifiable during observations of Patricia's large lecture? Freema Elbaz conducted research conversations with Sarah, a high school classroom and writing resource teacher who conducted much of her teaching work one on one with students. Patricia's practice differs significantly from Sarah's with respect to subject matter and to scale.

Occult intraocular trauma: evaluation of the eye in an austere environment.

PubMed

Sweet, Patrick H

2013-03-01

Physicians deployed to austere environments often encounter the challenge of needing to make clinical decisions based upon rudimentary history and physical examination. These skills, however, can be difficult for many to rely on, with the many subtleties of examining the eye, when they are normally accustomed to relying on sophisticated modalities to establish diagnosis. This case is a model for evaluating eye trauma in an austere or hostile environment. A 25-year-old male U.S. Marine was fired upon at a Mexican Army checkpoint where he sustained glass shrapnel injuries, the most serious being to his right eye. He was taken from a detention facility to a Mexican hospital, where he was evaluated and given the diagnosis of corneal laceration. Twelve hours later, a U.S. Navy physician arrived to evaluate the patient; he was allowed limited access to the patient. His ophthalmologic examination revealed a closed corneal laceration on the right eye, worse than 20/800 vision, absent red reflex, and obscured funduscopic examination. These findings made it impossible to rule out globe penetration. The patient was released 48 h later to a U.S. Naval Hospital, where intraocular foreign bodies were confirmed by imaging and he was taken to emergency surgery. This case illustrates that even under austere conditions, a focused history and evaluation can reveal the likelihood of occult intraocular foreign body, thereby triaging the patient for emergency surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Interactions between prefrontal cortex and cerebellum revealed by trace eyelid conditioning.

PubMed

Kalmbach, Brian E; Ohyama, Tatsuya; Kreider, Joy C; Riusech, Frank; Mauk, Michael D

2009-01-01

Eyelid conditioning has proven useful for analysis of learning and computation in the cerebellum. Two variants, delay and trace conditioning, differ only by the relative timing of the training stimuli. Despite the subtlety of this difference, trace eyelid conditioning is prevented by lesions of the cerebellum, hippocampus, or medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), whereas delay eyelid conditioning is prevented by cerebellar lesions and is largely unaffected by forebrain lesions. Here we test whether these lesion results can be explained by two assertions: (1) Cerebellar learning requires temporal overlap between the mossy fiber inputs activated by the tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and the climbing fiber inputs activated by the reinforcing unconditioned stimulus (US), and therefore (2) trace conditioning requires activity that outlasts the presentation of the CS in a subset of mossy fibers separate from those activated directly by the CS. By use of electrical stimulation of mossy fibers as a CS, we show that cerebellar learning during trace eyelid conditioning requires an input that persists during the stimulus-free trace interval. By use of reversible inactivation experiments, we provide evidence that this input arises from the mPFC and arrives at the cerebellum via a previously unidentified site in the pontine nuclei. In light of previous PFC recordings in various species, we suggest that trace eyelid conditioning involves an interaction between the persistent activity of delay cells in mPFC-a putative mechanism of working memory-and motor learning in the cerebellum.

Measurement of the Neutron Beta Decay Lifetime using Magnetically Trapped Ultracold Neutrons

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adamek, Evan Robert

The neutron lifetime is an important parameter in the Standard Model of particle physics, with influences on the electroweak interaction and on Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Measurements of this quantity in cold beam experiments and in experiments using ultracold neutrons (UCN) disagree; this discrepancy may indicate that these measurements possess unaccounted-for systematic errors. The UCNtau experiment at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCe) utilizes an asymmetrical magneto-gravitational storage volume with an in-situ vanadium detector. This setup is designed to either avoid or control many of the weaknesses that reduce systematic precision in other UCN lifetime experiments. Controlling for the many measurable errors requires detailed calculation and simulation, aided, for example, by the Geant4 Monte Carlo particle transport toolkit, which has been used to create a high fidelity model of the UCNtau experiment for modeling UCN transport, storage, and detection. Through the course of running the experiment, improvements in knowledge of particle measurement have led to improvements to the transport and to the detectors used in various parts of the experiment. With the experimental setup optimized to account for the subtleties of the measurement, the 2014-2015 beam period at LANSCe generated 85 measurement runs from which we could calculate the storage lifetime. Careful analysis of the effects of background on the vanadium detector assembly allowed for elimination of undesired signal and allowed for the extraction of a preliminary value for the neutron lifetime and the determination of areas to improve for the following run cycle.

International Children's Continence Society standardization report on urodynamic studies of the lower urinary tract in children.

PubMed

Bauer, Stuart B; Nijman, Rien J M; Drzewiecki, Beth A; Sillen, Ulla; Hoebeke, Piet

2015-09-01

The objective of this document created by the ICCS standardization subcommittee is to provide a uniform guideline on measurement, quality control and documentation of urodynamic studies in children. This guideline was created using expert opinion and critical review of the published literature on urodynamic studies in children. Currently no standardized guideline or level 1 data exists on the proper technique for this subject matter. The document provides a throughout explanation on how to approach a child who presents with lower urinary tract dysfunction, whether it be of neurogenic, anatomic or functional origin. Formation of an urodynamic question after a comprehensive history and physical examination is paramount in selecting the urodynamic study(ies) that will be most appropriate for each child. Appropriate application of each test with careful consideration of the needs of the child and family will provide the most accurate and reproducible results. Recommendations on how to execute each of the components of an urodynamic study as well as interpretation are included in the document. Urodynamic studies have become a major tool in evaluating lower urinary tract dysfunction in children. There are many subtleties in performing these studies in children in juxtaposition to adults; therefore, adaptations specific to children must be made to achieve accurate and reproducible results. Uniformity in how the studies are conducted from center to center will allow for healthier transparency and enhanced comparison of results in both clinical and research situations. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Gravitational redshift and asymmetric redshift-space distortions for stacked clusters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cai, Yan-Chuan; Kaiser, Nick; Cole, Shaun; Frenk, Carlos

2017-06-01

We derive the expression for the observed redshift in the weak field limit in the observer's past light cone, including all relativistic terms up to second order in velocity. We then apply it to compute the cluster-galaxy cross-correlation functions (CGCF) using N-body simulations. The CGCF is asymmetric along the line of sight owing to the presence of the small second-order terms such as the gravitational redshift (GRedshift). We identify two systematics in the modelling of the GRedshift signal in stacked clusters. First, it is affected by the morphology of dark matter haloes and the large-scale cosmic-web. The non-spherical distribution of galaxies around the central halo and the presence of neighbouring clusters systematically reduce the GRedshift signal. This bias is approximately 20 per cent for Mmin ≃ 1014 M⊙ h-1, and is more than 50 per cent for haloes with Mmin ≃ 2 × 1013 M⊙ h-1 at r > 4 Mpc h-1. Secondly, the best-fitting GRedshift profiles as well as the profiles of all other relativistic terms are found to be significantly different in velocity space compared to their real space versions. We find that the relativistic Doppler redshift effect, like other second-order effects, is subdominant to the GRedshift signal. We discuss some subtleties relating to these effects in velocity space. We also find that the S/N of the GRedshift signal increases with decreasing halo mass.

Department of Defense Fiscal Years 1990 and 1991 Budget Revision

DTIC Science & Technology

1989-04-01

Japan Yen 123.52 132.61 Netherlands Guilder 1.97 2.13 Norway Krone 6.61 6.87 Portugal Escudo 144.99 156.20 South Korea Won 697.84 669.34 Spain Peseta...and the continental United States. In addition, due to fiscal constraints, one active component AH-I helicopter battalion will be inactivated in FY...1992 due to fiscal constraints. In addition, retirement of 14 of the DDG-2 and DDG-37 class destroyers will be accelerated with an additional 9 in FY

76 FR 13431 - Major Portion Prices and Due Date for Additional Royalty Payments on Indian Gas Production in...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-03-11

...: Notice of major portion prices for calendar year 2009. SUMMARY: Final regulations for valuing gas produced from Indian leases, published August 10, 1999, require the Office of Natural Resources Revenue... calendar year 2009. DATES: The due date to pay additional royalties based on the major portion prices is...

Influence of Ge addition on the optical properties of As40Se50Ge10 thin film probed by spectroscopy techniques

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Naik, Ramakanta; Pradhan, Jagnaseni; Sripan, Chinnaiyah; Ganesan, R.

2018-05-01

The thin films of As40Se60 and As40Se50Ge10 were prepared on glass substrates by thermal evaporation method with thickness 1000 nm. The prepared films were amorphous in nature which was confirmed through X-ray diffraction. The chemical composition and the surface picture were obtained from energy dispersive X-ray analysis and Scanning Electron Microscopy analysis. The transmission data of the two films were collected in the wavelength range 400-1000 nm. The transmission percentage is found to be decreased whereas the absorption coefficient is increased with the Ge addition. The addition of Ge into As40Se60 is found to increase the refractive index and the extinction coefficient of As40Se50Ge10 thin film. The decrease in optical band gap is explained on the basis of increase in density of states and disorderness due to Ge addition. The optical absorption in the film is due to allowed indirect transition, and the homopolar bond density is increased with Ge addition. The Raman shift observed in the two films clearly supports the optical changes due to Ge addition.

Changes in air temperature and its relation to ambulance transports due to heat stroke in all 47 prefectures of Japan.

PubMed

Murakami, Shoko; Miyatake, Nobuyuki; Sakano, Noriko

2012-09-01

Changes in air temperature and its relation to ambulance transports due to heat stroke in all 47 prefectures, in Japan were evaluated. Data on air temperature were obtained from the Japanese Meteorological Agency. Data on ambulance transports due to heat stroke was directly obtained from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, Japan. We also used the number of deaths due to heat stroke from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan, and population data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Chronological changes in parameters of air temperature were analyzed. In addition, the relation between air temperature and ambulance transports due to heat stroke in August 2010 was also evaluated by using an ecological study. Positive and significant changes in the parameters of air temperature that is, the mean air temperature, mean of the highest air temperature, and mean of the lowest air temperature were noted in all 47 prefectures. In addition, changes in air temperature were accelerated when adjusted for observation years. Ambulance transports due to heat stroke was significantly correlated with air temperature in the ecological study. The highest air temperature was significantly linked to ambulance transports due to heat stroke, especially in elderly subjects. Global warming was demonstrated in all 47 prefectures in Japan. In addition, the higher air temperature was closely associated with higher ambulance transports due to heat stroke in Japan.

Government regulation and public opposition create high additional costs for field trials with GM crops in Switzerland.

PubMed

Bernauer, Thomas; Tribaldos, Theresa; Luginbühl, Carolin; Winzeler, Michael

2011-12-01

Field trials with GM crops are not only plant science experiments. They are also social experiments concerning the implications of government imposed regulatory constraints and public opposition for scientific activity. We assess these implications by estimating additional costs due to government regulation and public opposition in a recent set of field trials in Switzerland. We find that for every Euro spent on research, an additional 78 cents were spent on security, an additional 31 cents on biosafety, and an additional 17 cents on government regulatory supervision. Hence the total additional spending due to government regulation and public opposition was around 1.26 Euros for every Euro spent on the research per se. These estimates are conservative; they do not include additional costs that are hard to monetize (e.g. stakeholder information and dialogue activities, involvement of various government agencies). We conclude that further field experiments with GM crops in Switzerland are unlikely unless protected sites are set up to reduce these additional costs.

Transport, electrochemical and thermophysical properties of two N-donor-functionalised ionic liquids.

PubMed

Rüther, Thomas; Harris, Kenneth R; Horne, Michael D; Kanakubo, Mitsuhiro; Rodopoulos, Theo; Veder, Jean-Pierre; Woolf, Lawrence A

2013-12-23

Two N-donor-functionalised ionic liquids (ILs), 1-ethyl-1,4-dimethylpiperazinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide (1) and 1-(2-dimethylaminoethyl)-dimethylethylammonium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide (2), were synthesised and their electrochemical and transport properties measured. The data were compared with the benchmark system, N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide (3). Marked differences in thermal and electrochemical stability were observed between the two tertiary-amine-functionalised salts and the non-functionalised benchmark. The former are up to 170 K and 2 V less stable than the structural counterpart lacking a tertiary amine function. The ion self-diffusion coefficients (Di ) and molar conductivities (Λ) are higher for the IL with an open-chain cation (2) than that with a cyclic cation (1), but less than that with a non-functionalised, heterocyclic cation (3). The viscosities (η) show the opposite behaviour. The Walden [Λ[proportionality](1/η)(t) ] and Stokes-Einstein [Di /T)[proportionality](1/η)(t) ] exponents, t, are very similar for the three salts, 0.93-0.98 (±0.05); that is, the self-diffusion coefficients and conductivity are set by η. The Di for 1 and 2 are the same, within experimental error, at the same viscosity, whereas Λ for 1 is approximately 13% higher than that of 2. The diffusion and molar conductivity data are consistent, with a slope of 0.98±0.05 for a plot of ln(ΛT) against ln(D+ +D- ). The Nernst-Einstein deviation parameters (Δ) are such that the mean of the two like-ion VCCs is greater than that of the unlike ions. The values of Δ are 0.31, 0.36 and 0.42 for 3, 1 and 2, respectively, as is typical for ILs, but there is some subtlety in the ion interactions given 2 has the largest value. The distinct diffusion coefficients (DDC) follow the order D(d)__ < D(d)++ < D(d)+_, as is common for [Tf2N](-) salts. The ion motions are not correlated as in an electrolyte solution: instead, there is greater anti-correlation between the velocities of a given anion and the overall ensemble of anions in comparison to those for the cationic analogue, the anti-correlation for the velocities of which is in turn greater than that for a given ion and the ensemble of oppositely charged ions, an observation that is due to the requirement for the conservation of momentum in the system. The DDC also show fractional SE behaviour with t~0.95. Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

The effect of Taro (Colocasia esculenta L.) and Lesser Yam flour (Dioscorea esculenta L.) as thickener agent on physical characteristics of frozen wheygurt

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nurhartadi, E.; Utami, R.; Widowati, E.; Karunawati, B. M.

