1,741 research outputs found
Photodesorption of CO ice
At the high densities and low temperatures found in star forming regions, all
molecules other than H2 should stick on dust grains on timescales shorter than
the cloud lifetimes. Yet these clouds are detected in the millimeter lines of
gaseous CO. At these temperatures, thermal desorption is negligible and hence a
non-thermal desorption mechanism is necessary to maintain molecules in the gas
phase. Here, the first laboratory study of the photodesorption of pure CO ice
under ultra high vacuum is presented, which gives a desorption rate of 3E-3 CO
molecules per UV (7-10.5 eV) photon at 15 K. This rate is factors of 1E2-1E5
larger than previously estimated and is comparable to estimates of other
non-thermal desorption rates. The experiments constrains the mechanism to a
single photon desorption process of ice surface molecules. The measured
efficiency of this process shows that the role of CO photodesorption in
preventing total removal of molecules in the gas has been underestimated.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted by ApJ
Perceived and real barriers to workplace empowerment among women at Saudi universities: A cross-sectional study
Academic women in the Arab world, especially Saudi women, have numerous barriers inhibiting their leadership power at the workplace. The current study explores the perceived and real barriers to workplace empowerment among women at Saudi universities. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out at 15 Saudi governmental universities. A multistage cluster sampling technique was followed to select (5587 participants) The data collection started from the beginning of April to the beginning of September 2020. SPSS 23.0 was used to analyze data using descriptive statistics. Multiple linear regression was used to identify the real barriers to women empowerment at the workplace. The study showed that 52.1% of the study participants had moderate workplace empowerment, and only 10.2% have a low level. Regarding perceived barriers to workplace empowerment, 42.6% of the participants agree that male dominance was a barrier. Moreover, 36.2% of the participants agreed and strongly agree that the customs and traditions are a barrier to women empowerment at the workplace. Multiple linear regression showed that age, followed by years of experience (p<0.000), were the most significant demographic predictors of women empowerment at the workplace. Moreover, positive attitude, high self-esteem, and good knowledge (p<0.000) were considered other variables that positively predict women's empowerment at the workplace. The experience of gender-based violence (p<0.000) was a negative predictor of women empowerment at the workplace. The study concluded that around 62.3% of Saudi female academics and administrative staff have moderate or low workplace empowerment at Saudi Universities. Male dominance is perceived as the highest barrier.
Keywords: Barriers, workplace empowerment, Saudi wome
Subjective response to antipsychotic treatment and compliance in schizophrenia. A naturalistic study comparing olanzapine, risperidone and haloperidol (EFESO Study)
BACKGROUND: In order to compare the effectiveness of different antipsychotic drugs in the treatment of schizophrenia it is very important to evaluate subjective response and compliance in patient cohorts treated according to routine clinical practice. METHOD: Outpatients with schizophrenia entered this prospective, naturalistic study when they received a new prescription for an antipsychotic drug. Treatment assignment was based on purely clinical criteria, as the study did not include any experimental intervention. Patients treated with olanzapine, risperidone or haloperidol were included in the analysis. Subjective response was measured using the 10-item version of the Drug Attitude Inventory (DAI-10), and treatment compliance was measured using a physician-rated 4 point categorical scale. RESULTS: A total of 2128 patients initiated treatment (as monotherapy) with olanzapine, 417 with risperidone, and 112 with haloperidol. Olanzapine-treated patients had significantly higher DAI-10 scores and significantly better treatment compliance compared to both risperidone- and haloperidol-treated patients. Risperidone-treated patients had a significantly higher DAI-10 score compared to haloperidol-treated patients. CONCLUSION: Subjective response and compliance were superior in olanzapine-treated patients, compared to patients treated with risperidone and haloperidol, in routine clinical practice. Differences in subjective response were explained largely, but not completely, by differences in incidence of EPS
Virtual prototyping of a semi-active transfemoral prosthetic leg
This article presents a virtual prototyping study of a semi-active lower limb prosthesis to improve the functionality of an amputee during prosthesis–environment interaction for level ground walking. Articulated ankle–foot prosthesis and a single-axis semi-active prosthetic knee with active and passive operating modes were considered. Data for level ground walking were collected using a photogrammetric method in order to develop a base-line simulation model and with the hip kinematics input to verify the proposed design. The simulated results show that the semi-active lower limb prosthesis is able to move efficiently in passive mode, and the activation time of the knee actuator can be reduced by approximately 50%. Therefore, this semi-active system has the potential to reduce the energy consumption of the actuators required during level ground walking and requires less compensation from the amputee due to lower deviation of the vertical excursion of body centre of mass
Scale without Conformal Invariance: Theoretical Foundations
We present the theoretical underpinnings of scale without conformal
invariance in quantum field theory. In light of our results the gradient-flow
interpretation of renormalization-group (RG) flow is challenged, due to deep
connections between scale-invariant theories and recurrent behaviors in the RG.
