374 research outputs found
You Can't Get Through Szekeres Wormholes - or - Regularity, Topology and Causality in Quasi-Spherical Szekeres Models
The spherically symmetric dust model of Lemaitre-Tolman can describe
wormholes, but the causal communication between the two asymptotic regions
through the neck is even less than in the vacuum
(Schwarzschild-Kruskal-Szekeres) case. We investigate the anisotropic
generalisation of the wormhole topology in the Szekeres model. The function
E(r, p, q) describes the deviation from spherical symmetry if \partial_r E \neq
0, but this requires the mass to be increasing with radius, \partial_r M > 0,
i.e. non-zero density. We investigate the geometrical relations between the
mass dipole and the locii of apparent horizon and of shell-crossings. We
present the various conditions that ensure physically reasonable
quasi-spherical models, including a regular origin, regular maxima and minima
in the spatial sections, and the absence of shell-crossings. We show that
physically reasonable values of \partial_r E \neq 0 cannot compensate for the
effects of \partial_r M > 0 in any direction, so that communication through the
neck is still worse than the vacuum.
We also show that a handle topology cannot be created by identifying
hypersufaces in the two asymptotic regions on either side of a wormhole, unless
a surface layer is allowed at the junction. This impossibility includes the
Schwarzschild-Kruskal-Szekeres case.Comment: zip file with LaTeX text + 6 figures (.eps & .ps). 47 pages. Second
replacement corrects some minor errors and typos. (First replacement prints
better on US letter size paper.
Theory for the coalescence of viscous lenses
Drop coalescence occurs through the rapid growth of a liquid bridge that
connects the two drops. At early times after contact, the bridge dynamics is
typically self-similar, with details depending on the geometry and viscosity of
the liquid. In this paper we analyse the coalescence of two-dimensional viscous
drops that float on a quiescent deep pool; such drops are called liquid lenses.
The analysis is based on the thin-sheet equations, which were recently shown to
accurately capture experiments of liquid lens coalescence. It is found that the
bridge dynamics follows a self-similar solution at leading order, but,
depending on the large-scale boundary conditions on the drop, significant
corrections may arise to this solution. This dynamics is studied in detail
using numerical simulations and through matched asymptotics. We show that the
liquid lens coalescence can involve a global translation of the drops, a
feature that is confirmed experimentally
Gender, climate change, agriculture, and food security: a CCAFS training-of-trainers (TOT) manual to prepare South Asian rural women to adapt to climate change
This training-of-trainers manual is designed to train you to be able to deliver a capacity enhancement workshop (CEW) to rural women on climate change and gender. It has been designed by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and is appropriate to the South Asian context
Faecal haemoglobin concentration in adenoma, before and after polypectomy, approaches the ideal tumour marker
BACKGROUND: Polypectomy may be performed at colonoscopy and then subsequent surveillance undertaken. It is thought that faecal haemoglobin concentration (f-Hb), estimated by quantitative faecal immunochemical tests (FIT), might be a useful tumour marker. METHODS: Consecutive patients enrolled in colonoscopy surveillance were approached at two hospitals. A specimen for FIT was provided before colonoscopy and, ideally after 3 weeks, a second FIT sample from those who had polypectomy. A single FIT system (OC-Sensor io, Eiken Chemical Co., Ltd) was used to generate f-Hb. RESULTS: 1103 Patients were invited; 643 returned a FIT device (uptake: 58.3%). Four patients had known inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and were excluded, leaving 639 (57.9%) with an age range of 25–90 years (median 64 years), 54.6% male. Of 593 patients who had a f-Hb result and completed colonoscopy, advanced neoplasia was found in 41 (6.9%); four colorectal cancer (CRC): 0.7% and 37 advanced adenoma (AA): 6.3%, and a further 127 (21.4%) had non-advanced adenoma (NAA). The median f-Hb was significantly greater in AA as compared to NAA; 6.0 versus 1.0 μg Hb/g faeces, p < 0.0001.134/164 (81.7%) of invited patients returned a second FIT device: 28 were patients with AA in whom median pre-polypectomy f-Hb was 19.2, falling to 3.5 μg Hb/g faeces post-polypectomy, p = 0.01, and 106 with NAA had median pre-polypectomy f-Hb 0.8 compared to 1.0 μg Hb/g faeces post-polypectomy, p = 0.96. CONCLUSIONS: Quantitative FIT could provide a good tumour marker in post-polypectomy surveillance, reduce colonoscopy requirements and minimise potential risk to patients
Instability of black hole formation under small pressure perturbations
We investigate here the spectrum of gravitational collapse endstates when
arbitrarily small perfect fluid pressures are introduced in the classic black
hole formation scenario as described by Oppenheimer, Snyder and Datt (OSD) [1].
This extends a previous result on tangential pressures [2] to the more
physically realistic scenario of perfect fluid collapse. The existence of
classes of pressure perturbations is shown explicitly, which has the property
that injecting any smallest pressure changes the final fate of the dynamical
collapse from a black hole to a naked singularity. It is therefore seen that
any smallest neighborhood of the OSD model, in the space of initial data,
contains collapse evolutions that go to a naked singularity outcome. This gives
an intriguing insight on the nature of naked singularity formation in
gravitational collapse.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, several modifications to match published version
on GR
Stellar structure and compact objects before 1940: Towards relativistic astrophysics
Since the mid-1920s, different strands of research used stars as "physics
laboratories" for investigating the nature of matter under extreme densities
and pressures, impossible to realize on Earth. To trace this process this paper
is following the evolution of the concept of a dense core in stars, which was
important both for an understanding of stellar evolution and as a testing
ground for the fast-evolving field of nuclear physics. In spite of the divide
between physicists and astrophysicists, some key actors working in the
cross-fertilized soil of overlapping but different scientific cultures
formulated models and tentative theories that gradually evolved into more
realistic and structured astrophysical objects. These investigations culminated
in the first contact with general relativity in 1939, when J. Robert
Oppenheimer and his students George Volkoff and Hartland Snyder systematically
applied the theory to the dense core of a collapsing neutron star. This
pioneering application of Einstein's theory to an astrophysical compact object
can be regarded as a milestone in the path eventually leading to the emergence
of relativistic astrophysics in the early 1960s.Comment: 83 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the European Physical Journal
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Genome3D: integrating a collaborative data pipeline to expand the depth and breadth of consensus protein structure annotation.
Genome3D (https://www.genome3d.eu) is a freely available resource that provides consensus structural annotations for representative protein sequences taken from a selection of model organisms. Since the last NAR update in 2015, the method of data submission has been overhauled, with annotations now being 'pushed' to the database via an API. As a result, contributing groups are now able to manage their own structural annotations, making the resource more flexible and maintainable. The new submission protocol brings a number of additional benefits including: providing instant validation of data and avoiding the requirement to synchronise releases between resources. It also makes it possible to implement the submission of these structural annotations as an automated part of existing internal workflows. In turn, these improvements facilitate Genome3D being opened up to new prediction algorithms and groups. For the latest release of Genome3D (v2.1), the underlying dataset of sequences used as prediction targets has been updated using the latest reference proteomes available in UniProtKB. A number of new reference proteomes have also been added of particular interest to the wider scientific community: cow, pig, wheat and mycobacterium tuberculosis. These additions, along with improvements to the underlying predictions from contributing resources, has ensured that the number of annotations in Genome3D has nearly doubled since the last NAR update article. The new API has also been used to facilitate the dissemination of Genome3D data into InterPro, thereby widening the visibility of both the annotation data and annotation algorithms
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