19,964 research outputs found
PMNCH Knowledge Summary 23: Human Rights & Accountability
Panel presentation for the Global Maternal Health Conference, held in Tanzania in January 2013, organised by Kate Sabot
Presentation Outline
(1) Overview of PMNCH
(2) Overview of Knowledge Summary Process
(3) KS 23 Highlight
Seismic analysis of 70 Ophiuchi A: A new quantity proposed
The basic intent of this paper is to model 70 Ophiuchi A using the latest
asteroseismic observations as complementary constraints and to determine the
fundamental parameters of the star. Additionally, we propose a new quantity to
lift the degeneracy between the initial chemical composition and stellar age.
Using the Yale stellar evolution code (YREC7), we construct a series of stellar
evolutionary tracks for the mass range = 0.85 -- 0.93 with
different composition (0.26 -- 0.30) and (0.017 -- 0.023).
Along these tracks, we select a grid of stellar model candidates that fall
within the error box in the HR diagram to calculate the theoretical
frequencies, the large- and small- frequency separations using the Guenther's
stellar pulsation code. Following the asymptotic formula of stellar -modes,
we define a quantity which is correlated with stellar age. Also, we
test it by theoretical adiabatic frequencies of many models. Many detailed
models of 70 Ophiuchi A have been listed in Table 3. By combining all
non-asteroseismic observations available for 70 Ophiuchi A with these
seismological data, we think that Model 60, Model 125 and Model 126, listed in
Table 3, are the optimum models presently. Meanwhile, we predict that the
radius of this star is about 0.860 -- 0.865 and the age is about
6.8 -- 7.0 Gyr with mass 0.89 -- 0.90 . Additionally, we prove that
the new quantity can be a useful indicator of stellar age.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, accepted by New Astronom
Asteroseismic study of solar-like stars: A method of estimating stellar age
Asteroseismology, as a tool to use the indirect information contained in
stellar oscillations to probe the stellar interiors, is an active field of
research presently. Stellar age, as a fundamental property of star apart from
its mass, is most difficult to estimate. In addition, the estimating of stellar
age can provide the chance to study the time evolution of astronomical
phenomena. In our poster, we summarize our previous work and further present a
method to determine age of low-mass main-sequence star.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figures, submitted to IAUS25
Matrix Product Representation of Locality Preserving Unitaries
The matrix product representation provides a useful formalism to study not
only entangled states, but also entangled operators in one dimension. In this
paper, we focus on unitary transformations and show that matrix product
operators that are unitary provides a necessary and sufficient representation
of 1D unitaries that preserve locality. That is, we show that matrix product
operators that are unitary are guaranteed to preserve locality by mapping local
operators to local operators while at the same time all locality preserving
unitaries can be represented in a matrix product way. Moreover, we show that
the matrix product representation gives a straight-forward way to extract the
GNVW index defined in Ref.\cite{Gross2012} for classifying 1D locality
preserving unitaries. The key to our discussion is a set of `fixed point'
conditions which characterize the form of the matrix product unitary operators
after blocking sites. Finally, we show that if the unitary condition is relaxed
and only required for certain system sizes, the matrix product operator
formalism allows more possibilities than locality preserving unitaries. In
particular, we give an example of a simple matrix product operator which is
unitary only for odd system sizes, does not preserve locality and carries a
`fractional' index as compared to their locality preserving counterparts.Comment: 14 page
Knowledge Summary 23: Human Rights & Accountability
Progress has been made in reducing maternal and child mortality, yet millions continue to
die from preventable causes. These deaths represent an accountability challenge and a
major concern shared by both the health and human rights communities. The Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) commit to reducing these deaths. Powerful complementarities
exist between MDGs and human rights.1 The MDGs generate attention, mobilise resources
and contribute technical health monitoring approaches. Human rights offer a fundamental
emphasis on accountability, systematic and sustained attention to inequities and a legal
grounding of commitments. This knowledge summary explores human rights accountability
systems at community, country, regional and international levels and the potential synergies
