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European consumers' valuation for hybrid meat: Does information matter?
This study investigates for the first time how the use of different information messages (i.e., health, sensory, and convenience benefits) about hybrid meat shapes British, Spanish, and Danish consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for such products. Hybrid meats are products whereby a proportion of the meat has been replaced by plant-based proteins. Using a choice experiment (CE) involving hybrid burgers that vary across four attributes (i.e., ingredient, fat content, Carbon Trust label, and price), our results show that consumers are generally not yet willing to pay a premium for such new products. Furthermore, we found that consumer valuation for hybrid burgers strongly depends on the type of information provided and consumer characteristics. These findings provide useful guidelines on how information can be used in communicating the nature of the hybrid meats to the public in a cross-country context
Structural and behavioral characteristics of a commercial humic acid and natural dissolved aquatic organic matter
Dissolved organic matter (DOM) from two natural surface water sources and a commercial humic acid were analyzed using gel-permeation chromatography, high pressure reverse phase liquid chromatography, and 1H-NMR spectroscopy. Results from the chromatographic studies show that the DOM of two natural waters consisted primarily of relatively low molecular weight, polar organic constituents, while large and relatively nonpolar macromolecules comprised a significant fraction of the commercial humic acid. The 1H-NMR assays indicated that DOM from the two natural water samples was comprised of nonaromatic organic constituents, while the commercial humic acids tested contained both aromatic and aliphatic moieties. Based upon these composite results of the several different types of analysis employed, it is evident that the humic acid examined, and possibly others prepared in the same way, contain molecular structures which exhibit physical and chemical properties that do not reflect the true nature of DOM in real aquatic systems. Commercially available humic substances of this type may therefore not be suitable surrogates for naturally occurring DOM in laboratory investigations and analysis of geochemical and environmental transformation reactions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28942/1/0000779.pd
Signatures of Superfluidity in Dilute Fermi Gases near a Feshbach Resonance
We present a brief account of the most salient properties of vortices in
dilute atomic Fermi superfluids near a Feshbach resonance.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, and jltp.cls. Several typos and a couple of
inaccuracies have been correcte
Kappa-symmetric Derivative Corrections to D-brane Dynamics
We show how the superembedding formalism can be applied to construct
manifestly kappa-symmetric higher derivative corrections for the D9-brane. We
also show that all correction terms appear at even powers of the fundamental
length scale . We explicitly construct the first potential correction, which
corresponds to the kappa-symmetric version of the , which one
finds from the four-point amplitude of the open superstring.Comment: 20 pages. Minor changes, added reference
Revisiting the S-matrix approach to the open superstring low energy effective lagrangian
The conventional S-matrix approach to the (tree level) open string low energy
effective lagrangian assumes that, in order to obtain all its bosonic
order terms, it is necessary to know the open string (tree level)
-point amplitude of massless bosons, at least expanded at that order in
. In this work we clarify that the previous claim is indeed valid for
the bosonic open string, but for the supersymmetric one the situation is much
more better than that: there are constraints in the kinematical bosonic terms
of the amplitude (probably due to Spacetime Supersymmetry) such that a much
lower open superstring -point amplitude is needed to find all the
order terms. In this `revisited' S-matrix approach we have
checked that, at least up to order, using these kinematical
constraints and only the known open superstring 4-point amplitude, it is
possible to determine all the bosonic terms of the low energy effective
lagrangian. The sort of results that we obtain seem to agree completely with
the ones achieved by the method of BPS configurations, proposed about ten years
ago. By means of the KLT relations, our results can be mapped to the NS-NS
sector of the low energy effective lagrangian of the type II string theories
implying that there one can also find kinematical constraints in the -point
amplitudes and that important informations can be inferred, at least up to
order, by only using the (tree level) 4-point amplitude.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figure, Submitted on Aug 4, 2012, Published on Oct 15,
201
Weak reaction freeze-out constraints on primordial magnetic fields
We explore constraints on the strength of the primordial magnetic field based
upon the weak reaction freeze-out in the early universe. We find that limits on
the strength of the magnetic field found in other works are recovered simply by
examining the temperature at which the rate of weak reactions drops below the
rate of universal expansion ( H). The temperature for which the
ratio at freeze-out leads to acceptable helium production implies limits
on the magnetic field. This simplifies the application of magnetic fields to
other cosmological variants of the standard big-bang. As an illustration we
also consider effects of neutrino degeneracy on the allowed limits to the
primordial magnetic field.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. D., 6 pages, 2 figure
Higher order contributions to the effective action of N=4 super Yang-Mills
The one-loop low-energy effective action for non-Abelian N=4 supersymmetric
Yang-Mills theory is computed to order by use of heat kernel techniques
in N=1 superspace. At the component level, the terms are found to be
consistent with the form of the non-Abelian Born-Infeld action computed to this
order by superstring methods. The terms will be of importance for
comparison with superstring calculations.Comment: 23 pages, JHEP style, references adde
Role of mitochondrial raft-like microdomains in the regulation of cell apoptosis
Lipid rafts are envisaged as lateral assemblies of specific lipids and proteins that dissociate and associate rapidly and form functional clusters in cell membranes. These structural platforms are not confined to the plasma membrane; indeed lipid microdomains are similarly formed at subcellular organelles, which include endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi and mitochondria, named raft-like microdomains. In addition, some components of raft-like microdomains are present within ER-mitochondria associated membranes. This review is focused on the role of mitochondrial raft-like microdomains in the regulation of cell apoptosis, since these microdomains may represent preferential sites where key reactions take place, regulating mitochondria hyperpolarization, fission-associated changes, megapore formation and release of apoptogenic factors. These structural platforms appear to modulate cytoplasmic pathways switching cell fate towards cell survival or death. Main insights on this issue derive from some pathological conditions in which alterations of microdomains structure or function can lead to severe alterations of cell activity and life span. In the light of the role played by raft-like microdomains to integrate apoptotic signals and in regulating mitochondrial dynamics, it is conceivable that these membrane structures may play a role in the mitochondrial alterations observed in some of the most common human neurodegenerative diseases, such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's chorea and prion-related diseases. These findings introduce an additional task for identifying new molecular target(s) of pharmacological agents in these pathologies
WNT signalling in prostate cancer
Genome sequencing and gene expression analyses of prostate tumours have highlighted the potential importance of genetic and epigenetic changes observed in WNT signalling pathway components in prostate tumours-particularly in the development of castration-resistant prostate cancer. WNT signalling is also important in the prostate tumour microenvironment, in which WNT proteins secreted by the tumour stroma promote resistance to therapy, and in prostate cancer stem or progenitor cells, in which WNT-β-catenin signals promote self-renewal or expansion. Preclinical studies have demonstrated the potential of inhibitors that target WNT receptor complexes at the cell membrane or that block the interaction of β-catenin with lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1 and the androgen receptor, in preventing prostate cancer progression. Some WNT signalling inhibitors are in phase I trials, but they have yet to be tested in patients with prostate cancer
Longitudinal double spin asymmetries in single hadron quasi-real photoproduction at high
We measured the longitudinal double spin asymmetries for single
hadron muo-production off protons and deuterons at photon virtuality <
1(GeV/) for transverse hadron momenta in the range 0.7
GeV/ to 4 GeV/ . They were determined using COMPASS data taken
with a polarised muon beam of 160 GeV/ or 200 GeV/ impinging on
polarised or targets. The experimental
asymmetries are compared to next-to-leading order pQCD calculations, and are
sensitive to the gluon polarisation inside the nucleon in the range
of the nucleon momentum fraction carried by gluons
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