2017-11-01

The results showed that the addition ratio of taro and lesser yam flour affected to the physical characteristics of frozen wheygurt. The addition of lesser yam flour increased total soluble solids until the addition ratio of 2:2 due to the higher ash content of lesser yam (2.87%) than taro (0.44%). Sample with addition ratio of 1:3 and 0:4 significantly different compared to other samples, due to the starch content difference between taro (70-80%) and lesser yam (51.34%). Addition ratio of taro and lesser yam flour do not have a significant effect on the viscosity of the frozen wheygurt, due to both starch have similar setback viscosity. Lesser yam setback viscosity was 684.8 cP, while taro was 838.3 cP. Setback viscosity showed a high tendency of retrogradation. The addition ratio of taro and lesser yam flour have a significant effect to the overrun of frozen wheygurt. Addition ratio of taro and lesser yam flour have a significant effect to melting rate of frozen wheygurt. This result was caused by higher peak viscosity of taro starch compared to lesser yam, thus produced thicker gel than lesser yam. This lead increased water contents in the mixtures entrapped and slows down water mobility, hence melting rate would decrease.

26 CFR 1.6695-2 - Tax return preparer due diligence requirements for determining earned income credit eligibility.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 26 Internal Revenue 13 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Tax return preparer due diligence requirements... the Tax, Additional Amounts, and Assessable Penalties § 1.6695-2 Tax return preparer due diligence requirements for determining earned income credit eligibility. (a) Penalty for failure to meet due diligence...

Additive Technology: Update on Current Materials and Applications in Dentistry.

PubMed

Barazanchi, Abdullah; Li, Kai Chun; Al-Amleh, Basil; Lyons, Karl; Waddell, J Neil

2017-02-01

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is becoming an alternative to subtractive manufacturing or milling in the area of computer-aided manufacturing. Research on material for use in additive manufacturing is ongoing, and a wide variety of materials are being used or developed for use in dentistry. Some materials, however, such as cobalt chromium, still lack sufficient research to allow definite conclusions about the suitability of their use in clinical dental practice. Despite this, due to the wide variety of machines that use additive manufacturing, there is much more flexibility in the build material and geometry when building structures compared with subtractive manufacturing. Overall additive manufacturing produces little material waste and is energy efficient when compared to subtractive manufacturing, due to passivity and the additive layering nature of the build process. Such features make the technique suitable to be used with fabricating structures out of hard to handle materials such as cobalt chromium. The main limitations of this technology include the appearance of steps due to layering of material and difficulty in fabricating certain material generally used in dentistry for use in 3D printing such as ceramics. The current pace of technological development, however, promises exciting possibilities. © 2016 by the American College of Prosthodontists.

Dosimetric variations due to interfraction organ deformation in cervical cancer brachytherapy.

PubMed

Kobayashi, Kazuma; Murakami, Naoya; Wakita, Akihisa; Nakamura, Satoshi; Okamoto, Hiroyuki; Umezawa, Rei; Takahashi, Kana; Inaba, Koji; Igaki, Hiroshi; Ito, Yoshinori; Shigematsu, Naoyuki; Itami, Jun

2015-12-01

We quantitatively estimated dosimetric variations due to interfraction organ deformation in multi-fractionated high-dose-rate brachytherapy (HDRBT) for cervical cancer using a novel surface-based non-rigid deformable registration. As the number of consecutive HDRBT fractions increased, simple addition of dose-volume histogram parameters significantly overestimated the dose, compared with distribution-based dose addition. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.. All rights reserved.

The effect of a Cr addition and transformation temperature on the mechanical properties of cold drawn hyper-eutectoid steel wires

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Song, Hyung Rak; Kang, Eui Goo; Bae, Chul Min; Lee, Choong Yeol; Lee, Duk Lak; Nam, Won Jong

2006-06-01

The effects of a Cr addition and transformation temperature on the strength and work hardening behavior of cold drawn hyper-eutectoid steel wires are investigated in this study. The Cr addition was found to be effective for increasing the tensile strength and work hardening rate, k/(2 λ°)1/2, due to the refinement of the initial interlamellar spacing and the increment of the Hall-Petch parameter. While the work hardening rate, k/(2 λ°)1/2, was significantly influenced by the magnitude of the interlamellar spacing, the Hall-Petch parameter, k, was not affected by the interlamellar spacing. Additionally, the refinement of the interlamellar spacing due to the low transformation temperature and the Cr addition caused an increase of the RA in drawn pearlitic steels.

Additive effects of electronic and nuclear energy losses in irradiation-induced amorphization of zircon

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Zarkadoula, Eva; Toulemonde, Marcel; Weber, William J.

2015-12-28

We used a combination of ion cascades and the unified thermal spike model to study the electronic effects from 800 keV Kr and Xe ion irradiation in zircon. We compared the damage production for four cases: (a) due to ion cascades alone, (b) due to ion cascades with the electronic energy loss activated as a friction term, (c) due to the thermal spike from the combined electronic and nuclear energy losses, and (d) due to ion cascades with electronic stopping and the electron-phonon interactions superimposed. We found that taking the electronic energy loss out as a friction term results in reducedmore » damage, while the electronic electron-phonon interactions have additive impact on the final damage created per ion.« less

Additive effects of electronic and nuclear energy loss in irradiation-induced amorphization of zircon

DOE PAGES

Zarkadoula, Eva; Toulemonde, Marcel; Weber, William J.

2015-12-29

We used a combination of ion cascades and the unified thermal spike model to study the electronic effects from 800 keV Kr and Xe ion irradiation in zircon. We compared the damage production for four cases: (a) due to ion cascades alone, (b) due to ion cascades with the electronic energy loss activated as a friction term, (c) due to the thermal spike from the combined electronic and nuclear energy losses, and (d) due to ion cascades with electronic stopping and the electron-phonon interactions superimposed. As a result, we found that taking the electronic energy loss out as a frictionmore » term results in reduced damage, while the electronic electron-phonon interactions have additive impact on the final damage created per ion.« less

Reader characteristics linked to detection of pulmonary nodules on radiographs: ROC vs. JAFROC analyses of performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kohli, Akshay; Robinson, John W.; Ryan, John; McEntee, Mark F.; Brennan, Patrick C.

2011-03-01

The purpose of this study is to explore whether reader characteristics are linked to heightened levels of diagnostic performance in chest radiology using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and jackknife free response ROC (JAFROC) methodologies. A set of 40 postero-anterior chest radiographs was developed, of which 20 were abnormal containing one or more simulated nodules, of varying subtlety. Images were independently reviewed by 12 boardcertified radiologists including six chest specialists. The observer performance was measured in terms of ROC and JAFROC scores. For the ROC analysis, readers were asked to rate their degree of suspicion for the presence of nodules by using a confidence rating scale (1-6). JAFROC analysis required the readers to locate and rate as many suspicious areas as they wished using the same scale and resultant data were used to generate Az and FOM scores for ROC and JAFROC analyses respectively. Using Pearson methods, scores of performance were correlated with 7 reader characteristics recorded using a questionnaire. JAFROC analysis showed that improved reader performance was significantly (p<=0.05) linked with chest specialty (p<0.03), hours per week reading chest radiographs (p<0.03) and chest readings per year (p<0.04). ROC analyses demonstrated only one significant relationship, hours per week reading chest radiographs (p<0.02).The results of this study have shown that radiologist's performance in the detection of pulmonary nodules on radiographs is significantly linked to chest specialty, hours reading per week and number of radiographs read per year. Also, JAFROC is a more powerful predictor of performance as compared to ROC.

Stability analysis and future singularity of the m{sup 2} R □{sup -2} R model of non-local gravity

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dirian, Yves; Mitsou, Ermis, E-mail: yves.dirian@unige.ch, E-mail: ermis.mitsou@unige.ch

2014-10-01

We analyse the classical stability of the model proposed by Maggiore and Mancarella, where gravity is modified by a term ∼ m{sup 2} R □{sup -2} R to produce the late-time acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Our study takes into account all excitations of the metric that can potentially drive an instability. There are some subtleties in identifying these modes, as a non-local field theory contains dynamical fields which yet do not correspond to degrees of freedom. Since some of them are ghost-like, we clarify the impact of such modes on the stability of the solutions of interest that are the flatmore » space-time and cosmological solutions. We then find that flat space-time is unstable under scalar perturbations, but the instability manifests itself only at cosmological scales, i.e. out of the region of validity of this solution. It is therefore the stability of the FLRW solution which is relevant there, in which case the scalar perturbations are known to be well-behaved by numerical studies. By finding the analytic solution for the late-time behaviour of the scale factor, which leads to a big rip singularity, we argue that the linear perturbations are bounded in the future because of the domination of Hubble friction. In particular, this effect damps the scalar ghost perturbations which were responsible for destabilizing Minkowski space-time. Thus, the model remains phenomenologically viable.« less

Real Decision Support for Health Insurance Policy Selection.

PubMed

Stein, Roger M

2016-03-01

We report on an ongoing project to develop data-driven tools to help individuals make better choices about health insurance and to better understand the range of costs to which they are exposed under different health plans. We describe a simulation tool that we developed to evaluate the likely usage and costs for an individual and family under a wide range of health service usage outcomes, but that can be tailored to specific physicians and the needs of the user and to reflect the demographics and other special attributes of the family. The simulator can accommodate, for example, specific known physician visits or planned procedures, while also generating statistically reasonable "unexpected" events like ER visits or catastrophic diagnoses. On the other hand, if a user provides only a small amount of information (e.g., just information about the family members), the simulator makes a number of generic assumptions regarding physician usage, etc., based on the age, gender, and other features of the family. Data to parameterize all of these events is informed by a combination of the information provided by the user and a series of specialized databases that we have compiled based on publicly available government data and commercial data as well as our own analysis of this initially very coarse and rigid data. To demonstrate both the subtlety of choosing a healthcare plan and the degree to which the simulator can aid in such evaluations, we present sample results using real insurance plans and two example policy shoppers with different demographics and healthcare needs.

Energy-time entanglement, elements of reality, and local realism

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jogenfors, Jonathan; Larsson, Jan-Åke

2014-10-01

The Franson interferometer, proposed in 1989 (Franson 1989 Phys. Rev. Lett. 62 2205-08), beautifully shows the counter-intuitive nature of light. The quantum description predicts sinusoidal interference for specific outcomes of the experiment, and these predictions can be verified in experiment. In the spirit of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen it is possible to ask if the quantum-mechanical description (of this setup) can be considered complete. This question will be answered in detail in this paper, by delineating the quite complicated relation between energy-time entanglement experiments and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) elements of reality. The mentioned sinusoidal interference pattern is the same as that giving a violation in the usual Bell experiment. Even so, depending on the precise requirements made on the local realist model, this can imply (a) no violation, (b) smaller violation than usual, or (c) full violation of the appropriate statistical bound. Alternatives include (a) using only the measurement outcomes as EPR elements of reality, (b) using the emission time as EPR element of reality, (c) using path realism, or (d) using a modified setup. This paper discusses the nature of these alternatives and how to choose between them. The subtleties of this discussion needs to be taken into account when designing and setting up experiments intended to test local realism. Furthermore, these considerations are also important for quantum communication, for example in Bell-inequality-based quantum cryptography, especially when aiming for device independence. This article is part of a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical devoted to ‘50 years of Bell’s theorem’.

