1,755 research outputs found
The Importance of Dietary Carbohydrate in Human Evolution
We propose that plant foods containing high quantities of starch were essential for the evolution of the human phenotype during the Pleistocene. Although previous studies have highlighted a stone tool-mediated shift from primarily plant-based to primarily meat-based diets as critical in the development of the brain and other human traits, we argue that digestible carbohydrates were also necessary to accommodate the increased metabolic demands of a growing brain. Furthermore, we acknowledge the adaptive role cooking played in improving the digestibility and palatability of key carbohydrates. We provide evidence that cooked starch, a source of preformed glucose, greatly increased energy availability to human tissues with high glucose demands, such as the brain, red blood cells, and the developing fetus. We also highlight the auxiliary role copy number variation in the salivary amylase genes may have played in increasing the importance of starch in human evolution following the origins of cooking. Salivary amylases are largely ineffective on raw crystalline starch, but cooking substantially increases both their energy-yielding potential and glycemia. Although uncertainties remain regarding the antiquity of cooking and the origins of salivary amylase gene copy number variation, the hypothesis we present makes a testable prediction that these events are correlate
Altered Blood Flow Response to Small Muscle Mass Exercise in Cancer Survivors Treated With Adjuvant Therapy
Citation: Didier, K. D., Ederer, A. K., Reiter, L. K., Brown, M., Hardy, R., Caldwell, J., . . . Ade, C. J. (2017). Altered Blood Flow Response to Small Muscle Mass Exercise in Cancer Survivors Treated With Adjuvant Therapy. Journal of the American Heart Association, 6(2), 9. doi:10.1161/jaha.116.004784Background-Adjuvant cancer treatments have been shown to decrease cardiac function. In addition to changes in cardiovascular risk, there are several additional functional consequences including decreases in exercise capacity and increased incidence of cancer-related fatigue. However, the effects of adjuvant cancer treatment on peripheral vascular function during exercise in cancer survivors have not been well documented. We investigated the vascular responses to exercise in cancer survivors previously treated with adjuvant cancer therapies. Methods and Results-Peripheral vascular responses were investigated in 11 cancer survivors previously treated with adjuvant cancer therapies (age 58 +/- 6 years, 34 +/- 30 months from diagnosis) and 9 healthy controls group matched for age, sex, and maximal voluntary contraction. A dynamic handgrip exercise test at 20% maximal voluntary contraction was performed with simultaneous measurements of forearm blood flow and mean arterial pressure. Forearm vascular conductance was calculated from forearm blood flow and mean arterial pressure. Left ventricular ejection time index (LVETi) was derived from the arterial pressure wave form. Forearm blood flow was attenuated in cancer therapies compared to control at 20% maximal voluntary contraction (189.8 +/- 53.8 vs 247.9 +/- 80.3 mL.min (1), respectively). Forearm vascular conductance was not different between groups at rest or during exercise. Mean arterial pressure response to exercise was attenuated in cancer therapies compared to controls (107.8 +/- 10.8 vs 119.2 +/- 16.2 mm Hg). LEVTi was lower in cancer therapies compared to controls. Conclusions-These data suggest an attenuated exercise blood flow response in cancer survivors approximate to 34 months following adjuvant cancer therapy that may be attributed to an attenuated increase in mean arterial pressure
Field-Induced Quasiparticle Excitation in Ca(AlSi): Evidence for unconventional Superconductivity
The temperature () and magnetic field () dependence of the magnetic
penetration depth, , in Ca(AlSi) exhibits
significant deviation from that expected for conventional BCS superconductors.
In particular, it is inferred from a field dependence of () at 2.0 K that the quasiparticle excitation is strongly enhanced by the
Doppler shift. This suggests that the superconducting order parameter in
Ca(AlSi) is characterized by a small energy scale
K originating either from anisotropy or multi-gap
structure.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jp
Nonlocal Effects of Partial Measurements and Quantum Erasure
Partial measurement turns the initial superposition not into a definite
outcome but into a greater probability for it. The probability can approach
100%, yet the measurement can undergo complete quantum erasure. In the EPR
setting, we prove that i) every partial measurement nonlocally creates the same
partial change in the distant particle; and ii) every erasure inflicts the same
erasure on the distant particle's state. This enables an EPR experiment where
the nonlocal effect does not vanish after a single measurement but keeps
"traveling" back and forth between particles. We study an experiment in which
two distant particles are subjected to interferometry with a partial "which
path" measurement. Such a measurement causes a variable amount of correlation
between the particles. A new inequality is formulated for same-angle
polarizations, extending Bell's inequality for different angles. The resulting
nonlocality proof is highly visualizable, as it rests entirely on the
interference effect. Partial measurement also gives rise to a new form of
entanglement, where the particles manifest correlations of multiple
polarization directions. Another novelty in that the measurement to be erased
is fully observable, in contrast to prevailing erasure techniques where it can
never be observed. Some profound conceptual implications of our experiment are
briefly pointed out.Comment: To be published in Phys. Rev. A 63 (2001). 19 pages, 12 figures,
RevTeX 3.