We show that, on scale-invariant trajectories, there is a redefinition of the
dilatation current that leads to generators of dilatations that generate
dilatations. Finally, we develop a systematic algorithm for the search of
scale-invariant trajectories in perturbation theory.Comment: 18 pages. Added note to make clear that the results of
arXiv:1106.2540 do not imply the existence of unitary theories with scale but
without conformal invariance in perturbation theory in
spacetime dimension
Chemopreventive potential of β-Sitosterol in experimental colon cancer model - an In vitro and In vivo study
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Asclepias curassavica </it>Linn. is a traditional medicinal plant used by tribal people in the western ghats, India, to treat piles, gonorrhoea, roundworm infestation and abdominal tumours. We have determined the protective effect of β-sitosterol isolated from <it>A. curassavica </it>in colon cancer, using <it>in vitro </it>and <it>in vivo </it>models.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The active molecule was isolated, based upon bioassay guided fractionation, and identified as β-sitosterol on spectral evidence. The ability to induce apoptosis was determined by its <it>in vitro </it>antiradical activity, cytotoxic studies using human colon adenocarcinoma and normal monkey kidney cell lines, and the expression of β-catenin and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) in human colon cancer cell lines (COLO 320 DM). The chemopreventive potential of β-sitosterol in colon carcinogenesis was assessed by injecting 1,2-dimethylhydrazine (DMH, 20 mg/kg b.w.) into male Wistar rats and supplementing this with β-sitosterol throughout the experimental period of 16 weeks at 5, 10, and 20 mg/kg b.w.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>β-sitosterol induced significant dose-dependent growth inhibition of COLO 320 DM cells (IC<sub>50 </sub>266.2 μM), induced apoptosis by scavenging reactive oxygen species, and suppressed the expression of β-catenin and PCNA antigens in human colon cancer cells. β-sitosterol supplementation reduced the number of aberrant crypt and crypt multiplicity in DMH-initiated rats in a dose-dependent manner with no toxic effects.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We found doses of 10-20 mg/kg b.w. β-sitosterol to be effective for future <it>in vivo </it>studies. β-sitosterol had chemopreventive potential by virtue of its radical quenching ability <it>in vitro</it>, with minimal toxicity to normal cells. It also attenuated β-catenin and PCNA expression, making it a potential anticancer drug for colon carcinogenesis.</p
Prediction of Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE)/Extreme Ultraviolet Spectro-Photometer (ESP) Irradiance from Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) Images Using Fuzzy Image Processing and Machine Learning
YesThe cadence and resolution of solar images have been increasing dramatically with the launch of new spacecraft such as STEREO and SDO. This increase in data volume provides new opportunities for solar researchers, but the efficient processing and analysis of these data create new challenges. We introduce a fuzzy-based solar feature-detection system in this article. The proposed system processes SDO/AIA images using fuzzy rules to detect coronal holes and active regions. This system is fast and it can handle different size images. It is tested on six months of solar data (1 October 2010 to 31 March 2011) to generate filling factors (ratio of area of solar feature to area of rest of the solar disc) for active regions and coronal holes. These filling factors are then compared to SDO/EVE/ESP irradiance measurements. The correlation between active-region filling factors and irradiance measurements is found to be very high, which has encouraged us to design a time-series prediction system using Radial Basis Function Networks to predict ESP irradiance measurements from our generated filling factors
Gravitational quasinormal modes of AdS black branes in d spacetime dimensions
The AdS/CFT duality has established a mapping between quantities in the bulk
AdS black-hole physics and observables in a boundary finite-temperature field
