3,659 research outputs found
The White Dwarf in EM Cygni: Beyond The Veil
We present a spectral analysis of the FUSE spectra of EM Cygni, a Z Cam DN
system. The FUSE spectrum, obtained in quiescence, consists of 4 individual
exposures (orbits): two exposures, at orbital phases phi ~ 0.65 and phi ~ 0.90,
have a lower flux; and two exposures, at orbital phases phi =0.15 and 0.45,
have a relatively higher flux. The change of flux level as a function of the
orbital phase is consistent with the stream material (flowing over and below
the disk from the hot spot region to smaller radii) partially masking the white
dwarf. We carry out a spectral analysis of the FUSE data, obtained at phase
0.45 (when the flux is maximual, using the codes TLUSTY and SYNSPEC. Using a
single white dwarf spectral component, we obtain a white dwarf temperature of
40,000K, rotating at 100km/s. The white dwarf, or conceivably, the material
overflowing the disk rim, shows suprasolar abundances of silicon, sulphur and
possibly nitrogen. Using a white dwarf+disk composite model, we obtain that the
white dwarf temperature could be even as high as 50,000K, contributing more
than 90% of the FUV flux, and the disk contributing less than 10% must have a
mass accretion rate reaching 1.E-10 Msun/yr.In both cases, however, we obtain
that the white dwarf temperature is much higher than previously estimated.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJ, 3 Tables, 12 Figures (including
color figures), 33 pages in present format (possibly 10 pages in ApJ format
Treatments used for obsessive-compulsive disorder-An international perspective
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to characterise international trends in the use of psychotropic medication, psychological therapies, and novel therapies used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). METHODS: Researchers in the field of OCD were invited to contribute summary statistics on the characteristics of their samples. Consistency of summary statistics across countries was evaluated. RESULTS: The study surveyed 19 expert centres from 15 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States) providing a total sample of 7,340 participants. Fluoxetine (n = 972; 13.2%) and fluvoxamine (n = 913; 12.4%) were the most commonly used selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications. Risperidone (n = 428; 7.3%) and aripiprazole (n = 415; 7.1%) were the most commonly used antipsychotic agents. Neurostimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, deep brain stimulation, gamma knife surgery, and psychosurgery were used in less than 1% of the sample. There was significant variation in the use and accessibility of exposure and response prevention for OCD. CONCLUSIONS: The variation between countries in treatments used for OCD needs further evaluation. Exposure and response prevention is not used as frequently as guidelines suggest and appears difficult to access in most countries. Updated treatment guidelines are recommended.Peer reviewe
Immunohistochemical Characterisation of GLUT1, MMP3 and NRF2 in Osteosarcoma.
Osteosarcoma (OSA) is an aggressive bone malignancy. Unlike many other malignancies, OSA outcomes have not improved in recent decades. One challenge to the development of better diagnostic and therapeutic methods for OSA has been the lack of well characterized experimental model systems. Spontaneous OSA in dogs provides a good model for the disease seen in people and also remains an important veterinary clinical challenge. We recently used RNA sequencing and qRT-PCR to provide a detailed molecular characterization of OSA relative to non-malignant bone in dogs. We identified differential mRNA expression of the solute carrier family 2 member 1 (SLC2A1/GLUT1), matrix metallopeptidase 3 (MMP3) and nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (NFE2L2/NRF2) genes in canine OSA tissue in comparison to paired non-tumor tissue. Our present work characterizes protein expression of GLUT1, MMP3 and NRF2 using immunohistochemistry. As these proteins affect key processes such as Wnt activation, heme biosynthesis, glucose transport, understanding their expression and the enriched pathways and gene ontologies enables us to further understand the potential molecular pathways and mechanisms involved in OSA. This study further supports spontaneous OSA in dogs as a model system to inform the development of new methods to diagnose and treat OSA in both dogs and people
Effects of atomoxetine on growth in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder following up to five years of treatment.
