5,122 research outputs found
The strangeness form factors of the proton
The present empirical information on the strangeness form factors indicates
that the corresponding component in the proton is such that the
subsystem has the flavor spin symmetry and mixed
orbital symmetry . This configuration leads to the
empirical signs of all the form factors , and . An
analysis with simple quark model wave functions for the preferred configuration
shows that the qualitative features of the empirical strangeness form factors
may be described with a 15% admixture of with a compact
wave function in the proton. Transition matrix elements between the and
the components give significant contributions
Five-quark components in baryons
Evidence has been accumulating for the existence of significant intrinsic
non-perturbative five-quark components in various baryons. The inclusion of the
five-quark components gives a natural explanation of the excess of
over , significant quark orbital angular momentum in the proton, the
problematic mass and decay pattern of the lowest baryon nonet, etc.. A
breathing mode of is suggested for the lowest
baryon octet. Evidence of a predicted member of the new scheme,
around 1380 MeV, is introduced.Comment: invited plenary talk at the 10th International Conference on
Hypernuclear and Strange Particle Physics (HypX09) September 14th - 18th,
2009, Tokai, Ibaraki, Japa
Modulation of gene expression in endothelial cells in response to high LET nickel ion irradiation
Ionizing radiation can elicit harmful effects on the cardiovascular system at high doses. Endothelial cells are critical targets in radiation-induced cardiovascular damage. Astronauts performing a long-term deep space mission are exposed to consistently higher fluences of ionizing radiation that may accumulate to reach high effective doses. In addition, cosmic radiation contains high linear energy transfer (LET) radiation that is known to produce high values of relative biological effectiveness (RBE). The aim of this study was to broaden the understanding of the molecular response to high LET radiation by investigating the changes in gene expression in endothelial cells. For this purpose, a human endothelial cell line (EA.hy926) was irradiated with accelerated nickel ions (Ni) (LET, 183 keV/mu m) at doses of 0.5, 2 and 5 Gy. DNA damage was measured 2 and 24 h following irradiation by gamma-H2AX foci detection by fluorescence microscopy and gene expression changes were measured by microarrays at 8 and 24 h following irradiation. We found that exposure to accelerated nickel particles induced a persistent DNA damage response up to 24 h after treatment. This was accompanied by a downregulation in the expression of a multitude of genes involved in the regulation of the cell cycle and an upregulation in the expression of genes involved in cell cycle checkpoints. In addition, genes involved in DNA damage response, oxidative stress, apoptosis and cell-cell signaling (cytokines) were found to be upregulated. An in silico analysis of the involved genes suggested that the transcription factors, E2F and nuclear factor (NF)-kappa B, may be involved in these cellular responses
Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an educational intervention for practice teams to deliver problem focused therapy for insomnia: rationale and design of a pilot cluster randomised trial
Background: Sleep problems are common, affecting over a third of adults in the United Kingdom and leading to reduced productivity and impaired health-related quality of life. Many of those whose lives are affected seek medical help from primary care. Drug treatment is ineffective long term. Psychological methods for managing sleep problems, including cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBTi) have been shown to be effective and cost effective but have not been widely implemented or evaluated in a general practice setting where they are most likely to be needed and
most appropriately delivered. This paper outlines the protocol for a pilot study designed to
evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an educational intervention for general practitioners, primary care nurses and other members of the primary care team to deliver problem focused therapy to adult patients presenting with sleep problems due to lifestyle causes, pain or mild to moderate depression or anxiety.
Methods and design: This will be a pilot cluster randomised controlled trial of a complex intervention. General practices will be randomised to an educational intervention for problem focused therapy which includes a consultation approach comprising careful assessment (using assessment of secondary causes, sleep diaries and severity) and use of modified CBTi for insomnia in the consultation compared with usual care (general advice on sleep hygiene and pharmacotherapy with hypnotic drugs). Clinicians randomised to the intervention will receive an educational intervention (2 × 2 hours) to implement a complex intervention of problem focused therapy. Clinicians randomised to the control group will receive reinforcement of usual care with sleep hygiene advice. Outcomes will be assessed via self-completion questionnaires and telephone
interviews of patients and staff as well as clinical records for interventions and prescribing.
Discussion: Previous studies in adults have shown that psychological treatments for insomnia administered by specialist nurses to groups of patients can be effective within a primary care setting. This will be a pilot study to determine whether an educational intervention aimed at primary care teams to deliver problem focused therapy for insomnia can improve sleep management and outcomes for individual adult patients presenting to general practice. The study will also test procedures and collect information in preparation for a larger definitive cluster-randomised trial. The study is funded by The Health Foundation
Fast Two-Robot Disk Evacuation with Wireless Communication
In the fast evacuation problem, we study the path planning problem for two
robots who want to minimize the worst-case evacuation time on the unit disk.
The robots are initially placed at the center of the disk. In order to
evacuate, they need to reach an unknown point, the exit, on the boundary of the
disk. Once one of the robots finds the exit, it will instantaneously notify the
other agent, who will make a beeline to it.
