The Effect of Interface Texture on Exchange Biasing in Ni80Fe20/Ir20Mn80System

Exchange-biasing phenomenon can induce an evident unidirectional hysteresis loop shift by spin coupling effect in the ferromagnetic (FM)/antiferromagnetic (AFM) interface which can be applied in magnetoresistance random access memory (MRAM) and recording-head applications. However, magnetic properties are the most important to AFM texturing. In this work, top-configuration exchange-biasing NiFe/IrMn(x Å) systems have been investigated with three different conditions. From the high-resolution cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (HR X-TEM) and X-ray diffraction results, we conclude that the IrMn (111) texture plays an important role in exchange-biasing field (Hex) and interfacial exchange energy (Jk).HexandJktend to saturate when the IrMn thickness increases. Moreover, the coercivity (Hc) dependence on IrMn thickness is explained based on the coupling or decoupling effect between the spins of the NiFe and IrMn layers near the NiFe/IrMn interface. In this work, the optimal values forHexandJkare 115 Oe and 0.062 erg/cm2, respectively

Psychological interventions in asthma

Asthma is a multifactorial chronic respiratory disease characterised by recurrent episodes of airway obstruction. The current management of asthma focuses principally on pharmacological treatments, which have a strong evidence base underlying their use. However, in clinical practice, poor symptom control remains a common problem for patients with asthma. Living with asthma has been linked with psychological co-morbidity including anxiety, depression, panic attacks and behavioural factors such as poor adherence and suboptimal self-management. Psychological disorders have a higher-than-expected prevalence in patients with difficult-to-control asthma. As psychological considerations play an important role in the management of people with asthma, it is not surprising that many psychological therapies have been applied in the management of asthma. There are case reports which support their use as an adjunct to pharmacological therapy in selected individuals, and in some clinical trials, benefit is demonstrated, but the evidence is not consistent. When findings are quantitatively synthesised in meta-analyses, no firm conclusions are able to be drawn and no guidelines recommend psychological interventions. These inconsistencies in findings may in part be due to poor study design, the combining of results of studies using different interventions and the diversity of ways patient benefit is assessed. Despite this weak evidence base, the rationale for psychological therapies is plausible, and this therapeutic modality is appealing to both patients and their clinicians as an adjunct to conventional pharmacological treatments. What are urgently required are rigorous evaluations of psychological therapies in asthma, on a par to the quality of pharmaceutical trials. From this evidence base, we can then determine which interventions are beneficial for our patients with asthma management and more specifically which psychological therapy is best suited for each patient

The growth in newspaper coverage of tobacco control in China, 2000-2010

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Media coverage of tobacco-related issues can potentially shape individual beliefs, attitudes and behaviors about tobacco use. This study aims to describe news coverage of tobacco control related issues in Chinese newspapers from 2000 to 2010.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>All 1149 articles related to tobacco control were extracted from the Database of Chinese Important Newspapers and content analyzed for the period Jan 1, 2000 to Dec 31, 2010. The changing pattern of tobacco control topic, article type, viewpoint, and article origin, and their relationship were analysed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>News coverage of tobacco control related issues increased significantly (<it>p </it>< 0.01) from 2000 to 2010, with news coverage being relatively intensive in May and June (<it>p </it>< 0.01), around World No Tobacco Day. 24.9% (n = 286) of all articles focused on secondhand smoke, 25.3% (n = 291) warned about the dangers of active smoking, and 10.0% (n = 115) focused on prevention and cessation programs and campaigns. Tobacco control topics varied significantly between national vs city/regional newspapers (<it>χ</it>²= 24.09, <it>p </it>= 0.002) and article types (<it>χ</it>²= 193.35, <it>p </it>< 0.001). Articles in national newspapers had more coverage of the dangers of tobacco and on enforcing bans on tobacco-advertising. News stories centered around monitoring tobacco use and smoke free activity, while editorials focused on enforcing bans on tobacco-advertising, youth access and programs and campaigns. Letters to editors focused on the dangers of smoking, raising tax, and smoking cessation. More articles (50.4%) took an anti-tobacco position (compared with 10.5% which were pro-smoking), with the amount of negative coverage growing significantly across the decade. National articles tended to lean toward anti-tobacco, however, local articles tended mix of pro-tobacco and neutral/balance positions. Editorials seemed to be more anti-tobacco oriented, but letters to the editor tended to show a mix of anti-tobacco and pro-tobacco positions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Chinese newspapers are giving increasing attention to tobacco control, but coverage remains lower than in the USA and Australia. Health workers need to give higher priority to efforts to increase news coverage beyond the present concentration around World No Tobacco Day and to develop strategies for making tobacco control issues more newsworthy to both national and local news outlets.</p

Genetic dissection of heterosis using epistatic association mapping in a partial NCII mating design

Heterosis refers to the phenomenon in which an F1 hybrid exhibits enhanced growth or agronomic performance. However, previous theoretical studies on heterosis have been based on bi-parental segregating populations instead of F1 hybrids. To understand the genetic basis of heterosis, here we used a subset of F1 hybrids, named a partial North Carolina II design, to perform association mapping for dependent variables: original trait value, general combining ability (GCA), specific combining ability (SCA) and mid-parental heterosis (MPH). Our models jointly fitted all the additive, dominance and epistatic effects. The analyses resulted in several important findings: 1) Main components are additive and additive-by-additive effects for GCA and dominance-related effects for SCA and MPH, and additive-by-dominant effect for MPH was partly identified as additive effect; 2) the ranking of factors affecting heterosis was dominance > dominance-by-dominance > over-dominance > complete dominance; and 3) increasing the proportion of F1 hybrids in the population could significantly increase the power to detect dominance-related effects, and slightly reduce the power to detect additive and additive-by-additive effects. Analyses of cotton and rapeseed datasets showed that more additive-by-additive QTL were detected from GCA than from trait phenotype, and fewer QTL were from MPH than from other dependent variables

