7,478 research outputs found
Toward RADSCAT measurements over the sea and their interpretation
Investigations into several areas which are essential to the execution and interpretation of suborbital observations by composite radiometer - scatterometer sensor (RADSCAT) are reported. Experiments and theory were developed to demonstrate the remote anemometric capability of the sensor over the sea through various weather conditions. It is shown that weather situations found in extra tropical cyclones are useful for demonstrating the all weather capability of the composite sensor. The large scale fluctuations of the wind over the sea dictate the observational coverage required to correlate measurements with the mean surface wind speed. Various theoretical investigations were performed to establish a premise for the joint interpretation of the experiment data. The effects of clouds and rains on downward radiometric observations over the sea were computed. A method of predicting atmospheric attenuation from joint observations is developed. In other theoretical efforts, the emission and scattering characteristics of the sea were derived. Composite surface theories with coherent and noncoherent assumptions were employed
Turbulent Pair Diffusion
Kinematic Simulations of turbulent pair diffusion in planar turbulence with a
-5/3 energy spectrum reproduce the results of the laboratory measurements of
Jullien Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2872 (1999), in particular the stretched
exponential form of the PDF of pair separations and their correlation
functions. The root mean square separation is found to be strongly dependent on
initial conditions for very long stretches of times. This dependence is
consistent with the topological picture of turbulent pair diffusion where pairs
initially close enough travel together for long stretches of time and separate
violently when they meet straining regions around hyperbolic points. A new
argument based on the divergence of accelerations is given to support this
picture
Clostridium difficile colitis in patients after kidney and pancreas-kidney transplantation
Limited data exist about Clostridium difficile colitis (CDC) in solid organ transplant patients. Between 1/1/99 and 12/31/02, 600 kidney and 102 pancreas–kidney allograft recipients were transplanted. Thirty-nine (5.5%) of these patients had CDC on the basis of clinical and laboratory findings. Of these 39 patients, 35 have information available for review. CDC developed at a median of 30 days after transplantation, and the patients undergoing pancreas–kidney transplantation had a slightly higher incidence of CDC than recipients of kidney alone (7.8% vs. 4.5%, P> 0.05). All but one patient presented with diarrhea. Twenty-four patients (64.9%) were diagnosed in the hospital, and CDC occurred during first hospitalization in 14 patients (40%). Treatment was with oral metronidazole (M) in 33 patients (94%)and M + oral vancomycin (M + V) in 2 patients. Eight patients had recurrent CDC, which occurred at a median of 30 days (range 15–314) after the first episode. Two patients (5.7%) developed fulminant CDC, presented with toxic megacolon, and underwent colectomy. One of them died; the other patient survived after colectomy. CDC should be considered as a diagnosis in transplant patients with history of diarrhea after antibiotic use, and should be treated aggressively before the infection becomes complicated
Daily Sleep Quality is Associated with Daily Cognition in Late-Life
Background: Older adults often face sleep disturbance or cognitive decline that goes beyond the scope of normal aging. The present study examined the relationship between self-reported sleep quality and self-reported daytime attention in a community-dwelling sample of older men at the between-persons and within-persons levels of association.
Methods: Thirty-eight participants (M age =75.36 years, SD age =7.51 years, range=66-90 years) completed a twice-daily sleep diary for one week. Sleep quality and attention were assessed using a single-item 0-10 rating scales from the morning diary (“How was the quality of your sleep last night?”) and from the evening diary (“How was your attention today?”). A two-level multilevel model was parameterized with days nested within individuals to examine whether nightly sleep quality predicts an individual’s daily attention rating.
Results: A multilevel model predicting self-reported attention revealed (1) older individuals who reported better sleep quality reported having better daily attention [Beta=0.64, t(248.15)=10.12, p\u3c0.001] and (2) following a day of above-average sleep quality, older individuals experienced above-average attention [Beta=0.16, t(259.79)=2.75, p=.006].
Conclusion: Not only was overall sleep quality associated with self-reported attention, but a good night\u27s sleep was associated with better self-reported next-day attention. Results point to the potential importance of fluctuations in sleep quality for daytime functioning. Interventions aimed at improving nightly sleep consistency may be worth exploring as methods to improve daytime cognitive functioning in older adults.
Support: This work was supported by the Sleep Research Society Foundation/Jazz Pharmaceuticals (001JP13, PI: Dzierzewski) and by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K23AG049955 (PI: Dzierzewski), and National Heart Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health under award number K24HL143055 (PI: Martin). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Veterans Affairs.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1089/thumbnail.jp
The use of MHC class I or class II 'knock out' mice to investigate the role of these antigens in allosensitization
Secure gated detection scheme for quantum cryptography
Several attacks have been proposed on quantum key distribution systems with
gated single-photon detectors. The attacks involve triggering the detectors
outside the center of the detector gate, and/or using bright illumination to
exploit classical photodiode mode of the detectors. Hence a secure detection
scheme requires two features: The detection events must take place in the
middle of the gate, and the detector must be single-photon sensitive. Here we
present a technique called bit-mapped gating, which is an elegant way to force
the detections in the middle of the detector gate by coupling detection time
and quantum bit error rate. We also discuss how to guarantee single-photon
sensitivity by directly measuring detector parameters. Bit-mapped gating also
provides a simple way to measure the detector blinding parameter in security
proofs for quantum key distribution systems with detector efficiency mismatch,
which up until now has remained a theoretical, unmeasurable quantity. Thus if
single-photon sensitivity can be guaranteed within the gates, a detection
scheme with bit-mapped gating satisfies the assumptions of the current security
proofs.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Quantum key distribution with delayed privacy amplification and its application to security proof of a two-way deterministic protocol
Privacy amplification (PA) is an essential post-processing step in quantum
key distribution (QKD) for removing any information an eavesdropper may have on
the final secret key. In this paper, we consider delaying PA of the final key
after its use in one-time pad encryption and prove its security. We prove that
the security and the key generation rate are not affected by delaying PA.
Delaying PA has two applications: it serves as a tool for significantly
simplifying the security proof of QKD with a two-way quantum channel, and also
it is useful in QKD networks with trusted relays. To illustrate the power of
the delayed PA idea, we use it to prove the security of a qubit-based two-way
deterministic QKD protocol which uses four states and four encoding operations.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
Mid-Infrared Photometry and Spectra of Three High Mass Protostellar Candidates at IRAS 18151-1208 and IRAS 20343+4129
We present arcsecond-scale mid-ir photometry (in the 10.5 micron N band and
at 24.8 microns), and low resolution spectra in the N band (R~100) of a
candidate high mass protostellar object (HMPO) in IRAS 18151-1208 and of two
HMPO candidates in IRAS 20343+4129, IRS 1 and IRS 3. In addition we present
high resolution mid-ir spectra (R~80000) of the two HMPO candidates in IRAS
20343+4129. These data are fitted with simple models to estimate the masses of
gas and dust associated with the mid-ir emitting clumps, the column densities
of overlying absorbing dust and gas, the luminosities of the HMPO candidates,
and the likely spectral type of the HMPO candidate for which [Ne II] 12.8
micron emission was detected (IRAS 20343+4129 IRS 3). We suggest that IRAS
18151-1208 is a pre-ultracompact HII region HMPO, IRAS 20343+4129 IRS 1 is an
embedded young stellar object with the luminosity of a B3 star, and IRAS
20343+4129 IRS 3 is a B2 ZAMS star that has formed an ultracompact HII region
and disrupted its natal envelope.Comment: 40 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in
Astrophysical Journal (Part 1
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