Junior Recital: A.J. Nemsick, Bass Trombone

Kemp Recital Hall April 7, 2018 Saturday Evening 8:30p.m

Atmospheric absorption of sound: Update

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.400176Best current expressions for the vibrational relaxation times of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere are used to compute total absorption. The resulting graphs of total absorption as a function of frequency for different humidities should be used in lieu of the grap

Sticky stuff : redefining bedform prediction in modern and ancient environments

This work was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under the COHBED project (NE/1027223/1). Paterson was funded by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS).The dimensions and dynamics of subaqueous bedforms are well known for cohesionless sediments. However, the effect of physical cohesion imparted by cohesive clay within mixed sand-mud substrates has not been examined, despite its recognized influence on sediment stability. Here we present a series of controlled laboratory experiments to establish the influence of substrate clay content on subaqueous bedform dynamics within mixtures of sand and clay exposed to unidirectional flow. The results show that bedform dimensions and steepness decrease linearly with clay content, and comparison with existing predictors of bedform dimensions, established within cohesionless sediments, reveals significant over-prediction of bedform size for all but the lowermost clay contents examined. The profound effect substrate clay content has on bedform dimensions has a number of important implications for interpretation in a range of modern and ancient environments, including reduced roughness and bedform heights in estuarine systems and the often cited lack of large dune cross-sets in turbidites. The results therefore offer a step change in our understanding of bedform formation and dynamics in these, and many other, sedimentary environments.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Ultrasonic Stimulation of Mouse Skin Reverses the Healing Delays in Diabetes and Aging by Activation of Rac1

Chronic skin-healing defects are one of the leading challenges to lifelong well-being, affecting 2–5% of populations. Chronic wound formation is linked to age and diabetes and frequently leads to major limb amputation. Here we identify a strategy to reverse fibroblast senescence and improve healing rates. In healthy skin, fibronectin activates Rac1 in fibroblasts, causing migration into the wound bed, and driving wound contraction. We discover that mechanical stimulation of the skin with ultrasound can overturn healing defects by activating a calcium/CamKinaseII/Tiam1/Rac1 pathway that substitutes for fibronectin-dependent signaling and promotes fibroblast migration. Treatment of diabetic and aged mice recruits fibroblasts to the wound bed and reduces healing times by 30%, restoring healing rates to those observed in young, healthy animals. Ultrasound treatment is equally effective in rescuing the healing defects of animals lacking fibronectin receptors, and can be blocked by pharmacological inhibition of the CamKinaseII pathway. Finally, we discover that the migration defects of fibroblasts from human venous leg ulcer patients can be reversed by ultrasound, demonstrating that the approach is applicable to human chronic samples. By demonstrating that this alternative Rac1 pathway can substitute for that normally operating in the skin, we identify future opportunities for management of chronic wounds

The acyclic group dichotomy

Two extremal classes of acyclic groups are discussed. For an arbitrary group G, there is always a homomorphism from an acyclic group of cohomological dimension 2 onto the maximum perfect subgroup of G, and there is always an embedding of G in a binate (hence acyclic) group. In the other direction, there are no nontrivial homomorphisms from binate groups to groups of finite cohomological dimension. Binate groups are shown to be of significance in relation to a number of important K-theoretic isomorphism conjectures.Comment: To appea

On Non-parametric Estimation of the L\'evy Kernel of Markov Processes

We consider a recurrent Markov process which is an It\^o semi-martingale. The L\'evy kernel describes the law of its jumps. Based on observations X(0),X({\Delta}),...,X(n{\Delta}), we construct an estimator for the L\'evy kernel's density. We prove its consistency (as n{\Delta}->\infty and {\Delta}->0) and a central limit theorem. In the positive recurrent case, our estimator is asymptotically normal; in the null recurrent case, it is asymptotically mixed normal. Our estimator's rate of convergence equals the non-parametric minimax rate of smooth density estimation. The asymptotic bias and variance are analogous to those of the classical Nadaraya-Watson estimator for conditional densities. Asymptotic confidence intervals are provided.Comment: 53 pages; 1 figure; Accepted for publication in the journal Stochastic Processes and their Applications (April 30, 2013

Intracoronary gamma-radiation therapy after angioplasty inhibits recurrence in patients with in-stent restenosis

BACKGROUND: Treatment of in-stent restenosis presents a critical limitation of intracoronary stent implantation. Ionizing radiation has been shown to decrease neointimal formation within stents in animal models and in initial clinical trials. We studied the effects of intracoronary gamma-radiation therapy versus placebo on the clinical and angiographic outcomes of patients with in-stent restenosis. METHODS AND RESULTS: One hundred thirty patients with in-stent restenosis underwent successful coronary intervention and were then blindly randomized to receive either intracoronary gamma-radiation with (192)Ir (15 Gy) or placebo. Four independent core laboratories blinded to the treatment protocol analyzed the angiographic and intravascular ultrasound end points of restenosis. Procedural success and in-hospital and 30-day complications were similar among the groups. At 6 months, patients assigned to radiation therapy required less target lesion revascularization and target vessel revascularization (9 [13.8%] and 17 [26.2%], respectively) compared with patients assigned to placebo (41 [63.1%, P=0.0001] and 44 [67.7%, P=0.0001], respectively). Binary angiographic restenosis was lower in the irradiated group (19% versus 58% for placebo, P=0.001). Freedom from major cardiac events was lower in the radiation group (29.2% versus 67.7% for placebo, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Intracoronary gamma-radiation used as adjunct therapy for patients with in-stent restenosis significantly reduces both angiographic and clinical restenosis

