27,455 research outputs found
Monophyly of brachiopods and phoronids: reconciliation of molecular evidence with Linnaean classification (the subphylum Phoroniformea nov.)
Molecular phylogenetic analyses of aligned 18S rDNA gene sequences from articulate and inarticulate brachiopods representing all major extant lineages, an enhanced set of phoronids and several unrelated protostome taxa, confirm previous indications that in such data, brachiopod and phoronids form a well-supported clade that (on previous evidence) is unambiguously affiliated with protostomes rather than deuterostomes. Within the brachiopod-phoronid clade, an association between phoronids and inarticulate brachiopods is moderately well supported, whilst a close relationship between phoronids and craniid inarticulates is weakly indicated. Brachiopod-phoronid monophyly is reconciled with the most recent Linnaean classification of brachiopods by abolition of the phylum Phoronida and rediagnosis of the phylum Brachiopoda to include tubiculous, shell-less forms. Recognition that brachiopods and phoronids are close genealogical allies of protostome phyla such as molluscs and annelids, but are much more distantly related to deuterostome phyla such as echinoderms and chordates, implies either (or both) that the morphology and ontogeny of blastopore, mesoderm and coelom formation have been widely misreported or misinterpreted, or that these characters have been subject to extensive homoplasy. This inference, if true, undermines virtually all morphology-based reconstructions of phylogeny made during the past century or more
Arithmetic Properties of Overpartition Pairs
Bringmann and Lovejoy introduced a rank for overpartition pairs and
investigated its role in congruence properties of , the number of
overpartition pairs of n. In particular, they applied the theory of Klein forms
to show that there exist many Ramanujan-type congruences for the number
. In this paper, we shall derive two Ramanujan-type identities and
some explicit congruences for . Moreover, we find three ranks as
combinatorial interpretations of the fact that is divisible by
three for any n. We also construct infinite families of congruences for
modulo 3, 5, and 9.Comment: 19 page
European Springtails Orchesella cincta (L.) and O. villosa (L.) (Collembola: Entomobryidae): Vagabond Species of the Nearctic Region
North American specimens of the European invasive springtail Orchesella cincta (L.) were compared to several published European haplotypes in a phylogenetic framework using likelihood methods based on a portion of cytochrome oxidase II (cox2). Our analyses provide direct evidence of at least two distinct introductions of this invasive to North America from different regions of Europe. Additional introduction events cannot be ruled out because detection is limited by extremely low sequence divergence among populations inhabiting different regions of the continent. Orchesella villosa (L.), another invasive from Europe, is another candidate for multiple introductions. Herein we include the cox2 sequence from single specimens of O. villosa from Maine and Oregon. Although these two specimens are identical in sequence, they differ from a published sequence from a European specimen by 15%, indicating significant undocumented genetic variation in the natal range of O. villosa. Additional sampling of Nearctic populations of O. villosa might reveal the same situation reported herein for O. cincta
A Sufficient Condition for Power Flow Insolvability with Applications to Voltage Stability Margins
For the nonlinear power flow problem specified with standard PQ, PV, and
slack bus equality constraints, we present a sufficient condition under which
the specified set of nonlinear algebraic equations has no solution. This
sufficient condition is constructed in a framework of an associated feasible,
convex optimization problem. The objective employed in this optimization
problem yields a measure of distance (in a parameter set) to the power flow
solution boundary. In practical terms, this distance is closely related to
quantities that previous authors have proposed as voltage stability margins. A
typical margin is expressed in terms of the parameters of system loading
(injected powers); here we additionally introduce a new margin in terms of the
parameters of regulated bus voltages.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure
Scaling studies of QCD with the dynamical HISQ action
We study the lattice spacing dependence, or scaling, of physical quantities
using the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action introduced by the
HPQCD/UKQCD collaboration, comparing our results to similar simulations with
the asqtad fermion action. Results are based on calculations with lattice
spacings approximately 0.15, 0.12 and 0.09 fm, using four flavors of dynamical
HISQ quarks. The strange and charm quark masses are near their physical values,
and the light-quark mass is set to 0.2 times the strange-quark mass. We look at
the lattice spacing dependence of hadron masses, pseudoscalar meson decay
constants, and the topological susceptibility. In addition to the commonly used
determination of the lattice spacing through the static quark potential, we
examine a determination proposed by the HPQCD collaboration that uses the decay
constant of a fictitious "unmixed s bar s" pseudoscalar meson. We find that the
lattice artifacts in the HISQ simulations are much smaller than those in the
asqtad simulations at the same lattice spacings and quark masses.Comment: 36 pages, 11 figures, revised version to be published. Revisions
include discussion of autocorrelations and several clarification
A Lattice Study of the Gluon Propagator in Momentum Space
We consider pure glue QCD at beta=5.7, beta=6.0 and beta=6.3. We evaluate the
gluon propagator both in time at zero 3-momentum and in momentum space. From
the former quantity we obtain evidence for a dynamically generated effective
mass, which at beta=6.0 and beta=6.3 increases with the time separation of the
sources, in agreement with earlier results. The momentum space propagator G(k)
provides further evidence for mass generation. In particular, at beta=6.0, for
k less than 1 GeV, the propagator G(k) can be fit to a continuum formula
proposed by Gribov and others, which contains a mass scale b, presumably
related to the hadronization mass scale. For higher momenta Gribov's model no
longer provides a good fit, as G(k) tends rather to follow an inverse power
law. The results at beta=6.3 are consistent with those at beta=6.0, but only
the high momentum region is accessible on this lattice. We find b in the range
of three to four hundred MeV and the exponent of the inverse power law about
2.7. On the other hand, at beta=5.7 (where we can only study momenta up to 1
GeV) G(k) is best fit to a simple massive boson propagator with mass m. We
argue that such a discrepancy may be related to a lack of scaling for low
momenta at beta=5.7. {}From our results, the study of correlation functions in
momentum space looks promising, especially because the data points in Fourier
space turn out to be much less correlated than in real space.Comment: 19 pages + 12 uuencoded PostScript picture
Novel diabetes drugs and the cardiovascular specialist
Recently, treatment with 2 newer classes of type 2 diabetes drugs were found to reduce events in patients with diabetes and cardiovascular (CV) disease, a group common in cardiology clinics. The sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor, empagliflozin, markedly and rapidly reduced CV death and heart failure hospitalization, likely with hemodynamic/metabolic-driven mechanisms of action. More recently, the glucagon-like peptide–1 receptor agonists liraglutide and semaglutide also reduced CV death and/or major adverse CV events, but did so more slowly and did not influence heart failure risks, suggesting alternative mechanisms of benefit. We will discuss drug therapy for diabetes relative to CV risk, briefly summarize key findings of CV benefit from recent trials, discuss potential mechanisms for benefits of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide–1 agonists, and suggest how such drugs might be embraced by CV specialists to reduce CV events and mortality in their patients
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