An Exact Black Hole Entropy Bound
We show that a Rademacher expansion can be used to establish an exact bound
for the entropy of black holes within a conformal field theory framework. This
convergent expansion includes all subleading corrections to the
Bekenstein-Hawking term.Comment: 6 pages, Latex, v2 minor re-wording, additional reference, to appear
in Phyical Review D (title changed in journal
The mixed problem for the Laplacian in Lipschitz domains
We consider the mixed boundary value problem or Zaremba's problem for the
Laplacian in a bounded Lipschitz domain in R^n. We specify Dirichlet data on
part of the boundary and Neumann data on the remainder of the boundary. We
assume that the boundary between the sets where we specify Dirichlet and
Neumann data is a Lipschitz surface. We require that the Neumann data is in L^p
and the Dirichlet data is in the Sobolev space of functions having one
derivative in L^p for some p near 1. Under these conditions, there is a unique
solution to the mixed problem with the non-tangential maximal function of the
gradient of the solution in L^p of the boundary. We also obtain results with
data from Hardy spaces when p=1.Comment: Version 5 includes a correction to one step of the main proof. Since
the paper appeared long ago, this submission includes the complete paper,
followed by a short section that gives the correction to one step in the
proo
Calculated corrections to superallowed Fermi beta decay: New evaluation of the nuclear-structure-dependent terms
The measured -values for superallowed nuclear
-decay can be used to obtain the value of the vector coupling constant
and thus to test the unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. An
essential requirement for this test is accurate calculations for the radiative
and isospin symmetry-breaking corrections that must be applied to the
experimental data. We present a new and consistent set of calculations for the
nuclear-structure-dependent components of these corrections. These new results
do not alter the current status of the unitarity test -- it still fails by more
than two standard deviations -- but they provide calculated corrections for
eleven new superallowed transitions that are likely to become accessible to
precise measurements in the future. The reliability of all calculated
corrections is explored and an experimental method indicated by which the
structure-dependent corrections can be tested and, if necessary, improved.Comment: Revtex4, one figur
(G)hosting television: Ghostwatch and its medium
This article’s subject is Ghostwatch (BBC, 1992), a drama broadcast on Halloween night of 1992 which adopted the rhetoric of live non-fiction programming, and attracted controversy and ultimately censure from the Broadcasting Standards Council. In what follows, we argue that Ghostwatch must be understood as a televisually-specific artwork and artefact. We discuss the programme’s ludic relationship with some key features of television during what Ellis (2000) has termed its era of ‘availability’, principally liveness, mass simultaneous viewing, and the flow of the television super-text. We trace the programme’s television-specific historicity whilst acknowledging its allusions and debts to other media (most notably film and radio). We explore the sophisticated ways in which Ghostwatch’s visual grammar and vocabulary and deployment of ‘broadcast talk’ (Scannell 1991) variously ape, comment upon and subvert the rhetoric of factual programming, and the ends to which these strategies are put. We hope that these arguments collectively demonstrate the aesthetic and historical significance of Ghostwatch and identify its relationship to its medium and that medium’s history. We offer the programme as an historically-reflexive artefact, and as an exemplary instance of the work of art in television’s age of broadcasting, liveness and co-presence
On the error term in Weyl's law for the Heisenberg manifolds (II)
In this paper we study the mean square of the error term in the Weyl's law of
an irrational -dimensional Heisenberg manifold . An asymptotic formula
is established
Evidence for the classical integrability of the complete AdS(4) x CP(3) superstring
We construct a zero-curvature Lax connection in a sub-sector of the
superstring theory on AdS(4) x CP(3) which is not described by the
OSp(6|4)/U(3) x SO(1,3) supercoset sigma-model. In this sub-sector worldsheet
fermions associated to eight broken supersymmetries of the type IIA background
are physical fields. As such, the prescription for the construction of the Lax
connection based on the Z_4-automorphism of the isometry superalgebra OSp(6|4)
does not do the job. So, to construct the Lax connection we have used an
alternative method which nevertheless relies on the isometry of the target
superspace and kappa-symmetry of the Green-Schwarz superstring.Comment: 1+26 pages; v2: minor typos corrected, acknowledgements adde
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