Directional detection of Dark Matter

Among the many experimental techniques available, those providing directional information have the potential of yielding an unambiguous observation of WIMPs even in the presence of insidious backgrounds. A measurement of the distribution of arrival direction of WIMPs can also discriminate between Galactic Dark Matter halo models. In this article, I will discuss the motivation for directional detectors and review the experimental techniques used by the various experiments. I will then describe one of them, the DMTPC detector, in more detail.Comment: 17 pages, 11 postscript figures, mini-review submitted to Modern Physics Letters A (MPLA). Submitted to Modern Physics Letters A (MPLA

Thomas Hobbes: theorist of the law

This short article introduces the papers that follow on the topic of Hobbes as a theorist of the law. It provides an overview of Hobbes reputation as a theorist of law in both domestic and international theory. The paper summarizes the papers that follow and suggest how they fit into the wider literature on Hobbes, legal theory, and constitutional theory.PostprintPeer reviewe

Stres Pada Kejadian Stroke

Stroke is the third largest cause of death in the world with a mortality rate of 18 - 37%, stroke risk factors were related to one of them is stress. Treatment of stress need to be prioritized, because the health department in 2008 report about 10% of the entire population of Indonesia is stressed. The purpose of this study was to determine the stress on the incidence of stroke. This study used a descriptive correlational research design with cross-sectional approach nonprobability sampling and sampling with purposive sampling techniques and data analysis using univariate tests. The number of samples is 90 respondents stroke and recurrent stroke. Techniques of data collection using questionnaires Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 42 (DASS 42), with significant <α (0.05) given to patients with no recurrent stroke and recurrent stroke. The results of stress analysis of research data on the incidence of stroke, found no recurrent stroke 50 respondents (55.6 %) consisting of 13 respondents (26 %) no stress, 19 respondents (38 %) mild stress, 14 respondents (28 %) and the stress is 4 respondents (8 %) of severe stress. 40 respondents experienced recurrent stroke (44.4%) which includes 6 respondents (15 %) no stress, 11 respondents (27 %) mild stress, 14 respondents (35 %) and 9 respondents were stress (22.5%) of severe stress. The conclusion of this study a total of 71 respondents (78.9 %) experienced stress. Suggestions for hospitals, nursing care provided nurses can be directed to controlling the risk factors stres

Product Advertisement and Brand Equity Effect to Consumer Brand Choice in Manado

Company is using advertising as a media to offered products, so the product could be known and sold well in the market place. That is why advertising is made as attractive as possible, so that sometimes can be too extravagate, and ignoring the psychological, sociological, ecological, and aesthetic target audience or product being advertised. The aim of this research analysis is using multiple regression and causal research as a tool to gather data and analysis. This study collected 105 respondents data sample of population of people in Manado. The conclusion of this study is the influence of product advertisement and brand image on consumer brand choice, simultaneously and partially are significant. The recommendation of this research result is to increase brand equity the company should expand the brand engagement to the consumer and give more promotion. Keywords: product advertising, brand equity, consumer brand choic

Progressive impairment of CaV1.1 function in the skeletal muscle of mice expressing a mutant type 1 Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (G93A) linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is an adult-onset neurodegenerative disorder that is typically fatal within 3–5 years of diagnosis. While motoneuron death is the defining characteristic of ALS, the events that underlie its pathology are not restricted to the nervous system. In this regard, ALS muscle atrophies and weakens significantly before presentation of neurological symptoms. Since the skeletal muscle L-type Ca2+ channel (CaV1.1) is a key regulator of both mass and force, we investigated whether CaV1.1 function is impaired in the muscle of two distinct mouse models carrying an ALS-linked mutation. Methods: We recorded L-type currents, charge movements, and myoplasmic Ca2+ transients from dissociated flexor digitorum brevis (FDB) fibers to assess CaV1.1 function in two mouse models expressing a type 1 Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase mutant (SOD1G93A). Results: In FDB fibers obtained from “symptomatic” global SOD1G93A mice, we observed a substantial reduction of SR Ca2+ release in response to depolarization relative to fibers harvested from age-matched control mice. L-type current and charge movement were both reduced by ~40 % in symptomatic SOD1G93A fibers when compared to control fibers. Ca2+ transients were not significantly reduced in similar experiments performed with FDB fibers obtained from “early-symptomatic” SOD1G93A mice, but L-type current and charge movement were decreased (~30 and ~20 %, respectively). Reductions in SR Ca2+ release (~35 %), L-type current (~20 %), and charge movement (~15 %) were also observed in fibers obtained from another model where SOD1G93A expression was restricted to skeletal muscle. Conclusions: We report reductions in EC coupling, L-type current density, and charge movement in FDB fibers obtained from symptomatic global SOD1G93A mice. Experiments performed with FDB fibers obtained from early-symptomatic SOD1G93A and skeletal muscle autonomous MLC/SOD1G93A mice support the idea that events occurring locally in the skeletal muscle contribute to the impairment of CaV1.1 function in ALS muscle independently of innervation status

Tomato ionomic approach for food fortification and safety.

