309 research outputs found
The building stones and slates of Killin : an investigation of stone for the built heritage
The village of Killin lies in an area of dramatic landscape and mountain scenery. The use of local stone
in the buildings gives a direct connection to this landscape and reflects the local geology, comprising
mostly metamorphic rocks of Precambrian age –dominantly limestone, meta-sandstone, mica schist
and meta-igneous rocks. All of these (with the exception of the Loch Tay Limestone which was used for
soil improvement) were used in buildings and structures within the Killin Conservation Area.
The stone masonry in the village is classified into five categories; (1) cottages (mostly harled) built of
random rubble from field and river boulders and surface rock outcrops, (2) two storey buildings with
irregular coursed rubble walls of meta-sandstone and mica schist with large dressings of silver-grey
slabs of actinolite schist, (3) and (4) larger late 19th century buildings with dressings of Central Belt
sandstone used in combination with squared rubble walling of local actinolite schist and metasandstone.
The 5th masonry category represents relatively late buildings constructed using distinctive
imported stone types (e.g. whinstone, granite, red sandstone). These categories are broadly
chronological in order and reflect the development of architectural form along with improving
transportation of materials over time
Residual cognitive deficits 50 years after lead poisoning during childhood
The long term neurobehavioural consequences of childhood lead poisoning are not known. In this study adult subjects with a documented history of lead poisoning before age 4 and matched controls were examined with an abbreviated battery of neuropsychological tests including measures of attention, reasoning, memory, motor speed, and current mood. The subjects exposed to lead were inferior to controls on almost all of the cognitive tasks. This pattern of widespread deficits resembles that found in children evaluated at the time of acute exposure to lead rather than the more circumscribed pattern typically seen in adults exposed to lead. Despite having completed as many years of schooling as controls, the subjects exposed to lead were lower in lifetime occupational status. Within the exposed group, performance on the neuropsychological battery and occupational status were related, consistent with the presumed impact of limitations in neuropsychological functioning on everyday life. The results suggest that many subjects exposed to lead suffered acute encephalopathy in childhood which resolved into a chronic subclinical encephalopathy with associated cognitive dysfunction still evident in adulthood. These findings lend support to efforts to limit exposure to lead in childhood
Nondissipative Drag Conductance as a Topological Quantum Number
We show in this paper that the boundary condition averaged nondissipative
drag conductance of two coupled mesoscopic rings with no tunneling, evaluated
in a particular many-particle eigenstate, is a topological invariant
characterized by a Chern integer. Physical implications of this observation are
discussed.Comment: 4 pages, no figure. Title modified and significant revision made to
the text. Final version appeared in PR
Self-similar Approximants of the Permeability in Heterogeneous Porous Media from Moment Equation Expansions
We use a mathematical technique, the self-similar functional renormalization,
to construct formulas for the average conductivity that apply for large
heterogeneity, based on perturbative expansions in powers of a small parameter,
usually the log-variance of the local conductivity. Using
perturbation expansions up to third order and fourth order in
obtained from the moment equation approach, we construct the general functional
dependence of the transport variables in the regime where is of
order 1 and larger than 1. Comparison with available numerical simulations give
encouraging results and show that the proposed method provides significant
improvements over available expansions.Comment: Latex, 14 pages + 5 ps figure
Data Analysis Challenges for the Einstein Telescope
The Einstein Telescope is a proposed third generation gravitational wave
detector that will operate in the region of 1 Hz to a few kHz. As well as the
inspiral of compact binaries composed of neutron stars or black holes, the
lower frequency cut-off of the detector will open the window to a number of new
sources. These will include the end stage of inspirals, plus merger and
ringdown of intermediate mass black holes, where the masses of the component
bodies are on the order of a few hundred solar masses. There is also the
possibility of observing intermediate mass ratio inspirals, where a stellar
mass compact object inspirals into a black hole which is a few hundred to a few
thousand times more massive. In this article, we investigate some of the data
analysis challenges for the Einstein Telescope such as the effects of increased
source number, the need for more accurate waveform models and the some of the
computational issues that a data analysis strategy might face.Comment: 18 pages, Invited review for Einstein Telescope special edition of
GR
Theory of excited state absorptions in phenylene-based -conjugated polymers
Within a rigid-band correlated electron model for oligomers of
poly-(paraphenylene) (PPP) and poly-(paraphenylenevinylene) (PPV), we show that
there exist two fundamentally different classes of two-photon A states in
these systems to which photoinduced absorption (PA) can occur. At relatively
lower energies there occur A states which are superpositions of one
electron - one hole (1e--1h) and two electron -- two hole (2e--2h) excitations,
that are both comprised of the highest delocalized valence band and the lowest
delocalized conduction band states only. The dominant PA is to one specific
member of this class of states (the mA). In addition to the above class of
A states, PA can also occur to a higher energy kA state whose 2e--2h
component is {\em different} and has significant contributions from excitations
involving both delocalized and localized bands. Our calculated scaled energies
of the mA and the kA agree reasonably well to the experimentally
observed low and high energy PAs in PPV. The calculated relative intensities of
the two PAs are also in qualitative agreement with experiment. In the case of
ladder-type PPP and its oligomers, we predict from our theoretical work a new
intense PA at an energy considerably lower than the region where PA have been
observed currently. Based on earlier work that showed that efficient
charge--carrier generation occurs upon excitation to odd--parity states that
involve both delocalized and localized bands, we speculate that it is the
characteristic electronic nature of the kA that leads to charge generation
subsequent to excitation to this state, as found experimentally.Comment: Revtex4 style, 2 figures inserted in the text, three tables, 10 page
Fusion of secretory vesicles isolated from rat liver
Secretory vesicles isolated from rat liver were found to fuse after exposure to Ca2+. Vescle fusion is characterized by the occurrence of twinned vesicles with a continuous cleavage plane between two vesicles in freeze-fracture electron microscopy. The number of fused vesicles increases with increasing Ca2+-concentrations and is half maximal around 10–6 m. Other divalent cations (Ba2+, Sr2+, and Mg2+) were ineffective. Mg2+ inhibits Ca2+-induced fusion. Therefore, the fusion of secretory vesiclesin vitro is Ca2+ specific and exhibits properties similar to the exocytotic process of various secretory cells.
Various substances affecting secretionin vivo (microtubular inhibitors, local anethetics, ionophores) were tested for their effect on membrane fusion in our system.
The fusion of isolated secretory vesicles from liver was found to differ from that of pure phospholipid membranes in its temperature dependence, in its much lower requirement for Ca2+, and in its Ca2+-specificity. Chemical and enzymatic modifications of the vesicle membrane indicate that glycoproteins may account for these differences
Critical behavior of the two-dimensional N-component Landau-Ginzburg Hamiltonian with cubic anisotropy
We study the two-dimensional N-component Landau-Ginzburg Hamiltonian with
cubic anisotropy. We compute and analyze the fixed-dimension perturbative
expansion of the renormalization-group functions to four loops. The relations
of these models with N-color Ashkin-Teller models, discrete cubic models,
planar model with fourth order anisotropy, and structural phase transition in
adsorbed monolayers are discussed. Our results for N=2 (XY model with cubic
anisotropy) are compatible with the existence of a line of fixed points joining
the Ising and the O(2) fixed points. Along this line the exponent has
the constant value 1/4, while the exponent runs in a continuous and
monotonic way from 1 to (from Ising to O(2)). For N\geq 3 we find a
cubic fixed point in the region , which is marginally stable or
unstable according to the sign of the perturbation. For the physical relevant
case of N=3 we find the exponents and at the cubic
transition.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure
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