5,212 research outputs found
Delegation and the Destruction of American Liberties: The Affordable Care Act and the Contraception Mandate
Recommended from our members
European consumers' valuation for hybrid meat: Does information matter?
This study investigates for the first time how the use of different information messages (i.e., health, sensory, and convenience benefits) about hybrid meat shapes British, Spanish, and Danish consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for such products. Hybrid meats are products whereby a proportion of the meat has been replaced by plant-based proteins. Using a choice experiment (CE) involving hybrid burgers that vary across four attributes (i.e., ingredient, fat content, Carbon Trust label, and price), our results show that consumers are generally not yet willing to pay a premium for such new products. Furthermore, we found that consumer valuation for hybrid burgers strongly depends on the type of information provided and consumer characteristics. These findings provide useful guidelines on how information can be used in communicating the nature of the hybrid meats to the public in a cross-country context
Disruption of cerebellar maturation by an antimitotic agent impairs the ontogeny of eyeblink conditioning in rats
This study represents an attempt to establish a relationship between maturation of the cerebellum and the ontogeny of eyeblink conditioning in the rat. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effects of disrupting cerebellar maturation by neonatal exposure to the antimitotic agent methylazoxymethanol (MAM) on the ontogeny of eyeblink conditioning in infant rats. Experiment 1 demonstrated that neonatal exposure to MAM on Postnatal Day 4 (PND4) and 7 severely disrupted cerebellar maturation. This effect appeared to be specific in that there was no overt dysmorphology in other brain regions. MAM treatment also severely disrupted associative eyeblink conditioning in rats given training on PND24 and 25. However, exposure to MAM had no effect on the unconditioned response, T-maze delayed alternation, or conditioned suppression of ongoing behavior. In Experiment 2, MAM was given on PND4 and 7 and pups were tested behaviorally on PND17-18, 20-21, or 31-32. Cerebellar hypoplasia was most dramatic shortly after exposure. The cerebellar cortex continued to mature after exposure to MAM, but development of morphological endpoints examined here were static from PND19 to 33. Eyeblink conditioning was impaired at all ages, indicating that there was no functional recovery following neonatal exposure to MAM over the age range tested. These experiments suggest that normal cerebellar maturation may be important for the ontogeny of eyeblink conditioning
Workshop to identify critical windows of exposure for children\u27s health: Neurobehavioral work group summary
Summarizes the deliberations of a work group charged with addressing specific questions relevant to risk estimation in developmental neurotoxicology. Importance of multiple factors addressing critical windows of exposure on neurological function; Role that compensatory mechanisms play in the manifestation of the effects of developmental exposures
Control of Josephson current by Aharonov-Casher Phase in a Rashba Ring
We study the interference effect induced by the Aharonov-Casher phase on the
Josephson current through a semiconducting ring attached to superconducting
leads. Using a 1D model that incorporates spin-orbit coupling in the
semiconducting ring, we calculate the Andreev levels analytically and
numerically, and predict oscillations of the Josephson current due to the AC
phase. This result is valid from the point contact limit to the long channel
length limit, as defined by the ratio of the junction length and the BCS
healing length. We show in the long channel length limit that the impurity
scattering has no effect on the oscillation of the Josephson current, in
contrast to the case of conductivity oscillations in a spin-orbit coupled ring
system attached to normal leads where impurity scattering reduces the amplitude
of oscillations. Our results suggest a new scheme to measure the AC phase with,
in principle, higher sensitivity. In addition, this effect allows for control
of the Josephson current through the gate voltage tuned AC phase.Comment: 12pages, 8 figure
The ecological and biogeochemical state of the North Pacifi c Subtropical Gyre is linked to sea surface height
Sea surface height (SSH) is routinely measured from satellites and used to infer ocean currents, including eddies, that affect the distribution of organisms and substances in the ocean. SSH not only reflects the dynamics of the surface layer, but also is sensitive to the fluctuations of the main pycnocline; thus it is linked to events of nutrient upwelling. Beyond episodic upwelling events, it is not clear if and how SSH is linked to broader changes in the biogeochemical state of marine ecosystems. Our analysis of 23 years of satellite observations and biogeochemical measurements from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre shows that SSH is associated with numerous biogeochemical changes in distinct layers of the water column. From the sea surface to the depth of the chlorophyll maximum, dissolved phosphorus and nitrogen enigmatically increase with SSH, enhancing the abundance of heterotrophic picoplankton. At the deep chlorophyll maximum, increases in SSH are associated with decreases in vertical gradients of inorganic nutrients, decreases in the abundance of eukaryotic phytoplankton, and increases in the abundance of prokaryotic phytoplankton. In waters below ∼100 m depth, increases in SSH are associated with increases in organic matter and decreases in inorganic nutrients, consistent with predicted consequences of the vertical displacement of isopycnal layers. Our analysis highlights how satellite measurements of SSH can be used to infer the ecological and biogeochemical state of open-ocean ecosystems
Reductions in cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory mortality following the national Irish smoking ban: Interrupted time-series analysis
