The Role of Calcium in Osteoporosis

Calcium requirements may vary throughout the lifespan. During the growth years and up to age 25 to 30, it is important to maximize dietary intake of calcium to maintain positive calcium balance and achieve peak bone mass, thereby possibly decreasing the risk of fracture when bone is subsequently lost. Calcium intake need not be greater than 800 mg/day during the relatively short period of time between the end of bone building and the onset of bone loss (30 to 40 years). Starting at age 40 to 50, both men and women lose bone slowly, but women lose bone more rapidly around the menopause and for about 10 years after. Intestinal calcium absorption and the ability to adapt to low calcium diets are impaired in many postmenopausal women and elderly persons owing to a suspected functional or absolute decrease in the ability of the kidney to produce 1,25(OH)2D2. The bones then become more and more a source of calcium to maintain critical extracellular fluid calcium levels. Excessive dietary intake of protein and fiber may induce significant negative calcium balance and thus increase dietary calcium requirements. Generally, the strongest risk factors for osteoporosis are uncontrollable (e.g., sex, age, and race) or less controllable (e.g., disease and medications). However, several factors such as diet, physical activity, cigarette smoking, and alcohol use are lifestyle related and can be modified to help reduce the risk of osteoporosis

BEC-BCS crossover in an optical lattice

We present the microscopic theory for the BEC-BCS crossover of an atomic Fermi gas in an optical lattice, showing that the Feshbach resonance underlying the crossover in principle induces strong multiband effects. Nevertheless, the BEC-BCS crossover itself can be described by a single-band model since it occurs at magnetic fields that are relatively far away from the Feshbach resonance. A criterion is proposed for the latter, which is obeyed by most known Feshbach resonances in ultracold atomic gases.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Report on the first round of the Mock LISA Data Challenges

The Mock LISA Data Challenges (MLDCs) have the dual purpose of fostering the development of LISA data analysis tools and capabilities, and demonstrating the technical readiness already achieved by the gravitational-wave community in distilling a rich science payoff from the LISA data output. The first round of MLDCs has just been completed: nine challenges consisting of data sets containing simulated gravitational-wave signals produced either by galactic binaries or massive black hole binaries embedded in simulated LISA instrumental noise were released in June 2006 with deadline for submission of results at the beginning of December 2006. Ten groups have participated in this first round of challenges. All of the challenges had at least one entry which successfully characterized the signal to better than 95% when assessed via a correlation with phasing ambiguities accounted for. Here, we describe the challenges, summarize the results and provide a first critical assessment of the entries

Absence of Dobrushin states for 2d2d long-range Ising models

We consider the two-dimensional Ising model with long-range pair interactions of the form $J_{xy}\sim|x-y|^{-\alpha}$ with $\alpha>2$, mostly when $J_{xy} \geq 0$. We show that Dobrushin states (i.e. extremal non-translation-invariant Gibbs states selected by mixed $\pm$-boundary conditions) do not exist. We discuss possible extensions of this result in the direction of the Aizenman-Higuchi theorem, or concerning fluctuations of interfaces. We also mention the existence of rigid interfaces in two long-range anisotropic contexts.Comment: revised versio

Entropic repulsion and lack of the gg-measure property for Dyson models

We consider Dyson models, Ising models with slow polynomial decay, at low temperature and show that its Gibbs measures deep in the phase transition region are not $g$-measures. The main ingredient in the proof is the occurrence of an entropic repulsion effect, which follows from the mesoscopic stability of a (single-point) interface for these long-range models in the phase transition region.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure

One-parameter Darboux-transformed quantum actions in Thermodynamics

We use nonrelativistic supersymmetry, mainly Darboux transformations of the general (one-parameter) type, for the quantum oscillator thermodynamic actions. Interesting Darboux generalizations of the fundamental Planck and pure vacuum cases are discussed in some detail with relevant plots. It is shown that the one-parameter Darboux-transformed Thermodynamics refers to superpositions of boson and fermion excitations of positive and negative absolute temperature, respectively. Recent results of Arnaud, Chusseau, and Philippe physics/0105048 regarding a single mode oscillator Carnot cycle are extended in the same Darboux perspective. We also conjecture a Darboux generalization of the fluctuation-dissipation theoremComment: 14 pages, 13 figures, correction of the formula in the text after Eq. 7, accepted at Physica Script

Extracting galactic binary signals from the first round of Mock LISA Data Challenges

We report on the performance of an end-to-end Bayesian analysis pipeline for detecting and characterizing galactic binary signals in simulated LISA data. Our principal analysis tool is the Blocked-Annealed Metropolis Hasting (BAM) algorithm, which has been optimized to search for tens of thousands of overlapping signals across the LISA band. The BAM algorithm employs Bayesian model selection to determine the number of resolvable sources, and provides posterior distribution functions for all the model parameters. The BAM algorithm performed almost flawlessly on all the Round 1 Mock LISA Data Challenge data sets, including those with many highly overlapping sources. The only misses were later traced to a coding error that affected high frequency sources. In addition to the BAM algorithm we also successfully tested a Genetic Algorithm (GA), but only on data sets with isolated signals as the GA has yet to be optimized to handle large numbers of overlapping signals.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Proceedings of GWDAW-11 (Berlin, Dec. '06

A Chandra X-ray Study of Cygnus A - II. The Nucleus

We report Chandra ACIS and quasi-simultaneous RXTE observations of the nearby, powerful radio galaxy Cygnus A, with the present paper focusing on the properties of the active nucleus. In the Chandra observation, the hard (> a few keV) X-ray emission is spatially unresolved with a size \approxlt 1 arcsec (1.5 kpc, H_0 = 50 km s^-1 Mpc^-1) and coincides with the radio and near infrared nuclei. In contrast, the soft (< 2 keV) emission exhibits a bi-polar nebulosity that aligns with the optical bi-polar continuum and emission-line structures and approximately with the radio jet. In particular, the soft X-ray emission corresponds very well with the [O III] \lambda 5007 and H\alpha + [N II] \lambda\lambda 6548, 6583 nebulosity imaged with HST. At the location of the nucleus there is only weak soft X-ray emission, an effect that may be intrinsic or result from a dust lane that crosses the nucleus perpendicular to the source axis. The spectra of the various X-ray components have been obtained by simultaneous fits to the 6 detectors. The compact nucleus is detected to 100 keV and is well described by a heavily absorbed power law spectrum with \Gamma_h = 1.52^{+0.12}_{-0.12} (similar to other narrow line radio galaxies) and equivalent hydrogen column N_H (nuc) = 2.0^{+0.1}_{-0.2} \times 10^{23} cm^-2. (Abstract truncated).Comment: To be published in the Astrophysical Journal, v564 January 1, 2002 issue; 34 pages, 11 figures (1 color

Linearly bounded infinite graphs

Linearly bounded Turing machines have been mainly studied as acceptors for context-sensitive languages. We define a natural class of infinite automata representing their observable computational behavior, called linearly bounded graphs. These automata naturally accept the same languages as the linearly bounded machines defining them. We present some of their structural properties as well as alternative characterizations in terms of rewriting systems and context-sensitive transductions. Finally, we compare these graphs to rational graphs, which are another class of automata accepting the context-sensitive languages, and prove that in the bounded-degree case, rational graphs are a strict sub-class of linearly bounded graphs