Lung nodule malignancy prediction using multi-task convolutional neural network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Xiuli; Kao, Yueying; Shen, Wei; Li, Xiang; Xie, Guotong

2017-03-01

In this paper, we investigated the problem of diagnostic lung nodule malignancy prediction using thoracic Computed Tomography (CT) screening. Unlike most existing studies classify the nodules into two types benign and malignancy, we interpreted the nodule malignancy prediction as a regression problem to predict continuous malignancy level. We proposed a joint multi-task learning algorithm using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to capture nodule heterogeneity by extracting discriminative features from alternatingly stacked layers. We trained a CNN regression model to predict the nodule malignancy, and designed a multi-task learning mechanism to simultaneously share knowledge among 9 different nodule characteristics (Subtlety, Calcification, Sphericity, Margin, Lobulation, Spiculation, Texture, Diameter and Malignancy), and improved the final prediction result. Each CNN would generate characteristic-specific feature representations, and then we applied multi-task learning on the features to predict the corresponding likelihood for that characteristic. We evaluated the proposed method on 2620 nodules CT scans from LIDC-IDRI dataset with the 5-fold cross validation strategy. The multitask CNN regression result for regression RMSE and mapped classification ACC were 0.830 and 83.03%, while the results for single task regression RMSE 0.894 and mapped classification ACC 74.9%. Experiments show that the proposed method could predict the lung nodule malignancy likelihood effectively and outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. The learning framework could easily be applied in other anomaly likelihood prediction problem, such as skin cancer and breast cancer. It demonstrated the possibility of our method facilitating the radiologists for nodule staging assessment and individual therapeutic planning.

Reproducibility in Psychological Science: When Do Psychological Phenomena Exist?

PubMed Central

Iso-Ahola, Seppo E.

2017-01-01

Scientific evidence has recently been used to assert that certain psychological phenomena do not exist. Such claims, however, cannot be made because (1) scientific method itself is seriously limited (i.e., it can never prove a negative); (2) non-existence of phenomena would require a complete absence of both logical (theoretical) and empirical support; even if empirical support is weak, logical and theoretical support can be strong; (3) statistical data are only one piece of evidence and cannot be used to reduce psychological phenomena to statistical phenomena; and (4) psychological phenomena vary across time, situations and persons. The human mind is unreproducible from one situation to another. Psychological phenomena are not particles that can decisively be tested and discovered. Therefore, a declaration that a phenomenon is not real is not only theoretically and empirically unjustified but runs counter to the propositional and provisional nature of scientific knowledge. There are only “temporary winners” and no “final truths” in scientific knowledge. Psychology is a science of subtleties in human affect, cognition and behavior. Its phenomena fluctuate with conditions and may sometimes be difficult to detect and reproduce empirically. When strictly applied, reproducibility is an overstated and even questionable concept in psychological science. Furthermore, statistical measures (e.g., effect size) are poor indicators of the theoretical importance and relevance of phenomena (cf. “deliberate practice” vs. “talent” in expert performance), not to mention whether phenomena are real or unreal. To better understand psychological phenomena, their theoretical and empirical properties should be examined via multiple parameters and criteria. Ten such parameters are suggested. PMID:28626435

Digital clock drawing: Differentiating ‘thinking’ versus ‘doing’ in younger and older adults with depression

PubMed Central

Cohen, Jamie; Penney, Dana L.; Davis, Randall; Libon, David J.; Swenson, Rodney A.; Ajilore, Olusola; Kumar, Anand; Lamar, Melissa

2015-01-01

Objective Psychomotor slowing has been documented in depression. The digital Clock Drawing Test (dCDT) provides: i) a novel technique to assess both cognitive and motor aspects of psychomotor speed within the same task and ii) the potential to uncover subtleties of behavior not previously detected with non-digitized modes of data collection. Method Using digitized pen technology in 106 participants grouped by Age (younger/older) and Affect (euthymic/unmedicated depressed), we recorded cognitive and motor output by capturing how the clock is drawn rather than focusing on the final product. We divided time to completion (TTC) for Command and Copy conditions of the dCDT into metrics of percent of drawing (%Ink) versus non-drawing (%Think) time. We also obtained composite z-scores of cognition, including attention/ information processing (AIP), to explore associations of %Ink and %Think times to cognitive and motor performance. Results Despite equivalent TTC, %Ink and %Think Command times (Copy n.s.) were significant (AgeXAffect interaction:p=.03)—younger depressed spent a smaller proportion of time drawing relative to thinking compared to the older depressed group. Command %Think time negatively correlated with AIP in the older depressed group (r=−.46;p=.02). Copy %Think time negatively correlated with AIP in the younger depressed (r=−.47;p=.03) and older euthymic groups (r=−.51;p=.01). Conclusion The dCDT differentiated aspects of psychomotor slowing in depression regardless of age, while dCDT/cognitive associates for younger adults with depression mimicked patterns of older euthymics. PMID:25222513

Structure solution of DNA-binding proteins and complexes with ARCIMBOLDO libraries

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Pröpper, Kevin; Instituto de Biologia Molecular de Barcelona; Meindl, Kathrin

2014-06-01

The structure solution of DNA-binding protein structures and complexes based on the combination of location of DNA-binding protein motif fragments with density modification in a multi-solution frame is described. Protein–DNA interactions play a major role in all aspects of genetic activity within an organism, such as transcription, packaging, rearrangement, replication and repair. The molecular detail of protein–DNA interactions can be best visualized through crystallography, and structures emphasizing insight into the principles of binding and base-sequence recognition are essential to understanding the subtleties of the underlying mechanisms. An increasing number of high-quality DNA-binding protein structure determinations have been witnessed despite themore » fact that the crystallographic particularities of nucleic acids tend to pose specific challenges to methods primarily developed for proteins. Crystallographic structure solution of protein–DNA complexes therefore remains a challenging area that is in need of optimized experimental and computational methods. The potential of the structure-solution program ARCIMBOLDO for the solution of protein–DNA complexes has therefore been assessed. The method is based on the combination of locating small, very accurate fragments using the program Phaser and density modification with the program SHELXE. Whereas for typical proteins main-chain α-helices provide the ideal, almost ubiquitous, small fragments to start searches, in the case of DNA complexes the binding motifs and DNA double helix constitute suitable search fragments. The aim of this work is to provide an effective library of search fragments as well as to determine the optimal ARCIMBOLDO strategy for the solution of this class of structures.« less

Finite element approximation of the fields of bulk and interfacial line defects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Chiqun; Acharya, Amit; Puri, Saurabh

2018-05-01

A generalized disclination (g.disclination) theory (Acharya and Fressengeas, 2015) has been recently introduced that goes beyond treating standard translational and rotational Volterra defects in a continuously distributed defects approach; it is capable of treating the kinematics and dynamics of terminating lines of elastic strain and rotation discontinuities. In this work, a numerical method is developed to solve for the stress and distortion fields of g.disclination systems. Problems of small and finite deformation theory are considered. The fields of a single disclination, a single dislocation treated as a disclination dipole, a tilt grain boundary, a misfitting grain boundary with disconnections, a through twin boundary, a terminating twin boundary, a through grain boundary, a star disclination/penta-twin, a disclination loop (with twist and wedge segments), and a plate, a lenticular, and a needle inclusion are approximated. It is demonstrated that while the far-field topological identity of a dislocation of appropriate strength and a disclination-dipole plus a slip dislocation comprising a disconnection are the same, the latter microstructure is energetically favorable. This underscores the complementary importance of all of topology, geometry, and energetics in understanding defect mechanics. It is established that finite element approximations of fields of interfacial and bulk line defects can be achieved in a systematic and routine manner, thus contributing to the study of intricate defect microstructures in the scientific understanding and predictive design of materials. Our work also represents one systematic way of studying the interaction of (g.)disclinations and dislocations as topological defects, a subject of considerable subtlety and conceptual importance (Aharoni et al., 2017; Mermin, 1979).

Monitoring pressure profiles across an airfoil with a fiber Bragg grating sensor array

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Papageorgiou, Anthony W.; Parkinson, Luke A.; Karas, Andrew R.; Hansen, Kristy L.; Arkwright, John W.

2018-02-01

Fluid flow over an airfoil section creates a pressure difference across the upper and lower surfaces, thus generating lift. Successful wing design is a combination of engineering design and experience in the field, with subtleties in design and manufacture having significant impact on the amount of lift produced. Current methods of airfoil optimization and validation typically involve computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and extensive wind tunnel testing with pressure sensors embedded into the airfoil to measure the pressure over the wing. Monitoring pressure along an airfoil in a wind tunnel is typically achieved using surface pressure taps that consist of hollow tubes running from the surface of the airfoil to individual pressure sensors external to the tunnel. These pressure taps are complex to configure and not ideal for in-flight testing. Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) pressure sensing arrays provide a highly viable option for both wind tunnel and inflight pressure measurement. We present a fiber optic sensor array that can detect positive and negative pressure suitable for validating CFD models of airfoil profile sections. The sensing array presented here consists of 6 independent sensing elements, each capable of a pressure resolution of less than 10 Pa over the range of 70 kPa to 120 kPa. The device has been tested with the sensor array attached to a 90mm chord length airfoil section subjected to low velocity flow. Results show that the arrays are capable of accurately detecting variations of the pressure profile along the airfoil as the angle of attack is varied from zero to the point at which stall occurs.

High Pressure Oxygen A-Band Spectra

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Drouin, Brian; Sung, Keeyoon; Yu, Shanshan; Lunny, Elizabeth M.; Bui, Thinh Quoc; Okumura, Mitchio; Rupasinghe, Priyanka; Bray, Caitlin; Long, David A.; Hodges, Joseph; Robichaud, David; Benner, D. Chris; Devi, V. Malathy; Hoo, Jiajun

2015-06-01

Composition measurements from remote sensing platforms require knowledge of air mass to better than the desired precision of the composition. Oxygen spectra allow determination of air mass since the mixing ratio of oxygen is fixed. The OCO-2 mission is currently retrieving carbon dioxide concentration using the oxygen A-band for air mass normalization. The 0.25% accuracy desired for the carbon dioxide concentration has pushed the state-of-the-art for oxygen spectroscopy. To produce atmospheric pressure A-band cross-sections with this accuracy requires a sophisticated line-shape model (Galatry or Speed-Dependent) with line mixing (LM) and collision induced absorption (CIA). Models of each of these phenomena exist, but an integrated self-consistent model must be developed to ensure accuracy. This presentation will describe the ongoing effort to parameterize these phenomena on a representative data set created from complementary experimental techniques. The techniques include Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS), photo-acoustic spectroscopy (PAS) and cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS). CRDS data allow long-pathlength measurements with absolute intensities, providing lineshape information as well as LM and CIA, however the subtleties of the lineshape are diminished in the saturated line-centers. Conversely, the short paths and large dynamic range of the PAS data allow the full lineshape to be discerned, but with an arbitrary intensity axis. Finally, the FTS data provides intermediate paths and consistency across a broad pressure range. These spectra are all modeled with the Labfit software using first the spectral line database HITRAN, and then model values are adjusted and fitted for better agreement with the data.

Plasma Instabilities in the Context of Current Helium Sedimentation Models: Dynamical Implications for the ICM in Galaxy Clusters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berlok, Thomas; Pessah, Martin E.

2015-11-01

Understanding whether Helium can sediment to the core of galaxy clusters is important for a number of problems in cosmology and astrophysics. All current models addressing this question are one-dimensional and do not account for the fact that magnetic fields can effectively channel ions and electrons, leading to anisotropic transport of momentum, heat, and particle diffusion in the weakly collisional intracluster medium (ICM). This anisotropy can lead to a wide variety of instabilities, which could be relevant for understanding the dynamics of heterogeneous media. In this paper, we consider the radial temperature and composition profiles as obtained from a state-of-the-art Helium sedimentation model and analyze its stability properties. We find that the associated radial profiles are unstable to different kinds of instabilities depending on the magnetic field orientation at all radii. The fastest growing modes are usually related to generalizations of the magnetothermal instability (MTI) and the heat-flux-driven buoyancy instability which operate in heterogeneous media. We find that the effect of sedimentation is to increase (decrease) the predicted growth rates in the inner (outer) cluster region. The unstable modes grow quickly compared to the sedimentation timescale. This suggests that the composition gradients as inferred from sedimentation models, which do not fully account for the anisotropic character of the weakly collisional environment, might not be very robust. Our results emphasize the subtleties involved in understanding the gas dynamics of the ICM and argue for the need of a comprehensive approach to address the issue of Helium sedimentation beyond current models.

