2,502 research outputs found
Epidemiological evaluation of cat health at a first-response animal shelter in Fukushima, following the Great East Japan Earthquakes of 2011.
The Great East Japan Earthquakes of March 11, 2011 caused immense harm to the community and subsequent nuclear accident in Fukushima Prefecture extended the damage. Local residents were forced to evacuated without pets and the left behind animals were rescued from the restricted zone one month later. Unplanned animal rescue and unregulated sheltering caused secondary damage to animals such as disease epidemics at impounded animal shelter. The purpose of this study was to retrospectively evaluate the incidence of upper respiratory infection (URI) and diarrhea in cats at the first response animal shelter in Fukushima, and investigate factors affecting the duration of disease and determinants of treatments performed. Eighty percent and 59% of impounded cats developed URI, 71% and 54% of cats developed diarrhea, and 91% and 83% of cats had at least one disease in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Uses of multiple drug administration (more than five drugs) was associated with prolonged URI and diarrhea. Multiple antibiotics, antihistamines, interferon, and steroids were associated with relapse of and prolonged URI. Developing a standardized treatment protocol for commonly observed diseases at Japanese animal shelters to prevent and control diseases, to promote animal welfare, and protect public health in the face of future disasters is overdue
Numerical experiments of adjusted BSSN systems for controlling constraint violations
We present our numerical comparisons between the BSSN formulation widely used
in numerical relativity today and its adjusted versions using constraints. We
performed three testbeds: gauge-wave, linear wave, and Gowdy-wave tests,
proposed by the Mexico workshop on the formulation problem of the Einstein
equations. We tried three kinds of adjustments, which were previously proposed
from the analysis of the constraint propagation equations, and investigated how
they improve the accuracy and stability of evolutions. We observed that the
signature of the proposed Lagrange multipliers are always right and the
adjustments improve the convergence and stability of the simulations. When the
original BSSN system already shows satisfactory good evolutions (e.g., linear
wave test), the adjusted versions also coincide with those evolutions; while in
some cases (e.g., gauge-wave or Gowdy-wave tests) the simulations using the
adjusted systems last 10 times as long as those using the original BSSN
equations. Our demonstrations imply a potential to construct a robust evolution
system against constraint violations even in highly dynamical situations.Comment: to be published in PR
Upside-Down but Headed in the Right Direction: Review of the Highly Versatile Cassiopea xamachana System
The upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea xamachana (Scyphozoa: Rhizostomeae) has been predominantly studied to understand its interaction with the endosymbiotic dinoflagellate algae Symbiodinium. As an easily culturable and tractable cnidarian model, it is an attractive alternative to stony corals to understanding the mechanisms driving establishment and maintenance of symbiosis. Cassiopea is also unique in requiring the symbiont in order to complete its transition to the adult stage, thereby providing an excellent model to understand symbiosis-driven development and evolution. Recently, the Cassiopea research system has gained interest beyond symbiosis in fields related to embryology, climate ecology, behavior, and more. With these developments, resources including genomes, transcriptomes, and laboratory protocols are steadily increasing. This review provides an overview of the broad range of interdisciplinary research that has utilized the Cassiopea model and highlights the advantages of using the model for future research
Quasinormal ringing of acoustic black holes in Laval nozzles: Numerical simulations
Quasinormal ringing of acoustic black holes in Laval nozzles is discussed.
The equation for sounds in a transonic flow is written into a
Schr\"{o}dinger-type equation with a potential barrier, and the quasinormal
frequencies are calculated semianalytically. From the results of numerical
simulations, it is shown that the quasinormal modes are actually excited when
the transonic flow is formed or slightly perturbed, as well as in the real
black hole case. In an actual experiment, however, the purely-outgoing boundary
condition will not be satisfied at late times due to the wave reflection at the
end of the apparatus, and a late-time ringing will be expressed as a
superposition of "boxed" quasinormal modes. It is shown that the late-time
ringing damps more slowly than the ordinary quasinormal ringing, while its
central frequency is not greatly different from that of the ordinary one. Using
this fact, an efficient way for experimentally detecting the quasinormal
ringing of an acoustic black hole is discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
Phase statistics of seismic coda waves
We report the analysis of the statistics of the phase fluctuations in the
coda of earthquakes recorded during a temporary experiment deployed at Pinyon
Flats Observatory, California. The practical measurement of the phase is
discussed and the main pitfalls are underlined. For large values, the
experimental distributions of the phase first, second and third derivatives
obey universal power-law decays whose exponents are remarkably well predicted
by circular Gaussian statistics. For small values, these distributions are
flat. The details of the transition between the plateau and the power-law
behavior are governed by the wavelength. The correlation function of the first
phase derivative along the array shows a simple algebro-exponential decay with
the mean free path as the only length scale. Although only loose bounds are
provided in this study, our work suggests a new method to estimate the degree
of heterogeneity of the crComment: 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter
Optical Coronagraphic Spectroscopy of AU Mic: Evidence of Time Variable Colors?
