1,273 research outputs found
Food activities and identity maintenance in old age: a systematic review and meta-synthesis
This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Objectives: Services provided to older people should be developed based on active ageing policies. Nutrition is one aspect of active ageing, but little is known about how food activities contribute to psychological well-being in later life. This is a systematic review of qualitative and quantitative research that answers the question âWhat is known about the relationship between food activities and the maintenance of identities in old age?â
Amyloid-Ă and a-Synuclein Decrease the Level of Metal-Catalyzed Reactive Oxygen Species by Radical Scavenging and Redox Silencing
The formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is linked to the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. Here we have investigated the effect of soluble and aggregated amyloid-Ă (AĂ) and a-synuclein (aS), associated with Alzheimer''s and Parkinson''s diseases, respectively, on the Cu2+-catalyzed formation of ROS in vitro in the presence of a biological reductant. We find that the levels of ROS, and the rate by which ROS is generated, are significantly reduced when Cu2+ is bound to AĂ or aS, particularly when they are in their oligomeric or fibrillar forms. This effect is attributed to a combination of radical scavenging and redox silencing mechanisms. Our findings suggest that the increase in ROS associated with the accumulation of aggregated AĂ or aS does not result from a particularly ROS-active form of these peptides, but rather from either a local increase of Cu2+ and other ROS-active metal ions in the aggregates or as a downstream consequence of the formation of the pathological amyloid structures
Metal Surface Energy: Persistent Cancellation of Short-Range Correlation Effects beyond the Random-Phase Approximation
The role that non-local short-range correlation plays at metal surfaces is
investigated by analyzing the correlation surface energy into contributions
from dynamical density fluctuations of various two-dimensional wave vectors.
Although short-range correlation is known to yield considerable correction to
the ground-state energy of both uniform and non-uniform systems, short-range
correlation effects on intermediate and short-wavelength contributions to the
surface formation energy are found to compensate one another. As a result, our
calculated surface energies, which are based on a non-local
exchange-correlation kernel that provides accurate total energies of a uniform
electron gas, are found to be very close to those obtained in the random-phase
approximation and support the conclusion that the error introduced by the
local-density approximation is small.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Tractable non-local correlation density functionals for flat surfaces and slabs
A systematic approach for the construction of a density functional for van
der Waals interactions that also accounts for saturation effects is described,
i.e. one that is applicable at short distances. A very efficient method to
calculate the resulting expressions in the case of flat surfaces, a method
leading to an order reduction in computational complexity, is presented.
Results for the interaction of two parallel jellium slabs are shown to agree
with those of a recent RPA calculation (J.F. Dobson and J. Wang, Phys. Rev.
Lett. 82, 2123 1999). The method is easy to use; its input consists of the
electron density of the system, and we show that it can be successfully
approximated by the electron densities of the interacting fragments. Results
for the surface correlation energy of jellium compare very well with those of
other studies. The correlation-interaction energy between two parallel jellia
is calculated for all separations d, and substantial saturation effects are
predicted.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure
Finite temperature theory of the trapped two dimensional Bose gas
We present a Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) theoretical treatment of the
two-dimensional trapped Bose gas and indicate how semiclassical approximations
to this and other formalisms have lead to confusion. We numerically obtain
results for the fully quantum mechanical HFB theory within the Popov
approximation and show that the presence of the trap stabilizes the condensate
against long wavelength fluctuations. These results are used to show where
phase fluctuations lead to the formation of a quasicondensate.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Intersubband spin-density excitations in quantum wells with Rashba spin splitting
In inversion-asymmetric semiconductors, spin-orbit coupling induces a
k-dependent spin splitting of valence and conduction bands, which is a
well-known cause for spin decoherence in bulk and heterostructures.
