6,378 research outputs found
The distribution and movement patterns of four woodland caribou herds in Quebec and Labrador
Recent studies of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) in northern Quebec and central Labrador have demonstrated similar patterns of seasonal movements and distribution among four herds. Aerial surveys and radio-telemetry indicated that animals occupied forest-wetland habitat at densities of 0.03 caribou km2, or lower, for most of the year. Although females were widely dispersed at calving individuals demonstrated fidelity toward specific calving locations, in successive years. Caribou did not form large post-calving aggregations. Movement was greatest in the spring, prior to calving, and in the fall, during or immediately after rutting. Caribou were generally sedentary during summer and winter, although some moved relatively long distances to late-winter range. Although the herds occupy continuous range across Quebec and Labrador, our data indicate that the herds are largely discreete and should be managed individually
Protocol for a feasibility study of smoking cessation in the surgical pathway before major lung surgery: Project MURRAY
INTRODUCTION: Smoking prior to major thoracic surgery is the biggest risk factor for development of postoperative pulmonary complications, with one in five patients continuing to smoke before surgery. Current guidance is that all patients should stop smoking before elective surgery yet very few are offered specialist smoking cessation support. Patients would prefer support within the thoracic surgical pathway. No study has addressed the effectiveness of such an intervention in this setting on cessation. The overall aim is to determine in patients who undergo major elective thoracic surgery whether an intervention integrated (INT) into the surgical pathway improves smoking cessation rates compared with usual care (UC) of standard community/hospital based NHS smoking support. This pilot study will evaluate feasibility of a substantive trial. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Project MURRAY is a trial comparing the effectiveness of INT and UC on smoking cessation. INT is pharmacotherapy and a hybrid of behavioural support delivered by the trained healthcare practitioners (HCPs) in the thoracic surgical pathway and a complimentary web-based application. This pilot study will evaluate the feasibility of a substantive trial and study processes in five adult thoracic centres including the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. The primary objective is to establish the proportion of those eligible who agree to participate. Secondary objectives include evaluation of study processes. Analyses of feasibility and patient-reported outcomes will take the form of simple descriptive statistics and where appropriate, point estimates of effects sizes and associated 95% CIs. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study has obtained ethical approval from NHS Research Ethics Committee (REC number 19/WM/0097). Dissemination plan includes informing patients and HCPs; engaging multidisciplinary professionals to support a proposal of a definitive trial and submission for a full application dependent on the success of the study. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04190966
Modelling the clumping-induced polarimetric variability of hot star winds
Clumping in the winds of massive stars may significantly reduce empirical
mass-loss rates, and which in turn may have a large impact on our understanding
of massive star evolution. Here, we investigate wind-clumping through the
linear polarization induced by light scattering off the clumps. Through the use
of an analytic wind clumping model, we predict the time evolution of the linear
polarimetry over a large parameter space. We concentrate on the Luminous Blue
Variables, which display the greatest amount of polarimetric variability and
for which we recently conducted a spectropolarimetric survey. Our model results
indicate that the observed level of polarimetric variability can be reproduced
for two regimes of parameter space: one of a small number of massive,
optically-thick clumps; and one of a very large number of low-mass clumps.
Although a systematic time-resolved monitoring campaign is required to
distinguish between the two scenarios, we currently favour the latter, given
the short timescale of the observed polarization variability. As the
polarization is predicted to scale linearly with mass-loss rate, we anticipate
that all hot stars with very large mass-loss rates should display polarimetric
variability. This is consistent with recent findings that intrinsic
polarization is more common in stars with strong H emission.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, accepted to A&
Gene Function Classification Using Bayesian Models with Hierarchy-Based Priors
We investigate the application of hierarchical classification schemes to the
annotation of gene function based on several characteristics of protein
sequences including phylogenic descriptors, sequence based attributes, and
predicted secondary structure. We discuss three Bayesian models and compare
their performance in terms of predictive accuracy. These models are the
ordinary multinomial logit (MNL) model, a hierarchical model based on a set of
nested MNL models, and a MNL model with a prior that introduces correlations
between the parameters for classes that are nearby in the hierarchy. We also
provide a new scheme for combining different sources of information. We use
these models to predict the functional class of Open Reading Frames (ORFs) from
the E. coli genome. The results from all three models show substantial
improvement over previous methods, which were based on the C5 algorithm. The
MNL model using a prior based on the hierarchy outperforms both the
non-hierarchical MNL model and the nested MNL model. In contrast to previous
attempts at combining these sources of information, our approach results in a
higher accuracy rate when compared to models that use each data source alone.