PLASMA INSTABILITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF CURRENT HELIUM SEDIMENTATION MODELS: DYNAMICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ICM IN GALAXY CLUSTERS

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Berlok, Thomas; Pessah, Martin E., E-mail: berlok@nbi.dk, E-mail: mpessah@nbi.dk

2015-11-01

Understanding whether Helium can sediment to the core of galaxy clusters is important for a number of problems in cosmology and astrophysics. All current models addressing this question are one-dimensional and do not account for the fact that magnetic fields can effectively channel ions and electrons, leading to anisotropic transport of momentum, heat, and particle diffusion in the weakly collisional intracluster medium (ICM). This anisotropy can lead to a wide variety of instabilities, which could be relevant for understanding the dynamics of heterogeneous media. In this paper, we consider the radial temperature and composition profiles as obtained from a state-of-the-artmore » Helium sedimentation model and analyze its stability properties. We find that the associated radial profiles are unstable to different kinds of instabilities depending on the magnetic field orientation at all radii. The fastest growing modes are usually related to generalizations of the magnetothermal instability (MTI) and the heat-flux-driven buoyancy instability which operate in heterogeneous media. We find that the effect of sedimentation is to increase (decrease) the predicted growth rates in the inner (outer) cluster region. The unstable modes grow quickly compared to the sedimentation timescale. This suggests that the composition gradients as inferred from sedimentation models, which do not fully account for the anisotropic character of the weakly collisional environment, might not be very robust. Our results emphasize the subtleties involved in understanding the gas dynamics of the ICM and argue for the need of a comprehensive approach to address the issue of Helium sedimentation beyond current models.« less

quantum mechanics

PubMed Central

Bender, Carl M; DeKieviet, Maarten; Klevansky, S. P.

2013-01-01

-symmetric quantum mechanics (PTQM) has become a hot area of research and investigation. Since its beginnings in 1998, there have been over 1000 published papers and more than 15 international conferences entirely devoted to this research topic. Originally, PTQM was studied at a highly mathematical level and the techniques of complex variables, asymptotics, differential equations and perturbation theory were used to understand the subtleties associated with the analytic continuation of eigenvalue problems. However, as experiments on -symmetric physical systems have been performed, a simple and beautiful physical picture has emerged, and a -symmetric system can be understood as one that has a balanced loss and gain. Furthermore, the phase transition can now be understood intuitively without resorting to sophisticated mathe- matics. Research on PTQM is following two different paths: at a fundamental level, physicists are attempting to understand the underlying mathematical structure of these theories with the long-range objective of applying the techniques of PTQM to understanding some of the outstanding problems in physics today, such as the nature of the Higgs particle, the properties of dark matter, the matter–antimatter asymmetry in the universe, neutrino oscillations and the cosmological constant; at an applied level, new kinds of -synthetic materials are being developed, and the phase transition is being observed in many physical contexts, such as lasers, optical wave guides, microwave cavities, superconducting wires and electronic circuits. The purpose of this Theme Issue is to acquaint the reader with the latest developments in PTQM. The articles in this volume are written in the style of mini-reviews and address diverse areas of the emerging and exciting new area of -symmetric quantum mechanics. PMID:23509390

Ambient lighting: setting international standards for the viewing of softcopy chest images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McEntee, Mark F.; Ryan, John; Evanoff, Micheal G.; Keeling, Aoife; Chakraborty, Dev; Manning, David; Brennan, Patrick C.

2007-03-01

Clinical radiological judgments are increasingly being made on softcopy LCD monitors. These monitors are found throughout the hospital environment in radiological reading rooms, outpatient clinics and wards. This means that ambient lighting where clinical judgments from images are made can vary widely. Inappropriate ambient lighting has several deleterious effects: monitor reflections reduce contrast; veiling glare adds brightness; dynamic range and detectability of low contrast objects is limited. Radiological images displayed on LCDs are more sensitive to the impact of inappropriate ambient lighting and with these devices problems described above are often more evident. The current work aims to provide data on optimum ambient lighting, based on lesions within chest images. The data provided may be used for the establishment of workable ambient lighting standards. Ambient lighting at 30cms from the monitor was set at 480 Lux (office lighting) 100 Lux (WHO recommendations), 40 Lux and <10 Lux. All monitors were calibrated to DICOM part 14 GSDF. Sixty radiologists were presented with 30 chest images, 15 images having simulated nodular lesions of varying subtlety and size. Lesions were positioned in accordance with typical clinical presentation and were validated radiologically. Each image was presented for 30 seconds and viewers were asked to identify and score any visualized lesion from 1-4 to indicate confidence level of detection. At the end of the session, sensitivity and specificity were calculated. Analysis of the data suggests that visualization of chest lesions is affected by inappropriate lighting with chest radiologists demonstrating greater ambient lighting dependency. JAFROC analyses are currently being performed.

Coding of Class I and II aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases

PubMed Central

Carter, Charles W.

2018-01-01

SUMMARY The aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases and their cognate transfer RNAs translate the universal genetic code. The twenty canonical amino acids are sufficiently diverse to create a selective advantage for dividing amino acid activation between two distinct, apparently unrelated superfamilies of synthetases, Class I amino acids being generally larger and less polar, Class II amino acids smaller and more polar. Biochemical, bioinformatic, and protein engineering experiments support the hypothesis that the two Classes descended from opposite strands of the same ancestral gene. Parallel experimental deconstructions of Class I and II synthetases reveal parallel losses in catalytic proficiency at two novel modular levels—protozymes and Urzymes—associated with the evolution of catalytic activity. Bi-directional coding supports an important unification of the proteome; affords a genetic relatedness metric—middle base-pairing frequencies in sense/antisense alignments—that probes more deeply into the evolutionary history of translation than do single multiple sequence alignments; and has facilitated the analysis of hitherto unknown coding relationships in tRNA sequences. Reconstruction of native synthetases by modular thermodynamic cycles facilitated by domain engineering emphasizes the subtlety associated with achieving high specificity, shedding new light on allosteric relationships in contemporary synthetases. Synthetase Urzyme structural biology suggests that they are catalytically active molten globules, broadening the potential manifold of polypeptide catalysts accessible to primitive genetic coding and motivating revisions of the origins of catalysis. Finally, bi-directional genetic coding of some of the oldest genes in the proteome places major limitations on the likelihood that any RNA World preceded the origins of coded proteins. PMID:28828732

Larger fig wasps are more careful about which figs to enter--with good reason.

PubMed

Liu, Cong; Yang, Da-Rong; Compton, Stephen G; Peng, Yan-Qiong

2013-01-01

Floral longevity reflects a balance between gains in pollinator visitation and the costs of flower maintenance. Because rewards to pollinators change over time, older flowers may be less attractive, reducing the value of extended longevity. Un-pollinated figs, the inflorescences of Ficus species, can remain receptive for long periods, but figs that are older when entered by their host-specific fig wasp pollinators produce fewer seeds and fig wasp offspring. Our field experiments with Ficushispida, a dioecious fig tree, examined how the length of time that receptive figs have remained un-pollinated influences the behaviour and reproductive success of its short-lived fig wasp pollinator, Ceratosolensolmsi marchali. The results were consistent in three different seasons, and on male and female trees, although receptivity was greatly extended during colder months. Pollinators took longer to find the ostioles of older figs, and longer to penetrate them. They also became increasingly unwilling to enter figs as they aged, and increasing numbers of the wasps became trapped in the ostiolar bracts. Larger individuals were particularly unwilling to enter older figs, resulting in older figs being pollinated by smaller wasps. On female trees, where figs produce only seeds, seed production declined rapidly with fig age. On male trees, the numbers and size of fig wasp offspring declined, and a higher proportion were male. Older male figs are harder to enter, especially for larger individuals, and offer poorer quality oviposition opportunities. This study opens an interesting new perspective on the coevolution of figs and their pollinators, especially factors influencing pollinator body size and emphasises the subtleties of interactions between mutualists.

Working With the Wave Equation in Aeroacoustics: The Pleasures of Generalized Functions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Farassat, F.; Brentner, Kenneth S.; Dunn, mark H.

2007-01-01

The theme of this paper is the applications of generalized function (GF) theory to the wave equation in aeroacoustics. We start with a tutorial on GFs with particular emphasis on viewing functions as continuous linear functionals. We next define operations on GFs. The operation of interest to us in this paper is generalized differentiation. We give many applications of generalized differentiation, particularly for the wave equation. We discuss the use of GFs in finding Green s function and some subtleties that only GF theory can clarify without ambiguities. We show how the knowledge of the Green s function of an operator L in a given domain D can allow us to solve a whole range of problems with operator L for domains situated within D by the imbedding method. We will show how we can use the imbedding method to find the Kirchhoff formulas for stationary and moving surfaces with ease and elegance without the use of the four-dimensional Green s theorem, which is commonly done. Other subjects covered are why the derivatives in conservation laws should be viewed as generalized derivatives and what are the consequences of doing this. In particular we show how we can imbed a problem in a larger domain for the identical differential equation for which the Green s function is known. The primary purpose of this paper is to convince the readers that GF theory is absolutely essential in aeroacoustics because of its powerful operational properties. Furthermore, learning the subject and using it can be fun.

Source Distribution Method for Unsteady One-Dimensional Flows With Small Mass, Momentum, and Heat Addition and Small Area Variation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mirels, Harold

1959-01-01

A source distribution method is presented for obtaining flow perturbations due to small unsteady area variations, mass, momentum, and heat additions in a basic uniform (or piecewise uniform) one-dimensional flow. First, the perturbations due to an elemental area variation, mass, momentum, and heat addition are found. The general solution is then represented by a spatial and temporal distribution of these elemental (source) solutions. Emphasis is placed on discussing the physical nature of the flow phenomena. The method is illustrated by several examples. These include the determination of perturbations in basic flows consisting of (1) a shock propagating through a nonuniform tube, (2) a constant-velocity piston driving a shock, (3) ideal shock-tube flows, and (4) deflagrations initiated at a closed end. The method is particularly applicable for finding the perturbations due to relatively thin wall boundary layers.

Effect of Co Addition on the Microstructure, Martensitic Transformation and Shape Memory Behavior of Fe-Mn-Si Alloys

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maji, Bikas C.; Krishnan, Madangopal; Sujata, M.; Gouthama; Ray, Ranjit K.

2013-01-01

The effect of Co addition has been studied in Fe-30Mn-6Si- xCo ( x = 0 to 9 wt pct) shape memory alloys in terms of their microstructure, martensitic transformation and shape recovery. Microstructural investigations reveal that in Fe-Mn-Si-Co alloys, the microstructure remains single-phase austenite (γ) up to 5 pct Co and beyond that becomes two-phase comprising γ and off-stoichiometric (Fe,Co)5Mn3Si2 intermetallic π-phases. The forward γ-ɛ martensite transformation start temperature ( M S) decreases with the addition of Co up to 5 pct, and alloys containing more than 5 pct Co, show slightly higher M S possibly on account of two-phase microstructure. Unlike M S, the ɛ-γ reverse transformation start temperature ( A S) has been found to remain almost unaltered by Co addition. In general, addition of Co to Fe-Mn-Si alloys deteriorates shape recovery due to decreasing resistance to plastic yielding concomitant with the formation of stress induced ɛ martensite. However, there is an improvement in shape recovery beyond 5 pct Co addition, possibly due to the strengthening effect arising from the presence of (Fe,Co)5Mn3Si2 precipitates within the two-phase microstructure and due to higher amount of stress induced ɛ martensite.

Potential hazards due to food additives in oral hygiene products.

PubMed

Tuncer Budanur, Damla; Yas, Murat Cengizhan; Sepet, Elif

2016-01-01

Food additives used to preserve flavor or to enhance the taste and appearance of foods are also available in oral hygiene products. The aim of this review is to provide information concerning food additives in oral hygiene products and their adverse effects. A great many of food additives in oral hygiene products are potential allergens and they may lead to allergic reactions such as urticaria, contact dermatitis, rhinitis, and angioedema. Dental practitioners, as well as health care providers, must be aware of the possibility of allergic reactions due to food additives in oral hygiene products. Proper dosage levels, delivery vehicles, frequency, potential benefits, and adverse effects of oral health products should be explained completely to the patients. There is a necessity to raise the awareness among dental professionals on this subject and to develop a data gathering system for possible adverse reactions.

Additional results on space environmental effects on polymer matrix composites: Experiment A0180

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tennyson, R. C.

1992-01-01

Additional experimental results on the atomic oxygen erosion of boron, Kevlar, and graphite fiber reinforced epoxy matrix composites are presented. Damage of composite laminates due to micrometeoroid/debris impacts is also examined with particular emphasis on the relationship between damage area and actual hole size due to particle penetration. Special attention is given to one micrometeoroid impact on an aluminum base plate which resulted in ejecta visible on an adjoining vertical flange structure.

45 CFR 3.2 - Applicability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... § 3.42(f) Smoking. (c) All regulations in this part are in addition to the provisions in the United.... Drivers to exercise due care Transportation, Sec. 21-504 Drivers shall exercise due care to avoid...

Effect of molybdenum additions on the microstructures and corrosion behaviours of 316L stainless steel-based alloys

DOE PAGES

Rahman, T.; Ebert, W. L.; Indacochea, J. E.

