33,296 research outputs found
It\u27s Fun, But Is It Science? Goals and Strategies in a Problem-Based Learning Course
All students at Hampshire College must complete a science requirement in which they demonstrate their understanding of how science is done, examine the work of science in larger contexts, and communicate their ideas effectively. Human Biology: Selected Topics in Medicine is one of 18-20 freshman seminars designed to move students toward completing this requirement. Students work in cooperative groups of 4-6 people to solve actual medical cases about which they receive information progressively. Students assign themselves homework tasks to bring information back for group deliberation. The goal is for case teams to work cooperatively to develop a differential diagnosis and recommend treatment. Students write detailed individual final case reports. Changes observed in student work over six years of developing this course include: increased motivation to pursue work in depth, more effective participation on case teams, increase in critical examination of evidence, and more fully developed arguments in final written reports. As part of a larger study of eighteen introductory science courses in two institutions, several types of pre- and post-course assessments were used to evaluate how teaching approaches might have influenced students’ attitudes about science, their ability to learn science, and their understanding of how scientific knowledge is developed [1]. Preliminary results from interviews and Likert-scale measures suggest improvements in the development of some students’ views of epistemology and in the importance of cooperative group work in facilitating that development
Quasi-particle dephasing time in disordered d-wave superconductors
We evaluate the low-temperature cutoff for quantum interference 1/tf induced
in a d-wave superconductor by the diffusion enhanced quasiparticle interactions
in the presence of disorder. We carry out our analysis in the framework of the
non-linear sigma-model which allows a direct calculation of 1/tf, as the mass
of the transverse modes of the theory. Only the triplet amplitude in the
particle-hole channel and the Cooper amplitude with is pairing symmetry
contribute to 1/tf. We discuss the possible relevance of our results to the
present disagreement between thermal transport data in cuprates and the
localization theory for d-wave quasiparticles
Ultrasensitivity in phosphorylation-dephosphorylation cycles with little substrate
Cellular decision-making is driven by dynamic behaviours, such as the preparations for sunrise enabled by circadian rhythms and the choice of cell fates enabled by positive feedback. Such behaviours are often built upon ultrasensitive responses where a linear change in input generates a sigmoidal change in output. Phosphorylation-dephosphorylation cycles are one means to generate ultrasensitivity. Using bioinformatics, we show that in vivo levels of kinases and phosphatases frequently exceed the levels of their corresponding substrates in budding yeast. This result is in contrast to the conditions often required by zero-order ultrasensitivity, perhaps the most well known means for how such cycles become ultrasensitive. We therefore introduce a mechanism to generate ultrasensitivity when numbers of enzymes are higher than numbers of substrates. Our model combines distributive and non-distributive actions of the enzymes with two-stage binding and concerted allosteric transitions of the substrate. We use analytical and numerical methods to calculate the Hill number of the response. For a substrate with [Formula: see text] phosphosites, we find an upper bound of the Hill number of [Formula: see text], and so even systems with a single phosphosite can be ultrasensitive. Two-stage binding, where an enzyme must first bind to a binding site on the substrate before it can access the substrate's phosphosites, allows the enzymes to sequester the substrate. Such sequestration combined with competition for each phosphosite provides an intuitive explanation for the sigmoidal shifts in levels of phosphorylated substrate. Additionally, we find cases for which the response is not monotonic, but shows instead a peak at intermediate levels of input. Given its generality, we expect the mechanism described by our model to often underlay decision-making circuits in eukaryotic cells
Improvements on analytic modelling of stellar spots
In this work we present the solution of the stellar spot problem using the
Kelvin-Stokes theorem. Our result is applicable for any given location and
dimension of the spots on the stellar surface. We present explicitely the
result up to the second degree in the limb darkening law. This technique can be
used to calculate very efficiently mutual photometric effects produced by
eclipsing bodies occulting stellar spots and to construct complex spot shapes.Comment: Resubmitted to MNRAS after accounting for minor comments of second
review, 9 pages, 5 figures, software available at
http://eduscisoft.com/KSINT
A deep insight into the sialome of male and female aedes aegypti mosquitoes
Only adult female mosquitoes feed on blood, while both genders take sugar meals. Accordingly, several compounds associated with blood feeding (i.e. vasodilators, anti-clotting, anti-platelets) are found only in female glands, while enzymes associated with sugar feeding or antimicrobials (such as lysozyme) are found in the glands of both sexes. We performed de novo assembly of reads from adult Aedes aegypti female and male salivary gland libraries (285 and 90 million reads, respectively). By mapping back the reads to the assembled contigs, plus mapping the reads from a publicly available Ae. aegypti library from adult whole bodies, we identified 360 transcripts (including splice variants and alleles) overexpressed tenfold or more in the glands when compared to whole bodies. Moreover, among these, 207 were overexpressed fivefold or more in female vs. male salivary glands, 85 were near equally expressed and 68 were overexpressed in male glands. We call in particular the attention to C-type lectins, angiopoietins, female-specific Antigen 5, the 9.7 kDa, 12–14 kDa, 23.5 kDa, 62/34 kDa, 4.2 kDa, proline-rich peptide, SG8, 8.7 kDa family and SGS fragments: these polypeptides are all of unknown function, but due to their overexpression in female salivary glands and putative secretory nature they are expected to affect host physiology. We have also found many transposons (some of which novel) and several endogenous viral transcripts (probably acquired by horizontal transfer) which are overexpressed in the salivary glands and may play some role in tissue-specific gene regulation or represent a mechanism of virus interference. This work contributes to a near definitive catalog of male and female salivary gland transcripts from Ae. aegypti, which will help to direct further studies aiming at the functional characterization of the many transcripts with unknown function and the understanding of their role in vector-host interaction and pathogen transmission
Graphene in periodically alternating magnetic field: unusual quantization of the anomalous Hall effect
We study the energy spectrum and electronic properties of graphene in a
periodic magnetic field of zero average with a symmetry of triangular lattice.
