Magnetostriction of a Superconductor: -Results from the Critical-State Model

In many cases, the critical-state theory can be treated as a suffi ciently accurate approximation for the modelling of the magnetic properties of superconductors. In the present work, the magnetostrictive hysteresis is computed for a quite general case of the modified Kim-Anderson model. The results obtained reproduce many features of the giant magnetostriction (butterfly-shaped curves) reported in the literature for measurements made on single-crystal samples of the high-temperature superconductor $Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_8$. It is shown that addition of a contribution to the magnetostriction in the superconducting state which is of similar origin as in the normal state, offers a broader phenomenological interpretation of the complex magnetostriction hysteresis found in such heavy-fermion compounds as $UPt_3$, $URu_2Si_2$ or $UBe_{13}$.Comment: 9 LaTeX pages, 4 Postscript figures, WWW version available at http://is.dal.ca/~zkoziol/super.htm

Validation of the short version of the dimensional inventory for child development assessment

Objectives: There is a critical need to monitor the development of children around the world, and in Brazil, this need is substantial since there is a paucity of assessment tools. This study aimed to describe the design and provide evidence of reliability and validity for the short version of the Dimensional Inventory for Child Development Assessment (IDADI-short). Methods: A sample of 1,865 biological mothers of children aged 4---72 months (M = 34.8, SD = 20.20) completed the IDADI to assess Cognitive, socio-emotional, Expressive, and Receptive Language and Communication, Fine and Gross Motor, and Adaptive Behavior development. The psychometric properties of a total of 118 subscales of IDADI were obtained and the IDADI-short age-specific scores were correlated with the original inventory, and criteria variables such as neurodevelopment diagnosis, socioeconomic status, and sex. Results: Item Response Theory analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha, and McDonald’s Omega indicated excellent internal consistency and optimal participant discrimination after minor alterations. IDADI-short scores were strongly associated with the original inventory, with high sensibility and specificity precision for developmental delays. Significant associations with relevant criteria variables were also observed. Conclusion: Findings support the use of IDADI-short as a parental measure of young children’s development

Validation of the short version of the dimensional inventory for child development assessment

Objectives: There is a critical need to monitor the development of children around the world, and in Brazil, this need is substantial since there is a paucity of assessment tools. This study aimed to describe the design and provide evidence of reliability and validity for the short version of the Dimensional Inventory for Child Development Assessment (IDADI-short). Methods: A sample of 1,865 biological mothers of children aged 4---72 months (M = 34.8, SD = 20.20) completed the IDADI to assess Cognitive, socio-emotional, Expressive, and Receptive Language and Communication, Fine and Gross Motor, and Adaptive Behavior development. The psychometric properties of a total of 118 subscales of IDADI were obtained and the IDADI-short age-specific scores were correlated with the original inventory, and criteria variables such as neurodevelopment diagnosis, socioeconomic status, and sex. Results: Item Response Theory analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha, and McDonald’s Omega indicated excellent internal consistency and optimal participant discrimination after minor alterations. IDADI-short scores were strongly associated with the original inventory, with high sensibility and specificity precision for developmental delays. Significant associations with relevant criteria variables were also observed. Conclusion: Findings support the use of IDADI-short as a parental measure of young children’s development

Impurity effects in superconducting UPt3

Superconducting UPt3 is characterized by a novel and complex magnetic field‐temperature phase diagram, with two superconducting transitions at Tc1 and Tc2 in zero field. We have studied the effects of Pd and Y impurities on the zero field superconducting properties of UPt3. Resistance measurements show that both dopants increase the residual resistivity and decrease the spin fluctuation temperature in the normal state. Tc1 is depressed by both dopants, but more effectively by Pd. ‖Tc1 − Tc2‖ is essentially unaffected by Y doping, but increases dramatically with Pd doping.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/70706/2/JAPIAU-69-8-5487-1.pd

Gut content metabarcoding of specialized feeders is not a replacement for environmental DNA assays of seawater in reef environments

In tropical marine ecosystems, the coral-based diet of benthic-feeding reef fishes provides a window into the composition and health of coral reefs. In this study, for the first time, we compare multi-assay metabarcoding sequences of environmental DNA (eDNA) isolated from seawater and partially digested gut items from an obligate corallivore butterflyfish (Chaetodon lunulatus) resident to coral reef sites in the South China Sea. We specifically tested the proportional and statistical overlap of the different approaches (seawater vs gut content metabarcoding) in characterizing eukaryotic community composition on coral reefs. Based on 18S and ITS2 sequence data, which differed in their taxonomic sensitivity, we found that gut content detections were only partially representative of the eukaryotic communities detected in the seawater based on low levels of taxonomic overlap (3 to 21%) and significant differences between the sampling approaches. Overall, our results indicate that dietary metabarcoding of specialized feeders can be complimentary to, but is no replacement for, more comprehensive environmental DNA assays of reef environments that might include the processing of different substrates (seawater, sediment, plankton) or traditional observational surveys. These molecular assays, in tandem, might be best suited to highly productive but cryptic oceanic environments (kelp forests, seagrass meadows) that contain an abundance of organisms that are often small, epiphytic, symbiotic, or cryptic.</p

Non-adiabatic and time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy for molecular systems

We quantify the non-adiabatic contributions to the vibronic sidebands of equilibrium and explicitly time-resolved non-equilibrium photoelectron spectra for a vibronic model system of Trans-Polyacetylene. Using exact diagonalization, we directly evaluate the sum-over-states expressions for the linear-response photocurrent. We show that spurious peaks appear in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation for the vibronic spectral function, which are not present in the exact spectral function of the system. The effect can be traced back to the factorized nature of the Born-Oppenheimer initial and final photoemission states and also persists when either only initial, or final states are replaced by correlated vibronic states. Only when correlated initial and final vibronic states are taken into account, the spurious spectral weights of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation are suppressed. In the non-equilibrium case, we illustrate for an initial Franck-Condon excitation and an explicit pump-pulse excitation how the vibronic wavepacket motion of the system can be traced in the time-resolved photoelectron spectra as function of the pump-probe delay

The identification of trans-associations between prostate cancer GWAS SNPs and RNA expression differences in tumor-adjacent stroma

Here we tested the hypothesis that SNPs associated with prostate cancer risk, might differentially affect RNA expression in prostate cancer stroma. The most significant 35 SNP loci were selected from Genome Wide Association (GWA) studies of ~40,000 patients. We also selected 4030 transcripts previously associated with prostate cancer diagnosis and prognosis. eQTL analysis was carried out by a modified BAYES method to analyze the associations between the risk variants and expressed transcripts jointly in a single model. We observed 47 significant associations between eight risk variants and the expression patterns of 46 genes. This is the first study to identify associations between multiple SNPs and multiple in trans gene expression differences in cancer stroma. Potentially, a combination of SNPs and associated expression differences in prostate stroma may increase the power of risk assessment for individuals, and for cancer progression