Particle Pair Production in Cosmological General Relativity

The Cosmological General Relativity (CGR) of Carmeli, a 5-dimensional (5-D) theory of time, space and velocity, predicts the existence of an acceleration a_0 = c / tau due to the expansion of the universe, where c is the speed of light in vacuum, tau = 1 / h is the Hubble-Carmeli time constant, where h is the Hubble constant at zero distance and no gravity. The Carmeli force on a particle of mass m is F_c = m a_0, a fifth force in nature. In CGR, the effective mass density rho_eff = rho - rho_c, where rho is the matter density and rho_c is the critical mass density which we identify with the vacuum mass density rho_vac = -rho_c. The fields resulting from the weak field solution of the Einstein field equations in 5-D CGR and the Carmeli force are used to hypothesize the production of a pair of particles. The mass of each particle is found to be m = tau c^3 / 4 G, where G is Newton's constant. The vacuum mass density derived from the physics is rho_vac = -rho_c = -3 / (8 pi G tau^2). The cosmic microwave background (CMB) black body radiation at the temperature T_o = 2.72548 K which fills that volume is found to have a relationship to the ionization energy of the Hydrogen atom. Define the radiation energy epsilon_gamma = (1 - g) m c^2 / N_gamma, where (1-g) is the fraction of the initial energy m c^2 which converts to photons, g is a function of the baryon density parameter Omega_b and N_gamma is the total number of photons in the CMB radiation field. We make the connection with the ionization energy of the first quantum level of the Hydrogen atom by the hypothesis epsilon_gamma = [(1 - g) m c^2] / N_gamma = alpha^2 mu c^2 / 2, where alpha is the fine-structure constant and mu = m_p f / (1 + f), where f= m_e / m_p with m_e the electron mass and m_p the proton mass.Comment: 14 pages, 0 figures. The final publication is available at springerlink.co

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance artefacts

The multitude of applications offered by CMR make it an increasing popular modality to study the heart and the surrounding vessels. Nevertheless the anatomical complexity of the chest, together with cardiac and respiratory motion, and the fast flowing blood, present many challenges which can possibly translate into imaging artefacts. The literature is wide in terms of papers describing specific MR artefacts in great technical detail. In this review we attempt to summarise, in a language accessible to a clinical readership, some of the most common artefacts found in CMR applications. It begins with an introduction of the most common pulse sequences, and imaging techniques, followed by a brief section on typical cardiovascular applications. This leads to the main section on common CMR artefacts with examples, a short description of the mechanisms behind them, and possible solutions

Review of Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance 2015

There were 116 articles published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (JCMR) in 2015, which is a 14 % increase on the 102 articles published in 2014. The quality of the submissions continues to increase. The 2015 JCMR Impact Factor (which is published in June 2016) rose to 5.75 from 4.72 for 2014 (as published in June 2015), which is the highest impact factor ever recorded for JCMR. The 2015 impact factor means that the JCMR papers that were published in 2013 and 2014 were cited on average 5.75 times in 2015. The impact factor undergoes natural variation according to citation rates of papers in the 2 years following publication, and is significantly influenced by highly cited papers such as official reports. However, the progress of the journal's impact over the last 5 years has been impressive. Our acceptance rate is <25 % and has been falling because the number of articles being submitted has been increasing. In accordance with Open-Access publishing, the JCMR articles go on-line as they are accepted with no collating of the articles into sections or special thematic issues. For this reason, the Editors have felt that it is useful once per calendar year to summarize the papers for the readership into broad areas of interest or theme, so that areas of interest can be reviewed in a single article in relation to each other and other recent JCMR articles. The papers are presented in broad themes and set in context with related literature and previously published JCMR papers to guide continuity of thought in the journal. We hope that you find the open-access system increases wider reading and citation of your papers, and that you will continue to send your quality papers to JCMR for publication

Assessment of pesticides residues in fish (Tilapia guineensis) in the Couffo River in Djidja (Benin)

