2,722 research outputs found
Brain Imaging and Privacy: How Recent Advances in Neuroimaging Implicate Privacy Concerns
This paper deals with recent advances in neuroimaging technologies which could begin to implicate privacy concerns in the near future
China’s Market Participation: The Case for a Paradigm Shift in Analyzing China’s Capital Market Regulation
This paper deals with recent reforms governing China’s state owned enterprises and how those reforms affect both the domestic and international market
Inhibition by Anandamide of 6-Hydroxydopamine-Induced Cell Death in PC12 Cells
6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) is a selective neurotoxin that is widely used to investigate cell death and protective strategies in models of Parkinson's disease. Here, we investigated the effects of the endogenous cannabinoid, anandamide, on 6-OHDA-induced toxicity in rat adrenal phaeochromocytoma PC12 cells. Morphological analysis and caspase-3 activity assay revealed that anandamide inhibited 6-OHDA-induced apoptosis. The protection was not affected by antagonists of either cannabinoid receptors (CB1 or CB2) or the vanilloid receptor TRPV1. Anandamide-dependent protection was reduced by pretreatment with LY294002 (inhibitor of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, PI3K) and unaffected by U0126 (inhibitor of extracellularly-regulated kinase). Interestingly, phosphorylation of c-Jun-NH2-terminal kinase (JNK) in cells exposed to 6-OHDA was strongly reduced by anandamide pre-treatment. Furthermore, 6-OHDA induced c-Jun activation and increased Bim expression, both of which were inhibited by anandamide. Together, these data demonstrate antiapoptotic effects of anandamide and also suggest a role for activation of PI3K and inhibition of JNK signalling in anandamide-mediated protection against 6-OHDA
Wetting and Minimal Surfaces
We study minimal surfaces which arise in wetting and capillarity phenomena.
Using conformal coordinates, we reduce the problem to a set of coupled boundary
equations for the contact line of the fluid surface, and then derive simple
diagrammatic rules to calculate the non-linear corrections to the Joanny-de
Gennes energy. We argue that perturbation theory is quasi-local, i.e. that all
geometric length scales of the fluid container decouple from the
short-wavelength deformations of the contact line. This is illustrated by a
calculation of the linearized interaction between contact lines on two opposite
parallel walls. We present a simple algorithm to compute the minimal surface
and its energy based on these ideas. We also point out the intriguing
singularities that arise in the Legendre transformation from the pure Dirichlet
to the mixed Dirichlet-Neumann problem.Comment: 22 page
Using coupled micropillar compression and micro-Laue diffraction to investigate deformation mechanisms in a complex metallic alloy Al13Co4
In this investigation, we have used in-situ micro-Laue diffraction combined with micropillar compression of focused ion beam milled Al13Co4 complex metallic alloy to study the evolution of deformation in Al13Co4. Streaking of the Laue spots showed that the onset of plastic flow occured at stresses as low as 0.8 GPa, although macroscopic yield only becomes apparent at 2 GPa. The measured misorientations, obtained from peak splitting, enabled the geometrically necessary dislocation density to be estimated as 1.1 x 1013 m-2
Black Hole Spectroscopy: Testing General Relativity through Gravitational Wave Observations
Assuming that general relativity is the correct theory of gravity in the
strong field limit, can gravitational wave observations distinguish between
black hole and other compact object sources? Alternatively, can gravitational
wave observations provide a test of one of the fundamental predictions of
general relativity? Here we describe a definitive test of the hypothesis that
observations of damped, sinusoidal gravitational waves originated from a black
hole or, alternatively, that nature respects the general relativistic no-hair
theorem. For astrophysical black holes, which have a negligible charge-to-mass
ratio, the black hole quasi-normal mode spectrum is characterized entirely by
the black hole mass and angular momentum and is unique to black holes. In a
different theory of gravity, or if the observed radiation arises from a
different source (e.g., a neutron star, strange matter or boson star), the
spectrum will be inconsistent with that predicted for general relativistic
black holes. We give a statistical characterization of the consistency between
the noisy observation and the theoretical predictions of general relativity,
together with a numerical example.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure
Bayesian Bounds on Parameter Estimation Accuracy for Compact Coalescing Binary Gravitational Wave Signals
A global network of laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors is
projected to be in operation by around the turn of the century. Here, the noisy
output of a single instrument is examined. A gravitational wave is assumed to
have been detected in the data and we deal with the subsequent problem of
parameter estimation. Specifically, we investigate theoretical lower bounds on
the minimum mean-square errors associated with measuring the parameters of the
inspiral waveform generated by an orbiting system of neutron stars/black holes.
Three theoretical lower bounds on parameter estimation accuracy are considered:
the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB); the Weiss-Weinstein bound (WWB); and the Ziv-Zakai
bound (ZZB). We obtain the WWB and ZZB for the Newtonian-form of the coalescing
binary waveform, and compare them with published CRB and numerical Monte-Carlo
results. At large SNR, we find that the theoretical bounds are all identical
and are attained by the Monte-Carlo results. As SNR gradually drops below 10,
the WWB and ZZB are both found to provide increasingly tighter lower bounds
than the CRB. However, at these levels of moderate SNR, there is a significant
departure between all the bounds and the numerical Monte-Carlo results.Comment: 17 pages (LaTeX), 4 figures. Submitted to Physical Review
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