634 research outputs found
Public experiences of mass casualty decontamination
In this article, we analyze feedback from simulated casualties who took part in field exercises involving mass decontamination, to gain an understanding of how responder communication can affect people’s experiences of and compliance with decontamination. We analyzed questionnaire data gathered from 402 volunteers using the framework approach, to provide an insight into the public’s experiences of decontamination and how these experiences are shaped by the actions of emergency responders. Factors that affected casualties’ experiences of the econtamination process included the need for greater practical information and better communication from responders, and the need for privacy. Results support previous findings from small-scale incidents that involved decontamination in showing that participants wanted better communication from responders during the process of decontamination, including more practical information, and that the failure of responders to communicate effectively with members of the public led to anxiety about the decontamination process. The similarity between the findings from the exercises described in this article and previous research into real
incidents involving decontamination suggests that field exercises provide a useful way to examine the effect of responder communication strategies on the public’s experiences of decontamination. Future exercises should examine in more detail the effect of various communication strategies on the public’s experiences of decontamination. This will facilitate the development of evidence-based communication strategies intended to reduce anxiety about decontamination and increase compliance among members of the public during real-life incidents that involve mass decontamination
Time-Delay Interferometry
Equal-arm interferometric detectors of gravitational radiation allow phase
measurements many orders of magnitude below the intrinsic phase stability of
the laser injecting light into their arms. This is because the noise in the
laser light is common to both arms, experiencing exactly the same delay, and
thus cancels when it is differenced at the photo detector. In this situation,
much lower level secondary noises then set overall performance. If, however,
the two arms have different lengths (as will necessarily be the case with
space-borne interferometers), the laser noise experiences different delays in
the two arms and will hence not directly cancel at the detector. In order to
solve this problem, a technique involving heterodyne interferometry with
unequal arm lengths and independent phase-difference readouts has been
proposed. It relies on properly time-shifting and linearly combining
independent Doppler measurements, and for this reason it has been called
Time-Delay Interferometry (or TDI). This article provides an overview of the
theory and mathematical foundations of TDI as it will be implemented by the
forthcoming space-based interferometers such as the Laser Interferometer Space
Antenna (LISA) mission. We have purposely left out from this first version of
our ``Living Review'' article on TDI all the results of more practical and
experimental nature, as well as all the aspects of TDI that the data analysts
will need to account for when analyzing the LISA TDI data combinations. Our
forthcoming ``second edition'' of this review paper will include these topics.Comment: 51 pages, 11 figures. To appear in: Living Reviews. Added conten
CMB Anisotropy of the Poincare Dodecahedron
We analyse the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for the
Poincare dodecahedron which is an example for a multi-connected spherical
universe. We compare the temperature correlation function and the angular power
spectrum for the Poincare dodecahedral universe with the first-year WMAP data
and find that this multi-connected universe can explain the surprisingly low
CMB anisotropy on large scales found by WMAP provided that the total energy
density parameter Omega_tot is in the range 1.016...1.020. The ensemble average
over the primordial perturbations is assumed to be the scale-invariant
Harrison-Zel'dovich spectrum. The circles-in-the-sky signature is studied and
it is found that the signal of the six pairs of matched circles could be missed
by current analyses of CMB sky maps
Discovery of the Optical Afterglow and Host Galaxy of Short GRB 181123B at z = 1.754: Implications for Delay Time Distributions
We present the discovery of the optical afterglow and host galaxy of the Swift short-duration gamma-ray burst (SGRB) GRB 181123B. Observations with Gemini-North starting ≈9.1 hr after the burst reveal a faint optical afterglow with i ≈ 25.1 mag at an angular offset of 0farcs59 ± 0farcs16 from its host galaxy. Using grizYJHK observations, we measure a photometric redshift of the host galaxy of . From a combination of Gemini and Keck spectroscopy of the host galaxy spanning 4500–18000 Å, we detect a single emission line at 13390 Å, inferred as Hβ at z = 1.754 ± 0.001 and corroborating the photometric redshift. The host galaxy properties of GRB 181123B are typical of those of other SGRB hosts, with an inferred stellar mass of ≈9.1 × 109 M ⊙, a mass-weighted age of ≈0.9 Gyr, and an optical luminosity of ≈0.9L*. At z = 1.754, GRB 181123B is the most distant secure SGRB with an optical afterglow detection and one of only three at z > 1.5. Motivated by a growing number of high-z SGRBs, we explore the effects of a missing z > 1.5 SGRB population among the current Swift sample on delay time distribution (DTD) models. We find that lognormal models with mean delay times of ≈4–6 Gyr are consistent with the observed distribution but can be ruled out to 95% confidence, with an additional ≈one to five Swift SGRBs recovered at z > 1.5. In contrast, power-law models with ∝t −1 are consistent with the redshift distribution and can accommodate up to ≈30 SGRBs at these redshifts. Under this model, we predict that ≈1/3 of the current Swift population of SGRBs is at z > 1. The future discovery or recovery of existing high-z SGRBs will provide significant discriminating power on their DTDs and thus their formation channels