Together, these results show that gene function can be predicted with higher
accuracy than previously achieved, using Bayesian models that incorporate
suitable prior information
Speciation of OH reactivity above the canopy of an isoprene-dominated forest
Measurements of OH reactivity, the inverse lifetime of the OH radical, can provide a top–down estimate of the total amount of reactive carbon in an air mass. Using a comprehensive measurement suite, we examine the measured and modeled OH reactivity above an isoprene-dominated forest in the southeast United States during the 2013 Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study (SOAS) field campaign. Measured and modeled species account for the vast majority of average daytime reactivity (80–95 %) and a smaller portion of nighttime and early morning reactivity (68–80 %). The largest contribution to total reactivity consistently comes from primary biogenic emissions, with isoprene contributing ∼  60 % in the afternoon, and ∼  30–40 % at night and monoterpenes contributing ∼  15–25 % at night. By comparing total reactivity to the reactivity stemming from isoprene alone, we find that ∼  20 % of the discrepancy is temporally related to isoprene reactivity, and an additional constant ∼  1 s^(−1) offset accounts for the remaining portion. The model typically overestimates measured OVOC concentrations, indicating that unmeasured oxidation products are unlikely to influence measured OH reactivity. Instead, we suggest that unmeasured primary emissions may influence the OH reactivity at this site
Three-dimensional Explosion Geometry of Stripped-envelope Core-collapse Supernovae. II. Modeling of Polarization
We present modeling of line polarization to study the multidimensional geometry of stripped-envelope core-collapse supernovae (SNe). We demonstrate that a purely axisymmetric, two-dimensional (2D) geometry cannot reproduce a loop in the Stokes Q - U diagram, that is, a variation of the polarization angles along the velocities associated with the absorption lines. On the contrary, three-dimensional (3D) clumpy structures naturally reproduce the loop. The fact that the loop is commonly observed in stripped-envelope SNe suggests that SN ejecta generally have a 3D structure. We study the degree of line polarization as a function of the absorption depth for various 3D clumpy models with different clump sizes and covering factors. A comparison between the calculated and observed degree of line polarization indicates that a typical size of the clump is relatively large, ≈25% of the photospheric radius. Such large-scale clumps are similar to those observed in the SN remnant Cassiopeia A. Given the small size of the observed sample, the covering factor of the clumps is only weakly constrained (∼5%-80%). The presence of a large-scale clumpy structure suggests that the large-scale convection or standing accretion shock instability takes place at the onset of the explosion. © 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved
Infinite Nuclear Matter on the Light Front: Nucleon-Nucleon Correlations
A relativistic light front formulation of nuclear dynamics is developed and
applied to treating infinite nuclear matter in a method which includes the
correlations of pairs of nucleons: this is light front Brueckner theory. We
start with a hadronic meson-baryon Lagrangian that is consistent with chiral
symmetry. This is used to obtain a light front version of a one-boson-exchange
nucleon-nucleon potential (OBEP). The accuracy of our description of the
nucleon-nucleon (NN) data is good, and similar to that of other relativistic
OBEP models. We derive, within the light front formalism, the Hartree-Fock and
Brueckner Hartree-Fock equations. Applying our light front OBEP, the nuclear
matter saturation properties are reasonably well reproduced. We obtain a value
of the compressibility, 180 MeV, that is smaller than that of alternative
relativistic approaches to nuclear matter in which the compressibility usually
comes out too large. Because the derivation starts from a meson-baryon
Lagrangian, we are able to show that replacing the meson degrees of freedom by
a NN interaction is a consistent approximation, and the formalism allows one to
calculate corrections to this approximation in a well-organized manner. The
simplicity of the vacuum in our light front approach is an important feature in
allowing the derivations to proceed. The mesonic Fock space components of the
nuclear wave function are obtained also, and aspects of the meson and nucleon
plus-momentum distribution functions are computed. We find that there are about
0.05 excess pions per nucleon.Comment: 39 pages, RevTex, two figure
Time evolution of models described by one-dimensional discrete nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation
The dynamics of models described by a one-dimensional discrete nonlinear
Schr\"odinger equation is studied. The nonlinearity in these models appears due
to the coupling of the electronic motion to optical oscillators which are
treated in adiabatic approximation. First, various sizes of nonlinear cluster
embedded in an infinite linear chain are considered. The initial excitation is
applied either at the end-site or at the middle-site of the cluster. In both
the cases we obtain two kinds of transition: (i) a cluster-trapping transition
and (ii) a self-trapping transition. The dynamics of the quasiparticle with the
end-site initial excitation are found to exhibit, (i) a sharp self-trapping
transition, (ii) an amplitude-transition in the site-probabilities and (iii)
propagating soliton-like waves in large clusters. Ballistic propagation is
observed in random nonlinear systems. The effect of nonlinear impurities on the
superdiffusive behavior of random-dimer model is also studied.Comment: 16 pages, REVTEX, 9 figures available upon request, To appear in
Physical Review
In-medium relativistic kinetic theory and nucleon-meson systems
Within the model of coupled nucleon-meson systems, a
generalized relativistic Lenard--Balescu--equation is presented resulting from
a relativistic random phase approximation (RRPA). This provides a systematic
derivation of relativistic transport equations in the frame of nonequilibrium
Green's function technique including medium effects as well as flucuation
effects. It contains all possible processes due to one meson exchange and
special attention is kept to the off--shell character of the particles. As a
new feature of many particle effects, processes are possible which can be
interpreted as particle creation and annihilation due to in-medium one meson
exchange. In-medium cross sections are obtained from the generalized derivation
of collision integrals, which possess complete crossing symmetries.Comment: See nucl-th/9310032 for revised version which the authors
incompetently resubmitted rather than correctly replacing thi
Efficacy and safety of a novel delayed-release risedronate 35Â mg once-a-week tablet
Dosing regimens of oral bisphosphonates are inconvenient and contribute to poor compliance. The bone mineral density response to a once weekly delayed-release formulation of risedronate given before or following breakfast was non-inferior to traditional immediate-release risedronate given daily before breakfast. Delayed-release risedronate is a convenient regimen for oral bisphosphonate therapy
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