7,566 research outputs found
The detection of extragalactic N: Consequences for nitrogen nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution
Detections of extragalactic N are reported from observations of the
rare hydrogen cyanide isotope HCN toward the Large Magellanic Cloud
(LMC) and the core of the (post-) starburst galaxy NGC 4945. Accounting for
optical depth effects, the LMC data from the massive star-forming region N113
infer a N ratio of 111 17, about twice the C
value. For the LMC star-forming region N159HW and for the central region of NGC
4945, N ratios are also 100. The N ratios
are smaller than all interstellar nitrogen isotope ratios measured in the disk
and center of the Milky Way, strongly supporting the idea that N is
predominantly of `primary' nature, with massive stars being its dominant
source. Although this appears to be in contradiction with standard stellar
evolution and nucleosynthesis calculations, it supports recent findings of
abundant N production due to rotationally induced mixing of protons into
the helium-burning shells of massive stars.Comment: 15 pages including one postscript figure, accepted for publication by
ApJ Letter, further comments: please contact Yi-nan Chi
Abundances and Isotope Ratios in the Magellanic Clouds: The Star Forming Environment of N113
With the goal of deriving the physical and chemical conditions of star
forming regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a spectral line survey of
the prominent star forming region N113 is presented. The observations cover
parts of the frequency range from 85 GHz to 357 GHz and include 63 molecular
transitions from a total of 16 species, among them spectra of rare
isotopologues. Maps of selected molecular lines as well as the 1.2 mm continuum
distribution are also presented. Molecular abundances in the core of the
complex are found to be consistent with a photon dominated region (PDR) that is
nitrogen deficient, with the potential exception of N2H+. Densities range from
5x10^3 cm-3 for CO to almost 10^6 for CS and HCN, indicating that only the
densest regions provide sufficient shielding even for some of the most common
species. An ortho- to para-H_2CO ratio of ~3 hints at H_2CO formation in a warm
(>=40 K) environment. Isotope ratios are 12C/13C ~ 49+-5, 16O/18O ~ 2000+-250,
18O/17O ~ 1.7+-0.2 and 32S/34S ~ 15. Agreement with data from other star
forming clouds shows that the gas is well mixed in the LMC . The isotope ratios
do not only differ from those seen in the Galaxy. They also do not form a
continuation of the trends observed with decreasing metallicity from the inner
to the outer Galaxy. This implies that the outer Galaxy, is not providing a
transition zone between the inner Galaxy and the metal poor environment of the
Magellanic Clouds. A part of this discrepancy is likely caused by differences
in the age of the stellar populations in the outer Galaxy and the LMC.Comment: 50 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Effect of solid-to-solvent ratio on phenolic content and antioxidant capacities of “ Dukung Anak” (Phyllanthus niruri)
The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of solid-to-solvent ratio (1:5. 1:10, 1:15
and 1:20) on the extraction of phenolic compounds (TPC and TFC) and antioxidant capacity
(ABTS and DPPH radical scavenging capacity) of
P. niruri
. Solid-to-solvent ratio showed
a significant effect for both phenolic compounds (TPC and TFC) and antioxidant capacity
(ABTS and DPPH radical scavenging capacity) with 1:20 was the condition for extracting the
highest of phenolic compounds (TPC and TFC) with a value of 5788.7 mg GAE/100 g DW and
1906.5 mg CE/100 g DW, respectively and exhibited high antioxidant capacities (ABTS and
DPPH radical scavenging capacities) with a value of 0.820 mM and 1.598 mM, respectively
among the four levels studied. TPC was positively and significantly correlated with ABTS and
DPPH (r=0.999 and r=0.999) under the effects of solid-to-solvent ratio as compared to TFC,
positively and strongly correlated (r=0.865 and r=0.868) with ABTS and DPPH
The evaluation of liquefaction potential of oil-containing sand under cyclic loading
Risk and Reliability in Geotechnical Engineerin
Quantum Perfect-Fluid Kaluza-Klein Cosmology
The perfect fluid cosmology in the 1+d+D dimensional Kaluza-Klein spacetimes
for an arbitrary barotropic equation of state is quantized by using
the Schutz's variational formalism. We make efforts in the mathematics to solve
the problems in two cases. For the first case of the stiff fluid we
exactly solve the Wheeler-DeWitt equation when the space is flat. After the
superposition of the solutions we analyze the Bohmian trajectories of the
final-stage wave-packet functions and show that the flat spaces and the
compact spaces will eventually evolve into finite scale functions. For the
second case of , we use the approximated wavefunction in the
Wheeler-DeWitt equation to find the analytic forms of the final-stage
wave-packet functions. After analyzing the Bohmian trajectories we show that
the flat spaces will be expanding forever while the scale function of the
contracting spaces would not become zero within finite time. Our
investigations indicate that the quantum effect in the quantum perfect-fluid
cosmology could prevent the extra compact spaces in the Kaluza-Klein theory
from collapsing into a singularity or that the "crack-of-doom" singularity of
the extra compact dimensions is made to occur at .Comment: Latex 18 pages, add section 2 to introduce the quantization of
perfect flui
Flux melting in BSCCO: Incorporating both electromagnetic and Josephson couplings
Multilevel Monte Carlo simulations of a BSCCO system are carried out
including both Josephson as well as electromagnetic couplings for a range of
anisotropies. A first order melting transition of the flux lattice is seen on
increasing the temperature and/or the magnetic field. The phase diagram for
BSCCO is obtained for different values of the anisotropy parameter .