In Benin, the main cash crop is the cotton of which the level of production is largely insufficient to satisfy the national and International market. The main food crops (corn, cassava, yam, bean, rice, etc.) permit to cover the food needed globally, but remain again extensively on this side of the potentialities offered by the ecological conditions of the country. In the process to increase the agricultural production, the herbicides, insecticides and the fertilizers are used now in higher quantity that in the past. The aim of this work was to assess the level of contamination of fish (Tilapia guineensis) in the Couffo River in Djidja (Benin) by the pesticides. Nine (09) samples of fish (Tilapia guineensis) have been collected in nine (09) points along the Couffo River. The analysis of these fish has been done by gas chromatography after extraction and purification. In fish, the detected concentrations in average ranged between 0.123 µg/kg and 0.191 µg/kg for the glyphosate, from 0.095 to 0.128 µg/kg for the profenofos, between 0.112 and 0.125 µg/kg for the acetamiprid and 0.127 and 0.139 µg/kg. To assess the risk to public health, pesticides intake by fish consumption was estimated and compared with Estimated Daily Intake (EDI) values reported by the Codex Alimentarius. This comparison showed that fish consumption does not pose a risk for public health

Review of Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance 2014

There were 102 articles published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (JCMR) in 2014, which is a 6 % decrease on the 109 articles published in 2013. The quality of the submissions continues to increase. The 2013 JCMR Impact Factor (which is published in June 2014) fell to 4.72 from 5.11 for 2012 (as published in June 2013). The 2013 impact factor means that the JCMR papers that were published in 2011 and 2012 were cited on average 4.72 times in 2013. The impact factor undergoes natural variation according to citation rates of papers in the 2 years following publication, and is significantly influenced by highly cited papers such as official reports. However, the progress of the journal’s impact over the last 5 years has been impressive. Our acceptance rate is <25 % and has been falling because the number of articles being submitted has been increasing. In accordance with Open-Access publishing, the JCMR articles go on-line as they are accepted with no collating of the articles into sections or special thematic issues. For this reason, the Editors have felt that it is useful once per calendar year to summarize the papers for the readership into broad areas of interest or theme, so that areas of interest can be reviewed in a single article in relation to each other and other recent JCMR articles. The papers are presented in broad themes and set in context with related literature and previously published JCMR papers to guide continuity of thought in the journal. We hope that you find the open-access system increases wider reading and citation of your papers, and that you will continue to send your quality papers to JCMR for publication

Deep De-Aliasing for Fast Compressive Sensing MRI

Fast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is highly in demand for many clinical applications in order to reduce the scanning cost and improve the patient experience. This can also potentially increase the image quality by reducing the motion artefacts and contrast washout. However, once an image field of view and the desired resolution are chosen, the minimum scanning time is normally determined by the requirement of acquiring sufficient raw data to meet the Nyquist-Shannon sampling criteria. Compressive Sensing (CS) theory has been perfectly matched to the MRI scanning sequence design with much less required raw data for the image reconstruction. Inspired by recent advances in deep learning for solving various inverse problems, we propose a conditional Generative Adversarial Networks-based deep learning framework for de-aliasing and reconstructing MRI images from highly undersampled data with great promise to accelerate the data acquisition process. By coupling an innovative content loss with the adversarial loss our de-aliasing results are more realistic. Furthermore, we propose a refinement learning procedure for training the generator network, which can stabilise the training with fast convergence and less parameter tuning. We demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms state-of-the-art CS-MRI methods, in terms of reconstruction error and perceptual image quality. In addition, our method can reconstruct each image in 0.22ms--0.37ms, which is promising for real-time applications

The complete mitochondrial genome of rare and critically endangered Anilany helenae (Microhylidae) of Madagascar

Anilany helenae is a Critically Endangered frog native to the central highlands of Madagascar. Due to ongoing habitat loss of its known range, this species’ population is considered declining, while little is known about its ecology, behavior, and taxonomy. Within the context of developing tools that can aid the conservation of Madagascar’s amphibian fauna, and add to the continued understanding of their taxonomy, we assembled its complete mitochondrial genome (Genbank Accession number MZ751042). This contributes the first complete mitochondrial genome of a microhylid from Madagascar, despite there being over 100 species in the Cophylinae subfamily alone. Anilany helenae’s circular mitochondrial genome is 17,519 bp long, contains 37 genes, and exhibits differences in gene arrangement compared with other microhylids, including the placement of protein coding genes nad1 and nad2. A phylogeny of the 13 protein coding genes of the few Madagascan anuran mitogenomes available, along with species from Africa and East Asia, places A. helenae along with the New Guinean Mantophryne lateralis in a basal position with respect to the other microhylids in the tree