The problem has been studied for robots with the same speed~\cite{s1}. We
study a more general case where one robot has speed and the other has speed
. We provide optimal evacuation strategies in the case that by showing matching upper and lower bounds on the
worst-case evacuation time. For , we show (non-matching)
upper and lower bounds on the evacuation time with a ratio less than .
Moreover, we demonstrate that a generalization of the two-robot search strategy
from~\cite{s1} is outperformed by our proposed strategies for any .Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
A 550,000-year record of East Asian monsoon rainfall from Be-10 in loess
Cosmogenic Be-10 flux from the atmosphere is a proxy for rainfall. Using this proxy, we derived a 550,000-year-long record of East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) rainfall from Chinese loess. This record is forced at orbital precession frequencies, with higher rainfall observed during Northern Hemisphere summer insolation maxima, although this response is damped during cold interstadials. The Be-10 monsoon rainfall proxy is also highly correlated with global ice-volume variations, which differs from Chinese cave delta O-18, which is only weakly correlated. We argue that both EASM intensity and Chinese cave delta O-18 are not governed by high-northern-latitude insolation, as suggested by others, but rather by low-latitude interhemispheric insolation gradients, which may also strongly influence global ice volume via monsoon dynamics
Differential response to acute low dose radiation in primary and immortalized endothelial cells
Purpose : The low dose radiation response of primary human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) and its immortalized derivative, the EA.hy926 cell line, was evaluated and compared.
Material and methods: DNA damage and repair, cell cycle progression, apoptosis and cellular morphology in HUVEC and EA.hy926 were evaluated after exposure to low (0.05-0.5 Gy) and high doses (2 and 5 Gy) of acute X-rays.
Results : Subtle, but significant increases in DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) were observed in HUVEC and EA.hy926 30 min after low dose irradiation (0.05 Gy). Compared to high dose irradiation (2 Gy), relatively more DSB/Gy were formed after low dose irradiation. Also, we observed a dose-dependent increase in apoptotic cells, down to 0.5 Gy in HUVEC and 0.1 Gy in EA.hy926 cells. Furthermore, radiation induced significantly more apoptosis in EA.hy926 compared to HUVEC.
Conclusions : We demonstrated for the first time that acute low doses of X-rays induce DNA damage and apoptosis in endothelial cells. Our results point to a non-linear dose-response relationship for DSB formation in endothelial cells. Furthermore, the observed difference in radiation-induced apoptosis points to a higher radiosensitivity of EA.hy926 compared to HUVEC, which should be taken into account when using these cells as models for studying the endothelium radiation response
Strangeness in the proton and N*(1535)
The newest progress on the study of the strangeness in the proton and in the
lowest negative parity nucleon excited state is reviewed.
Implications on the internal quark structure of the proton, and
other baryons are discussed. The diquark cluster picture for the 5-quark
components in baryons gives a natural explanation not only to the empirical
indications for a positive strangeness magnetic moment and positive
strangeness radius of the proton but also the longstanding mass-reverse problem
of , and resonances as well as the
unusual decay pattern of the resonance. Evidence for possible
existence of 's SU(3) nonet partners in this picture is
pointed out, and suggestion is made to search for these hyperon excited
states under the well known , and
peaks in various reactions.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, Plenary talk at 18th International IUPAP
Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics August 21-26. 2006 Santos SP
Brazil; to be published in Nuclear Physics
Characterization of L1 retrotransposition with high-throughput dual-luciferase assays
Recent studies employing genome-wide approaches have provided an unprecedented view of the scope of L1 activities on structural variations in the human genome, and further reinforced the role of L1s as one of the major driving forces behind human genome evolution. The rapid identification of novel L1 elements by these high-throughput approaches demands improved L1 functional assays. However, the existing assays use antibiotic selection markers or fluorescent proteins as reporters; neither is amenable to miniaturization. To increase assay sensitivity and throughput, we have developed a third generation assay by using dual-luciferase reporters, in which firefly luciferase is used as the retrotransposition indicator and Renilla luciferase is encoded on the same or separate plasmid for normalization. This novel assay is highly sensitive and has a broad dynamic range. Quantitative data with high signal-to-noise ratios can be obtained from 24- up to 96-well plates in 2–4 days after transfection. Using the dual-luciferase assays, we have characterized profiles of retrotransposition by various human and mouse L1 elements, and detailed the kinetics of L1 retrotransposition in cultured cells. Its high-throughput and short assay timeframe make it well suited for routine tests as well as large-scale screening efforts
Isospin relaxation time in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies
Using an isospin-dependent transport model, we have studied the isospin and
momentum relaxation times in the heavy residues formed in heavy-ion collisions
at intermediate energies. It is found that only at incident energies below the
Fermi energy, chemical or thermal equilibrium can be reached before dynamical
instability is developed in the heavy residues. Also, the isospin relaxation
time is shorter (longer) than that for momentum at beam energies lower (higher)
than the Fermi energy.Comment: 8 pages Latex + 2 ps Figs.; Phys. Rev. C in pres
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