Effect of ionic radii on the Curie temperature in Ba1-x-ySrxCayTiO3 compounds

<p>A series of Ba_1-x-ySr_xCa_yTiO₃ compounds were prepared with varying average ionic radii and cation disorder on A-site. All samples showed typical ferroelectric behavior. A simple empirical equation correlated Curie temperature, <em>T_C</em>, with the values of ionic radii of A-site cations. This correlation was related to the distortion of TiO₆ octahedra observed during neutron diffraction studies. The equation was used for the selection of compounds with predetermined values of <em>T_C</em>. The effects of A-site ionic radii on the temperatures of phase transitions in Ba_1-x-ySr_xCa_yTiO₃ were discussed. </p

Direct laser acceleration of electrons assisted by strong laser-driven azimuthal plasma magnetic fields.

A high-intensity laser beam propagating through a dense plasma drives a strong current that robustly sustains a strong quasistatic azimuthal magnetic field. The laser field efficiently accelerates electrons in such a field that confines the transverse motion and deflects the electrons in the forward direction. Its advantage is a threshold rather than resonant behavior, accelerating electrons to high energies for sufficiently strong laser-driven currents. We study the electron dynamics via a test-electron model, specifically deriving the corresponding critical current density. We confirm the model's predictions by numerical simulations, indicating energy gains two orders of magnitude higher than achievable without the magnetic field

Canine Gouging: A Taboo Resurfacing in Migrant Urban Population.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Cosmopolitan cities have become a pool of migrants from different parts of the world, who carry their cultural beliefs and superstitions with them around the globe. Canine gouging is a kind of infant oral mutilation (IOM) which is widely practiced among rural population of Africa where the primary tooth bud of the deciduous canine is enucleated. The belief is that the life threatening illnesses in children like vomiting, diarrhoea, and fevers are caused by worms which infest on tooth buds. This case report is of a 15-year-old Somalian born boy, who presented at the dental institute with intermittent pain in his lower right permanent canine which was associated with a discharging intra oral buccal sinus. The tooth was endodontically treated and then restored with composite. General dental practitioners need to be vigilant when encountered with tooth presenting unusual morphology, unilateral missing tooth, and shift in the midline due to early loss of deciduous/permanent canines. Identification of any such dental mutilation practice will need further counselling of the individual and family members. It is the duty of every dental professional to educate and safeguard the oral and dental health of general public

Image transfer through a chaotic channel by intensity correlations

The three-wave mixing processes in a second-order nonlinear medium can be used for imaging protocols, in which an object field is injected into the nonlinear medium together with a reference field and an image field is generated. When the reference field is chaotic, the image field is also chaotic and does not carry any information about the object. We show that a clear image of the object be extracted from the chaotic image field by measuring the spatial intensity correlations between this field and one Fourier component of the reference. We experimentally verify this imaging protocol in the case of frequency downconversion.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Ising Model Coupled to Three-Dimensional Quantum Gravity

We have performed Monte Carlo simulations of the Ising model coupled to three-dimensional quantum gravity based on a summation over dynamical triangulations. These were done both in the microcanonical ensemble, with the number of points in the triangulation and the number of Ising spins fixed, and in the grand canoncal ensemble. We have investigated the two possible cases of the spins living on the vertices of the triangulation (``diect'' case) and the spins living in the middle of the tetrahedra (``dual'' case). We observed phase transitions which are probably second order, and found that the dual implementation more effectively couples the spins to the quantum gravity.Comment: 11 page

Six-Loop Anomalous Dimension of Twist-Three Operators in N=4 SYM

The result for the six-loop anomalous dimension of twist-three operators in the planar N=4 SYM theory is presented. The calculations were performed along the paper arXiv:0912.1624. This result provides a new data for testing the proposed spectral equations for planar AdS/CFT correspondence.Comment: 19 pages, typos corrected, details adde

Inhibition of Nuclear Factor of Activated T-Cells (NFAT) Suppresses Accelerated Atherosclerosis in Diabetic Mice

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY: Diabetic patients have a much more widespread and aggressive form of atherosclerosis and therefore, higher risk for myocardial infarction, peripheral vascular disease and stroke, but the molecular mechanisms leading to accelerated damage are still unclear. Recently, we showed that hyperglycemia activates the transcription factor NFAT in the arterial wall, inducing the expression of the pro-atherosclerotic protein osteopontin. Here we investigate whether NFAT activation may be a link between diabetes and atherogenesis. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes in apolipoprotein E(-/-) mice resulted in 2.2 fold increased aortic atherosclerosis and enhanced pro-inflammatory burden, as evidenced by elevated blood monocytes, endothelial activation- and inflammatory markers in aorta, and pro-inflammatory cytokines in plasma. In vivo treatment with the NFAT blocker A-285222 for 4 weeks completely inhibited the diabetes-induced aggravation of atherosclerosis, having no effect in non-diabetic mice. STZ-treated mice exhibited hyperglycemia and higher plasma cholesterol and triglycerides, but these were unaffected by A-285222. NFAT-dependent transcriptional activity was examined in aorta, spleen, thymus, brain, heart, liver and kidney, but only augmented in the aorta of diabetic mice. A-285222 completely blocked this diabetes-driven NFAT activation, but had no impact on the other organs or on splenocyte proliferation or cytokine secretion, ruling out systemic immunosuppression as the mechanism behind reduced atherosclerosis. Instead, NFAT inhibition effectively reduced IL-6, osteopontin, monocyte chemotactic protein 1, intercellular adhesion molecule 1, CD68 and tissue factor expression in the arterial wall and lowered plasma IL-6 in diabetic mice. CONCLUSIONS: Targeting NFAT signaling may be a novel and attractive approach for the treatment of diabetic macrovascular complications