168 research outputs found
Effect of season and stocking density during transport on carcass and meat quality of suckling lambs
Unified Model for Dark Energy
A new model for the universe filled with a generalized Chaplygin fluid is
considered which unitarily describes as a single vacuum entity both a
quintessence scalar field and a cosmological constant, so unifying the notion
of dark energy. While the evolution of the universe filled with such a fluid
does not obviously contradict the present cosmic acceleration, the introduced
single dark-energy component, for equations of state with characteristic
parameter , behaves like an usual quintessence fluid with
constant equation of state at early high densities, and like a pure
cosmological constant at late cosmological times.Comment: 5 pages, some misprints corrected, a comment on the initial equation
of state inserted, one reference adde
Path-integral quantum cosmology: a class of exactly soluble scalar-field minisuperspace models with exponential potentials
We study a class of minisuperspace models consisting of a homogenous isotropic universe with a minimally coupled homogenous scalar field with a potential alpha cosh(2-phi) + beta sinh(2-phi), where alpha and beta are arbitrary parameters. This includes the case of a pure exponential potential exp(2-phi), which arises in the dimensional reduction to four dimensions of five-dimensional Kaluza-Klein theory. We study the classical Lorentzian solutions for the model and find that they exhibit exponential or power-law inflation. We show that the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for this model is exactly soluble. Concentrating on the two particular cases of potentials cosh(2-phi) and exp(2-phi), we consider the Euclidean minisuperspace path integral for a propagation amplitude between fixed scale factors and scalar-field configurations. In the gauge N = 0 (where N is the rescaled lapse function), the path integral reduces, after some essentially trivial functional integrations, to a single nontrivial ordinary integral over N. Because the Euclidean action is unbounded from below, N must be integrated along a complex contour for convergence. We find all possible complex contours which lead to solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation or Green's functions of the Wheeler-DeWitt operator, and we give an approximate evaluation of the integral along these contours, using the method of steepest descents. The steepest-descent contours may be dominated by saddle points corresponding to exact solutions to the full Einstein-scalar equations which may be real Euclidean, real Lorentzian, or complex. We elucidate the conditions under which each of these different types of solution arise. For the exp(2-phi) potential, we evaluate the path integral exactly. Although we cannot evaluate the path integral in closed form for the cosh(2-phi) potential, we show that for particular N contours the amplitude may be written as a given superposition of exact solutions to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. By choosing certain initial data for the path-integral amplitude we obtain the amplitude specified by the "no-boundary" proposal of Hartle and Hawking. We discuss the nature of the geometries corresponding to the saddle points of the no-boundary amplitude. We identify the set of classical solutions this proposal picks out in the classical limit
Mechanism of inhibition of lipid peroxidation by tamoxifen and 4-hydroxytamoxifen introduced into liposomes Similarity to cholesterol and ergosterol
AbstractThe anticancer drug tamoxifen when introduced into phospholipid liposomes during their preparation inhibited Fe(III)-ascorbate induced lipid peroxidation to a greater extent than similarly introduced cholesterol. Ergosterol was equipotent with tamoxifen, but much less effective than 4-hydroxytamoxifen. Possible mechanisms underlying these effects are discussed in relation to structural mimicry of the sterols by these triphenylethylene drugs as membrane stabilizers against lipid peroxidation
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