OBJECTIVE: To examine the effects on growth of long-term pharmacological treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), we present findings from an ongoing 5-year study of the efficacy and safety of treatment with atomoxetine.
METHODS: North American patients, 6-17 years old at study entry (N = 1,312) and with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,4th edition (DSM-IV) ADHD, were studied under open-label atomoxetine treatment. Sixty-one were studied up to 5 years.
RESULTS: After 1 month\u27s treatment, patients weighed less than expected from their starting percentiles relative to population norms, with a maximum shortfall at 15 months and a return to expected weight by 36 months. Patients were slightly shorter than expected after 12 months, reaching a maximum shortfall at 18 months and returning to expected height by 24 months. Patients in the top quartile for body mass index (BMI) or weight at baseline, and those in the third quartile for height, showed 5-year decreases from expected values. Those below median height at baseline showed increases relative to expected values.
CONCLUSIONS: These interim results indicate that continuous atomoxetine treatment for up to 5 years has little or no long-term effect on juvenile growth and final stature for most patients, although persistent decreases from expected may occur in some patients who are larger than average before treatment
Predicting language diversity with complex network
Evolution and propagation of the world's languages is a complex phenomenon,
driven, to a large extent, by social interactions. Multilingual society can be
seen as a system of interacting agents, where the interaction leads to a
modification of the language spoken by the individuals. Two people can reach
the state of full linguistic compatibility due to the positive interactions,
like transfer of loanwords. But, on the other hand, if they speak entirely
different languages, they will separate from each other. These simple
observations make the network science the most suitable framework to describe
and analyze dynamics of language change. Although many mechanisms have been
explained, we lack a qualitative description of the scaling behavior for
different sizes of a population. Here we address the issue of the language
diversity in societies of different sizes, and we show that local interactions
are crucial to capture characteristics of the empirical data. We propose a
model of social interactions, extending the idea from, that explains the growth
of the language diversity with the size of a population of country or society.
We argue that high clustering and network disintegration are the most important
characteristics of models properly describing empirical data. Furthermore, we
cancel the contradiction between previous models and the Solomon Islands case.
Our results demonstrate the importance of the topology of the network, and the
rewiring mechanism in the process of language change
Cross Sections for the Reactions e+e- --> K+ K- pi+pi-, K+ K- pi0pi0, and K+ K- K+ K- Measured Using Initial-State Radiation Events
We study the processes e+e- --> K+ K- pi+pi-gamma, K+ K- pi0pi0gamma, and K+
K- K+ K-gamma, where the photon is radiated from the initial state. About
84000, 8000, and 4200 fully reconstructed events, respectively, are selected
from 454 fb-1 of BaBar data. The invariant mass of the hadronic final state
defines the \epem center-of-mass energy, so that the K+ K- pi+pi- data can be
compared with direct measurements of the e+e- --> K+ K- pi+pi- reaction. No
direct measurements exist for the e+e- --> K+ K-pi0pi0 or e+e- --> K+ K-K+ K-
reactions, and we present an update of our previous result with doubled
statistics. Studying the structure of these events, we find contributions from
a number of intermediate states, and extract their cross sections. In
particular, we perform a more detailed study of the e+e- --> phi(1020)pipigamma
reaction, and confirm the presence of the Y(2175) resonance in the phi(1020)
f0(980) and K+K-f0(980) modes. In the charmonium region, we observe the J/psi
in all three final states and in several intermediate states, as well as the
psi(2S) in some modes, and measure the corresponding product of branching
fraction and electron width.Comment: 35 pages, 42 figure
