2,008 research outputs found
Swiss ethnoveterinary knowledge on medicinal plants - a within-country comparison of Italian speaking regions with north-western German speaking regions
BACKGROUND:
Ethnoveterinary knowledge in Europe may play an important role as a basis for sustainable treatment options for livestock. Aims of our study were (a) to compare the ethnoveterinary practices of two culturally and sociodemographically different regions of Switzerland, (b) to compare results with earlier ethnoveterinary studies conducted in Switzerland and in adjacent Italian regions and, (c) to evaluate possible reasons for regional differences in European ethnoveterinary medicine.
METHODS:
25 interviews were conducted in 2014 in all Italian speaking regions (ItR) of Switzerland, and 31 interviews were held in five north-western German speaking Cantons (GeC). Semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect detailed information regarding plant species, mode of preparation, dosage, route of administration, category of use, origin of knowledge, frequency of use, and satisfaction with outcomes of the treatments.
RESULTS:
A total of 162 homemade remedies in ItR and 219 in GeC were reported, out of which 125 and 145, respectively, were reported to contain only one plant species (homemade single species herbal remedy report, HSHR). 44 ItR and 43 GeC plant species were reported to treat livestock, of which only a half were used in both regions. For each HSHR, we classified the treatment intention of all use reports (UR), leading to a total of 205 and 219 UR in ItR and GeC respectively. While cattle were the most often treated livestock species in both study regions, in ItR 40% of UR were administered to small ruminants. Main indications in both regions were gastrointestinal diseases and skin afflictions, but in ItR a high number of URs were reported as antiparasitics. URs were mainly handed down from the past generation, but in GeC the source of knowledge for 20% of URs were from courses. Regarding the used plant species, ItR showed a higher concordance with Swiss than Italian studies, but with some differences to all regions. A total of 22 (14 ItR; 8 GeC) plant species in this study have not been reported before in ethnoveterinary studies of Swiss and Italian alpine regions.
CONCLUSIONS:
ItR and GeC, show differences and similarities with respect to their own ethnoveterinary practices and earlier Swiss and Italian ethnoveterinary studies. Linguistic, geographical, as well as social and farm-structural conditions influence the regional ethnoveterinary knowledge. However, political borders seem to be more important than language or geographical barriers
Modulation of tumour colony growth by irradiated accessory cells.
The ability of human tumour cells to form colonies in soft agar is enhanced by the presence of autologous phagocytic/adherent cells. We investigated the effect of irradiation on the ability of the adherent cells to support human tumour colony formation. Relatively low doses of irradiation significantly increased the growth enhancing ability of adherent cells in 17/19 cases. The possibility that the enhancement was mediated by inactivation of radiosensitive contaminating lymphocytes was explored. Depletion of T lymphocytes from unirradiated adherent cells by a monoclonal antibody and complement resulted in little overall change in tumour colony growth. However, elimination of only the suppressor subset (OKT8+) of T lymphocytes resulted in increased colony growth relative to control values obtained with unirradiated adherent cells. In contrast, depletion of T lymphocytes from irradiated adherent cells by a pan T monoclonal antibody and complement decreased colony formation. Thus, the ability of irradiated macrophages to enhance tumour colony growth appeared to be mediated by a T lymphocyte. The effect of irradiation on isolated populations of macrophages and T lymphocytes was also examined. The enhanced ability of irradiated adherent cells to support tumor colony growth appeared to have been due to treatment of T lymphocytes alone. The results indicate that both adherent macrophages and lymphocytes may influence the growth of clonogenic human tumour cells
Reconstruction of thermally-symmetrized quantum autocorrelation functions from imaginary-time data
In this paper, I propose a technique for recovering quantum dynamical
information from imaginary-time data via the resolution of a one-dimensional
Hamburger moment problem. It is shown that the quantum autocorrelation
functions are uniquely determined by and can be reconstructed from their
sequence of derivatives at origin. A general class of reconstruction algorithms
is then identified, according to Theorem 3. The technique is advocated as
especially effective for a certain class of quantum problems in continuum
space, for which only a few moments are necessary. For such problems, it is
argued that the derivatives at origin can be evaluated by Monte Carlo
simulations via estimators of finite variances in the limit of an infinite
number of path variables. Finally, a maximum entropy inversion algorithm for
the Hamburger moment problem is utilized to compute the quantum rate of
reaction for a one-dimensional symmetric Eckart barrier.Comment: 15 pages, no figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Quasi-analyticity and determinacy of the full moment problem from finite to infinite dimensions
This paper is aimed to show the essential role played by the theory of
quasi-analytic functions in the study of the determinacy of the moment problem
on finite and infinite-dimensional spaces. In particular, the quasi-analytic
criterion of self-adjointness of operators and their commutativity are crucial
to establish whether or not a measure is uniquely determined by its moments.
