1,958 research outputs found
Preliminary Observations on the Effects In Vivo and In Vitro of Low Dose Laser on the Epithelia of the Bladder, Trachea and Tongue of the Mouse
The effects of low dose CW laser were studied by in vivo and in vitro systems. The experimental tissues that were used included bladders, tracheas and tongues as experimental tissues. Buddings (round surface projections) from the transitional epithelium of bladder were frequently observed 3 days after laser treatment in both in vivo and in vitro systems. The trachea and tongue were less affected. In both the in vivo and in vitro systems, some epithelial cells of the trachea showed decreased microvilli and cilia 3 days after treatment whereas the epithelial cells of the tongue revealed no response to laser treatment in both systems. Low dose laser, however, appeared to promote the rate of healing of experimental tongue ulcer: healing was about 1 day earlier in the laser treated than non-treated animals and vessel infiltration and epithelialization were detected earlier in the treated
Non-ancient solution of the Ricci flow
For any complete noncompact Khler manifold with nonnegative and
bounded holomorphic bisectional curvature,we provide the necessary and
sufficient condition for non-ancient solution to the Ricci flow in this paper.Comment: seven pages, latex fil
Cross-Frequency Integration for Consonant and Vowel Identification in Bimodal Hearing
Purpose: Improved speech recognition in binaurally combined acousticâelectric stimulation (otherwise known as bimodal hearing) could arise when listeners integrate speech cues from the acoustic and electric hearing. The aims of this study were (a) to identify speech cues extracted in electric hearing and residual acoustic hearing in the low-frequency region and (b) to investigate cochlear implant (CI) users' ability to integrate speech cues across frequencies.
Method: Normal-hearing (NH) and CI subjects participated in consonant and vowel identification tasks. Each subject was tested in 3 listening conditions: CI alone (vocoder speech for NH), hearing aid (HA) alone (low-pass filtered speech for NH), and both. Integration ability for each subject was evaluated using a model of optimal integrationâthe PreLabeling integration model (Braida, 1991).
Results: Only a few CI listeners demonstrated bimodal benefit for phoneme identification in quiet. Speech cues extracted from the CI and the HA were highly redundant for consonants but were complementary for vowels. CI listeners also exhibited reduced integration ability for both consonant and vowel identification compared with their NH counterparts.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that reduced bimodal benefits in CI listeners are due to insufficient complementary speech cues across ears, a decrease in integration ability, or both.National Organization for Hearing ResearchNational Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (U.S.) (Grant R03 DC009684-01)National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (U.S.) (Grant R01 DC007152-02
Response of protonated, adduct, and fragmented ions in Vocus proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-ToF-MS)
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) affect secondary pollutant formation via active chemistry. Proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) is one of the most important techniques to study the highly variable spatial and temporal characteristics of VOCs. The response of protonated, adduct, and fragmented ions in PTR-MS in changing instrument settings and varying relative humidity (RH) requires rigorous characterization. Herein, we present dedicatedly designed laboratory experiments conducted to investigate the response of these ions for 21 VOCs, including 12 oxygenated VOCs and 2 nitriles, using the recently developed Vocus PTR-MS. Our results show that the focusing ionâmolecule reactor (FIMR) axial voltage increases sensitivity by 3 to 4 orders of magnitude but does not significantly change the fractions of protonated ions. Reducing the FIMR pressure, however, substantially increases fragmentation. Applying a high radio frequency (RF) amplitude radially to the FIMR can enhance sensitivity by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude without affecting the protonated ion fractions. The change in big segmented quadrupole (BSQ) amplitude mainly affects sensitivity and protonated ion fraction by modifying ion transmission. The relationship between sensitivity and proton-transfer reaction rate constant is complicated by the influences from both ion transmission and protonated ion fraction. The protonated ions of most VOCs studied (19 out of 21) show less than 15â% variations in sensitivity as RH increases from âźâ5% to âźâ85â%, except for some long-chain aldehydes which show a positive RH variation of up to 30â%. Our results suggest that the Vocus PTR-MS can reliably quantify the majority of VOCs under ambient conditions with varying RH. However, caution is advised for small oxygenates such as formaldehyde and methanol due to their low sensitivity and for long-chain aldehydes due to their slight RH dependence and fragmentation.</p
Global Networks of Trade and Bits
Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to produce detailed
topologies of the Internet. Although Internet topology data have been brought
to the attention of a wide and somewhat diverse audience of scholars, so far
they have been overlooked by economists. In this paper, we suggest that such
data could be effectively treated as a proxy to characterize the size of the
"digital economy" at country level and outsourcing: thus, we analyse the
topological structure of the network of trade in digital services (trade in
bits) and compare it with that of the more traditional flow of manufactured
goods across countries. To perform meaningful comparisons across networks with
different characteristics, we define a stochastic benchmark for the number of
connections among each country-pair, based on hypergeometric distribution.
Original data are thus filtered by means of different thresholds, so that we
only focus on the strongest links, i.e., statistically significant links. We
find that trade in bits displays a sparser and less hierarchical network
structure, which is more similar to trade in high-skill manufactured goods than
total trade. Lastly, distance plays a more prominent role in shaping the
network of international trade in physical goods than trade in digital
services.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure
KMT-2018-BLG-1292: A Super-Jovian Microlens Planet in the Galactic Plane
We report the discovery of KMT-2018-BLG-1292Lb, a super-Jovian planet orbiting an F or G dwarf , which lies physically within {\cal O}(10\,\pc) of the
Galactic plane. The source star is a heavily extincted luminous
giant that has the lowest Galactic latitude, , of any planetary
microlensing event. The relatively blue blended light is almost certainly
either the host or its binary companion, with the first explanation being
substantially more likely. This blend dominates the light at band and
completely dominates at and bands. Hence, the lens system can be probed
by follow-up observations immediately, i.e., long before the lens system and
the source separate due to their relative proper motion. The system is well
characterized despite the low cadence -- of
observations and short viewing windows near the end of the bulge season. This
suggests that optical microlensing planet searches can be extended to the
Galactic plane at relatively modest cost.Comment: 35 pages, 3 Tables, 8 figure
An optimal gap theorem
By solving the Cauchy problem for the Hodge-Laplace heat equation for
-closed, positive -forms, we prove an optimal gap theorem for
K\"ahler manifolds with nonnegative bisectional curvature which asserts that
the manifold is flat if the average of the scalar curvature over balls of
radius centered at any fixed point is a function of .
Furthermore via a relative monotonicity estimate we obtain a stronger
statement, namely a `positive mass' type result, asserting that if is
not flat, then for any
- âŚ