Copyright @ 2013 Stallings-Smith et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: Previous studies have shown decreases in cardiovascular mortality following the implementation of comprehensive smoking bans. It is not known whether cerebrovascular or respiratory mortality decreases post-ban. On March 29, 2004, the Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world to implement a national workplace smoking ban. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of this policy on all-cause and cause-specific, non-trauma mortality. Methods: A time-series epidemiologic assessment was conducted, utilizing Poisson regression to examine weekly age and gender-standardized rates for 215,878 non-trauma deaths in the Irish population, ages ≥35 years. The study period was from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2007, with a post-ban follow-up of 3.75 years. All models were adjusted for time trend, season, influenza, and smoking prevalence. Results: Following ban implementation, an immediate 13% decrease in all-cause mortality (RR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.76-0.99), a 26% reduction in ischemic heart disease (IHD) (RR: 0.74; 95% CI: 0.63-0.88), a 32% reduction in stroke (RR: 0.68; 95% CI: 0.54-0.85), and a 38% reduction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (RR: 0.62; 95% CI: 0.46-0.83) mortality was observed. Post-ban reductions in IHD, stroke, and COPD mortalities were seen in ages ≥65 years, but not in ages 35-64 years. COPD mortality reductions were found only in females (RR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.32-0.70). Post-ban annual trend reductions were not detected for any smoking-related causes of death. Unadjusted estimates indicate that 3,726 (95% CI: 2,305-4,629) smoking-related deaths were likely prevented post-ban. Mortality decreases were primarily due to reductions in passive smoking. Conclusions: The national Irish smoking ban was associated with immediate reductions in early mortality. Importantly, post-ban risk differences did not change with a longer follow-up period. This study corroborates previous evidence for cardiovascular causes, and is the first to demonstrate reductions in cerebrovascular and respiratory causes
Developmental Exposure of Rats to Chlorpyrifos Leads to Behavioral Alterations in Adulthood, Involving Serotonergic Mechanisms and Resembling Animal Models of Depression
Developmental exposure to chlorpyrifos (CPF) causes persistent changes in serotonergic (5HT) systems. We administered 1 mg/kg/day CPF to rats on postnatal days 1–4, a regimen below the threshold for systemic toxicity. When tested in adulthood, CPF-exposed animals showed abnormalities in behavioral tests that involve 5HT mechanisms. In the elevated plus maze, males treated with CPF spent more time in the open arms, an effect seen with 5HT deficiencies in animal models of depression. Similarly, in an anhedonia test, the CPF-exposed group showed a decreased preference for chocolate milk versus water. Developmental CPF exposure also has lasting effects on cognitive function. We replicated our earlier finding that developmental CPF exposure ablates the normal sex differences in 16-arm radial maze learning and memory: during acquisition training, control male rats typically perform more accurately than do control females, but CPF treatment eliminated this normal sex difference. Females exposed to CPF showed a reduction in working and reference memory errors down to the rate of control males. Conversely, CPF-exposed males exhibited an increase in working and reference memory errors. After radial-arm acquisition training, we assessed the role of 5HT by challenging the animals with the 5HT(2) receptor antagonist ketanserin. Ketanserin did not affect performance in controls but elicited dose-dependent increases in working and reference memory errors in the CPF group, indicating an abnormal dependence on 5HT systems. Our results indicate that neonatal CPF exposures, classically thought to be subtoxic, produce lasting changes in 5HT-related behaviors that resemble animal models of depression
Effect of granularity on the insulator-superconductor transition in ultrathin Bi films
We have studied the insulator-superconductor transition (IST) by tuning the
thickness in quench-condensed films. The resistive transitions of the
superconducting films are smooth and can be considered to represent
"homogeneous" films. The observation of an IST very close to the quantum
resistance for pairs, on several substrates supports
this idea. The relevant length scales here are the localization length, and the
coherence length. However, at the transition, the localization length is much
higher than the superconducting coherence length, contrary to expectation for a
"homogeneous" transition. This suggests the invalidity of a purely fermionic
model for the transition. Furthermore, the current-voltage characteristics of
the superconducting films are hysteretic, and show the films to be granular.
The relevant energy scales here are the Josephson coupling energy and the
charging energy. However, Josephson coupling energies () and the charging
energies () at the IST, they are found to obey the relation .
This is again contrary to expectation, for the IST in a granular or
inhomogeneous, system. Hence, a purely bosonic picture of the transition is
also inconsistent with our observations. We conclude that the IST observed in
our experiments may be either an intermediate case between the fermioinc and
bosonic mechanisms, or in a regime of charge and vortex dynamics for which a
quantitative analysis has not yet been done.Comment: accepted in Physical Review
Static Solitons of the Sine-Gordon Equation and Equilibrium Vortex Structure in Josephson Junctions
The problem of vortex structure in a single Josephson junction in an external
magnetic field, in the absence of transport currents, is reconsidered from a
new mathematical point of view. In particular, we derive a complete set of
exact analytical solutions representing all the stationary points (minima and
saddle-points) of the relevant Gibbs free-energy functional. The type of these
solutions is determined by explicit evaluation of the second variation of the
Gibbs free-energy functional. The stable (physical) solutions minimizing the
Gibbs free-energy functional form an infinite set and are labelled by a
topological number Nv=0,1,2,... Mathematically, they can be interpreted as
nontrivial ''vacuum'' (Nv=0) and static topological solitons (Nv=1,2,...) of
the sine-Gordon equation for the phase difference in a finite spatial interval:
solutions of this kind were not considered in previous literature. Physically,
they represent the Meissner state (Nv=0) and Josephson vortices (Nv=1,2,...).
Major properties of the new physical solutions are thoroughly discussed. An
exact, closed-form analytical expression for the Gibbs free energy is derived
and analyzed numerically. Unstable (saddle-point) solutions are also classified
and discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 4 Postscript figure
- …