2018-02-28

Alloys were made by alloying 5, 10, 15, 17.5, and 20 wt % Mo with Type 316L stainless steel. Sigma phases containing 21–29 wt % Mo formed along the austenite grain boundaries with the addition of 5 wt % Mo and increased with additions up to 15 wt % Mo, but they decreased with further additions. Laves phases containing 33–40 wt % Mo co-precipitated at additions of 10 wt % Mo which increased with further Mo increases. The corrosion resistance, assessed by potentiodynamic polarisation in a 10 mM NaCl solution adjusted to pH 4, increased relative to Type 316L formore » alloys made with 5 and 10 wt % added Mo, but decreased with further additions due to preferential corrosion of the Laves phase. The alloy made with 10 wt % added Mo had the highest corrosion resistance due primarily to the high Mo content of the austenite.« less

Effect of molybdenum additions on the microstructures and corrosion behaviours of 316L stainless steel-based alloys

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Rahman, T.; Ebert, W. L.; Indacochea, J. E.

Alloys were made by alloying 5, 10, 15, 17.5, and 20 wt % Mo with Type 316L stainless steel. Sigma phases containing 21–29 wt % Mo formed along the austenite grain boundaries with the addition of 5 wt % Mo and increased with additions up to 15 wt % Mo, but they decreased with further additions. Laves phases containing 33–40 wt % Mo co-precipitated at additions of 10 wt % Mo which increased with further Mo increases. The corrosion resistance, assessed by potentiodynamic polarisation in a 10 mM NaCl solution adjusted to pH 4, increased relative to Type 316L formore » alloys made with 5 and 10 wt % added Mo, but decreased with further additions due to preferential corrosion of the Laves phase. The alloy made with 10 wt % added Mo had the highest corrosion resistance due primarily to the high Mo content of the austenite.« less

Addition Table of Colours: Additive and Subtractive Mixtures Described Using a Single Reasoning Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mota, A. R.; Lopes dos Santos, J. M. B.

2014-01-01

Students' misconceptions concerning colour phenomena and the apparent complexity of the underlying concepts--due to the different domains of knowledge involved--make its teaching very difficult. We have developed and tested a teaching device, the addition table of colours (ATC), that encompasses additive and subtractive mixtures in a single…

Stabilization of erodible slopes with geofibers and nontraditional liquid additives.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2013-05-01

Instability of erodible slopes due to extreme climate events and of permafrost slopes due degradation and thawing is a significant : engineering problem for northern transportation infrastructure. Engineers continually look for mitigation alternative...

The evolution of diversity in ancient ecosystems: a review

PubMed Central

Morris, S. Conway

1998-01-01

On a perfect planet, such as might be acceptable to a physicist, one might predict that from its origin the diversity of life would grow exponentially until the carrying capacity, however defined, was reached. The fossil record of the Earth, however, tells a very different story. One of the most striking aspects of this record is the apparent evolutionary longueur, marked by the Precambrian record of prokaryotes and primitive eukaryotes, although our estimates of microbial diversity may be seriously incomplete. Subsequently there were various dramatic increases in diversity, including the Cambrian 'explosion' and the radiation of Palaeozoic-style faunas in the Ordovician. The causes of these events are far from resolved. It has also long been appreciated that the history of diversity has been punctuated by important extinctions. The subtleties and nuances of extinction as well as the survival of particular clades have to date, however, received rather too little attention, and there is still a tendency towards blanket assertions rather than a dissection of these extraordinary events. In addition, some but perhaps not all mass extinctions are characterized by long lag-times of recovery, which may reflect the slowing waning of extrinsic forcing factors or alternatively the incoherence associated with biological reassembly of stable ecosystems. The intervening periods between the identified mass extinctions may be less stable and benign than popularly thought, and in particular the frequency of extraterrestrial impacts leads to predictions of recurrent disturbance on timescales significantly shorter than the intervals separating the largest extinction events. Even at times of quietude it is far from clear whether biological communities enjoy stability and interlocked stasis or are dynamically reconstituted at regular intervals. Finally, can we yet rely on the present depictions of the rise and falls in the levels of ancient diversity? Existing data is almost entirely based on Linnean taxa, and the application of phylogenetic systematics to this problem is still in its infancy. Not only that, but even more intriguingly the pronounced divergence in estimates of origination times of groups as diverse as angiosperms, diatoms and mammals in terms of the fossil record as against molecular data point to the possibilities of protracted intervals of geological time with a cryptic diversity. If this is correct, and there are alternative explanations, then some of the mystery of adaptive radiations may be dispelled, in as much as the assembly of key features in the stem groups could be placed in a gradualistic framework of local adaptive response punctuated by intervals of opportunity.

29 CFR 1620.33 - Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful violations.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 29 Labor 4 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful... OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.33 Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful... overtime compensation under the FLSA. This is true both of the additional wages required by the Act to be...

29 CFR 1620.33 - Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful violations.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 29 Labor 4 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful... OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.33 Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful... overtime compensation under the FLSA. This is true both of the additional wages required by the Act to be...

29 CFR 1620.33 - Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful violations.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 29 Labor 4 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful... OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.33 Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful... overtime compensation under the FLSA. This is true both of the additional wages required by the Act to be...

29 CFR 1620.33 - Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful violations.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 29 Labor 4 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful... OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION THE EQUAL PAY ACT § 1620.33 Recovery of wages due; injunctions; penalties for willful... overtime compensation under the FLSA. This is true both of the additional wages required by the Act to be...

Insight into self-discharge of layered lithium-rich oxide cathode in carbonate-based electrolytes with and without additive

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Jianhui; Xing, Lidan; Zhang, Liping; Yu, Le; Fan, Weizhen; Xu, Mengqing; Li, Weishan

2016-08-01

Self-discharge behavior of layered lithium-rich oxide as cathode of lithium ion battery in a carbonated-based electrolyte is understood, and a simple boron-containing compound, trimethyl borate (TMB), is used as an electrolyte additive to suppress this self-discharge. It is found that layered lithium-rich oxide charged under 4.8 V in additive-free electrolyte suffers severe self-discharge and TMB is an effective electrolyte additive for self-discharge suppression. Physical characterizations from XRD, SEM, TEM, XPS and ICP-MS demonstrate that the crystal structure of the layered lithium-rich oxide collapses due to the chemical interaction between the charged oxide and electrolyte. When TMB is applied, the structural integrity of the oxide is maintained due to the protective cathode film generated from the preferential oxidation of TMB.

Evaluation of Fe-containing Li2CuO2 on CO2 capture performed at different physicochemical conditions.

PubMed

Yañez-Aulestia, Ana; Ovalle-Encinia, Oscar; Pfeiffer, Heriberto

2018-06-05

Li 2 CuO 2 and different iron-containing Li 2 CuO 2 samples were synthesized by solid state reaction. On iron-containing samples, atomic sites of copper are substituted by iron ions in the lattice (XRD and Rietveld analyses). Iron addition induces copper release from Li 2 CuO 2 , which produce cationic vacancies and CuO, due to copper (Cu 2+ ) and iron (Fe 3+ ) valence differences. Two different physicochemical conditions were used for analyzing CO 2 capture on these samples; (i) high temperature and (ii) low temperature in presence of water vapor. At high temperatures, iron addition increased CO 2 chemisorption, due to structural and chemical variations on Li 2 CuO 2 . Kinetic analysis performed by first order reaction and Eyring models evidenced that iron addition on Li 2 CuO 2 induced a faster CO 2 chemisorption but a higher thermal dependence. Conversely, CO 2 chemisorption at low temperature in water vapor presence practically did not vary by iron addition, although hydration and hydroxylation processes were enhanced. Moreover, under these physicochemical conditions the whole sorption process became slower on iron-containing samples, due to metal oxides presence.

Landfill leachate sludge use as soil additive prior and after electrocoagulation treatment: A cytological assessment using CHO-k1 cells.

PubMed

Morozesk, M; Bonomo, M M; Rocha, L D; Duarte, I D; Zanezi, E R L; Jesus, H C; Fernandes, M N; Matsumoto, S T

2016-09-01

Electrocoagulation has recently attracted attention as a potential technique for treating toxic effluents due to its versatility and environmental compatibility, generating a residue chemically suitable to be used as a soil additive. In the present study, landfill leachate sludge hazardous effects were investigated prior and after electrocoagulation process using in vitro assays with the mammalian cells CHO-k1. An integrated strategy for risk assessment was used to correctly estimate the possible adverse landfill leachate sludge effects on human health and ecosystem. Electrocoagulation process proved to be an effective treatment due to possibility to improve effluent adverse characteristics and produce sludge with potential to be used as soil additive. Despite low cytoxicity, the residue presented genotoxic and mutagenic effects, indicating a capacity to induce genetic damages, probably due to induction of polyploidization process in cells. The observed effects demand an improvement of waste management methods for reduce negative risks of landfill leachate sludge application. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

77 FR 43941 - Expansion of Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Regulatory Changes, and Sanctuary Name Change

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-07-26

... Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is adding five additional discrete geographical areas to the sanctuary and... additional discrete units: Fagalua/Fogama'a (described as Larsen Bay in the proposed rule), Swains Island, Ta... Marine Sanctuary. This change was necessary due to the addition of five discrete units, which are...

Amplification of global warming through pH dependence of DMS production simulated with a fully coupled Earth system model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schwinger, Jörg; Tjiputra, Jerry; Goris, Nadine; Six, Katharina D.; Kirkevåg, Alf; Seland, Øyvind; Heinze, Christoph; Ilyina, Tatiana

2017-08-01

We estimate the additional transient surface warming ΔTs caused by a potential reduction of marine dimethyl sulfide (DMS) production due to ocean acidification under the high-emission scenario RCP8.5 until the year 2200. Since we use a fully coupled Earth system model, our results include a range of feedbacks, such as the response of marine DMS production to the additional changes in temperature and sea ice cover. Our results are broadly consistent with the findings of a previous study that employed an offline model set-up. Assuming a medium (strong) sensitivity of DMS production to pH, we find an additional transient global warming of 0.30 K (0.47 K) towards the end of the 22nd century when DMS emissions are reduced by 7.3 Tg S yr-1 or 31 % (11.5 Tg S yr-1 or 48 %). The main mechanism behind the additional warming is a reduction of cloud albedo, but a change in shortwave radiative fluxes under clear-sky conditions due to reduced sulfate aerosol load also contributes significantly. We find an approximately linear relationship between reduction of DMS emissions and changes in top of the atmosphere radiative fluxes as well as changes in surface temperature for the range of DMS emissions considered here. For example, global average Ts changes by -0. 041 K per 1 Tg S yr-1 change in sea-air DMS fluxes. The additional warming in our model has a pronounced asymmetry between northern and southern high latitudes. It is largest over the Antarctic continent, where the additional temperature increase of 0.56 K (0.89 K) is almost twice the global average. We find that feedbacks are small on the global scale due to opposing regional contributions. The most pronounced feedback is found for the Southern Ocean, where we estimate that the additional climate change enhances sea-air DMS fluxes by about 9 % (15 %), which counteracts the reduction due to ocean acidification.

Convex decomposition techniques applied to handlebodies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ortiz, Marcos A.

Contact structures on 3-manifolds are 2-plane fields satisfying a set of conditions. The study of contact structures can be traced back for over two-hundred years, and has been of interest to mathematicians such as Hamilton, Jacobi, Cartan, and Darboux. In the late 1900's, the study of these structures gained momentum as the work of Eliashberg and Bennequin described subtleties in these structures that could be used to find new invariants. In particular, it was discovered that contact structures fell into two classes: tight and overtwisted. While overtwisted contact structures are relatively well understood, tight contact structures remain an area of active research. One area of active study, in particular, is the classification of tight contact structures on 3-manifolds. This began with Eliashberg, who showed that the standard contact structure in real three-dimensional space is unique, and it has been expanded on since. Some major advancements and new techniques were introduced by Kanda, Honda, Etnyre, Kazez, Matic, and others. Convex decomposition theory was one product of these explorations. This technique involves cutting a manifold along convex surfaces (i.e. surfaces arranged in a particular way in relation to the contact structure) and investigating a particular set on these cutting surfaces to say something about the original contact structure. In the cases where the cutting surfaces are fairly nice, in some sense, Honda established a correspondence between information on the cutting surfaces and the tight contact structures supported by the original manifold. In this thesis, convex surface theory is applied to the case of handlebodies with a restricted class of dividing sets. For some cases, classification is achieved, and for others, some interesting patterns arise and are investigated.

Action and familiarity effects on self and other expert musicians’ Laban effort-shape analyses of expressive bodily behaviors in instrumental music performance: a case study approach

PubMed Central

Broughton, Mary C.; Davidson, Jane W.