Detailed Enzyme Kinetics in Terms of Biochemical Species: Study of Citrate Synthase
The compulsory-ordered ternary catalytic mechanism for two-substrate two-product enzymes is analyzed to account for binding of inhibitors to each of the four enzyme states and to maintain the relationship between the kinetic constants and the reaction equilibrium constant. The developed quasi-steady flux expression is applied to the analysis of data from citrate synthase to determine and parameterize a kinetic scheme in terms of biochemical species, in which the effects of pH, ionic strength, and cation binding to biochemical species are explicitly accounted for in the analysis of the data. This analysis provides a mechanistic model that is consistent with the data that have been used support competing hypotheses regarding the catalytic mechanism of this enzyme
Bringing metabolic networks to life: convenience rate law and thermodynamic constraints
BACKGROUND: Translating a known metabolic network into a dynamic model requires rate laws for all chemical reactions. The mathematical expressions depend on the underlying enzymatic mechanism; they can become quite involved and may contain a large number of parameters. Rate laws and enzyme parameters are still unknown for most enzymes. RESULTS: We introduce a simple and general rate law called "convenience kinetics". It can be derived from a simple random-order enzyme mechanism. Thermodynamic laws can impose dependencies on the kinetic parameters. Hence, to facilitate model fitting and parameter optimisation for large networks, we introduce thermodynamically independent system parameters: their values can be varied independently, without violating thermodynamical constraints. We achieve this by expressing the equilibrium constants either by Gibbs free energies of formation or by a set of independent equilibrium constants. The remaining system parameters are mean turnover rates, generalised Michaelis-Menten constants, and constants for inhibition and activation. All parameters correspond to molecular energies, for instance, binding energies between reactants and enzyme. CONCLUSION: Convenience kinetics can be used to translate a biochemical network – manually or automatically - into a dynamical model with plausible biological properties. It implements enzyme saturation and regulation by activators and inhibitors, covers all possible reaction stoichiometries, and can be specified by a small number of parameters. Its mathematical form makes it especially suitable for parameter estimation and optimisation. Parameter estimates can be easily computed from a least-squares fit to Michaelis-Menten values, turnover rates, equilibrium constants, and other quantities that are routinely measured in enzyme assays and stored in kinetic databases
Resistance to TGFβ suppression and improved anti-tumor responses in CD8⁺ T cells lacking PTPN22
Transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) is important in maintaining self-tolerance and inhibits T cell reactivity. We show that CD8⁺ T cells that lack the tyrosine phosphatase Ptpn22, a major predisposing gene for autoimmune disease, are resistant to the suppressive effects of TGFβ. Resistance to TGFβ suppression, while disadvantageous in autoimmunity, helps Ptpn22‾/‾ T cells to be intrinsically superior at clearing established tumors that secrete TGFβ. Mechanistically, loss of Ptpn22 increases the capacity of T cells to produce IL-2, which overcomes TGFβ-mediated suppression. These data suggest that a viable strategy to improve anti-tumor adoptive cell therapy may be to engineer tumor-restricted T cells with mutations identified as risk factors for autoimmunity
The Evolution of Compact Binary Star Systems
We review the formation and evolution of compact binary stars consisting of
white dwarfs (WDs), neutron stars (NSs), and black holes (BHs). Binary NSs and
BHs are thought to be the primary astrophysical sources of gravitational waves
(GWs) within the frequency band of ground-based detectors, while compact
binaries of WDs are important sources of GWs at lower frequencies to be covered
by space interferometers (LISA). Major uncertainties in the current
understanding of properties of NSs and BHs most relevant to the GW studies are
discussed, including the treatment of the natal kicks which compact stellar
remnants acquire during the core collapse of massive stars and the common
envelope phase of binary evolution. We discuss the coalescence rates of binary
NSs and BHs and prospects for their detections, the formation and evolution of
binary WDs and their observational manifestations. Special attention is given
to AM CVn-stars -- compact binaries in which the Roche lobe is filled by
another WD or a low-mass partially degenerate helium-star, as these stars are
thought to be the best LISA verification binary GW sources.Comment: 105 pages, 18 figure
Three-dimensional Topology-Independent Methods to Look for Global Topology
The space-like hypersurface of the Universe at the present cosmological time
is a three-dimensional manifold. A non-trivial global topology of this
space-like hypersurface would imply that the apparently observable universe
(the sphere of particle horizon radius) could contain several images of the
single, physical Universe. Recent three-dimensional techniques for constraining
and/or detecting this topology are reviewed. Initial applications of these
techniques using X-ray bright clusters of galaxies and quasars imply (weak)
candidates for a non-trivial topology.Comment: minor revision; 7 pages, 1 figure, accepted by Classical and Quantum
Gravit
- …