4,178 research outputs found
Whole body and splanchnic amino acid metabolism in sheep during an acute endotoxin challenge
Acknowledgements The expertise of A. Graham Calder and Susan Anderson for the various stable isotope analyses is gratefully recognised. Ngaire Dennison is also thanked for her surgical expertise with the trans-splanchnic tissue catheter preparations. This study was supported by funds provided to the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Aberdeen and Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division of the Scottish Government. S. O. H. was a recipient of a FoRST (NZ) award to study abroad.Peer reviewedPostprin
Capital allocation for credit portfolios with kernel estimators
Determining contributions by sub-portfolios or single exposures to
portfolio-wide economic capital for credit risk is an important risk
measurement task. Often economic capital is measured as Value-at-Risk (VaR) of
the portfolio loss distribution. For many of the credit portfolio risk models
used in practice, the VaR contributions then have to be estimated from Monte
Carlo samples. In the context of a partly continuous loss distribution (i.e.
continuous except for a positive point mass on zero), we investigate how to
combine kernel estimation methods with importance sampling to achieve more
efficient (i.e. less volatile) estimation of VaR contributions.Comment: 22 pages, 12 tables, 1 figure, some amendment
V1647 Ori (IRAS 05436-0007) in Outburst: the First Three Months
We report on photometric (BVRIJHK) and low dispersion spectroscopic
observations of V1647 Ori, the star that drives McNeil's Nebula, between 10
February and 7 May 2004. The star is photometrically variable atop a general
decline in brightness of about 0.3-0.4 magnitudes during these 87 days. The
spectra are featureless, aside from H-alpha and the Ca II infrared triplet in
emission, and a Na I D absorption feature. The Ca II triplet line ratios are
typical of young stellar objects. The H-alpha equivalent width may be modulated
on a period of about 60 days. The post-outburst extinction appears to be less
than 7 mag. The data are suggestive of an FU Orionis-like event, but further
monitoring will be needed to definitively characterize the outburst.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa
Genetic Dissection of the Drosophila melanogaster Female Head Transcriptome Reveals Widespread Allelic Heterogeneity
Modern genetic mapping is plagued by the “missing heritability” problem, which refers to the discordance between the estimated heritabilities of quantitative traits and the variance accounted for by mapped causative variants. One major potential explanation for the missing heritability is allelic heterogeneity, in which there are multiple causative variants at each causative gene with only a fraction having been identified. The majority of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) implicitly assume that a single SNP can explain all the variance for a causative locus. However, if allelic heterogeneity is prevalent, a substantial amount of genetic variance will remain unexplained. In this paper, we take a haplotype-based mapping approach and quantify the number of alleles segregating at each locus using a large set of 7922 eQTL contributing to regulatory variation in the Drosophila melanogaster female head. Not only does this study provide a comprehensive eQTL map for a major community genetic resource, the Drosophila Synthetic Population Resource, but it also provides a direct test of the allelic heterogeneity hypothesis. We find that 95% of cis-eQTLs and 78% of trans-eQTLs are due to multiple alleles, demonstrating that allelic heterogeneity is widespread in Drosophila eQTL. Allelic heterogeneity likely contributes significantly to the missing heritability problem common in GWAS studies.This work was supported by NIH R01 RR024862/OD010974 to SJM and ADL, an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) administrative supplement to this award, and F32 GM099382 to EGK. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
Shift Towards P Limitation with N Deposition?
Atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition is altering biogeochemical cycling in forests and interconnected lakes of the northeastern US, and may shift nutrient limitation from N toward other essential elements, such as phosphorus (P). Whether this shift is occurring relative to N deposition gradients across the northeastern US has not been investigated. We used datasets for the northeastern US and the Adirondack sub-region to evaluate whether P limitation is increasing where N deposition is high at two geographic scales, based on N:P mass ratios. Using a model- selection approach, we determined that foliar N for dominant tree species and lake dissolved inorganic N (DIN) increased coincident with increasing N deposition, independent of relationships between foliar N or lake DIN and precipitation or temperature. Foliar P also increased with N deposition across the northeastern US for seven of eight deciduous species, but changed less across the Adirondacks. Foliar N:P therefore declined at the highest levels of N deposition for most deciduous species across the region (remaining nearly constant for most conifers and increasing only for black cherry and hemlock), but increased across all species in the Adirondacks. Ratios between DIN and total P (DIN:TP) in lakes were unrelated to N deposition regionally but increased across the Adirondacks. Thus, nutrient limitation patterns shifted from N toward P for dominant trees, and further toward P for predominantly P-limited lakes, at the sub-regional but not regional scale. For the northeastern US overall, accumulated N deposition may be insufficient to drive nutrient limitation from N toward P; alternatively, elements other than P (e.g., calcium, magnesium) may become limiting as N accumulates. The consistent Adirondack foliar and lake response could provide early indication of shifts toward P limitation within the northeastern US, and together with regional patterns, suggests that foliar chemistry could be a predictor of lake chemistry in the context of N deposition across the region
Tunable Electron Multibunch Production in Plasma Wakefield Accelerators
Synchronized, independently tunable and focused J-class laser pulses are
used to release multiple electron populations via photo-ionization inside an
electron-beam driven plasma wave. By varying the laser foci in the laboratory
frame and the position of the underdense photocathodes in the co-moving frame,
the delays between the produced bunches and their energies are adjusted. The
resulting multibunches have ultra-high quality and brightness, allowing for
hitherto impossible bunch configurations such as spatially overlapping bunch
populations with strictly separated energies, which opens up a new regime for
light sources such as free-electron-lasers
Characteristics of the low energy photoluminescence in μc-Si films
The temperature and excitation-intensity dependence of the ∼0.9 eV photoluminescence (PL) band has been studied in several microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si) films with varied crystallinity. When the measurement temperature is increased from 15 to 180 K, the PL peak energy redshifts from 1.0 to 0.83 eV. The PL quenching of the intensity follows a model of carrier thermalization in an exponential band tail with a width of ∼20 meV. The total PL intensity (IPL) as a function of excitation intensity (Iex) obeys a power law of IPL∝IγeX, where γ≈0.65 or 1 for high or low excitation intensity, respectively. The experimental results suggest that the ∼0.9 eV PL band originates from radiative tail-to-tail transitions in the grain-boundary region in μc-Si
Nuclear medium modifications of the NN interaction via quasielastic () and () scattering
Within the relativistic PWIA, spin observables have been recalculated for
quasielastic () and () reactions on a Ca
target. The incident proton energy ranges from 135 to 300 MeV while the
transferred momentum is kept fixed at 1.97 fm^{-1}. In the present
calculations, new Horowitz-Love--Franey relativistic NN amplitudes have been
generated in order to yield improved and more quantitative spin observable
values than before. The sensitivities of the various spin observables to the NN
interaction parameters, such as (1) the presence of the surrounding nuclear
medium, (2) a pseudoscalar versus a pseudovector interaction term, and (3)
exchange effects, point to spin observables which should preferably be measured
at certain laboratory proton energies, in order to test current nuclear models.
This study also shows that nuclear medium effects become more important at
lower proton energies ( 200 MeV). A comparison to the limited available
data indicates that the relativistic parametrization of the NN scattering
amplitudes in terms of only the five Fermi invariants (the SVPAT form) is
questionable.Comment: 10 pages, 6 Postscript figures, uses psfig.sty and article.sty,
submitted to Phys. Rev.
Ab initio studies of phonon softening and high pressure phase transitions of alpha-quartz SiO2
Density functional perturbation theory calculations of alpha-quartz using
extended norm conserving pseudopotentials have been used to study the elastic
properties and phonon dispersion relations along various high symmetry
directions as a function of bulk, uniaxial and non-hydrostatic pressure. The
computed equation of state, elastic constants and phonon frequencies are found
to be in good agreement with available experimental data. A zone boundary (1/3,
1/3, 0) K-point phonon mode becomes soft for pressures above P=32 GPa. Around
the same pressure, studies of the Born stability criteria reveal that the
structure is mechanically unstable. The phonon and elastic softening are
related to the high pressure phase transitions and amorphization of quartz and
these studies suggest that the mean transition pressure is lowered under
non-hydrostatic conditions. Application of uniaxial pressure, results in a
post-quartz crystalline monoclinic C2 structural transition in the vicinity of
the K-point instability. This structure, intermediate between quartz and
stishovite has two-thirds of the silicon atoms in octahedral coordination while
the remaining silicon atoms remain tetrahedrally coordinated. This novel
monoclinic C2 polymorph of silica, which is found to be metastable under
ambient conditions, is possibly one of the several competing dense forms of
silica containing octahedrally coordinated silicon. The possible role of high
pressure ferroelastic phases in causing pressure induced amorphization in
silica are discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figs., 8 Table
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