39 research outputs found
Influence of human impact and bedrock differences on the vegetational history of the Insubrian Southern Alps
Vegetation history for the study region is reconstructed on the basis of pollen, charcoal and AMS14C investigations of lake sediments from Lago del Segrino (calcareous bedrock) and Lago di Muzzano (siliceous bedrock). Late-glacial forests were characterised byBetula andPinus sylvestris. At the beginning of the Holocene they were replaced by temperate continental forest and shrub communities. A special type of temperate lowland forest, withAbies alba as the most important tree, was present in the period 8300 to 4500 B.P. Subsequently,Fagus, Quercus andAlnus glutinosa were the main forest components andA. alba ceased to be of importance.Castanea sativa andJuglans regia were probably introduced after forest clearance by fire during the first century A.D. On soils derived from siliceous bedrock,C. sativa was already dominant at ca. A.D. 200 (A.D. dates are in calendar years). In limestone areas, however,C. sativa failed to achieve a dominant role. After the introduction ofC. sativa, the main trees were initially oak (Quercus spp.) and later the walnut (Juglans regia). Ostrya carpinifolia became the dominant tree around Lago del Segrino only in the last 100-200 years though it had spread into the area at ca. 5000 cal. B.C. This recent expansion ofOstrya is confirmed at other sites and appears to be controlled by human disturbances involving especially clearance. It is argued that these forests should not be regarded as climax communities. It is suggested that under undisturbed succession they would develop into mixed deciduous forests consisting ofFraxinus excelsior, Tilia, Ulmus, Quercus andAce
Influence of human impact and bedrock differences on the vegetational history of the Insubrian Southern Alps
Vegetation history for the study region is reconstructed on the basis of pollen, charcoal and AMS14C investigations of lake sediments from Lago del Segrino (calcareous bedrock) and Lago di Muzzano (siliceous bedrock). Late-glacial forests were characterised byBetula andPinus sylvestris. At the beginning of the Holocene they were replaced by temperate continental forest and shrub communities. A special type of temperate lowland forest, withAbies alba as the most important tree, was present in the period 8300 to 4500 B.P. Subsequently,Fagus, Quercus andAlnus glutinosa were the main forest components andA. alba ceased to be of importance.Castanea sativa andJuglans regia were probably introduced after forest clearance by fire during the first century A.D. On soils derived from siliceous bedrock,C. sativa was already dominant at ca. A.D. 200 (A.D. dates are in calendar years). In limestone areas, however,C. sativa failed to achieve a dominant role. After the introduction ofC. sativa, the main trees were initially oak (Quercus spp.) and later the walnut (Juglans regia). Ostrya carpinifolia became the dominant tree around Lago del Segrino only in the last 100–200 years though it had spread into the area at ca. 5000 cal. B.C. This recent expansion ofOstrya is confirmed at other sites and appears to be controlled by human disturbances involving especially clearance. It is argued that these forests should not be regarded as climax communities. It is suggested that under undisturbed succession they would develop into mixed deciduous forests consisting ofFraxinus excelsior, Tilia, Ulmus, Quercus and Acer
Decay constants, light quark masses and quark mass bounds from light quark pseudoscalar sum rules
The flavor and pseudoscalar correlators are investigated using
families of finite energy sum rules (FESR's) known to be very accurately
satisfied in the isovector vector channel. It is shown that the combination of
constraints provided by the full set of these sum rules is sufficiently strong
to allow determination of both the light quark mass combinations ,
and the decay constants of the first excited pseudoscalar mesons in
these channels. The resulting masses and decay constants are also shown to
produce well-satisfied Borel transformed sum rules, thus providing non-trivial
constraints on the treatment of direct instanton effects in the FESR analysis.