Spin structure of the nucleon: QCD evolution, lattice results and models

The question how the spin of the nucleon is distributed among its quark and gluon constituents is still a subject of intense investigations. Lattice QCD has progressed to provide information about spin fractions and orbital angular momentum contributions for up- and down-quarks in the proton, at a typical scale \mu^2~4 GeV^2. On the other hand, chiral quark models have traditionally been used for orientation at low momentum scales. In the comparison of such model calculations with experiment or lattice QCD, fixing the model scale and the treatment of scale evolution are essential. In this paper, we present a refined model calculation and a QCD evolution of lattice results up to next-to-next-to-leading order. We compare this approach with the Myhrer-Thomas scenario for resolving the proton spin puzzle.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, equation (9) has been corrected leading to a revised figure 1b. Revision matches published versio

Gastrointestinal adenocarcinomas of the esophagus, stomach, and colon exhibit distinct patterns of genome instability and oncogenesis

A more detailed understanding of the somatic genetic events that drive gastrointestinal adenocarcinomas is necessary to improve diagnosis and therapy. Using data from high-density genomic profiling arrays, we conducted an analysis of somatic copy-number aberrations in 486 gastrointestinal adenocarcinomas including 296 esophageal and gastric cancers. Focal amplifications were substantially more prevalent in gastric/esophageal adenocarcinomas than colorectal tumors. We identified 64 regions of significant recurrent amplification and deletion, some shared and others unique to the adenocarcinoma types examined. Amplified genes were noted in 37% of gastric/esophageal tumors, including in therapeutically targetable kinases such as ERBB2, FGFR1, FGFR2, EGFR, and MET, suggesting the potential use of genomic amplifications as biomarkers to guide therapy of gastric and esophageal cancers where targeted therapeutics have been less developed compared with colorectal cancers. Amplified loci implicated genes with known involvement in carcinogenesis but also pointed to regions harboring potentially novel cancer genes, including a recurrent deletion found in 15% of esophageal tumors where the Runt transcription factor subunit RUNX1 was implicated, including by functional experiments in tissue culture. Together, our results defined genomic features that were common and distinct to various gut-derived adenocarcinomas, potentially informing novel opportunities for targeted therapeutic interventions

Current- and Wave-Generated Bedforms on Mixed Sand–Clay Intertidal Flats: A New Bedform Phase Diagram and Implications for Bed Roughness and Preservation Potential

The effect of bedforms on frictional roughness felt by the overlying flow is crucial to the regional modelling of estuaries and coastal seas. Bedforms are also a key marker of palaeoenvironments. Experiments have shown that even modest biotic and abiotic cohesion in sand inhibits bedform formation, modifies bedform size, and slows bedform development, but this has rarely been tested in nature. The present study used a comprehensive dataset recorded over a complete spring–neap cycle on an intertidal flat to investigate bedform dynamics controlled by a wide range of wave and current conditions, including the effects of wave–current angle and bed cohesion. A detailed picture of different bedform types and their relationship to the flow, be they equilibrium, non-equilibrium, or relict, was produced, and captured in a phase diagram that integrates wave-dominated, current-dominated, and combined wave–current bedforms. This bedform phase diagram incorporates a substantially wider range of flow conditions than previous phase diagrams, including bedforms related to near-orthogonal wave–current angles, such as ladderback ripples. Comparison with laboratory-derived bedform phase diagrams indicates that washed-out ripples, lunate interference ripples and upper-stage plane beds replace the subaqueous dune field; such bedform distributions may be a key characteristic of intertidal flats. The field data also provide a means of predicting the dimensions of these bedforms, which can be transferred to other areas and grain sizes. We show that an equation for the prediction of equilibrium bedform size is sufficient to predict the roughness, even though the bedforms are highly variable in character and only in equilibrium with the flow for approximately half the time. Whilst the effect of cohesive clay is limited under more active spring conditions, clay does play a role in reducing the bedform dimensions under more quiescent neap conditions. We also investigated which combinations of waves, currents, and bed clay contents in the intertidal zone have the highest potential for bedform preservation in the geological record. This shows that combined wave–current bedforms have the lowest preservation potential and equilibrium current ripples have the highest preservation potential, even in the presence of moderate and storm waves. Hence, the absence of wave ripples and combined-flow bedforms and their primary stratification in sedimentary successions cannot be taken as evidence that waves were absent at the time of deposition