1,915 research outputs found
Energy-dependent quenching adjusts the excitation diffusion length to regulate photosynthetic light harvesting
An important determinant of crop yields is the regulation of photosystem II
(PSII) light harvesting by energy-dependent quenching (qE). However, the
molecular details of excitation quenching have not been quantitatively
connected to the PSII yield, which only emerges on the 100 nm scale of the
grana membrane and determines flux to downstream metabolism. Here, we
incorporate excitation dissipation by qE into a pigment-scale model of
excitation transfer and trapping for a 200 nm x 200 nm patch of the grana
membrane. We demonstrate that single molecule measurements of qE are consistent
with a weak-quenching regime. Consequently, excitation transport can be
rigorously coarse-grained to a 2D random walk with an excitation diffusion
length determined by the extent of quenching. A diffusion-corrected lake model
substantially improves the PSII yield determined from variable chlorophyll
fluorescence measurements and offers an improved model of PSII for
photosynthetic metabolism.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, 3 supplementary figure
A Superfield for Every Dash-Chromotopology
The recent classification scheme of so-called adinkraic off-shell
supermultiplets of N-extended worldline supersymmetry without central charges
finds a combinatorial explosion. Completing our earlier efforts, we now
complete the constructive proof that all of these trillions or more of
supermultiplets have a superfield representation. While different as
superfields and supermultiplets, these are still super-differentially related
to a much more modest number of minimal supermultiplets, which we construct
herein.Comment: 13 pages, integrated illustration
The cost of youth suicide in Australia
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Suicide is the leading cause of death among Australians between 15 and 24 years of age. This study seeks to estimate the economic cost of youth suicide (15-24 years old) for Australia using 2014 as a reference year. The main outcome measure is monetized burden of youth suicide. Costs, in 2014 AU2,884,426, including 2,788,245 as the value of lost productivity, and 22 billion a year (equivalent to US20 to $25 billion. These findings can assist decision-makers understand the magnitude of adverse outcomes associated with youth suicide and the potential benefits to be achieved by investing in effective suicide prevention strategies
Theory Challenges of the Accelerating Universe
The accelerating expansion of the universe presents an exciting, fundamental
challenge to the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. I highlight
some of the outstanding challenges in both developing theoretical models and
interpreting without bias the observational results from precision cosmology
experiments in the next decade that will return data to help reveal the nature
of the new physics. Examples given focus on distinguishing a new component of
energy from a new law of gravity, and the effect of early dark energy on baryon
acoustic oscillations.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures; minor changes to match J. Phys. A versio
Mechanistic Regimes of Vibronic Transport in a Heterodimer and the Design Principle of Incoherent Vibronic Transport in Phycobiliproteins
Following the observation of coherent oscillations in non-linear spectra of
photosynthetic pigment protein complexes, particularly phycobilliprotein such
as PC645, coherent vibronic transport has been suggested as a design principle
for novel light harvesting materials operating at room temperature. Vibronic
transport between energetically remote pigments is coherent when the presence
of a resonant vibration supports transient delocalization between the pair of
electronic excited states. Here, we establish the mechanism of vibronic
transport for a model heterodimer across a wide range of molecular parameter
values. The resulting mechanistic map demonstrates that the molecular
parameters of phycobiliproteins in fact support incoherent vibronic transport.
This result points to an important design principle: incoherent vibronic
transport is more efficient than a coherent mechanism when energetic disorder
exceeds the coupling between the donor and vibrationally excited acceptor
states. Finally, our results suggest that the role of coherent vibronic
transport in pigment protein complexes should be reevaluated
Worldsheet Matter Superfields on Half-Shell
In this paper we discuss some of the effects of using "unidexterous"
worldsheet superfields, which satisfy worldsheet differential constraints and
so are partly on-shell, i.e., on half-shell. Most notably, this results in a
stratification of the field space that reminds of "brane-world" geometries.
