620 research outputs found
Chronic acceleration studies - Physiological responses to artificial alterations in weight Progress report
Influence of chronic acceleration on energy metabolism of chickens and animals, as indicated by maintenance feed requiremen
Gas gain and signal length measurements with a triple-GEM at different pressures of Ar-, Kr- and Xe-based gas mixtures
We investigate the gas gain behaviour of a triple-GEM configuration in gas
mixtures of argon, krypton and xenon with ten and thirty percent of carbon
dioxide at pressures between 1 and 3 bar. Since the signal widths affect the
dead time behaviour of the detector we present signal length measurements to
evaluate the use of the triple-GEM in time-resolved X-ray imaging.Comment: 19 pages, 21 figures, revised version, accepted for publication in
Nucl. Instr. and Meth.
On Justification, Idealization, and Discursive Purchase
Conceptions of acceptability-based moral or political justification take it that authoritative acceptability, widely conceived, constitutes, or contributes to, validity, or justification. There is no agreement as to what bar for authoritativeness such justification may employ. The paper engages the issue in relation to (i) the level of idealization that a bar for authoritativeness, ψ, imparts to a standard of acceptability-based justification, S, and (ii) the degree of discursive purchase of the discursive standing that S accords to people when it builds ψ. I argue that (i) and (ii) are interdependent: high idealization values entail low discursive purchase, while high degrees of purchase require low idealization values. I then distinguish between alethic conceptions of justification that prioritize ends that commit to high idealization values, and recognitive conceptions that favor high discursive purchase. On this basis, I argue for a moderately recognitivist constraint on idealization. To render the recognitive discursive minimum available to relevant people at the site of justification, S should set ψ low enough so that it is a genuine option for actual people to reject relevant views in ways that S recognizes as authoritative. (The Appendix applies this to a Forst-type view of reciprocity of reasons to draw out some limitations of this view.) [Draft available from author on request.
Obtaining the nuclear gluon distribution from heavy quark decays to lepton pairs in p collisions
We have studied how lepton pairs from decays of heavy-flavoured mesons
produced in p collisions can be used to determine the modifications of the
gluon distribution in the nucleus. Since heavy quark production is dominated by
the channel, the ratio of correlated lepton pair cross sections from
and decays in p and pp collisions directly reflects the
ratio . We have numerically calculated the lepton
pair cross sections from these decays in pp and p collisions at SPS, RHIC
and LHC energies. We find that ratio of the p to pp cross sections agrees
quite well with the input Thus, sufficiently accurate measurements
could be used to determine the nuclear modification of the gluon distribution
over a greater range of and than presently available, putting strong
constraints on models.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figure
Protease inhibitors prevent plasminogen-mediated, but not pemphigus vulgaris-induced, acantholysis in human epidermis
Pemphigus is an autoimmune blistering disease of the skin and mucous membranes. It is caused by autoantibodies directed against desmosomes, which are the principal adhesion structures between epidermal keratinocytes. Binding of autoantibodies leads to the destruction of desmosomes resulting in the loss of cell-cell adhesion (acantholysis) and epidermal blisters. The plasminogen activator system has been implicated as a proteolytic effector in pemphigus. We have tested inhibitors of the plasminogen activator system with regard to their potential to prevent pemphigus-induced cutaneous pathology. In a human split skin culture system, IgG preparations of sera from pemphigus vulgaris patients caused histopathologic changes (acantholysis) similar to those observed in the original pemphigus disease. All inhibitors that were tested (active site inhibitors directed against uPA, tPA, and/or plasmin; antibodies neutralizing the enzymatic activity of uPA or tPA; substances interfering with the binding of uPA to its specific cell surface receptor uPAR) failed to prevent pemphigus vulgaris IgG-mediated acantholysis. Plasminogen-mediated acantholysis, however, was effectively antagonized by the synthetic active site serine protease inhibitor WX-UK1 or by p-aminomethylbenzoic acid. Our data argue against applying anti-plasminogen activator/anti-plasmin strategies in the management of pemphigus