The periodic field leads to formation of a set of minibands separated by gaps,
which can be manipulated by external field. The Berry phase, related to the
motion of electrons in space, and the corresponding Chern numbers
characterizing topology of the energy bands are calculated analytically and
numerically. In this connection, we discuss the anomalous Hall effect in the
insulating state, when the Fermi level is located in the minigap. The results
of calculations show that in the model of gapless Dirac spectrum of graphene
the anomalous Hall effect can be treated as a sum of fractional quantum
numbers, related to the nonequivalent Dirac points.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Anopheline salivary protein genes and gene families: an evolutionary overview after the whole genome sequence of sixteen Anopheles species
Background: Mosquito saliva is a complex cocktail whose pharmacological properties play an essential role in
blood feeding by counteracting host physiological response to tissue injury. Moreover, vector borne pathogens are
transmitted to vertebrates and exposed to their immune system in the context of mosquito saliva which, in virtue
of its immunomodulatory properties, can modify the local environment at the feeding site and eventually affect
pathogen transmission. In addition, the host antibody response to salivary proteins may be used to assess human
exposure to mosquito vectors. Even though the role of quite a few mosquito salivary proteins has been clarified in
the last decade, we still completely ignore the physiological role of many of them as well as the extent of their
involvement in the complex interactions taking place between the mosquito vectors, the pathogens they transmit
and the vertebrate host. The recent release of the genomes of 16 Anopheles species offered the opportunity to get
insights into function and evolution of salivary protein families in anopheline mosquitoes.
Results: Orthologues of fifty three Anopheles gambiae salivary proteins were retrieved and annotated from 18
additional anopheline species belonging to the three subgenera Cellia, Anopheles, and Nyssorhynchus. Our analysis
included 824 full-length salivary proteins from 24 different families and allowed the identification of 79 novel
salivary genes and re-annotation of 379 wrong predictions. The comparative, structural and phylogenetic analyses
yielded an unprecedented view of the anopheline salivary repertoires and of their evolution over 100 million years
of anopheline radiation shedding light on mechanisms and evolutionary forces that contributed shaping the
anopheline sialomes.
Conclusions: We provide here a comprehensive description, classification and evolutionary overview of the main
anopheline salivary protein families and identify two novel candidate markers of human exposure to malaria vectors
worldwide. This anopheline sialome catalogue, which is easily accessible as hyperlinked spreadsheet, is expected to
be useful to the vector biology community and to improve the capacity to gain a deeper understanding of
mosquito salivary proteins facilitating their possible exploitation for epidemiological and/or pathogen-vector-host
interaction studies
Polarization Charge Distribution in Gapped Graphene
We study the distribution of vacuum polarization charge induced by a Coulomb
impurity in massive graphene. By analytically computing the polarization
function, we show that the charge density is distributed in space in a
non-trivial fashion, and on a characteristic length-scale set by the effective
Compton wavelength. The density crosses over from a logarithmic behavior below
this scale, to a power law variation above it. Our results in the continuum
limit are confirmed by explicit diagonalization of the corresponding
tight-binding model on a finite-size lattice. Electron-electron interaction
effects are also discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; expanded versio
Multiscale Fractal Descriptors Applied to Nanoscale Images
This work proposes the application of fractal descriptors to the analysis of
nanoscale materials under different experimental conditions. We obtain
descriptors for images from the sample applying a multiscale transform to the
calculation of fractal dimension of a surface map of such image. Particularly,
we have used the}Bouligand-Minkowski fractal dimension. We applied these
descriptors to discriminate between two titanium oxide films prepared under
different experimental conditions. Results demonstrate the discrimination power
of proposed descriptors in such kind of application
Characterization of nanostructured material images using fractal descriptors
This work presents a methodology to the morphology analysis and
characterization of nanostructured material images acquired from FEG-SEM (Field
Emission Gun-Scanning Electron Microscopy) technique. The metrics were
extracted from the image texture (mathematical surface) by the volumetric
fractal descriptors, a methodology based on the Bouligand-Minkowski fractal
dimension, which considers the properties of the Minkowski dilation of the
surface points. An experiment with galvanostatic anodic titanium oxide samples
prepared in oxalyc acid solution using different conditions of applied current,
oxalyc acid concentration and solution temperature was performed. The results
demonstrate that the approach is capable of characterizing complex morphology
characteristics such as those present in the anodic titanium oxide.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication Physica
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