Linear dependence on such superfields provides a worldsheet generalization of
the super-Zeeman effect. In turn, non-linear dependence yields additional
left-right asymmetric dynamical constraints on the propagating fields, again in
a stratified fashion.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures; minor algebraic correction
Can analyses of electronic patient records be independently and externally validated? The effect of statins on the mortality of patients with ischaemic heart disease: a cohort study with nested case-control analysis
Objective To conduct a fully independent and external validation of a research study based on one electronic health record database, using a different electronic database sampling the same population.
Design Using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), we replicated a published investigation into the effects of statins in patients with ischaemic heart disease (IHD) by a different research team using QResearch. We replicated the original methods and analysed all-cause mortality using: (1) a cohort analysis and (2) a case-control analysis nested within the full cohort.
Setting Electronic health record databases containing longitudinal patient consultation data from large numbers of general practices distributed throughout the UK.
Participants CPRD data for 34 925 patients with IHD from 224 general practices, compared to previously published results from QResearch for 13 029 patients from 89 general practices. The study period was from January 1996 to December 2003.
Results We successfully replicated the methods of the original study very closely. In a cohort analysis, risk of death was lower by 55% for patients on statins, compared with 53% for QResearch (adjusted HR 0.45, 95% CI 0.40 to 0.50; vs 0.47, 95% CI 0.41 to 0.53). In case-control analyses, patients on statins had a 31% lower odds of death, compared with 39% for QResearch (adjusted OR 0.69, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.75; vs OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.72). Results were also close for individual statins.
Conclusions Database differences in population characteristics and in data definitions, recording, quality and completeness had a minimal impact on key statistical outputs. The results uphold the validity of research using CPRD and QResearch by providing independent evidence that both datasets produce very similar estimates of treatment effect, leading to the same clinical and policy decisions. Together with other non-independent replication studies, there is a nascent body of evidence for wider validity
Building Clinical Ethics Capacity, Final Report of the Developing Clinical Ethics Capacity in NSW Partnership project 2014
Clinical ethics support services are an established feature of health care in the US and Canada and are becoming so in the UK, France, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe. They are yet to be widely established in NSW or elsewhere Australia. Clinical ethics support typically involves the provision of expert ethics input into clinical education, policy development and the care of individual patients, particularly where this involves value, rather than clinical, or scientific, conflict. Ethics support is generally provided by an individual consultant, an ethics committee or some combination of the two. In its case consultation function, expert support is intended to clarify the values that are in tension and through promoting open and inclusive discussion, facilitate consensus on the appropriate next steps. Internationally, the guidance and recommendations issued by a support service on a particular case are, in most cases, advisory and not binding. Advocates argue that clinical ethics support is necessary because contemporary clinical work takes place in a technologically, socially and ethically complex environment. The medical encounter has become far more open to scrutiny and is accountable to a more diverse public holding often quite different interests, ideas and values. In a more pluralist society, professional training, professional codes and institutional polices aren’t sufficient to establish ethical practices and procedures or resolve the ethical dilemmas that arise in the care of individual patients. The ethics expertise provided by an ethicist or a panel of ethically trained clinicians is necessary to astutely appraise the values and arguments and generate consensus. Without such expertise the ethicality of practices cannot be assured. Clinical ethics support is intended to promote ethically sound clinical and organisational practices and decision-making and thereby contribute to health organisation and system quality improvement. The under-developed state of clinical ethics support in Australia and NSW prompted NSW Health, in partnership with the Centre of Values Ethics and Law in Medicine and the Centre for Health Law and Governance , to ask: 1. Do changes to the environment in which clinical practice occurs mean there is a need to change the way we deal with ethical dilemmas? 2. Is more formalised support for clinicians, when making difficult and possibly controversial ethical decisions, desirable or warranted? 3. If it is agreed that clinical ethics support should be enhanced, what model is most appropriate for local conditions?funding provided by the Centre for Epidemiology and Evidence, NSW Ministry of Healt
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