9,861 research outputs found
Antibiotic activity of actinomycetes in soil and their controlling effects on root-rot of Wheat
RESP-357
Antibiotic Activity of Actinomycetes in Soil as Demonstrated by Direct Observation Techniques
RESP-364
Experiment K-6-16. Morphological examination of rat testes. The effect of Cosmos 1887 flight on spermatogonial population and testosterone level in rat testes
Testes from rats flown on Cosmos 1887 for twelve and a half days were compared to basal control, synchronous control and vivarium maintained rats. When the mean weights of flight testes, normalized for weight/100 gms, were compared to the vivarium controls they were 6.7 percent lighter. Although the flight testes were lighter than the synchronous, the difference is not significant. Counts of spermatogonial cells from 5 animals in each group revealed a 4 percent decrease in flight compared to vivarium controls. In both cases the t-Test significance was less than 0.02. The serum testosterone levels of all animals (flight, synchronous and vivarium) were significantly below the basal controls
Use of strategies to improve retention in primary care randomised trials: a qualitative study with in-depth interviews
Objective To explore the strategies used to improve retention in primary care randomised trials.<p></p>
Design Qualitative in-depth interviews and thematic analysis.<p></p>
Participants 29 UK primary care chief and principal investigators, trial managers and research nurses.<p></p>
Methods In-depth face-to-face interviews.<p></p>
Results Primary care researchers use incentive and communication strategies to improve retention in trials, but were unsure of their effect. Small monetary incentives were used to increase response to postal questionnaires. Non-monetary incentives were used although there was scepticism about the impact of these on retention. Nurses routinely used telephone communication to encourage participants to return for trial follow-up. Trial managers used first class post, shorter questionnaires and improved questionnaire designs with the aim of improving questionnaire response. Interviewees thought an open trial design could lead to biased results and were negative about using behavioural strategies to improve retention. There was consensus among the interviewees that effective communication and rapport with participants, participant altruism, respect for participant's time, flexibility of trial personnel and appointment schedules and trial information improve retention. Interviewees noted particular challenges with retention in mental health trials and those involving teenagers.<p></p>
Conclusions The findings of this qualitative study have allowed us to reflect on research practice around retention and highlight a gap between such practice and current evidence. Interviewees describe acting from experience without evidence from the literature, which supports the use of small monetary incentives to improve the questionnaire response. No such evidence exists for non-monetary incentives or first class post, use of which may need reconsideration. An exploration of barriers and facilitators to retention in other research contexts may be justified.<p></p>
The impact of universal newborn hearing screening on long-term literacy outcomes: a prospective cohort study
Objective: To determine whether the benefits of universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) seen at age 8?years persist through the second decade.Design: Prospective cohort study of a population sample of children with permanent childhood hearing impairment (PCHI) followed up for 17?years since birth in periods with (or without) UNHS.Setting: Birth cohort of 100?000 in southern England.Participants: 114 teenagers aged 13-19?years, 76 with PCHI and 38 with normal hearing. All had previously their reading assessed aged 6-10?years.Interventions: Birth in periods with and without UNHS; confirmation of PCHI before and after age 9?months.Main outcome measure: Reading comprehension ability. Regression modelling took account of severity of hearing loss, non-verbal ability, maternal education and main language.Results: Confirmation of PCHI by age 9?months was associated with significantly higher mean z-scores for reading comprehension (adjusted mean difference 1.17, 95% CI 0.36 to 1.97) although birth during periods with UNHS was not (adjusted mean difference 0.15, 95% CI -0.75 to 1.06). The gap between the reading comprehension z-scores of teenagers with early compared with late confirmed PCHI had widened at an adjusted mean rate of 0.06 per year (95% CI -0.02 to 0.13) during the 9.2-year mean interval since the previous assessment.Conclusions: The benefit to reading comprehension of confirmation of PCHI by age 9?months increases during the teenage years. This strengthens the case for UNHS programmes that lead to early confirmation of permanent hearing loss
On BLM scale fixing in exclusive processes
We discuss the BLM scale fixing procedure in exclusive electroproduction
processes in the Bjorken regime. We show that in the case of vector meson
production the usual way to aplly the BLM method fails due to singularities
present in equations fixing the BLM scale. We argue that the BLM scale should
be extracted from the squared amplitudes which are directly related to
observables.Comment: accepted for the publication in Eur.Phys.J.
Dependence of Variational Perturbation Expansions on Strong-Coupling Behavior. Inapplicability of delta-Expansion to Field Theory
We show that in applications of variational theory to quantum field theory it
is essential to account for the correct Wegner exponent omega governing the
approach to the strong-coupling, or scaling limit. Otherwise the procedure
either does not converge at all or to the wrong limit. This invalidates all
papers applying the so-called delta-expansion to quantum field theory.Comment: Author Information under
http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~kleinert/institution.html . Latest update of
paper (including all PS fonts) at
http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~kleinert/34
The Octet of Goldstone-Bosons in the SU(3) Linear sigma Model in the QRPA
A symmetry conserving, non-perturbative treatment based on a variational
squeezed vacuum state in conjunction with a well-defined class of RPA
fluctuations is applied to the SU(3) linear-sigma-model. It is shown that the
Goldstone theorem holds exactly both at zero and finite temperature. The
approach represents a systematic procedure which avoids problems of the
Gaussian Functional with the symmetries.Comment: 10 page
Perturbative Expansion around the Gaussian Effective Action: The Background Field Method
We develop a systematic method of the perturbative expansion around the
Gaussian effective action based on the background field method. We show, by
applying the method to the quantum mechanical anharmonic oscillator problem,
that even the first non-trivial correction terms greatly improve the Gaussian
approximation.Comment: 16 pages, 3 eps figures, uses RevTeX and epsf. Errors in Table 1 are
corrected and new references are adde
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