theory. Such a relationship appears to be valid for an arbitrary number of
spacetime dimensions, extrapolating the original formulations of Maldacena's
correspondence. In the same sense properties like the hydrodynamic behavior of
AdS black-hole fluctuations have been proved to be universal. We investigate in
this work the complete quasinormal spectra of gravitational perturbations of
-dimensional plane-symmetric AdS black holes (black branes). Holographically
the frequencies of the quasinormal modes correspond to the poles of two-point
correlation functions of the field-theory stress-energy tensor. The important
issue of the correct boundary condition to be imposed on the gauge-invariant
perturbation fields at the AdS boundary is studied and elucidated in a fully
-dimensional context. We obtain the dispersion relations of the first few
modes in the low-, intermediate- and high-wavenumber regimes. The sound-wave
(shear-mode) behavior of scalar (vector)-type low-frequency quasinormal mode is
analytically and numerically confirmed. These results are found employing both
a power series method and a direct numerical integration scheme.Comment: added references, typos corrected, minor changes, final version for
JHE
Improving Phase Change Memory Performance with Data Content Aware Access
A prominent characteristic of write operation in Phase-Change Memory (PCM) is
that its latency and energy are sensitive to the data to be written as well as
the content that is overwritten. We observe that overwriting unknown memory
content can incur significantly higher latency and energy compared to
overwriting known all-zeros or all-ones content. This is because all-zeros or
all-ones content is overwritten by programming the PCM cells only in one
direction, i.e., using either SET or RESET operations, not both. In this paper,
we propose data content aware PCM writes (DATACON), a new mechanism that
reduces the latency and energy of PCM writes by redirecting these requests to
overwrite memory locations containing all-zeros or all-ones. DATACON operates
in three steps. First, it estimates how much a PCM write access would benefit
from overwriting known content (e.g., all-zeros, or all-ones) by
comprehensively considering the number of set bits in the data to be written,
and the energy-latency trade-offs for SET and RESET operations in PCM. Second,
it translates the write address to a physical address within memory that
contains the best type of content to overwrite, and records this translation in
a table for future accesses. We exploit data access locality in workloads to
minimize the address translation overhead. Third, it re-initializes unused
memory locations with known all-zeros or all-ones content in a manner that does
not interfere with regular read and write accesses. DATACON overwrites unknown
content only when it is absolutely necessary to do so. We evaluate DATACON with
workloads from state-of-the-art machine learning applications, SPEC CPU2017,
and NAS Parallel Benchmarks. Results demonstrate that DATACON significantly
improves system performance and memory system energy consumption compared to
the best of performance-oriented state-of-the-art techniques.Comment: 18 pages, 21 figures, accepted at ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium
on Memory Management (ISMM
Gravitational quasinormal modes for Kerr Anti-de Sitter black holes
We investigate the quasinormal modes for gravitational perturbations of
rotating black holes in four dimensional Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime. The
study of the quasinormal frequencies related to these modes is relevant to the
AdS/CFT correspondence. Although results have been obtained for Schwarzschild
and Reissner-Nordstrom AdS black holes, quasinormal frequencies of Kerr-AdS
black holes are computed for the first time. We solve the Teukolsky equations
in AdS spacetime, providing a second order and a Pade approximation for the
angular eigenvalues associated to the Teukolsky angular equation. The
transformation theory and the Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli equations for Kerr-AdS are
obtained.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, ReVTe
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