565 research outputs found
Correlation between evolutionary history, flowering phenology, growth form and seral status for important veld grasses
Thirty species of veld grasses were analysed for their evolutionary history, flowering phenology, growth form and range of veld types. These characteristics were correlated with successional classes as reported in the literature, and the classes were defined on the basis of the parameters considered. The lowest and highest seral states were clearly distinguished from each other, but there was some overlap between the intermediate class and the highest and lowest classes. Six of the species differed from other representatives of their class. They were either in vegetation types atypical of other species in their group, were known to comprise a number of ecotypes, or were members of hybrid complexes
Atrial cellular electrophysiological changes in patients with ventricular dysfunction may predispose to AF
<b>Background:</b>
Left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD) is a risk factor for atrial fibrillation (AF), but the atrial cellular electrophysiological mechanisms in humans are unclear.
Objective
This study sought to investigate whether LVSD in patients who are in sinus rhythm (SR) is associated with atrial cellular electrophysiological changes that could predispose to AF.
<b>Methods:</b>
Right atrial myocytes were obtained from 214 consenting patients in SR who were undergoing cardiac surgery. Action potentials or ion currents were measured using the whole-cell-patch clamp technique.
<b>Results:</b>
The presence of moderate or severe LVSD was associated with a shortened atrial cellular effective refractory period (ERP) (209 ± 8 ms; 52 cells, 18 patients vs 233 ± 7 ms; 134 cells, 49 patients; P <0.05); confirmed by multiple linear regression analysis. The left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was markedly lower in patients with moderate or severe LVSD (36% ± 4%, n = 15) than in those without LVSD (62% ± 2%, n = 31; P <0.05). In cells from patients with LVEF ≤ 45%, the ERP and action potential duration at 90% repolarization were shorter than in those from patients with LVEF > 45%, by 24% and 18%, respectively. The LVEF and ERP were positively correlated (r = 0.65, P <0.05). The L-type calcium ion current, inward rectifier potassium ion current, and sustained outward ion current were unaffected by LVSD. The transient outward potassium ion current was decreased by 34%, with a positive shift in its activation voltage, and no change in its decay kinetics.
<b>Conclusion:</b>
LVSD in patients in SR is independently associated with a shortening of the atrial cellular ERP, which may be expected to contribute to a predisposition to AF
Bayesian Painting by Numbers: Flexible Priors for Colour-Invariant Object Recognition
Generative models of images should take into account transformations of geometry and reflectance. Then, they can provide explanations of images that are factorized into intrinsic properties that are useful for subsequent tasks, such as object classification. It was previously shown how images and objects within images could be described as compositions of regions called structural elements or ‘stels’. In this way, transformations of the reflectance and illumination of object parts could be accounted for using a hidden variable that is used to ‘paint’ the same stel differently in different images. For example, the stel corresponding to the petals of a flower can be red in one image and yellow in another. Previous stel models have used a fixed number of stels per image and per image class. Here, we introduce a Bayesian stel model, the colour − invariant admixture (CIA) model, which can infer different numbers of stels for different object types, as appropriate. Results on Caltech101 images show that this method is capable of automatically selecting a number of stels that reflects the complexity of the object class and that these stels are useful for object recognition.Engineering and Applied Science
Some comments on "The Mathematical Universe"
I discuss some problems related to extreme mathematical realism, focusing on
a recently proposed "shut-up-and-calculate" approach to physics
(arXiv:0704.0646, arXiv:0709.4024). I offer arguments for a moderate
alternative, the essence of which lies in the acceptance that mathematics is
(at least in part) a human construction, and discuss concrete consequences of
this--at first sight purely philosophical--difference in point of view.Comment: 11 page
New early Eocene tapiromorph perissodactyls from the Ghazij Formation of Pakistan, with implications for mammalian biochronology in Asia
Early Eocene mammals from Indo-Pakistan have only recently come under study. Here we describe the first tapiromorph perissodactyls from the subcontinent. Gandheralophus minor n. gen. and n. sp. and G. robustus n. sp. are two species of Isectolophidae differing in size and in reduction of the anterior dentition. Gandheralophus is probably derived from a primitive isectolophid such as Orientolophus hengdongensis from the earliest Eocene of China, and may be part of a South Asian lineage that also contains Karagalax from the middle Eocene of Pakistan. Two specimens are referred to a new, unnamed species of Lophialetidae. Finally, a highly diagnostic M3 and a molar fragment are described as the new eomoropid chalicothere Litolophus ghazijensis sp. nov. The perissodactyls described here, in contrast to most other mammalian groups published from the early Eocene of Indo-Pakistan, are most closely related to forms known from East and Central Asia. Tapiromorpha are diverse and biochronologically important in the Eocene there and our results allow the first biochronological correlation between early Eocene mammal faunas in Indo-Pakistan and the rest of Asia. We suggest that the upper Ghazij Formation of Pakistan is best correlated with the middle or late part of the Bumbanian Asian Land-Mammal Age, while the Kuldana and Subathu Formations of Pakistan and India are best correlated with the Arshantan Asian Land-Mammal Age