2014-01-01

Self-reflective performance review and expert evaluation are features of Western music performance practice. While music is usually the focus, visual information provided by performing musicians’ expressive bodily behaviors communicates expressiveness to musically trained and untrained observers. Yet, within a seemingly homogenous group, such as one of musically trained individuals, diversity of experience exists. Individual differences potentially affect perception of the subtleties of expressive performance, and performers’ effective communication of their expressive intentions. This study aimed to compare self- and other expert musicians’ perception of expressive bodily behaviors observed in marimba performance. We hypothesized that analyses of expressive bodily behaviors differ between expert musicians according to their specialist motor expertise and familiarity with the music. Two professional percussionists and experienced marimba players, and one professional classical singer took part in the study. Participants independently conducted Laban effort-shape analysis – proposing that intentions manifest in bodily activity are understood through shared embodied processes – of a marimbists’ expressive bodily behaviors in an audio-visual performance recording. For one percussionist, this was a self-reflective analysis. The work was unfamiliar to the other percussionist and singer. Perception of the performer’s expressive bodily behaviors appeared to differ according to participants’ individual instrumental or vocal motor expertise, and familiarity with the music. Furthermore, individual type of motor experience appeared to direct participants’ attention in approaching the analyses. Findings support forward and inverse perception–action models, and embodied cognitive theory. Implications offer scientific rigor and artistic interest for how performance practitioners can reflectively analyze performance to improve expressive communication. PMID:25400601

Calibration and validation of a spar-type floating offshore wind turbine model using the FAST dynamic simulation tool

DOE PAGES

Browning, J. R.; Jonkman, J.; Robertson, A.; ...

2014-12-16

In this study, high-quality computer simulations are required when designing floating wind turbines because of the complex dynamic responses that are inherent with a high number of degrees of freedom and variable metocean conditions. In 2007, the FAST wind turbine simulation tool, developed and maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), was expanded to include capabilities that are suitable for modeling floating offshore wind turbines. In an effort to validate FAST and other offshore wind energy modeling tools, DOE funded the DeepCwind project that tested three prototype floating wind turbines at 1/50 th scalemore » in a wave basin, including a semisubmersible, a tension-leg platform, and a spar buoy. This paper describes the use of the results of the spar wave basin tests to calibrate and validate the FAST offshore floating simulation tool, and presents some initial results of simulated dynamic responses of the spar to several combinations of wind and sea states. Wave basin tests with the spar attached to a scale model of the NREL 5-megawatt reference wind turbine were performed at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands under the DeepCwind project. This project included free-decay tests, tests with steady or turbulent wind and still water (both periodic and irregular waves with no wind), and combined wind/wave tests. The resulting data from the 1/50th model was scaled using Froude scaling to full size and used to calibrate and validate a full-size simulated model in FAST. Results of the model calibration and validation include successes, subtleties, and limitations of both wave basin testing and FAST modeling capabilities.« less

The Measurement of Gravitomagnetism: A Challenging Enterprise

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Iorio, Lorenzo

2007-11-01

This book is intended to give an updated overview on the state-of-the art of the theoretical and experimental efforts aimed to detect the elusive Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth. The reader, after a robust introduction to the historical (Chapter 2) and theoretical (Chapters 3-5) aspects of the subject, will get acquainted with the subtleties required to design suitable observables which are able to sufficiently enhance the signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, he/she should be able to follow autonomously the exciting developments which, hopefully, will take place in the near future if and when reliable few percent tests of this prediction of general relativity should become available. In an Earth-space based experiment with artificial satellites a good compromise between the need of reducing the impact of the systematic errors of gravitational origin and of non-gravitational origin must be obtained; this is not an easy task because such requirements are often in conflict one with each other. Consequently, a great attention is paid to elucidate many classical perturbing effects which, if not carefully modelled and accounted for in the data analysis, may alias the recovery of the gravitomagnetic signature. Indeed, we are dealing with a fundamental test of general relativity which must be honest, robust and based on solid error analysis. A critical and detailed discussion of the latest test with the LAGEOS satellites is included. The book will also be useful for better understanding the interplay among various geodetic, geophysical, general relativistic, astronomical and matter-wave interferometric effects which occurs in the weak-field and slow-motion approximation and which will become increasingly important in the near future thanks to the improvements in the accuracy of the orbital reconstruction process.

Applications and issues of GIS as tool for civil engineering modeling

USGS Publications Warehouse

Miles, S.B.; Ho, C.L.

1999-01-01

A tool that has proliferated within civil engineering in recent years is geographic information systems (GIS). The goal of a tool is to supplement ability and knowledge that already exists, not to serve as a replacement for that which is lacking. To secure the benefits and avoid misuse of a burgeoning tool, engineers must understand the limitations, alternatives, and context of the tool. The common benefits of using GIS as a supplement to engineering modeling are summarized. Several brief case studies of GIS modeling applications are taken from popular civil engineering literature to demonstrate the wide use and varied implementation of GIS across the discipline. Drawing from the case studies, limitations regarding traditional GIS data models find the implementation of civil engineering models within current GIS are identified and countered by discussing the direction of the next generation of GIS. The paper concludes by highlighting the potential for the misuse of GIS in the context of engineering modeling and suggests that this potential can be reduced through education and awareness. The goal of this paper is to promote awareness of the issues related to GIS-based modeling and to assist in the formulation of questions regarding the application of current GIS. The technology has experienced much publicity of late, with many engineers being perhaps too excited about the usefulness of current GIS. An undoubtedly beneficial side effect of this, however, is that engineers are becoming more aware of GIS and, hopefully, the associated subtleties. Civil engineers must stay informed of GIS issues and progress, but more importantly, civil engineers must inform the GIS community to direct the technology development optimally.

GPI Spectroscopy of the Mass, Age, and Metallicity Benchmark Brown Dwarf HD 4747 B

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Crepp, Justin R.; Principe, David A.; Wolff, Schuyler; Giorla Godfrey, Paige A.; Rice, Emily L.; Cieza, Lucas; Pueyo, Laurent; Bechter, Eric B.; Gonzales, Erica J.

2018-02-01

The physical properties of brown dwarf companions found to orbit nearby, solar-type stars can be benchmarked against independent measures of their mass, age, chemical composition, and other parameters, offering insights into the evolution of substellar objects. The TRENDS high-contrast imaging survey has recently discovered a (mass/age/metallicity) benchmark brown dwarf orbiting the nearby (d = 18.69 ± 0.19 pc), G8V/K0V star HD 4747. We have acquired follow-up spectroscopic measurements of HD 4747 B using the Gemini Planet Imager to study its spectral type, effective temperature, surface gravity, and cloud properties. Observations obtained in the H-band and K 1-band recover the companion and reveal that it is near the L/T transition (T1 ± 2). Fitting atmospheric models to the companion spectrum, we find strong evidence for the presence of clouds. However, spectral models cannot satisfactorily fit the complete data set: while the shape of the spectrum can be well-matched in individual filters, a joint fit across the full passband results in discrepancies that are a consequence of the inherent color of the brown dwarf. We also find a 2σ tension in the companion mass, age, and surface gravity when comparing to evolutionary models. These results highlight the importance of using benchmark objects to study “secondary effects” such as metallicity, non-equilibrium chemistry, cloud parameters, electron conduction, non-adiabatic cooling, and other subtleties affecting emergent spectra. As a new L/T transition benchmark, HD 4747 B warrants further investigation into the modeling of cloud physics using higher resolution spectroscopy across a broader range of wavelengths, polarimetric observations, and continued Doppler radial velocity and astrometric monitoring.

Hierarchical Cluster Analysis of Three-Dimensional Reconstructions of Unbiased Sampled Microglia Shows not Continuous Morphological Changes from Stage 1 to 2 after Multiple Dengue Infections in Callithrix penicillata

PubMed Central

Diniz, Daniel G.; Silva, Geane O.; Naves, Thaís B.; Fernandes, Taiany N.; Araújo, Sanderson C.; Diniz, José A. P.; de Farias, Luis H. S.; Sosthenes, Marcia C. K.; Diniz, Cristovam G.; Anthony, Daniel C.; da Costa Vasconcelos, Pedro F.; Picanço Diniz, Cristovam W.

2016-01-01

It is known that microglial morphology and function are related, but few studies have explored the subtleties of microglial morphological changes in response to specific pathogens. In the present report we quantitated microglia morphological changes in a monkey model of dengue disease with virus CNS invasion. To mimic multiple infections that usually occur in endemic areas, where higher dengue infection incidence and abundant mosquito vectors carrying different serotypes coexist, subjects received once a week subcutaneous injections of DENV3 (genotype III)-infected culture supernatant followed 24 h later by an injection of anti-DENV2 antibody. Control animals received either weekly anti-DENV2 antibodies, or no injections. Brain sections were immunolabeled for DENV3 antigens and IBA-1. Random and systematic microglial samples were taken from the polymorphic layer of dentate gyrus for 3-D reconstructions, where we found intense immunostaining for TNFα and DENV3 virus antigens. We submitted all bi- or multimodal morphological parameters of microglia to hierarchical cluster analysis and found two major morphological phenotypes designated types I and II. Compared to type I (stage 1), type II microglia were more complex; displaying higher number of nodes, processes and trees and larger surface area and volumes (stage 2). Type II microglia were found only in infected monkeys, whereas type I microglia was found in both control and infected subjects. Hierarchical cluster analysis of morphological parameters of 3-D reconstructions of random and systematic selected samples in control and ADE dengue infected monkeys suggests that microglia morphological changes from stage 1 to stage 2 may not be continuous. PMID:27047345

Temporal profiling of orexin receptor-arrestin-ubiquitin complexes reveals differences between receptor subtypes.

PubMed

Dalrymple, Matthew B; Jaeger, Werner C; Eidne, Karin A; Pfleger, Kevin D G

2011-05-13

Orexin G protein-coupled receptors (OxRs) and their cognate agonists have been implicated in a number of disorders since their recent discovery, ranging from narcolepsy to formation of addictive behavior. Bioluminescence resonance energy transfer assays of agonist-occupied OxRs provided evidence for a strong dose-dependent interaction with both trafficking proteins β-arrestin 1 and 2 that required unusually high agonist concentrations compared with inositol phosphate signaling. This appears to be reflected in functional differences in potency with respect to orexin A (OxA) and OxR2-dependent ERK1/2 phosphorylation after 90 min compared with 2 min, potentially consistent with β-arrestin-mediated versus G protein-mediated signaling, respectively. Furthermore, extended bioluminescence resonance energy transfer kinetic data monitoring OxA-dependent receptor-β-arrestin and β-arrestin-ubiquitin proximity suggested subtype-specific differences in receptor trafficking, with OxR2 activation resulting in more sustained receptor-β-arrestin-ubiquitin complex formation than elicited by OxR1 activation. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) data also revealed that OxR1 underwent significantly more rapid recycling compared with OxR2. Finally, we have observed sustained OxA-dependent ERK1/2 phosphorylation in the presence of OxR2 compared with OxR1. Although both OxR subtypes could be classified as class B receptors for β-arrestin usage based on the initial strength of interaction with both β-arrestins, our temporal profiling revealed tangible differences between OxR subtypes. Consequently, OxR1 appears to fit uneasily into the commonly used β-arrestin classification scheme. More importantly, it is hoped that this improved profiling capability, enabling the subtleties of protein complex formation, stability, and duration to be assessed in live cells, will help unlock the therapeutic potential of targeting these receptors.

PT quantum mechanics.

PubMed

Bender, Carl M; DeKieviet, Maarten; Klevansky, S P

2013-04-28

PT-symmetric quantum mechanics (PTQM) has become a hot area of research and investigation. Since its beginnings in 1998, there have been over 1000 published papers and more than 15 international conferences entirely devoted to this research topic. Originally, PTQM was studied at a highly mathematical level and the techniques of complex variables, asymptotics, differential equations and perturbation theory were used to understand the subtleties associated with the analytic continuation of eigenvalue problems. However, as experiments on PT-symmetric physical systems have been performed, a simple and beautiful physical picture has emerged, and a PT-symmetric system can be understood as one that has a balanced loss and gain. Furthermore, the PT phase transition can now be understood intuitively without resorting to sophisticated mathematics. Research on PTQM is following two different paths: at a fundamental level, physicists are attempting to understand the underlying mathematical structure of these theories with the long-range objective of applying the techniques of PTQM to understanding some of the outstanding problems in physics today, such as the nature of the Higgs particle, the properties of dark matter, the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, neutrino oscillations and the cosmological constant; at an applied level, new kinds of PT-synthetic materials are being developed, and the PT phase transition is being observed in many physical contexts, such as lasers, optical wave guides, microwave cavities, superconducting wires and electronic circuits. The purpose of this Theme Issue is to acquaint the reader with the latest developments in PTQM. The articles in this volume are written in the style of mini-reviews and address diverse areas of the emerging and exciting new area of PT-symmetric quantum mechanics.