Search for Gravitational Waves from Primordial Black Hole Binary Coalescences in the Galactic Halo

We use data from the second science run of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors to search for the gravitational waves from primordial black hole (PBH) binary coalescence with component masses in the range 0.2--$1.0 M_\odot$. The analysis requires a signal to be found in the data from both LIGO observatories, according to a set of coincidence criteria. No inspiral signals were found. Assuming a spherical halo with core radius 5 kpc extending to 50 kpc containing non-spinning black holes with masses in the range 0.2--$1.0 M_\odot$, we place an observational upper limit on the rate of PBH coalescence of 63 per year per Milky Way halo (MWH) with 90% confidence.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted to Phys. Rev.

Effects of Thioglycolic Acid on Parthenogenetic Activation of Xenopus Oocytes

BACKGROUND: Existing in Permanent-wave solutions (PWS), thioglycolic acid (TGA) is widely used in hairdressing industry for its contribution to hair styling. However, the toxicity of TGA, especially its reproductive toxicity, gradually calls the attention of more and more researchers. METHOD: In this work, xenopus oocytes were pretreated with different concentration of TGA, and then activated by calcium ionophore A23187. During culture, the oocytes activation rates were taken note at different time after adding calcium ionophore A23187. At the end of the culture period, the nuclear status was detected under confocal microscope. In addition, some other samples were collected for Western-Blotting analysis. RESULT: TGA significantly inhibited the oocytes activation rate and pronuclear formation. It may be resulted from the inhibition of the degradation of p-ERK1, Mos and CyclinB2. CONCLUSION: TGA inhibits in vitro parthenogenetic activation of xenopus oocytes with inhibited the degradation of proteins involved in mitogenic-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and maturation-promoting factor (MPF) pathways

In-situ local phase-transitioned MoSe2 in La0.5Sr0.5CoO3-?? heterostructure and stable overall water electrolysis over 1000 hours

Developing efficient bifunctional catalysts for overall water splitting that are earth-abundant, cost-effective, and durable is of considerable importance from the practical perspective to mitigate the issues associated with precious metal-based catalysts. Herein, we introduce a heterostructure comprising perovskite oxides (La0.5Sr0.5CoO3?????) and molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2) as an electrochemical catalyst for overall water electrolysis. Interestingly, formation of the heterostructure of La0.5Sr0.5CoO3????? and MoSe2 induces a local phase transition in MoSe2, 2???H to 1???T phase, and more electrophilic La0.5Sr0.5CoO3????? with partial oxidation of the Co cation owing to electron transfer from Co to Mo. Together with these synergistic effects, the electrochemical activities are significantly improved for both hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions. In the overall water splitting operation, the heterostructure showed excellent stability at the high current density of 100???mA???cm???2 over 1,000???h, which is exceptionally better than the stability of the state-of-the-art platinum and iridium oxide couple

The use of cessation assistance among smokers from China: Findings from the ITC China Survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Stop smoking medications significantly increase the likelihood of smoking cessation. However, there are no population-based studies of stop-smoking medication use in China, the largest tobacco market in the world. This study examined stop-smoking medication use and its association with quitting behavior among a population-based sample of Chinese smokers.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 4,627 smokers from six cities in the ITC China cohort survey. Longitudinal analyses were conducted using Wave 1 (April to August, 2006) and Wave 2 (November 2007 to January 2008).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Approximately 26% of smokers had attempted to quit between Waves 1 and 2, and 6% were abstinent at 18-month follow-up. Only 5.8% of those attempting to quit reported NRT use and NRT was associated with lower odds of abstinence at Wave 2 (OR = 0.11; 95%CI = 0.03-0.46). Visiting a doctor/health professional was associated with greater attempts to quit smoking (OR = 1.60 and 2.78; 95%CI = 1.22-2.10 and 2.21-3.49 respectively) and being abstinent (OR = 1.77 and 1.85; 95%CI = 1.18-2.66 and 1.13-3.04 respectively) at 18-month follow-up relative to the smokers who did not visit doctor/health professional.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The use of formal help for smoking cessation is low in China. There is an urgent need to explore the use and effectiveness of stop-smoking medications in China and in other non-Western markets.</p

RIG-I contributes to the innate immune response after cerebral ischemia

BACKGROUND: Focal cerebral ischemia induces an inflammatory response that when exacerbated contributes to deleterious outcomes. The molecular basis regarding the regulation of the innate immune response after focal cerebral ischemia remains poorly understood. METHODS: In this study we examined the expression of retinoic acid-inducible gene (RIG)-like receptor-I (RIG-I) and its involvement in regulating inflammation after ischemia in the brain of rats subjected to middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). In addition, we studied the regulation of RIG-I after oxygen glucose deprivation (OGD) in astrocytes in culture. RESULTS: In this study we show that in the hippocampus of rats, RIG-I and IFN-α are elevated after MCAO. Consistent with these results was an increased in RIG-I and IFN-α after OGD in astrocytes in culture. These data are consistent with immunohistochemical analysis of hippocampal sections, indicating that in GFAP-positive cells there was an increase in RIG-I after MCAO. In addition, in this study we have identified n-propyl gallate as an inhibitor of IFN-α signaling in astrocytes. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest a role for RIG-I in contributing to the innate immune response after focal cerebral ischemia