Strength of the 18F(p, α)15O resonance at Ec.m. = 330 keV

The astrophysical rate of the 18F(p,α)15O reaction at nova temperatures is critical to understanding production of the radioisotope 18F, which may be used to constrain nova models via observations with the coming generation of satellite-based γ-ray telescopes. As such, a measurement is made of the strength of this resonance using a radioactive 18F beam at the HRIBF. As a result, it is indicated that the 18F(p,α)15O reaction rate is lower than previous estimates by a factor of ∼2

Variational and Geometric Structures of Discrete Dirac Mechanics

In this paper, we develop the theoretical foundations of discrete Dirac mechanics, that is, discrete mechanics of degenerate Lagrangian/Hamiltonian systems with constraints. We first construct discrete analogues of Tulczyjew's triple and induced Dirac structures by considering the geometry of symplectic maps and their associated generating functions. We demonstrate that this framework provides a means of deriving discrete Lagrange-Dirac and nonholonomic Hamiltonian systems. In particular, this yields nonholonomic Lagrangian and Hamiltonian integrators. We also introduce discrete Lagrange-d'Alembert-Pontryagin and Hamilton-d'Alembert variational principles, which provide an alternative derivation of the same set of integration algorithms. The paper provides a unified treatment of discrete Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics in the more general setting of discrete Dirac mechanics, as well as a generalization of symplectic and Poisson integrators to the broader category of Dirac integrators.Comment: 26 pages; published online in Foundations of Computational Mathematics (2011

Quantification of Zonula Occludens-1 mRNA expression in cultu-red bovine retinal endothelial cells, using SYBR green real-time PCR

A simple and rapid real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) technique using SYBR green fluorescence was developed to quantify Zonula Occludens-1 (ZO-1) mRNA expression in histamine-treated cultured bovine retinal microvessel endothelial cells. There was no difference between the quantity of ZO-1 mRNA expression in histamine-treated (10-7M to 10-9 M) and untreated bovine retinal endothelial cells at high magnesium levels. Immunohisto-chemistry staining and western blot assay unequivocally demonstrated the approximately similar levels of ZO-1 protein in both histamine-treated and non-treated endothelial cells at high magnesium concentrations

Numerical Evaluation of Singular Multivariate Normal Distribution

Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation6811-2