Manipulating nonequilibrium spin coherence in device applications thus requires
understanding how valence and conduction band spin splitting affects carrier
spin dynamics. This paper studies the relevance of this decoherence mechanism
for collective intersubband spin-density excitations (SDEs) in quantum wells. A
density-functional formalism for the linear spin-density matrix response is
presented that describes SDEs in the conduction band of quantum wells with
subbands that may be non-parabolic and spin-split due to bulk or structural
inversion asymmetry (Rashba effect). As an example, we consider a 40 nm
GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well, including Rashba spin splitting of the conduction
subbands. We find a coupling and wavevector-dependent splitting of the
longitudinal and transverse SDEs. However, decoherence of the SDEs is not
determined by subband spin splitting, due to collective effects arising from
dynamical exchange and correlation.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
âThat's cool, youâre a musician and you drinkâ: Exploring entertainersâ accounts of their unique workplace relationship with alcohol
This qualitative research investigates the alcohol experiences of entertainers who perform within licensed premises. Previous, mainly quantitative, studies have found that entertainers, specifically musicians, are an occupational group who drink excessively. This qualitative study draws on a wider sample of entertainers to examine their accounts of drinking in the workplace and the explanations they provide for this. We conducted individual semi-structured interviews (n = 24) with band-members, variety acts and DJs in Glasgow, Scotland. This revealed a workplace characterised by continual opportunities for often free alcohol consumption. Unlike most occupations, for entertainers âdrinking-on-the-jobâ was normative, expected, and sometimes encouraged by peers, the public, employers or sponsors. Entertainers also experienced performance-related incentives to drink before, during and/or after a show; including anxiety, matching their intoxication level to the audience's, and âreward-drinkingâ. This qualitative research confirms the unique nature of the entertainer-alcohol link, even in comparison to that found within other leisure industry occupations. While providing some explanation as to why entertainers might drink excessively, participantsâ accounts also suggested potential strategies for avoiding the negative outcomes of workplace drinking
On the Computational Complexity of Measuring Global Stability of Banking Networks
Threats on the stability of a financial system may severely affect the
functioning of the entire economy, and thus considerable emphasis is placed on
the analyzing the cause and effect of such threats. The financial crisis in the
current and past decade has shown that one important cause of instability in
global markets is the so-called financial contagion, namely the spreading of
instabilities or failures of individual components of the network to other,
perhaps healthier, components. This leads to a natural question of whether the
regulatory authorities could have predicted and perhaps mitigated the current
economic crisis by effective computations of some stability measure of the
banking networks. Motivated by such observations, we consider the problem of
defining and evaluating stabilities of both homogeneous and heterogeneous
banking networks against propagation of synchronous idiosyncratic shocks given
to a subset of banks. We formalize the homogeneous banking network model of
Nier et al. and its corresponding heterogeneous version, formalize the
synchronous shock propagation procedures, define two appropriate stability
measures and investigate the computational complexities of evaluating these
measures for various network topologies and parameters of interest. Our results
and proofs also shed some light on the properties of topologies and parameters
of the network that may lead to higher or lower stabilities.Comment: to appear in Algorithmic
The functional role of biodiversity in ecosystems: incorporating trophic complexity
Understanding how biodiversity affects functioning of ecosystems requires integrating diversity within trophic levels (horizontal diversity) and across trophic levels (vertical diversity, including food chain length and omnivory). We review theoretical and experimental progress toward this goal. Generally, experiments show that biomass and resource use increase similarly with horizontal diversity of either producers or consumers. Among prey, higher diversity often increases resistance to predation, due to increased probability of including inedible species and reduced efficiency of specialist predators confronted with diverse prey. Among predators, changing diversity can cascade to affect plant biomass, but the strength and sign of this effect depend on the degree of omnivory and prey behaviour. Horizontal and vertical diversity also interact: adding a trophic level can qualitatively change diversity effects at adjacent levels. Multitrophic interactions produce a richer variety of diversityâfunctioning relationships than the monotonic changes predicted for single trophic levels. This complexity depends on the degree of consumer dietary generalism, tradeâoffs between competitive ability and resistance to predation, intraguild predation and openness to migration. Although complementarity and selection effects occur in both animals and plants, few studies have conclusively documented the mechanisms mediating diversity effects. Understanding how biodiversity affects functioning of complex ecosystems will benefit from integrating theory and experiments with simulations and networkâbased approaches
Structure and Dynamics of Liquid Iron under Earth's Core Conditions
First-principles molecular dynamics simulations based on density-functional
theory and the projector augmented wave (PAW) technique have been used to study
the structural and dynamical properties of liquid iron under Earth's core
conditions. As evidence for the accuracy of the techniques, we present PAW
results for a range of solid-state properties of low- and high-pressure iron,
and compare them with experimental values and the results of other
first-principles calculations. In the liquid-state simulations, we address
particular effort to the study of finite-size effects, Brillouin-zone sampling
and other sources of technical error. Results for the radial distribution
function, the diffusion coefficient and the shear viscosity are presented for a
wide range of thermodynamic states relevant to the Earth's core. Throughout
this range, liquid iron is a close-packed simple liquid with a diffusion
coefficient and viscosity similar to those of typical simple liquids under
ambient conditions.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
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