14,234 research outputs found
Fast beam stacking using RF barriers
Two barrier RF systems were fabricated, tested and installed in the Fermilab
Main Injector. Each can provide 8 kV rectangular pulses (the RF barriers) at 90
kHz. When a stationary barrier is combined with a moving barrier, injected
beams from the Booster can be continuously deflected, folded and stacked in the
Main Injector, which leads to doubling of the beam intensity. This paper gives
a report on the beam experiment using this novel technology.Comment: 2007 Particle Accelerator Conference (PAC07
Spatial and Temporal Habitat Use of an Asian Elephant in Sumatra
Increasingly, habitat fragmentation caused by agricultural and human development has forced Sumatran elephants into relatively small areas, but there is little information on how elephants use these areas and thus, how habitats can be managed to sustain elephants in the future. Using a Global Positioning System (GPS) collar and a land cover map developed from TM imagery, we identified the habitats used by a wild adult female elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) in the Seblat Elephant Conservation Center, Bengkulu Province, Sumatra during 2007â2008. The marked elephant (and presumably her 40â60 herd mates) used a home range that contained more than expected medium canopy and open canopy land cover. Further, within the home range, closed canopy forests were used more during the day than at night. When elephants were in closed canopy forests they were most often near the forest edge vs. in the forest interior. Effective elephant conservation strategies in Sumatra need to focus on forest restoration of cleared areas and providing a forest matrix that includes various canopy types
Multicolour detection of every chromosome as a means of detecting mosaicism and nuclear organisation in human embryonic nuclei
Fluorescence in situ Hybridisation (FISH) revolutionised cytogenetics using fluorescently labelled probes with high affinity with target (nuclear) DNA. By the early 1990s FISH was adopted as a means of PGD sexing for couples at risk of transmitting X-linked disorders and later for detection of unbalanced translocations. Following a rise in popularity of PGD by FISH for sexing and the availability of multicolour probes (5-8 colour), the use of FISH was expanded to the detection of aneuploidy and selective implantation of embryos more likely to be euploid, the rationale being to increase pregnancy rates (referral categories were typically advanced maternal age, repeated IVF failure, repeated miscarriage or severe male factor infertility). Despite initial reports of an increase in implantation rates, reduction in trisomic offspring and spontaneous abortions criticism centred around experimental design (including lack of randomisation), inadequate control groups and lack of report on live births. Eleven randomised control trials (RCTs) (2004-2010) showed that PGS with FISH did not increase delivery rates with some demonstrating adverse outcomes. These RCTs, parallel improvements in culturing and cryopreservation and a shift to blastocyst biopsy essentially outdated FISH as a tool for PGS and it has now been replaced by newer technologies (array CGH, SNP arrays, qRT-PCR and NGS). Cell-by-cell follow up analysis of individual blastomeres in non-transferred embryos is however usually prohibitively expensive by these new approaches and thus FISH remains an invaluable resource for the study of mosaicosm and nuclear organization. We thus developed the approach described herein for the FISH detection of chromosome copy number of all 24 human chromosomes. This approach involves 4 sequential layers of hybridization, each with 6 spectrally distinct fluorochromes and a bespoke capturing system. Here we report previously published studies and hitherto unreported data indicating that 24 chromosome FISH is a useful tool for studying chromosome mosaicism, one of the most hotly debated topics currently in preimplantation genetics. Our results suggest that mosaic embryo aneuploidy is not highly significantly correlated to maternal age, probably due, in part, to the large preponderance of post-zygotic (mitotic) errors. Chromosome loss (anaphase lag) appears to be the most common mechanism, followed by chromosome gain (endoreduplication), however 3:1 mitotic non- disjunction of chromosomes appears to be rare. Nuclear organisation (i.e. the spatial and temporal topology of chromosomes or sub-chromosomal compartments) studies indicate that human morula or blastocyst embryos (day 4-5) appear to adopt a "chromocentric" pattern (i.e. almost all centromeric signals reside in the innermost regions of the nuclear volume). By the blastocyst stage however, a more ordered organisation with spatial and temporal cues important for embryo development appears. We have however found no association between aneuploidy and nuclear organization using this approach despite our earlier studies. In conclusion, while FISH is mostly "dead and buried" for mainstream PGS, it still has a place for basic biology studies; the development of a 24 chromosome protocol extends the power of this analysis
Novel approach for deriving genome wide SNP analysis data from archived blood spots.
RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: The ability to transport and store DNA at room temperature in low volumes has the advantage of optimising cost, time and storage space. Blood spots on adapted filter papers are popular for this, with FTA (Flinders Technology Associates) WhatmanâąTM technology being one of the most recent. Plant material, plasmids, viral particles, bacteria and animal blood have been stored and transported successfully using this technology, however the method of porcine DNA extraction from FTA WhatmanâąTM cards is a relatively new approach, allowing nucleic acids to be ready for downstream applications such as PCR, whole genome amplification, sequencing and subsequent application to single nucleotide polymorphism microarrays has hitherto been under-explored. FINDINGS: DNA was extracted from FTA WhatmanâąTM cards (following adaptations of the manufacturer's instructions), whole genome amplified and subsequently analysed to validate the integrity of the DNA for downstream SNP analysis. DNA was successfully extracted from 288/288 samples and amplified by WGA. Allele dropout post WGA, was observed in less than 2% of samples and there was no clear evidence of amplification bias nor contamination. Acceptable call rates on porcine SNP chips were also achieved using DNA extracted and amplified in this way. CONCLUSIONS: DNA extracted from FTA Whatman cards is of a high enough quality and quantity following whole genomic amplification to perform meaningful SNP chip studies
Electronic Database Support Systems for Strategic Planning Activities in the Hospitality Industry
An electronic database support system for strategic planning activities can be built by providing conceptual and system specific information. The design and development of this type of system center around the information needs of strategy planners. Data that supply information on the organization\u27s internal and external environments must be originated, evaluated, collected, organized, managed, and analyzed. Strategy planners may use the resulting information to improve their decision making
Systematic review of the current status of cadaveric simulation for surgical training
Background:
There is growing interest in and provision of cadaveric simulation courses for surgical trainees. This is being driven by the need to modernize and improve the efficiency of surgical training within the current challenging training climate. The objective of this systematic review is to describe and evaluate the evidence for cadaveric simulation in postgraduate surgical training.
Methods:
A PRISMAâcompliant systematic literature review of studies that prospectively evaluated a cadaveric simulation training intervention for surgical trainees was undertaken. All relevant databases and trial registries were searched to January 2019. Methodological rigour was assessed using the widely validated Medical Education Research Quality Index (MERSQI) tool.
Results:
A total of 51 studies were included, involving 2002 surgical trainees across 69 cadaveric training interventions. Of these, 22 assessed the impact of the cadaveric training intervention using only subjective measures, five measured impact by change in learner knowledge, and 23 used objective tools to assess change in learner behaviour after training. Only one study assessed patient outcome and demonstrated transfer of skill from the simulated environment to the workplace. Of the included studies, 67 per cent had weak methodology (MERSQI score less than 10·7).
Conclusion:
There is an abundance of relatively lowâquality evidence showing that cadaveric simulation induces shortâterm skill acquisition as measured by objective means. There is currently a lack of evidence of skill retention, and of transfer of skills following training into the live operating theatre
First Results from Viper: Detection of Small-Scale Anisotropy at 40 GHZ
Results of a search for small-scale anisotropy in the cosmic microwave
background (CMB) are presented. Observations were made at the South Pole using
the Viper telescope, with a .26 degree (FWHM) beam and a passband centered at
40 GHz. Anisotropy band-power measurements in bands centered at l = 108, 173,
237, 263, 422 and 589 are reported. Statistically significant anisotropy is
detected in all bands.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, uses emulateapj.sty, submitted to ApJ Letter
Vortex nucleation in mesoscopic Bose superfluid and breaking of the parity symmetry
We analyze vortex nucleation in mezoscopic 2D Bose superfluid in a rotating
trap. We explicitly include a weakly anisotropic stirring potential, breaking
thus explicitly the axial symmetry. As the rotation frequency passes the
critical value the system undergoes an extra symmetry
change/breaking. Well below the ground state is properly described
by the mean field theory with an even condensate wave function. Well above
the MF solution works also well, but the order parameter becomes
odd. This phenomenon involves therefore a discrete parity symmetry breaking. In
the critical region the MF solutions exhibit dynamical instability. The true
many body state is a strongly correlated entangled state involving two
macroscopically occupied modes (eigenstates of the single particle density
operator). We characterize this state in various aspects: i) the eligibility
for adiabatic evolution; ii) its analytical approximation given by the
maximally entangled combination of two single modes; and finally iii) its
appearance in particle detection measurements.Comment: 14 pages, 27 figure
Spinor dynamics in an antiferromagnetic spin-1 thermal Bose gas
We present experimental observations of coherent spin-population oscillations
in a cold thermal, Bose gas of spin-1 sodium-23 atoms. The population
oscillations in a multi-spatial-mode thermal gas have the same behavior as
those observed in a single-spatial-mode antiferromagnetic spinor Bose Einstein
condensate. We demonstrate this by showing that the two situations are
described by the same dynamical equations, with a factor of two change in the
spin-dependent interaction coefficient, which results from the change to
particles with distinguishable momentum states in the thermal gas. We compare
this theory to the measured spin population evolution after times up to a few
hundreds of ms, finding quantitative agreement with the amplitude and period.
We also measure the damping time of the oscillations as a function of magnetic
field.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Effective photon mass in nuclear matter and finite nuclei
Electromagnetic field in nuclear matter and nuclei are studied. In the
nuclear matter, because the expectation value of the electric charge density
operator is not zero, different in vacuum, the U(1) local gauge symmetry of
electric charge is spontaneously broken, and consequently, the photon gains an
effective mass through the Higgs mechanism. An alternative way to study the
effective mass of photon is to calculate the self-energy of photon
perturbatively. It shows that the effective mass of photon is about
in the symmetric nuclear matter at the saturation density and about at the surface of . It seems that
the two-body decay of a massive photon causes the sharp lines of
electron-positron pairs in the low energy heavy ion collision experiments of
.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, REVTEX4, submitted to Int. J. Mod.
Phys.
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