12,387 research outputs found
Factors affecting sperm recovery rates and survival after centrifugation of equine semen
Conventional centrifugation protocols result in important sperm losses during removal of the supernatant. In this study, the effect of centrifugation force (400 or 900 × g), duration (5 or 10 min), and column height (20 or 40 mL; Experiment 1); sperm concentration (25, 50, and 100 × 10[superscript 6]/mL; Experiment 2), and centrifugation medium (EZ-Mixin CST [Animal Reproduction Systems, Chino, CA, USA], INRA96 [IMV Technologies, Maple Grove, MN, USA], or VMDZ [Partnar Animal Health, Port Huron, MI, USA]; Experiment 3) on sperm recovery and survival after centrifugation and cooling and storage were evaluated. Overall, sperm survival was not affected by the combination of centrifugation protocol and cooling. Total sperm yield was highest after centrifugation for 10 min at 400 × g in 20-mL columns (95.6 ± 5%, mean ± SD) or 900 × g in 20-mL (99.2 ± 0.8%) or 40-mL (91.4 ± 4.5%) columns, and at 900 × g for 5 min in 20-mL columns (93.8 ± 8.9%; P < 0.0001). Total (TMY) and progressively motile sperm yield followed a similar pattern (P < 0.0001). Sperm yields were not significantly different among samples centrifuged at various sperm concentrations. However, centrifugation at 100 × 10[superscript 6]/mL resulted in significantly lower total sperm yield (83.8 ± 10.7%) and TMY (81.7 ± 6.8%) compared with noncentrifuged semen. Centrifugation in VMDZ resulted in significantly lower TMY (69.3 ± 22.6%), progressively motile sperm yield (63.5 ± 18.2%), viable yield (60.9 ± 36.5%), and survival of progressively motile sperm after cooling (21 ± 10.8%) compared with noncentrifuged semen. In conclusion, centrifuging volumes of ≤ 20 mL minimized sperm losses with conventional protocols. With 40-mL columns, it may be recommended to increase the centrifugal force to 900 × g for 10 min and dilute the semen to a sperm concentration of 25 to 50 × 10[superscript 6]/mL in a milk- or fractionated milk-based medium. The semen extender VMDZ did not seem well suited for centrifugation of equine semen
Direct Measurement of the Fermi Energy in Graphene Using a Double Layer Structure
We describe a technique which allows a direct measurement of the relative
Fermi energy in an electron system using a double layer structure, where
graphene is one of the two layers. We illustrate this method by probing the
Fermi energy as a function of density in a graphene monolayer, at zero and in
high magnetic fields. This technique allows us to determine the Fermi velocity,
Landau level spacing, and Landau level broadening in graphene. We find that the
N=0 Landau level broadening is larger by comparison to the broadening of upper
and lower Landau levels.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Cooper pairing and finite-size effects in a NJL-type four-fermion model
Starting from a NJL-type model with N fermion species fermion and difermion
condensates and their associated phase structures are considered at nonzero
chemical potential and zero temperature in spaces with nontrivial
topology of the form and . Special
attention is devoted to the generation of the superconducting phase. In
particular, for the cases of antiperiodic and periodic boundary conditions we
have found that the critical curve of the phase transitions between the chiral
symmetry breaking and superconducting phases as well as the corresponding
condensates and particle densities strongly oscillate vs ,
where is the length of the circumference . Moreover, it is shown that
at some finite values of the superconducting phase transition is shifted to
smaller values both of and particle density in comparison with the case
of .Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures; minor changes; new references added; version
accepted to PR
Mesons and diquarks in neutral color superconducting quark matter with -equilibrium
The spectrum of meson and diquark excitations in cold color-superconducting
(2SC) quark matter is investigated under local color and electric neutrality
constraints with -equilibrium. A 2-flavored Nambu--Jona-Lasinio type
model including a baryon , color , and electric chemical
potentials is used. Two relations between coupling constants and in the
diquark- and quark-antiquark channels, correspondingly, are treated,
and . At the gapless- and at the gapped neutral color
superconductivity is realized. It is shown that color and electrical neutrality
together with -equilibrium lead to a strong mass splitting within the
pion isotriplet in the 2SC phase (both gapped and gapless), in contrast with
non--neutral matter. It is also shown that the properties of the physical
-singlet diquark excitation in the 2SC ground state varies for
different parameterization schemes. Thus, for one finds a heavy
resonance with mass 1100 MeV in the non--neutral (gapped) case, whereas,
if neutrality is imposed, a stable diquark with mass 200 MeV
appears in the gapless 2SC phase. For , there is again a resonance (with
the mass 300 MeV) in the neutral gapped 2SC phase. Hence, the existence
of the stable massive SU(2)-singlet diquark excitation is a new peculiarity
of the gapless 2SC.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures; version accepted for publication in PR
Testing for double inflation with WMAP
With the WMAP data we can now begin to test realistic models of inflation
involving multiple scalar fields. These naturally lead to correlated adiabatic
and isocurvature (entropy) perturbations with a running spectral index. We
present the first full (9 parameter) likelihood analysis of double inflation
with WMAP data and find that despite the extra freedom, supersymmetric hybrid
potentials are strongly constrained with less than 7% correlated isocurvature
component allowed when standard priors are imposed on the cosomological
parameters. As a result we also find that Akaike & Bayesian model selection
criteria rather strongly prefer single-field inflation, just as equivalent
analysis prefers a cosmological constant over dynamical dark energy in the late
universe. It appears that simplicity is the best guide to our universe.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
Offline Signature Verification by Combining Graph Edit Distance and Triplet Networks
Biometric authentication by means of handwritten signatures is a challenging
pattern recognition task, which aims to infer a writer model from only a
handful of genuine signatures. In order to make it more difficult for a forger
to attack the verification system, a promising strategy is to combine different
writer models. In this work, we propose to complement a recent structural
approach to offline signature verification based on graph edit distance with a
statistical approach based on metric learning with deep neural networks. On the
MCYT and GPDS benchmark datasets, we demonstrate that combining the structural
and statistical models leads to significant improvements in performance,
profiting from their complementary properties
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