Development and preliminary validation of the EASE: a tool to measure perceived singing voice function.

PubMed

Phyland, Debra J; Pallant, Julie F; Benninger, Michael S; Thibeault, Susan L; Greenwood, Ken M; Smith, Julian A; Vallance, Neil

2013-07-01

Most voice self-rating tools are disease-specific measures and are not suitable for use with healthy voice users. There is a need for a tool that is sensitive to the subtleties of a singer's voice and to perceived physical changes in the singing voice mechanism as a function of load. The aim of this study was to devise and validate a scale to assess singer's perceptions of the current status of their singing voice. Ninety-five vocal health descriptors were collected from focus group interviews of singers. These were reviewed by 25 currently performing music theater (MT) singers. Based on a consensus technique, the number of descriptors was decreased to 42 items. These were administered to a sample of 284 professional MT singers using an online survey to evaluate their perception of current singing voice status. Principal component analysis identified two subsets of items. Rasch analysis was used to evaluate and refine these sets of items to form two 10-item subscales. Both subscales demonstrated good overall fit to the Rasch model, no differential item functioning by sex or age, and good internal consistency reliability. The two subscales were strongly correlated and subsequent Rasch analysis supported their combination to form a single 20-item scale with good psychometric properties. The Evaluation of the Ability to Sing Easily (EASE) is a concise clinical tool to assess singer's perceptions of the current status of their singing voice with good measurement properties. EASE may prove a useful tool to measure changes in the singing voice as indicators of the effect of vocal load. Furthermore, it may offer a valuable means for the prediction or screening of singers "at risk" of developing voice disorders. Copyright © 2013 The Voice Foundation. All rights reserved.

Microbial Source Tracking in Adjacent Karst Springs.

PubMed

Ohad, Shoshanit; Vaizel-Ohayon, Dalit; Rom, Meir; Guttman, Joseph; Berger, Diego; Kravitz, Valeria; Pilo, Shlomo; Huberman, Zohar; Kashi, Yechezkel; Rorman, Efrat

2015-08-01

Modern man-made environments, including urban, agricultural, and industrial environments, have complex ecological interactions among themselves and with the natural surroundings. Microbial source tracking (MST) offers advanced tools to resolve the host source of fecal contamination beyond indicator monitoring. This study was intended to assess karst spring susceptibilities to different fecal sources using MST quantitative PCR (qPCR) assays targeting human, bovine, and swine markers. It involved a dual-time monitoring frame: (i) monthly throughout the calendar year and (ii) daily during a rainfall event. Data integration was taken from both monthly and daily MST profile monitoring and improved identification of spring susceptibility to host fecal contamination; three springs located in close geographic proximity revealed different MST profiles. The Giach spring showed moderate fluctuations of MST marker quantities amid wet and dry samplings, while the Zuf spring had the highest rise of the GenBac3 marker during the wet event, which was mirrored in other markers as well. The revelation of human fecal contamination during the dry season not connected to incidents of raining leachates suggests a continuous and direct exposure to septic systems. Pigpens were identified in the watersheds of Zuf, Shefa, and Giach springs and on the border of the Gaaton spring watershed. Their impact was correlated with partial detection of the Pig-2-Bac marker in Gaaton spring, which was lower than detection levels in all three of the other springs. Ruminant and swine markers were detected intermittently, and their contamination potential during the wet samplings was exposed. These results emphasized the importance of sampling design to utilize the MST approach to delineate subtleties of fecal contamination in the environment. Copyright © 2015, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Global and Local Helioseismic Studies of Solar Convection Zone Dynamics Using SOI-MDI on SOHO

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Toomre, Juri; Haber, Deborah; Hindman, Bradley; Christensen-Dalsgaard, Joergen; Gough, Douglas; Thompson, Michael

2003-01-01

Our joint collaborative analyses of global mode data to characterize the solar differential rotation (e.g. Thompson et al. 1996, Schou et al. 1998), and most recently to detect and analyze temporal variations in angular velocity Omega profiles both within the convection zone and in the deeper radiative interior (e.g. Howe et al 2000a,b; Toomre et al. 2000), have led to a series of fascinating discoveries. These should be pursued further as the solar cycle continues. The physical deductions being made from these studies have been greatly strengthened by utilizing both SOI-MDI and GONG data in order to have two independent observational realizations of Doppler images spanning a five-year interval, using two separate procedures to determine global mode splittings, and then analyzing those splitting data sets using both RLS and SOLA inversion procedures. There are considerable subtleties in the effects of instrumental response functions and calibrations, sensitivity of peak finding algorithms and their mode leakage estimates, and stochastic variations in mode amplitudes that can all contribute to apparent changes in the Omega profiles being inferred from sequences of helioseismic data. We have come to understand the implications of many of these calibration and analysis steps, greatly aided by frequent multi-week collaborative working sessions in our Helioseismic Analysis Facility (HAF) at JILA involving many members of the SO1 dynamics and inversion team, including most of our Co-Is during the summer months when we hold intensive working sessions. Considerable further focused attention is required in a collaborative setting on such global mode issues as we continue studying the changing sun.

The Reflexive Scientist: enabling more effective science communication and public engagement through deeper reflection and engagement between physical and social scientists

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Salmon, R. A.; Priestley, R. K.; Goven, J. F.

2014-12-01

Scientists, policymakers and science communicators generally work from an assumption that science communication, or 'outreach', is good and often work from a primarily practice-based knowledge. Meanwhile, the science, technology and society (STS) community, which is strongly grounded in theory and critical analysis, is critical of certain aspects of science communication, particularly in controversial areas of science. Unfortunately, these two groups rarely speak to each other, and when they do they don't necessarily understand one another. Much of this confusion relates to different assumptions around the goals of science communication, as well as differing understandings of the various roles and responsibilities in both science and society. The result, unfortunately, is a lack of science communication practice and theory informing each other. This research is a collaboration between a scientist communicator with a positive attitude to outreach, who works in the field of climate change; a political theorist with expertise in public dialogue around biotechnology and has been critical of motivations for engaging the public with science; and a science historian and science communicator who has uncovered surprising and significant changes in public attitudes towards nuclear science and technology in New Zealand. By exploring our understanding of science communication through these diverse disciplinary lenses, and considering three fields of science that are or have been highly controversial for different reasons, we have identified several subtleties in both the politics of communicating different areas of controversial science, and the difficulties of finding a common language across social and physical sciences. We conclude that greater reflexivity about our own roles and assumptions, and increased efforts at enhanced understanding across disciplines, is central to applying the theories in STS to the practice of communication by scientists.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wolfe, B.; Wallis, L.R.

This paper has a dual purpose. On the one hand, congratulations are in order; the 25th Hanford Life Sciences Symposium celebrates four decades of important research at Hanford. This research has helped provide a better understanding of ionizing radiation effects on man and his environment. Researchers at Hanford and those at other locations can take pride in the fact that today we know more about the major characteristics and potential health effects of ionizing radiation than we do for any other biological hazard. Ionizing radiation's present mysteries, important as they are, involve subtleties that are difficult to explore in detailmore » because the effects are so small relative to other health effects. It will also be a pleasure to add our tribute, along with many others, to Herb Parker, a friend, colleague, and pioneer in the radiation protection field. Building on the work of early pioneers such as Herb and those who have and will follow in their footsteps, we will develop an even broader understanding--an understanding that will clarify the effects of low-level radiation exposure, an area of knowledge about which sound explanations and predictions elude us today. The second purpose of this paper is to remind those in the radiation protection field that they have been less than successful in one of their most important tasks--that of effective communication. The task is not an easy one because the content of the message depends upon the dose. At high doses, above 1 Sv, where the deleterious effects of radiation are predictable, there is agreement on the message that must be delivered to the public: avoid it. There is no confusion in the public sector about this message. At the much lower doses resulting from beneficial activities, the message we must convey to the public is different.« less

Accomplishments in free-piston stirling tests at NASA GRC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schreiber, Jeffrey G.; Skupinski, Robert C.

2002-01-01

A power system based on the Stirling Radioisotope Generator (SRG) has been identified for potential use on deep space missions, as well as for Mars rovers that may benefit from extended operation. The Department of Energy (DOE) has responsibility for developing the generator and the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) is supporting DOE in this effort. The generator is based on a free-piston Stirling power convertor that has been developed by the Stirling Technology Company (STC) under contract to DOE. The generator would be used as a high-efficiency alternative to the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) that have been used on many previous missions. The increased efficiency leads to a factor of 3 to 4 reduction in the inventory of plutonium required to heat the generator. GRC has been involved in the development of Stirling power conversion technology for over 25 years. The support provided to this project by GRC has many facets and draws upon the lab's scientists and engineers that have gained experience in applying their skills to the previous Stirling projects. This has created a staff with an understanding of the subtleties involved in applying their expertise to Stirling systems. Areas include materials, structures, tribology, controls, electromagnetic interference, permanent magnets, alternator analysis, structural dynamics, and cycle performance. One of the key areas of support to the project is in the performance testing of the free-piston Stirling convertors. Since these power convertors are the smallest, lowest power Stirling machines that have been tested at GRC, a new laboratory was equipped for this project. Procedures and test plans have been created, instrumentation and data systems developed, and Stirling convertors have been tested. This paper will describe the GRC test facility, the test procedures that are used, present some of the test results and outline plans for the future. .

Getting Open Source Right for Big Data Analytics: Software Sharing, Governance, Collaboration and Most of All, Fun!

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mattmann, C. A.

2013-12-01

A wave of open source big data analytic infrastructure is currently shaping government, private sector, and academia. Projects are consuming, adapting, and contributing back to various ecosystems of software e.g., the Apache Hadoop project and its ecosystem of related efforts including Hive, HBase, Pig, Oozie, Ambari, Knox, Tez and Yarn, to name a few; the Berkeley AMPLab stack which includes Spark, Shark, Mesos, Tachyon, BlinkDB, MLBase, and other emerging efforts; MapR and its related stack of technologies, offerings from commercial companies building products around these tools e.g., Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), Cloudera's CDH project, etc. Though the technologies all offer different capabilities including low latency support/in-memory, versus record oriented file I/O, high availability, support for the Map Reduce programming paradigm or other dataflow/workflow constructs, there is a common thread that binds these products - they are all released under an open source license e.g., Apache2, MIT, BSD, GPL/LGPL, etc.; all thrive in various ecosystems, such as Apache, or Berkeley AMPLab; all are developed collaboratively, and all technologies provide plug in architecture models and methodologies for allowing others to contribute, and participate via various community models. This talk will cover the open source aspects and governance aspects of the aforementioned Big Data ecosystems and point out the differences, subtleties, and implications of those differences. The discussion will be by example, using several national deployments and Big Data initiatives stemming from the Administration including DARPA's XDATA program; NASA's CMAC program; NSF's EarthCube and geosciences BigData projects. Lessons learned from these efforts in terms of the open source aspects of these technologies will help guide the AGU community in their use, deployment and understanding.

Diagnosis and Management of Tremor.

PubMed

Louis, Elan D

2016-08-01

Tremor, which is a rhythmic oscillation of a body part, is among the most common involuntary movements. Rhythmic oscillations may manifest in a variety of ways; as a result, a rich clinical phenomenology surrounds tremor. For this reason, diagnosing tremor disorders can be particularly challenging. The aim of this article is to provide the reader with a straightforward approach to the diagnosis and management of patients with tremor. Scientific understanding of the pathophysiologic basis of tremor disorders has grown considerably in recent years with the use of a broad range of neuroimaging approaches and rigorous, controlled postmortem studies. The basal ganglia and cerebellum are structures that seem to play a prominent role. The diagnosis of tremor disorders is challenging. The approach to tremor involves a history and a neurologic examination that is focused on the nuances of tremor phenomenology, of which there are many. The evaluation should begin with a tremor history and a focused neurologic examination. The examination should attend to the many subtleties of tremor phenomenology. Among other things, the history and examination are used to establish whether the main type of tremor is an action tremor (ie, postural, kinetic, or intention tremor) or a resting tremor. The clinician should then formulate two sets of differential diagnoses: disorders in which action tremor is the predominant tremor versus those in which resting tremor is the main tremor. Among the most common of the former type are essential tremor, enhanced physiologic tremor, drug-induced tremor, dystonic tremor, orthostatic tremor, and cerebellar tremor. Parkinson disease is the most common form of resting tremor, along with drug-induced resting tremor. This article details the clinical features of each of these as well as other tremor disorders.

Estimates of Stellar Weak Interaction Rates for Nuclei in the Mass Range A=65-80

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pruet, Jason; Fuller, George M.