Long-term perturbations due to a disturbing body in elliptic inclined orbit
In the current study, a double-averaged analytical model including the action
of the perturbing body's inclination is developed to study third-body
perturbations. The disturbing function is expanded in the form of Legendre
polynomials truncated up to the second-order term, and then is averaged over
the periods of the spacecraft and the perturbing body. The efficiency of the
double-averaged algorithm is verified with the full elliptic restricted
three-body model. Comparisons with the previous study for a lunar satellite
perturbed by Earth are presented to measure the effect of the perturbing body's
inclination, and illustrate that the lunar obliquity with the value 6.68\degree
is important for the mean motion of a lunar satellite. The application to the
Mars-Sun system is shown to prove the validity of the double-averaged model. It
can be seen that the algorithm is effective to predict the long-term behavior
of a high-altitude Martian spacecraft perturbed by Sun. The double-averaged
model presented in this paper is also applicable to other celestial systems.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure
Atmosphere, ecology and evolution: what drove the Miocene expansion of C4 grasslands?
Grasses using the C4 photosynthetic pathway dominate today's savanna ecosystems and account for ∼20% of terrestrial carbon fixation. However, this dominant status was reached only recently, during a period of C4 grassland expansion in the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene (4–8 Myr ago). Declining atmospheric CO2 has long been considered the key driver of this event, but new geological evidence casts doubt on the idea, forcing a reconsideration of the environmental cues for C4 plant success.Here, I evaluate the current hypotheses and debate in this field, beginning with a discussion of the role of CO2 in the evolutionary origins, rather than expansion, of C4 grasses. Atmospheric CO2 starvation is a plausible selection agent for the C4 pathway, but a time gap of around 10 Myr remains between major decreases in CO2 during the Oligocene, and the earliest current evidence of C4 plants.An emerging ecological perspective explains the Miocene expansion of C4 grasslands via changes in climatic seasonality and the occurrence of fire. However, the climatic drivers of this event are debated and may vary among geographical regions.Uncertainty in these areas could be reduced significantly by new directions in ecological research, especially the discovery that grass species richness along rainfall gradients shows contrasting patterns in different C4 clades. By re-evaluating a published data set, I show that increasing seasonality of rainfall is linked to changes in the relative abundance of the major C4 grass clades Paniceae and Andropogoneae. I propose that the explicit inclusion of these ecological patterns would significantly strengthen climate change hypotheses of Miocene C4 grassland expansion. Critically, they allow a new series of testable predictions to be made about the fossil record.Synthesis. This paper offers a novel framework for integrating modern ecological patterns into theories about the geological history of C4 plants
The balance of power: accretion and feedback in stellar mass black holes
In this review we discuss the population of stellar-mass black holes in our
galaxy and beyond, which are the extreme endpoints of massive star evolution.
In particular we focus on how we can attempt to balance the available accretion
energy with feedback to the environment via radiation, jets and winds,
considering also possible contributions to the energy balance from black hole
spin and advection. We review quantitatively the methods which are used to
estimate these quantities, regardless of the details of the astrophysics close
to the black hole. Once these methods have been outlined, we work through an
outburst of a black hole X-ray binary system, estimating the flow of mass and
energy through the different accretion rates and states. While we focus on
feedback from stellar mass black holes in X-ray binary systems, we also
consider the applicability of what we have learned to supermassive black holes
in active galactic nuclei. As an important control sample we also review the
coupling between accretion and feedback in neutron stars, and show that it is
very similar to that observed in black holes, which strongly constrains how
much of the astrophysics of feedback can be unique to black holes.Comment: To be published in Haardt et al. Astrophysical Black Holes. Lecture
Notes in Physics. Springer 201
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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