Two monotonic functions involving gamma function and volume of unit ball

In present paper, we prove the monotonicity of two functions involving the gamma function $\Gamma(x)$ and relating to the $n$-dimensional volume of the unit ball $\mathbb{B}^n$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$.Comment: 7 page

Rassf7 Expression And Its Regulatory Roles On Apoptosis In Human Intervertebral Disc Degeneration

published_or_final_versio

An investigation of clinical and immunological events following repeated aerodigestive tract challenge infections with live Mycobacterium bovis Bacille Calmette Guerin

Bacille Calmette Guérin substrain Moreau Rio de Janeiro is an attenuated strain of Mycobacterium bovis that has been used extensively as an oral tuberculosis vaccine. We assessed its potential as a challenge model to study clinical and immunological events following repeated mycobacterial gut infection. Seven individuals received three oral challenges with approximately 107 viable bacilli. Clinical symptoms, T-cell responses and gene expression patterns in peripheral blood were monitored. Clinical symptoms were relatively mild and declined following each oral challenge. Delayed T-cell responses were observed, and limited differential gene expression detected by microarrays. Oral challenge with BCG Moreau Rio de Janeiro vaccine was immunogenic in healthy volunteers, limiting its potential to explore clinical innate immune responses, but with low reactogenicity

Assessing environmental services and disservices of urban street trees. an application of the emergy accounting

The urban green infrastructure (UGI), with special focus on street trees, is a very complex engineered ecosystem which plays an important role in generating ecosystem services and, if improperly managed, a number of dis-services to be prevented. This study applies the Emergy Accounting method to the cost and benefit evaluation, in order to establish a non-monetary “supply-side” assessment framework capable to assign an environmental value to each kind of services provided by urban forests and other green infrastructures. Further, the study classifies urban street tree integrated valuation framework into ecosystem services, avoided cost for human health and biodiversity damage, growing/maintenance cost and ecosystem dis-services. In a like manner, the interaction among the three different component flows in street tree ecosystems (costs, benefits and associated dis-services) are compared by means of a ternary diagram. Taking the case of the street ecosystem in Beijing, China, eleven typical urban tree species, including oak, maple, Chinese ash and linden, are selected for services and dis-services evaluation. Results show that, in general, UGI provides a large number of services to urban population, but it may also generate dis-services affecting human health, well-being and biodiversity when tree selection, location and management is not accurate. Results may help improve management practices which enhance the overall ecosystem service provision by urban forests not only in Beijing as case study but also in other cities by means of appropriate management

Liouvillian Approach to the Integer Quantum Hall Effect Transition

We present a novel approach to the localization-delocalization transition in the integer quantum Hall effect. The Hamiltonian projected onto the lowest Landau level can be written in terms of the projected density operators alone. This and the closed set of commutation relations between the projected densities leads to simple equations for the time evolution of the density operators. These equations can be used to map the problem of calculating the disorder averaged and energetically unconstrained density-density correlation function to the problem of calculating the one-particle density of states of a dynamical system with a novel action. At the self-consistent mean-field level, this approach yields normal diffusion and a finite longitudinal conductivity. While we have not been able to go beyond the saddle point approximation analytically, we show numerically that the critical localization exponent can be extracted from the energetically integrated correlation function yielding $\nu=2.33 \pm 0.05$ in excellent agreement with previous finite-size scaling studies.Comment: 9 pages, submitted to PR