2003-11-01

We estimate lepton capture and emission rates, as well as neutrino energy loss rates, for nuclei in the mass range A=65-80. These rates are calculated on a temperature/density grid appropriate for a wide range of astrophysical applications including simulations of late time stellar evolution and X-ray bursts. The basic inputs in our single-particle and empirically inspired model are (i) experimentally measured level information, weak transition matrix elements, and lifetimes, (ii) estimates of matrix elements for allowed experimentally unmeasured transitions based on the systematics of experimentally observed allowed transitions, and (iii) estimates of the centroids of the GT resonances motivated by shell model calculations in the fp shell as well as by (n, p) and (p, n) experiments. Fermi resonances (isobaric analog states) are also included, and it is shown that Fermi transitions dominate the rates for most interesting proton-rich nuclei for which an experimentally determined ground state lifetime is unavailable. For the purposes of comparing our results with more detailed shell model based calculations we also calculate weak rates for nuclei in the mass range A=60-65 for which Langanke & Martinez-Pinedo have provided rates. The typical deviation in the electron capture and β-decay rates for these ~30 nuclei is less than a factor of 2 or 3 for a wide range of temperature and density appropriate for presupernova stellar evolution. We also discuss some subtleties associated with the partition functions used in calculations of stellar weak rates and show that the proper treatment of the partition functions is essential for estimating high-temperature β-decay rates. In particular, we show that partition functions based on unconverged Lanczos calculations can result in errors in estimates of high-temperature β-decay rates.

Atmospheres and spectra of strongly magnetized neutron stars - II. The effect of vacuum polarization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ho, Wynn C. G.; Lai, Dong

2003-01-01

We study the effect of vacuum polarization on the atmosphere structure and radiation spectra of neutron stars with surface magnetic fields B= 1014-1015 G, as appropriate for magnetars. Vacuum polarization modifies the dielectric property of the medium and gives rise to a resonance feature in the opacity; this feature is narrow and occurs at a photon energy that depends on the plasma density. Vacuum polarization can also induce resonant conversion of photon modes via a mechanism analogous to the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) mechanism for neutrino oscillation. We construct atmosphere models in radiative equilibrium with an effective temperature of a few ×106 K by solving the full radiative transfer equations for both polarization modes in a fully ionized hydrogen plasma. We discuss the subtleties in treating the vacuum polarization effects in the atmosphere models and present approximate solutions to the radiative transfer problem which bracket the true answer. We show from both analytic considerations and numerical calculations that vacuum polarization produces a broad depression in the X-ray flux at high energies (a few keV <~E<~ a few tens of keV) as compared to models without vacuum polarization; this arises from the density dependence of the vacuum resonance feature and the large density gradient present in the atmosphere. Thus the vacuum polarization effect softens the high-energy tail of the thermal spectrum, although the atmospheric emission is still harder than the blackbody spectrum because of the non-grey opacities. We also show that the depression of continuum flux strongly suppresses the equivalent width of the ion cyclotron line and therefore makes the line more difficult to observe.

Hierarchical Cluster Analysis of Three-Dimensional Reconstructions of Unbiased Sampled Microglia Shows not Continuous Morphological Changes from Stage 1 to 2 after Multiple Dengue Infections in Callithrix penicillata.

PubMed

Diniz, Daniel G; Silva, Geane O; Naves, Thaís B; Fernandes, Taiany N; Araújo, Sanderson C; Diniz, José A P; de Farias, Luis H S; Sosthenes, Marcia C K; Diniz, Cristovam G; Anthony, Daniel C; da Costa Vasconcelos, Pedro F; Picanço Diniz, Cristovam W

2016-01-01

It is known that microglial morphology and function are related, but few studies have explored the subtleties of microglial morphological changes in response to specific pathogens. In the present report we quantitated microglia morphological changes in a monkey model of dengue disease with virus CNS invasion. To mimic multiple infections that usually occur in endemic areas, where higher dengue infection incidence and abundant mosquito vectors carrying different serotypes coexist, subjects received once a week subcutaneous injections of DENV3 (genotype III)-infected culture supernatant followed 24 h later by an injection of anti-DENV2 antibody. Control animals received either weekly anti-DENV2 antibodies, or no injections. Brain sections were immunolabeled for DENV3 antigens and IBA-1. Random and systematic microglial samples were taken from the polymorphic layer of dentate gyrus for 3-D reconstructions, where we found intense immunostaining for TNFα and DENV3 virus antigens. We submitted all bi- or multimodal morphological parameters of microglia to hierarchical cluster analysis and found two major morphological phenotypes designated types I and II. Compared to type I (stage 1), type II microglia were more complex; displaying higher number of nodes, processes and trees and larger surface area and volumes (stage 2). Type II microglia were found only in infected monkeys, whereas type I microglia was found in both control and infected subjects. Hierarchical cluster analysis of morphological parameters of 3-D reconstructions of random and systematic selected samples in control and ADE dengue infected monkeys suggests that microglia morphological changes from stage 1 to stage 2 may not be continuous.

Using special additions to preparation of the moulding mixture for casting steel parts of drive wheel type

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Josan, A.; Pinca Bretotean, C.

2015-06-01

The paper presents the possibility of using special additions to the execution of moulding mixtures for steel castings, drive wheel type. Critical analysis of moulding technology leads to the idea that most defects appear due to using improper moulding mixture. Using a improper moulding mixture leads to penetration of steel in moulding mixture, resulting in the formation of adherences, due to inadequate refractarity of the mould and core mixtures. Using only the unique mixture to the moulding leads to increasing consumption of new sand, respectively to the increase of price of piece. Acording to the dates registered in the industrial practice is necessary to use the special additions to obtain the moulding mixtures, carbonaceous materials respectively.

Process Control and Development for Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing with Embedded Fibers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hehr, Adam J.

Ultrasonic additive manufacturing (UAM) is a recent additive manufacturing technology which combines ultrasonic metal welding, CNC machining, and mechanized foil layering to create large gapless near net-shape metallic parts. The process has been attracting much attention lately due to its low formation temperature, the capability to join dissimilar metals, and the ability to create complex design features not possible with traditional subtractive processes alone. These process attributes enable light-weighting of structures and components in an unprecedented way. However, UAM is currently limited to niche areas due to the lack of quality tracking and inadequate scientific understanding of the process. As a result, this thesis work is focused on improving both component quality tracking and process understanding through the use of average electrical power input to the welder. Additionally, the understanding and application space of embedding fibers into metals using UAM is investigated, with particular focus on NiTi shape memory alloy fibers.

Subtle evidence for paleoseismicity in the cratonic interior, U.S. A

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jacobson, W. Z.; Cowan, C. A.; Runkel, A. C.

2009-12-01

Intrastratal deformation features in Cambrian-Ordovician boundary strata in southeastern Minnesota, U.S.A., may be evidence for mid-continent paleoseismicity. Deformation features are present tens of kilometers east of the Midcontinent Rift zone, and include sand blows, water escape, and convolute lamination, as well as more subtle structures indicative of sand-on-sand density contrasts. The stratigraphic interval of interest is the uppermost Jordan Formation (Furongian), a very fine- to coarse-grained quartzose sandstone, and the basal Oneota Formation (Tremadocian), a heterolithic sandstone and dolostone that grades upward into bedded dolostone. Along the Jordan-Oneota boundary, deformation features are extensive, and the result of sand liquefaction and fluidization. Upward migration of excess pore water was obstructed in places by shale drapes that locally ruptured, causing sand to be injected into overlying beds. Movement of sand in this manner created voids that were filled by a chaotic mixture of sand, shale, and pebbles that collapsed from above. Where upwardly percolating water was not confined by shale, intrastratal flow produced water escape pillars. Other deformation features are present up to ~3 m below the Jordan-Oneota boundary, in well-sorted, pure quartzose sandstone. These features are inconspicuous because of the uniform texture and minerology of the sediment, and some were previously interpreted as synsedimentary phenomena. These features are common along foreset boundaries in large-scale (>3 m) cross-strata, and include cm-scale digitate interfaces (interfingering) and in situ rounded forms interpreted as sand-on-sand boudinage. They formed from density contrasts between individual foresets within the cross-bedded sand. The top of the lower foreset was less dense but more viscous than the base of the succeeding foreset. Such contrasts were the result of subtle packing and grain size differences formed during the avalanche process during dune migration. We interpret the trigger for deformation, however, to be a post-depositional (post-Oneota) event because of the association of these subtle features with the more obvious liquefaction features in the immediately overlying boundary strata (and the increased intensity of deformation along foresets upward toward the boundary). Although these features cannot be unambiguously attributed to a paleoseismic event, some other common possibilities can be eliminated, including slumping and loading by sediment, tides, and storm waves. These intrastratal deformation features are documented in one outcrop in southeastern Minnesota. The subtlety of some of these features suggests that similar features may have been overlooked in nearby outcrops. Indeed, we are now revisiting unusual features in some localities that we previously interpreted as synsedimentary phenomena. Seismites may be difficult to generate, and to recognize, in quartoze sandstones of the mid-continent due to the lack of significantly thick clay beds to serve as permeability barriers, and the homogenous textural and mineralogical attributes of these units.

Advances and limitations on interpreting the erosional record from isotopic analysis of single detrital mineral grains

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Parrish, Randall

2010-05-01

The analysis of provenance of clastic sediments is useful for reconstructing the characteristics and rates of exhumation of source areas, and sometimes placing minimum age constraints on depositional age. Due largely to increased availability and ease of access to LA-ICP-MS instrumentation, the analysis of provenance using single detrital accessory minerals has grown very rapidly over recent years. With this however is a culture of casual users who may not fully appreciate subtleties of measurement and isotope interpretation. The isotopic provenance literature is dominated by zircon-centric studies that use U-Pb dating and Hf isotope measurements of single zircons, but unfortunately an increasing number of these studies appear to lack sufficient understanding of U-Pb and Hf systematics; misleading interpretations are increasingly common. The inherent information contained in detrital accessory minerals is potentially immense, scientifically, but comprehensive interpretations attempting to reconstruct the geological make-up and evolution of sources require dating of multiple types of accessory minerals (i.e. zircon, titanite, monazite, garnet inclusions, micas, allanite, rutile, apatite) by various methods (U-Pb, fission track, Ar-Ar…) at times accompanied by isotope geochemical data (Lu-Hf, Sm-Nd, Rb-Sr) of phases where Sr, Hf, or REE comprise a major element (≥0.5%). Many approaches have been demonstrated but the mix of methodologies needs to be tailored to the problem, in view of the variable effort and expense needed to acquire good datasets. To date there are few comprehensive multi-mineral, multi-isotope system applications, and too many studies that follow a prescriptive cookbook that lacks innovation and fails to address a problem. The field needs to focus effort on the approaches that can solve a problem well rather than doing either just the easy methods or too many methods only moderately well. Zircon studies require strategies that reduce or eliminate discordance, collect sufficient data on each grain to make a robust age interpretation, improve accuracy of data by more attention to standards and uncertainties, can analyze thin overgrowths that reveal the magmatic or metamorphic age, and minimize sample consumption, not an easy task for the vast majority of laboratories doing provenance applications. Detrital monazite, monazite-in garnet, titanite and rutile can reveal much of the higher temperature metamorphic time-temperature path, and coupled U-Pb and fission track studies of single zircon and apatite grains can be useful for determining lower temperature exhumation rates. Isotope geochemistry (Hf-Nd-Sr-O) is more time consuming but can be pivotal to distinguish subtle differences in sources and to test specific hypotheses. Examples of improved methods and applications will be presented to illustrate the presentation.

Long-term carbon loss in fragmented Neotropical forests.

PubMed

Pütz, Sandro; Groeneveld, Jürgen; Henle, Klaus; Knogge, Christoph; Martensen, Alexandre Camargo; Metz, Markus; Metzger, Jean Paul; Ribeiro, Milton Cezar; de Paula, Mateus Dantas; Huth, Andreas

2014-10-07

Tropical forests play an important role in the global carbon cycle, as they store a large amount of carbon (C). Tropical forest deforestation has been identified as a major source of CO2 emissions, though biomass loss due to fragmentation--the creation of additional forest edges--has been largely overlooked as an additional CO2 source. Here, through the combination of remote sensing and knowledge on ecological processes, we present long-term carbon loss estimates due to fragmentation of Neotropical forests: within 10 years the Brazilian Atlantic Forest has lost 69 (±14) Tg C, and the Amazon 599 (±120) Tg C due to fragmentation alone. For all tropical forests, we estimate emissions up to 0.2 Pg C y(-1) or 9 to 24% of the annual global C loss due to deforestation. In conclusion, tropical forest fragmentation increases carbon loss and should be accounted for when attempting to understand the role of vegetation in the global carbon balance.

Phase Partitioning from Theanol Blend Gasolines

EPA Science Inventory

In recent years, the use of ethanol and other alcohols as motor fuel additives has increased. Additionally, ethanol production has expanded due to the potential use of ethanol as a primary fuel source. Historical patterns of gasoline composition show strong dependency on regulato...