The values of and obtained are in good agreement with the
values implied by recent hadronic decay analyses and the ratios obtained
from ChPT. New light quark mass bounds based on FESR's involving weight
functions which strongly suppress spectral contributions from the excited
resonance region are also presented.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figure
QCD Sum Rules for Hyperons in Nuclear Matter
Within finite-density QCD sum-rule approach we investigate the self-energies
of hyperons propagating in nuclear matter from a correlator of
interpolating fields evaluated in the nuclear matter ground state. We
find that the Lorentz vector self-energy of the is similar to the
nucleon vector self-energy. The magnitude of Lorentz scalar self-energy of the
is also close to the corresponding value for nucleon; however, this
prediction is sensitive to the strangeness content of the nucleon and to the
assumed density dependence of certain four-quark condensate. The scalar and
vector self-energies tend to cancel, but not completely. The implications for
the couplings of to the scalar and vector mesons in nuclear matter and
for the spin-orbit force in a finite nucleus are discussed.Comment: 20 pages in revtex, 6 figures available under request as ps files,
UMD preprint #94--11
QCD sum rules at finite temperature
We derive thermal QCD sum rules for the correlation function of two vector
currents in the rho-meson channel. It takes into account the leading
non-perturbative corrections from the additional operators, which appear due to
the breakdown of Lorentz invariance at finite temperature. The mixing of the
new operators has a drastic effect on their coefficients. The thermal average
of all the operators can be related to that of the quark condensate and the
energy density. The sum rules then yield the temperature dependence of the
parameters of the -meson, namely its mass and coupling to the vector
current. Our result is that these parameters are practically independent of
temperature at least up to a temperature of 125 MeV.Comment: 11 pages, revtex, 2 figure
Impending status epilepticus and anxiety in a pregnant woman treated with levetiracetam.
Levetiracetam (LEV) has been considered to undergo no significant change in bioavailability during pregnancy; however, it was recently demonstrated to display modifications leading to a drop in its serum level. We describe a patient who displayed impending status epilepticus following a fall in her LEV level during the first trimester. The oral LEV dosage was increased, and phenytoin and benzodiazepines were transiently prescribed. She experienced severe anxiety and an unbearable fear over the deleterious consequences for her baby despite repeated, reassuring explanations. Her anxiety was so strong that she aborted electively shortly after leaving the hospital. This observation emphasizes the need for LEV level monitoring during pregnancy to prevent unexpected seizure relapses. The rapid increase in levetiracetam dosage in parallel with the loss of seizure control is suspected of facilitating the induction of significant psychiatric changes
L'hystérie : une entité historique, un trouble psychiatrique ou une maladie neurologique? [Hysteria : an historical entity, a psychiatric condition or a neurological disease?]
Il a été suggéré que l'hystérie avait disparu et n'était qu'un concept ancien, stigmatisant et péjoratif, voire erroné, reflétant l'incapacité de la communauté médicale à établir parfois un diagnostic. Actuellement ces troubles, appelés troubles dissociatifs ou de conversion, restent pourtant une réalité clinique fréquente et invalidante pour les patients. Plusieurs études et revues ont tenté de mieux décrire la présentation clinique, mais également de mieux comprendre les mécanismes neurobiologiques impliqués dans ces troubles grâce au développement de certaines techniques d'imagerie cérébrale. Si les corrélats neurobiologiques sont mieux compris, des traitements efficaces manquent encore et seule une prise en charge multidisciplinaire (généralistes, neurologues et psychiatres) et individualisée peut apporter un bénéfice au patient. It has been suggested that hysteria had waned and was an old-fashioned, stigmatizing and false concept, reflecting the incapacity of the medical community to establish a diagnosis in certain situations. Nowadays, however, those disturbances, now referred to as conversion or dissociative disorders, still remain a frequent and incapacitating condition that every clinician faces. These past decades, several studies have tried to better describe their clinical presentation and their neurobiological mechanisms, with the help of the development of new neuroimaging techniques. If the neurobiological correlates are now better understood, efficient treatments are still lacking and only a multidisciplinary (general practitioners, neurologists and psychiatrists) and individually-tailored therapy might be beneficial to the patients
A palaeoecological attempt to classify fire sensitivity of trees in the southern Alps
Using pollen percentages and charcoal influx to reconstruct the Holocene vegetation and fire history, we differentiate six possible responses of plants to fire of medium and high frequency: fire-intolerant, fire damaged, fire-sensitive, fire-indifferent, fire-enhanced and fire-adapted. The fire sensitivity of 17 pollen types, representing 20 woody species in the southern Alps, is validated by comparison with today's ecological studies of plant chronosequences. A surprising coincidence of species reaction to fire of medium frequency is character istic for completely different vegetation types, such as woodlands dominated byAbies alba (7000 years ago) andCastanea sativa (today). The temporal persistence of post-fire behaviour of plant taxa up to thousands of years suggests a generally valid species-related fire sensitivity that may be influenced only in part by changing external conditions. A non-analogous behaviour of woody taxa after fire is documented for high fire frequencies. Divergent behaviour patterns of plant taxa in response to medium and high fire frequencies (e.g., increases and decreases ofAlnus glutinosa) also indicate that post-fire plant reactions may change with increasing fire fre quency