Towards a Precise Parton Luminosity Determination at the CERN LHC
A new approach to determine the LHC luminosity is investigated. Instead of
employing the proton-proton luminosity measurement, we suggest to measure
directly the parton-parton luminosity. It is shown that the electron and muon
pseudorapidity distributions, originating from the decay of W+, W- and Z0
bosons produced at 14 TeV pp collisions (LHC), constrain the x distributions of
sea and valence quarks and antiquarks in the range from about 3 x 10**-4 to
about 10**-1 at a Q**2 of about 10**4 GeV**2. Furthermore, it is demonstrated
that, once the quark and antiquark structure functions are constrained from the
W+,W- and Z0 production dynamics, other quark-antiquark related scattering
processes at the LHC like q-qbar --> W+W- can be predicted accurately. Thus,
the lepton pseudorapidity distributions provide the key to a precise parton
luminosity monitor at the LHC, with accuracies of about +-1% compared to the so
far considered goal of +-5%.Comment: plain tex, 14 pages, 5 figure
A human relevent rat model of breast cancer
Abstract only availableBecause women experience a bewildering array of chemicals, foods and lifestyles, only profound effects on preventing or promoting breast cancer are detectible in human studies. Subtle or delayed effects can be detected in animal models. Mammary tumors in ACI rats share important similarities with the majority of human breast cancers. The link between life time estrogen exposure and breast cancer risk in humans is well established. A high percentage of human breast cancers express ER, are stimulated to grow by the addition of exogenous estrogen, and respond to the antiestrogen tamoxifen. The ACI rat is the only rodent model in which estrogen-sensitive tumors are induced by estrogen. The ACI.COP-Ept2 substrain, derived from the ACI rat, develops mammary tumors similar to those of the ACI rat, but with reduced pituitary hyperplasia. We show that estrogen-induced mammary tumors in ACI.COP-Ept2 express ERα and respond to tamoxifen. Furthermore, tumors express ERβ, progesterone receptor and Her2/neu. The average latency was 183±6 days (n=24) and average tumor burden 1,107±415 mm3. The similarities of ACI.COP-Ept2 tumors to human breast cancers make this a valuable model for determining which of the myriad of lifestyle and diet choices reportedly protecting women from breast cancer actually reduce cancer incidence.Food for the 21st Century Undergraduate Research Program in Nutritional Science
Verifiable Model of Neutrino Masses from Large Extra Dimensions
We propose a new scenario of neutrino masses with a Higgs triplet
in a theory of large extra dimensions. Lepton number
violation in a distant brane acts as the source of a very small trilinear
coupling of to the standard Higgs doublet in our brane. Small realistic
Majorana neutrino masses are \underline{naturally} obtained with the
fundamental scale TeV, foretelling the possible
discovery of (m_\xi\lsim M_*) at future colliders. Decays of
into same-sign dileptons are fixed by the neutrino mass matrix. Observation of
conversion in nuclei is predicted.Comment: A comment on Tevatron reach and two references added. Discussion and
conclusions unchange
Vector Meson Photoproduction with an Effective Lagrangian in the Quark Model
A quark model approach to the photoproduction of vector mesons off nucleons
is proposed. Its starting point is an effective Lagrangian of the interaction
between the vector meson and the quarks inside the baryon, which generates the
non-diffractive s- and u- channel resonance contributions. Additional t-channel
and exchanges are included for the and
production respectively to account for the large diffractive behavior in the
small region as suggested by Friman and Soyeur. The numerical results are
presented for the and productions in four isospin channels with
the same set of parameters, and they are in good agreement with the available
data not only in and productions but also in the charged
productions where the additional t-channel exchange does not
contribute so that it provides an important test to this approach. The
investigation is also extended to the photoproduction, and the initial
results show that the non-diffractive behavior of the productions in the
large region can be described by the s- and u- channel contributions with
significantly smaller coupling constants, which is consistent with the findings
in the similar studies in the QHD framework. The numerical investigation has
also shown that polarization observables are essential for identifying
so-called "missing resonances".Comment: 36 pages, 10 PS figures, extended version of nucl-th/9711061 and
nucl-th/9803021, submitted to PR
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