We present coronagraphic long slit spectra of AU Mic's debris disk taken with
the STIS instrument aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Our spectra are
the first spatially resolved, scattered light spectra of the system's disk,
which we detect at projected distances between approximately 10 and 45 AU. Our
spectra cover a wavelength range between 5200 and 10200 angstroms. We find that
the color of AU Mic's debris disk is bluest at small (12-35 AU) projected
separations. These results both confirm and quantify the findings qualitatively
noted by Krist et al. (2005), and are different than IR observations that
suggested a uniform blue or gray color as a function of projected separation in
this region of the disk. Unlike previous literature that reported the color of
AU Mic's disk became increasingly more blue as a function of projected
separation beyond approximately 30 AU, we find the disk's optical color between
35-45 AU to be uniformly blue on the southeast side of the disk and
decreasingly blue on the northwest side. We note that this apparent change in
disk color at larger projected separations coincides with several fast, outward
moving "features" that are passing through this region of the southeast side of
the disk. We speculate that these phenomenon might be related, and that the
fast moving features could be changing the localized distribution of sub-micron
sized grains as they pass by, thereby reducing the blue color of the disk in
the process. We encourage follow-up optical spectroscopic observations of the
AU Mic to both confirm this result, and search for further modifications of the
disk color caused by additional fast moving features propagating through the
disk.Comment: Accepted by AJ, 13 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl
A Two-Threshold Model for Scaling Laws of Non-Interacting Snow Avalanches
The sizes of snow slab failure that trigger snow avalanches are power-law
distributed. Such a power-law probability distribution function has also been
proposed to characterize different landslide types. In order to understand this
scaling for gravity driven systems, we introduce a two-threshold 2-d cellular
automaton, in which failure occurs irreversibly. Taking snow slab avalanches as
a model system, we find that the sizes of the largest avalanches just
preceeding the lattice system breakdown are power law distributed. By tuning
the maximum value of the ratio of the two failure thresholds our model
reproduces the range of power law exponents observed for land-, rock- or snow
avalanches. We suggest this control parameter represents the material cohesion
anisotropy.Comment: accepted PR
On the Frequency Dependency of Radio Channel's Delay Spread: Analyses and Findings From mmMAGIC Multi-frequency Channel Sounding
This paper analyzes the frequency dependency of the radio propagation
channel's root mean square (rms) delay spread (DS), based on the
multi-frequency measurement campaigns in the mmMAGIC project. The campaigns
cover indoor, outdoor, and outdoor-to-indoor (O2I) scenarios and a wide
frequency range from 2 to 86 GHz. Several requirements have been identified
that define the parameters which need to be aligned in order to make a
reasonable comparison among the different channel sounders employed for this
study. A new modelling approach enabling the evaluation of the statistical
significance of the model parameters from different measurements and the
establishment of a unified model is proposed. After careful analysis, the
conclusion is that any frequency trend of the DS is small considering its
confidence intervals. There is statistically significant difference from the
3GPP New Radio (NR) model TR 38.901, except for the O2I scenario.Comment: This paper has been accepted to the 2018 12th European Conference on
Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), London, UK, April 201
Constructing hyperbolic systems in the Ashtekar formulation of general relativity
Hyperbolic formulations of the equations of motion are essential technique
for proving the well-posedness of the Cauchy problem of a system, and are also
helpful for implementing stable long time evolution in numerical applications.
We, here, present three kinds of hyperbolic systems in the Ashtekar formulation
of general relativity for Lorentzian vacuum spacetime. We exhibit several (I)
weakly hyperbolic, (II) diagonalizable hyperbolic, and (III) symmetric
hyperbolic systems, with each their eigenvalues. We demonstrate that Ashtekar's
original equations form a weakly hyperbolic system. We discuss how gauge
conditions and reality conditions are constrained during each step toward
constructing a symmetric hyperbolic system.Comment: 15 pages, RevTeX, minor changes in Introduction. published as Int. J.
Mod. Phys. D 9 (2000) 1
Hyperbolic formulations and numerical relativity II: Asymptotically constrained systems of the Einstein equations
We study asymptotically constrained systems for numerical integration of the
Einstein equations, which are intended to be robust against perturbative errors
for the free evolution of the initial data. First, we examine the previously
proposed "-system", which introduces artificial flows to constraint
surfaces based on the symmetric hyperbolic formulation. We show that this
system works as expected for the wave propagation problem in the Maxwell system
and in general relativity using Ashtekar's connection formulation. Second, we
propose a new mechanism to control the stability, which we call the ``adjusted
system". This is simply obtained by adding constraint terms in the dynamical
equations and adjusting its multipliers. We explain why a particular choice of
multiplier reduces the numerical errors from non-positive or pure-imaginary
eigenvalues of the adjusted constraint propagation equations. This ``adjusted
system" is also tested in the Maxwell system and in the Ashtekar's system. This
mechanism affects more than the system's symmetric hyperbolicity.Comment: 16 pages, RevTeX, 9 eps figures, added Appendix B and minor changes,
to appear in Class. Quant. Gra
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