The best fit to the experimental results of D. Majer {\it et al.} [Phys. Rev.
Lett. {\bf 75}, 1166 (1995)] is obtained for provided one
assumes a temperature dependence of the
penetration depth with . Assuming a dependence
the best fit is obtained for . For finite anisotropy the data is shown to collapse on a straight line
when plotted in dimensionless units which shows that the melting transition can
be satisfied with a single Lindemann parameter whose value is about 0.3. A
different scaling applies to the case. The energy jump is
measured across the transition and for large values of it is found to
increase with increasing anisotropy and to decrease with increasing magnetic
field. For infinite anisotropy we see a 2D behavior of flux droplets with a
transition taking place at a temperature independent of the magnetic field. We
also show that for smaller values of anisotropy it is reasonable to replace the
electromagnetic coupling with an in-plane interaction represented by a Bessel
function of the second kind (), thus justifying our claim in a previous
paper.Comment: 12 figures, revtex
Unsupervised binning of environmental genomic fragments based on an error robust selection of l-mers
BACKGROUND: With the rapid development of genome sequencing techniques, traditional research methods based on the isolation and cultivation of microorganisms are being gradually replaced by metagenomics, which is also known as environmental genomics. The first step, which is still a major bottleneck, of metagenomics is the taxonomic characterization of DNA fragments (reads) resulting from sequencing a sample of mixed species. This step is usually referred as 'binning'. Existing binning methods are based on supervised or semi-supervised approaches which rely heavily on reference genomes of known microorganisms and phylogenetic marker genes. Due to the limited availability of reference genomes and the bias and instability of marker genes, existing binning methods may not be applicable in many cases. RESULTS: In this paper, we present an unsupervised binning method based on the distribution of a carefully selected set of l-mers (substrings of length l in DNA fragments). From our experiments, we show that our method can accurately bin DNA fragments with various lengths and relative species abundance ratios without using any reference and training datasets. Another feature of our method is its error robustness. The binning accuracy decreases by less than 1% when the sequencing error rate increases from 0% to 5%. Note that the typical sequencing error rate of existing commercial sequencing platforms is less than 2%. CONCLUSIONS: We provide a new and effective tool to solve the metagenome binning problem without using any reference datasets or markers information of any known reference genomes (species). The source code of our software tool, the reference genomes of the species for generating the test datasets and the corresponding test datasets are available at http://i.cs.hku.hk/alse/MetaCluster/.published_or_final_versio
Drying Characteristics and Product Quality of Lemon Slices Dried with Hot Air Circulation Oven and Hybrid Heatpump Dryers
In this research, drying characteristics and product quality of Coulomb-force-assisted heatpump and oven dried lemon slices were studied. Lemon slices with 3 mm thickness each, were dried using oven and Coulomb-force-assisted-heatpump dryer with and without auxiliary heater at different drying conditions. It was found that the drying rate of the lemon slices dried by all drying methods showed only falling rate states, which indicates the drying kinetics were controlled by internal moisture diffusion. Oven drying of lemon slices at 60°C showed the highest drying rate among all, followed by oven dried slices at 50°C, Coulomb-force-heater-assisted-heatpump (CF-HT-HP) dried slices at 31°C, Coulomb-force-assisted-heatpump (CF-HP) dried slices at 22°C, oven dried slices at 40°C and heatpump dried slices at 22°C. The average effective moisture diffusivity value for the slices dried with these drying methods was found in the range of 16.2 to 63.8´10-4 mm2min-1. In terms of quality assessment, CF-HP dried lemon slices retained the highest amount of Vitamin C as compared to the lemon slices dried by other drying methods. However, it retained relatively lower amount of total phenolic content (TPC) as compared to oven dried products. Among of all, CF-HP drying method produced dried lemon slices with the highest Vitamin C (6.74 mg AA / g dry weight) whereas oven dried lemon slices at 50°C preserved most of the TPC in the dried slices, which recorded as 13.76 mg GA / g dry weight
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