for achieving both human rights and public health goals including, and beyond, the MDGs
Anti Microbial Resistance Profile of E. coli isolates From Tropical Free Range Chickens
Normal intestinal flora of humans and animals constitute enormous reservoir of resistance genes for potentially pathogenic bacteria and may serve as major indictors of selection pressure exerted by anti-microbial use in a given population. A study was conducted in September 2003 at 3 purposively selected peri-urban sites spread across 3 senatorial zones of Imo state, Nigeria to determines the anti-microbial resistance profile of commensal E. coli isolated from free range chickens. The isolates were screened for anti-microbial resistance profile against 10 antibiotics using the disc diffusion method. E. coli strains from local fowls, recorded 100 and 78.9% resistances against ampicillin and cotrimoxazole respectively, while resistance rates against ciprofloxacin, gentamycin and norfloxacin were 0.0, 5.3 and 5.3% respectively. Isolates from free-range cockerels recorded 100% resistance against norfloxacin, cotrimoxazole and ampicillin and 83.3% against nitrofurantoin. Similarly, isolates from old layers, recorded 100% resistance against nitrofurantoin, cotrimoxazole, tetracycline, chloramphenicol and ampicillin and 80% against nalidixic acid. Similar resistance trends were observed in E. coli isolates from free-range turkeys and broiler roosters against the inexpensive broad-spectrum first line antibiotics (ampicillin, nalidixic acid, cotrimoxazole, nitrofurantoin and chloramphenicol), although values varied slightly across poultry types. Resistances against gentamycin were consistently low in isolates from the different types of poultry. Twenty-nine resistance patterns were observed in the E. coli isolates with predominant patterns being distributed widely across poultry types indicating a striking diversity of resistance patterns in the areas
Difference of optical conductivity between one- and two-dimensional doped nickelates
We study the optical conductivity in doped nickelates, and find the dramatic
difference of the spectrum in the gap (\alt4 eV) between one- (1D)
and two-dimensional (2D) nickelates. The difference is shown to be caused by
the dependence of hopping integral on dimensionality. The theoretical results
explain consistently the experimental data in 1D and
2D nickelates, YCaBaNiO and LaSrNiO,
respectively. The relation between the spectrum in the X-ray aborption
experiments and the optical conductivity in LaSrNiO is
discussed.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 4 figure
Synthesis of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Images via Multi-channel Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
Positron emission tomography (PET) image synthesis plays an important role,
which can be used to boost the training data for computer aided diagnosis
systems. However, existing image synthesis methods have problems in
synthesizing the low resolution PET images. To address these limitations, we
propose multi-channel generative adversarial networks (M-GAN) based PET image
synthesis method. Different to the existing methods which rely on using
low-level features, the proposed M-GAN is capable to represent the features in
a high-level of semantic based on the adversarial learning concept. In
addition, M-GAN enables to take the input from the annotation (label) to
synthesize the high uptake regions e.g., tumors and from the computed
tomography (CT) images to constrain the appearance consistency and output the
synthetic PET images directly. Our results on 50 lung cancer PET-CT studies
indicate that our method was much closer to the real PET images when compared
with the existing methods.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure
Min-oscillations in Escherichia coli induced by interactions of membrane-bound proteins
During division it is of primary importance for a cell to correctly determine
the site of cleavage. The bacterium Escherichia coli divides in the center,
producing two daughter cells of equal size. Selection of the center as the
correct division site is in part achieved by the Min-proteins. They oscillate
between the two cell poles and thereby prevent division at these locations.
Here, a phenomenological description for these oscillations is presented, where
lateral interactions between proteins on the cell membrane play a key role.
Solutions to the dynamic equations are compared to experimental findings. In
particular, the temporal period of the oscillations is measured as a function
of the cell length and found to be compatible with the theoretical prediction.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Physical Biolog
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