Search for lepton-number violating processes in B+ -> h- l+ l+ decays
We have searched for the lepton-number violating processes B+ -> h- l+ l+
with h- = K-/pi- and l+ = e+/mu+, using a sample of 471+/-3 million BBbar
events collected with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II e+e- collider at the
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. We find no evidence for these decays and
place 90% confidence level upper limits on their branching fractions Br(B+ ->
pi- e+ e+) K- e+ e+) pi-
mu+ mu+) K- mu+ mu+) < 6.7 x 10^{-8}.Comment: 8 pages, 4 postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D. R
Study of Upsilon(3S,2S) -> eta Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(3S,2S) -> pi+pi- Upsilon(1S) hadronic trasitions
We study the Upsilon(3S,2S)->eta Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(3S,2S)->pi+pi-
Upsilon(1S) transitions with 122 million Upsilon(3S) and 100 million
Upsilon(2S) mesons collected by the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric
energy e+e- collider. We measure B[Upsilon(2S)->eta
Upsilon(1S)]=(2.39+/-0.31(stat.)+/-0.14(syst.))10^-4 and Gamma[Upsilon(2S)->eta
Upsilon(1S)]/Gamma[Upsilon(2S)-> pi+pi-
Upsilon(1S)]=(1.35+/-0.17(stat.)+/-0.08(syst.))10^-3. We find no evidence for
Upsilon(3S)->eta Upsilon(1S) and obtain B[Upsilon(3S)->eta Upsilon(1S)]<1.0
10^-4 and Gamma[Upsilon(3S)->eta Upsilon(1S)]/Gamma[Upsilon(3S)->pi+pi-
Upsilon(1S)]<2.3 10^-3 as upper limits at the 90% confidence level. We also
provide improved measurements of the Upsilon(2S) - Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(3S)
- Upsilon(1S) mass differences, 562.170+/-0.007(stat.)+/-0.088(syst.) MeV/c^2
and 893.813+/-0.015(stat.)+/-0.107(syst.) MeV/c^2 respectively.Comment: 8 pages, 16 encapsulated postscript figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.
Discovering Transcription Factor Binding Sites in Highly Repetitive Regions of Genomes with Multi-Read Analysis of ChIP-Seq Data
Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq) is rapidly replacing chromatin immunoprecipitation combined with genome-wide tiling array analysis (ChIP-chip) as the preferred approach for mapping transcription-factor binding sites and chromatin modifications. The state of the art for analyzing ChIP-seq data relies on using only reads that map uniquely to a relevant reference genome (uni-reads). This can lead to the omission of up to 30% of alignable reads. We describe a general approach for utilizing reads that map to multiple locations on the reference genome (multi-reads). Our approach is based on allocating multi-reads as fractional counts using a weighted alignment scheme. Using human STAT1 and mouse GATA1 ChIP-seq datasets, we illustrate that incorporation of multi-reads significantly increases sequencing depths, leads to detection of novel peaks that are not otherwise identifiable with uni-reads, and improves detection of peaks in mappable regions. We investigate various genome-wide characteristics of peaks detected only by utilization of multi-reads via computational experiments. Overall, peaks from multi-read analysis have similar characteristics to peaks that are identified by uni-reads except that the majority of them reside in segmental duplications. We further validate a number of GATA1 multi-read only peaks by independent quantitative real-time ChIP analysis and identify novel target genes of GATA1. These computational and experimental results establish that multi-reads can be of critical importance for studying transcription factor binding in highly repetitive regions of genomes with ChIP-seq experiments
A search for the decay modes B+/- to h+/- tau l
We present a search for the lepton flavor violating decay modes B+/- to h+/-
tau l (h= K,pi; l= e,mu) using the BaBar data sample, which corresponds to 472
million BBbar pairs. The search uses events where one B meson is fully
reconstructed in one of several hadronic final states. Using the momenta of the
reconstructed B, h, and l candidates, we are able to fully determine the tau
four-momentum. The resulting tau candidate mass is our main discriminant
against combinatorial background. We see no evidence for B+/- to h+/- tau l
decays and set a 90% confidence level upper limit on each branching fraction at
the level of a few times 10^-5.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
- …