Food fortification is an issue of paramount of importance for people living both in developed and in developing countries. Among substances listed as "nutriceuticals", essential minerals have been recognised for their involvement in several healthy issues, involving all ages. In this frame, food plants are playing a pivotal role since their capability to compartmentalise ions and proteinmetal complexes in edible organs. Conversely, the accumulation of high metal levels in those organs may lead to safety problems. In the recent years, thanks to the availability of new and improved analytical apparatus in both ionic and genomic/transcrittomics areas, it is became feasible to couple data coming from plant physiology and genetics. Ionomics is the discipline that studies the cross-analysis of both data sets. Our group, in the frame of GenoPom project granted by MiUR, is interested to study the ionomics of tomatoes cultivars derived by breeding programmes in which wild relatives have been used to transfer several useful traits, such as resistance to biotic or abiotic stresses, fruit composition and textiture, etc. The introgression of the wild genome into the cultivated one produces new gene combinations. They might lead to the expression of some traits, such as increased or reduced adsorption of some metals and their exclusion or loading into edible organs, thus strongly involving the nutritional food value. Our final goal is to put together data coming from ions homeostasis and gene expression analyses, thus obtaining an ionomic tomato map related to ions absorption, translocation and accumulation in various plant organs, fruits included. To follow our hypothesis, we are studying the ionome of Solanum lycopersicum cv. M82 along with 76 Introgression Lines (ILs) produced by interspecific crosses between this cultivar and the wild species S. pennellii. These ILs are homozygous for small portions of the wild species genome introgressed into the domesticated M82 one. They are used as a useful tool for mapping QTL associated with many traits of interest. It is worthy to note that, until now, little information is available on QTL for ions accumulation in tomato. Moreover, as our knowledge, effects of new gene combinations in introgressed lines on ions uptake related to food safety have not been extensively studied. In this presentation we show results coming from the ionome analysis, carried out on S . lycopersicum M82 and several ILs. Plants were grown in pots in a greenhouse and watered with deionised water Thirty day-old plants were left to grow for 15 days in the presence of non-toxic concentration of Cd, Pb, As, Cr and Zn given combined. Leaves of all plants were then harvested and stored at -80°C for ionome and gene expression analyses. Preliminary results of ionome analysis of S. lycopersicum M82 and several ILs, carried out using an ICP-MS, showed that traits correlated to toxic metals and micronutrients accumulation in apical leaves were significantly modified in response to specific genetic backgrounds. Those results are perhaps due to the introgression of traits linked to uptake, translocation and accumulation of useful and/or toxic metal into plant apical leaves and to interactions of the wild type introgressed genomic regions with the cultivated genome. Also, data are shown on the identification and isolation of Solanum gene sequences related to ions uptake, translocation and accumulation, useful for further real-time gene expression evaluation in both cultivated and ILs during the treatments with the above-mentioned metals

FEATURE SELECTION APPLIED TO THE TIME-FREQUENCY REPRESENTATION OF MUSCLE NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY (NIRS) SIGNALS: CHARACTERIZATION OF DIABETIC OXYGENATION PATTERNS

Diabetic patients might present peripheral microcirculation impairment and might benefit from physical training. Thirty-nine diabetic patients underwent the monitoring of the tibialis anterior muscle oxygenation during a series of voluntary ankle flexo-extensions by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). NIRS signals were acquired before and after training protocols. Sixteen control subjects were tested with the same protocol. Time-frequency distributions of the Cohen's class were used to process the NIRS signals relative to the concentration changes of oxygenated and reduced hemoglobin. A total of 24 variables were measured for each subject and the most discriminative were selected by using four feature selection algorithms: QuickReduct, Genetic Rough-Set Attribute Reduction, Ant Rough-Set Attribute Reduction, and traditional ANOVA. Artificial neural networks were used to validate the discriminative power of the selected features. Results showed that different algorithms extracted different sets of variables, but all the combinations were discriminative. The best classification accuracy was about 70%. The oxygenation variables were selected when comparing controls to diabetic patients or diabetic patients before and after training. This preliminary study showed the importance of feature selection techniques in NIRS assessment of diabetic peripheral vascular impairmen

16x125 Gb/s Quasi-Nyquist DAC-Generated PM-16QAM Transmission Over 3590 km of PSCF

We report on a transmission experiment over high-performance pure silica core fiber (PSCF) of 16 Nyquist wavelength-division-multiplexed (Nyquist-WDM) channels at a symbol rate of 15.625 GBaud, using polarization-multiplexed (PM) 16 symbols quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM), resulting in a per-channel raw bit rate of 125 Gb/s. The channel spacing is 16 GHz, corresponding to 1.024 times the symbol rate. The interchannel crosstalk penalty is drastically reduced through the confinement of the signal spectrum within a near-Nyquist bandwidth, achieved with digital filtering and digital-to-analog converters (DACs) operating at 1.5 samples/symbol. The optical line is a recirculating loop composed of two spans of high-performance PSCF with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers only. The transmission distance of 3590 km at a target line bit-error rate (BER) of 1.5 10^-2 is achieved at a raw spectral efficiency (SE) of 7.81 b/s/Hz. Assuming a commercial hard forward error correction with 20.5% redundancy, capable of handling the target BER, the net SE is 6.48 b/s/Hz, the highest so far reported for multithousand kilometer transmission of PM-16QAM at ≥ 100 Gb/s per channel. These results demonstrate the feasibility of very high SE DAC-enabled ultra-long-haul quasi-Nyquist-WDM transmission using PM-16QAM with current technologies and manageable digital signal processing complexit