4,323 research outputs found
Measurement of Shear Modulus Profile Using a Continuous Surface Wave Measurement System
For most ground response analyses, the shear modulus is an important parameter to be determined and it has to be measured over a large strain range, so as to characterise the soil behavior under various loading conditions. Laboratory measurement of shear modulus covers a limited strain range depending on the test method. The main difficulty lies in the determination of the shear modulus at very small strains. In this respect, geophysical methods are more attractive. One of these test methods, which uses a continuous surface wave, is used to obtain the shear modulus profile at two sites in Singapore. The Continuous Surface Wave System (CSWS) is a nonintrusive field geophysical test consisting of a vibrator source and several receiver geophones connected to a computer system. The computer collects and analyses the field data, and provides a shear modulus profile at the test site. Conclusions from the field tests support published literature that such field seismic tests are capable of measuring the low-strain shear modulus well. The interpretation of field test data in the absence of specific stratigraphic information can pose some difficulties. An important part in interpreting continuous surface wave measurement data is in the selection of a suitable inversion tool so as to derive the correct shear modulus profile for the site under consideration. A finite element approach (using LS DYNA) is investigated for inversion of field test data. Data obtained from S-wave cross-hole survey are also compared with field tests data obtained using CSWS
Are Doctors in the University-Based Primary Care Clinic More Evidence-Based?
Letter to the editor
Do Primary Care Doctors Behave the Same in Antibiotic Prescribing for Upper Respiratory Tract Infections?
Purpose: To compare the extent of using an evidence-based approach in managing upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) among primary care doctors from two different government clinic settings in Malaysia. Method: This is a cross sectional, prospective study carried out in a teaching university primary care centre in Kuala Lumpur (KL) where doctors are constantly exposed to continuing medical education (CME) and seven health clinics in Seremban, Malaysia where doctors have less exposure to CME in the year 2000. Twelve primary care practitioners in KL and 13 in Seremban participated in the study. Each practitioner was asked to record clinical data and prescriptions given to twenty consecutive patients with URTIs using a structured questionnaire for each patient. The extent of usage of an evidence-based approach in managing URTIs among practitioners was assessed
Calculation of reduced density matrices from correlation functions
It is shown that for solvable fermionic and bosonic lattice systems, the
reduced density matrices can be determined from the properties of the
correlation functions. This provides the simplest way to these quantities which
are used in the density-matrix renormalization group method.Comment: 4 page
Mesoscopic, Non-equilibrium Fluctuations of Inhomogeneous Electronic States in Manganites
By using the dark-field real-space imaging technique of transmission electron
microscopy (TEM), we have observed slow 200 A-scale fluctuations of
charge-ordered (CO) phase in mixed-valent manganites under a strong electron
beam irradiation. In addition to these unusual fluctuations of the CO phase, we
observed the switching-type fluctuations of electrical resistivity in the same
sample, which were found to be as large as several percents. Systematic
analysis indicates that these two different types of fluctuations with a
similar time scale of the order of seconds are interconnected through a
meta-stable insulating charge-disordered state. Current dependence of the
fluctuations suggests a non-equilibrium nature of this slow dynamics.Comment: To appear in Europhysics Letter
Melting of Quasi-Two-Dimensional Charge Stripes in La5/3Sr1/3NiO4
Commensurability effects for nickelates have been studied by the first
neutron experiments on La5/3Sr1/3NiO4. Upon cooling, this system undergoes
three successive phase transitions associated with quasi-two-dimensional (2D)
commensurate charge and spin stripe ordering in the NiO planes. The two
lower temperature phases (denoted as phase II and III) are stripe lattice
states with quasi-long-range in-plane charge correlation. When the lattice of
2D charge stripes melts, it goes through an intermediate glass state (phase I)
before becoming a disordered liquid state. This glass state shows short-range
charge order without spin order, and may be called a "stripe glass" which
resembles the hexatic/nematic state in 2D melting.Comment: 10 pages, RevTex, 4 figures available on request to
[email protected]
Raman scattering studies of temperature- and field-induced melting of charge order in (La,Pr,Ca)MnO
We present Raman scattering studies of the structural and magnetic phases
that accompany temperature- and field-dependent melting of charge- and
orbital-order (COO) in La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 and La0.25Pr0.375Ca0.375MnO3. Our results
show that thermal and field-induced COO melting in La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 exhibits
three stages in a heterogeneous melting process associated with a structural
change: a long-range, strongly JT distorted/COO regime; a coexistence regime;
and weakly JT distorted/PM or FM phase. We provide a complete structural phase
diagram of La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 for the temperature and field ranges 6<=T<=170 K and
0<=H<=9 T. We also investigate thermal and field-induced melting in
La0.25Pr0.375Ca0.375MnO3 to elucidate the role of disorder in melting of COO.
We find that while thermal melting of COO in La0.25Pr0.375Ca0.375MnO3 is quite
similar to that in La0.5Ca0.5MnO3, the field-induced transition from the COO
phase to the weakly JT-distorted/FM phase in La0.25Pr0.375Ca0.375MnO3 is very
abrupt, and occurs at significantly lower fields (H~2 T at T~0 K) than in
La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 (H~30 T at T=0 K). Moreover, the critical field H_c increases
with increasing temperature in La0.25Pr0.375Ca0.375MnO3 in contrast to
La0.5Ca0.5MnO3. To explain these differences, we propose that field-induced
melting of COO in La0.25Pr0.375Ca0.375MnO3 is best described as the
field-induced percolation of FM domains, and we suggest that Griffiths phase
physics may be an appropriate theoretical model for describing the unusual
temperature- and field- dependent transitions observed in
La0.25Pr0.375Ca0.375MnO3.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, to be published in PR
Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering from Valence Excitations in Insulating Copper-Oxides
We report resonant inelastic x-ray measurements of insulating LaCuO
and SrCuOCl taken with the incident energy tuned near the Cu K
absorption edge. We show that the spectra are well described in a shakeup
picture in 3rd order perturbation theory which exhibits both incoming and
outgoing resonances, and demonstrate how to extract a spectral function from
the raw data. We conclude by showing {\bf q}-dependent measurements of the
charge transfer gap.Comment: minor notational changes, discussion of anderson impurity model
fixed, references added; accepted by PR
Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system to identify therapeutics for alcohol use disorders
Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) cause serious problems in society and few effective treatments are available. Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is an excellent invertebrate model to study the neurobiological basis of human behavior with a conserved, fully tractable genome, and a short generation time for fast generation of data at a fraction of the cost of other organisms. C. elegans demonstrate movement toward, and concentration-dependent self-exposure to various psychoactive drugs. The discovery of opioid receptors in C. elegans provided the impetus to test the hypothesis that C. elegans may be used as a medications screen to identify new AUD treatments. We tested the effects of naltrexone, an opioid antagonist and effective treatment for AUDs, on EtOH preference in C. elegans. Six-well agar test plates were prepared with EtOH placed in a target zone on one side and water in the opposite target zone of each well. Worms were treated with naltrexone before EtOH preference testing and then placed in the center of each well. Wild-type worms exhibited a concentration-dependent preference for 50, 70 and 95% EtOH. Naltrexone blocked acute EtOH preference, but had no effect on attraction to food or benzaldehyde in wild-type worms. Npr-17 opioid receptor knockout mutants did not display a preference for EtOH. In contrast, npr-17 opioid receptor rescue mutants exhibited significant EtOH preference behavior, which was attenuated by naltrexone. Chronic EtOH exposure induced treatment resistance and compulsive-like behavior. These data indicate that C. elegans can serve as a model system to identify compounds to treat AUDs
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