Our main goal is to point out that this is a common feature of the determinacy
question in both the finite and the infinite-dimensional moment problem, by
reviewing some of the most known determinacy results from this perspective. We
also collect some properties of independent interest concerning the
characterization of quasi-analytic classes associated to log-convex sequences.Comment: 28 pages, Stochastic and Infinite Dimensional Analysis, Chapter 9,
Trends in Mathematics, Birkh\"auser Basel, 201
Elastic Scattering by Deterministic and Random Fractals: Self-Affinity of the Diffraction Spectrum
The diffraction spectrum of coherent waves scattered from fractal supports is
calculated exactly. The fractals considered are of the class generated
iteratively by successive dilations and translations, and include
generalizations of the Cantor set and Sierpinski carpet as special cases. Also
randomized versions of these fractals are treated. The general result is that
the diffraction intensities obey a strict recursion relation, and become
self-affine in the limit of large iteration number, with a self-affinity
exponent related directly to the fractal dimension of the scattering object.
Applications include neutron scattering, x-rays, optical diffraction, magnetic
resonance imaging, electron diffraction, and He scattering, which all display
the same universal scaling.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures. Phys. Rev. E, in press. More info available at
http://www.fh.huji.ac.il/~dani
Atlas Toolkit: Fast registration of 3D morphological datasets in the absence of landmarks
Image registration is a gateway technology for Developmental Systems Biology, enabling computational analysis of related datasets within a shared coordinate system. Many registration tools rely on landmarks to ensure that datasets are correctly aligned; yet suitable landmarks are not present in many datasets. Atlas Toolkit is a Fiji/ImageJ plugin collection offering elastic group-wise registration of 3D morphological datasets, guided by segmentation of the interesting morphology. We demonstrate the method by combinatorial mapping of cell signalling events in the developing eyes of chick embryos, and use the integrated datasets to predictively enumerate Gene Regulatory Network states
Mixing of mineral dust with urban pollution aerosol over Dakar (Senegal): Impact on dust physico-chemical and radiative properties.
In the framework of the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment (SAMUM) in 2008, the mixing of the urban pollution
plume of Dakar (Senegal) with mineral dust was studied in detail using the German research aircraft Falcon which was
equipped with a nadir-looking high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) and extensive aerosol in situ instrumentation. The
mineral dust layer as well as the urban pollution plume were probed remotely by the HSRL and in situ. Back trajectory
analyses were used to attribute aerosol samples to source regions.We found that the emission from the region of Dakar
increased the aerosol optical depth (532 nm) from approximately 0.30 over sea and over land east of Dakar to 0.35 in the city outflow. In the urban area, local black carbon (BC) emissions, or soot respectively, contributed more than 75% to aerosol absorption at 530 nm. In the dust layer, the single-scattering albedo at 530 nm was 0.96 � 0.99, whereas
we found a value of 0.908 �± 0.018 for the aerosol dominated by urban pollution. After 6h of transport over the North
Atlantic, the externally mixed mode of secondary aerosol particles had almost completely vanished, whereas the BC
agglomerates (soot) were still externally mixed with mineral dust particles
Fractal Analysis of Protein Potential Energy Landscapes
The fractal properties of the total potential energy V as a function of time
t are studied for a number of systems, including realistic models of proteins
(PPT, BPTI and myoglobin). The fractal dimension of V(t), characterized by the
exponent \gamma, is almost independent of temperature and increases with time,
more slowly the larger the protein. Perhaps the most striking observation of
this study is the apparent universality of the fractal dimension, which depends
only weakly on the type of molecular system. We explain this behavior by
assuming that fractality is caused by a self-generated dynamical noise, a
consequence of intermode coupling due to anharmonicity. Global topological
features of the potential energy landscape are found to have little effect on
the observed fractal behavior.Comment: 17 pages, single spaced, including 12 figure
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