266 research outputs found
Short communication: Growth performance, nutrient digestibility and blood parameters of fattening lambs fed diet replacing corn with orange pulp
The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of replacing corn with orange pulp (OP) on growth performance, rumen fermentation, nutrient digestibility and blood parameters of fattening lambs. Twenty male lambs were placed in individual pens and fed with four levels of replacement of corn by OP (0, 33, 66, 100%) during 60 days. Average daily gain (ADG) showed a quadratic effect (p<0.007) with the increasing levels of replacement. Inclusion of 33 and 66% of OP in the diet significantly increased dry matter intake (DMI) compared to control group (p<0.01). Ruminal ammonia-N concentration showed a linear decrease (p<0.002). Ruminal fluid pH increased linearly with the increasing replacement of corn by OP (p<0.001). Acetate concentration showed a linear increase (p<0.001). Plasma total protein showed a linear increase (p<0.002). Organic matter, crude protein and neutral detergent fiber showed a quadratic effect with the level of replacement. The results of the present study showed that replacement of corn by OP improves DMI of fattening lambs, leading to an enhancement in ADG at the replacement level of 40.3%. Also, total replacement of corn by OP did not have any adverse effect on growth performance, rumen fermentation, nutrient digestibility and blood parameters
Interferon γ–inducible protein-10 (IP-10) and eotaxin as biomarkers in age-related macular degeneration
Teenagers’ understandings of and attitudes towards vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases: a qualitative study
<p>Background:
To examine immunisation information needs of teenagers we explored understandings of vaccination and vaccine-preventable diseases, attitudes towards immunisation and experiences of immunisation. Diseases discussed included nine for which vaccines are currently offered in the UK (human papillomavirus, meningitis, tetanus, diphtheria, polio, whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella), and two not currently included in the routine UK schedule (hepatitis B and chickenpox).</p>
<p>Methods
Twelve focus groups conducted between November 2010 and March 2011 with 59 teenagers (29 girls and 30 boys) living in various parts of Scotland.</p>
<p>Results
Teenagers exhibited limited knowledge and experience of the diseases, excluding chickenpox. Measles, mumps and rubella were perceived as severe forms of chickenpox-like illness, and rubella was not associated with foetal damage. Boys commonly believed that human papillomavirus only affects girls, and both genders exhibited confusion about its relationship with cancer. Participants considered two key factors when assessing the threat of diseases: their prevalence in the UK, and their potential to cause fatal or long-term harm. Meningitis was seen as a threat, but primarily to babies. Participants explained their limited knowledge as a result of mass immunisation making once-common diseases rare in the UK, and acknowledged immunisation's role in reducing disease prevalence.</p>
<p>Conclusions
While it is welcome that fewer teenagers have experienced vaccine-preventable diseases, this presents public health advocates with the challenge of communicating benefits of immunisation when advantages are less visible. The findings are timely in view of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation's recommendation that a booster of meningitis C vaccine should be offered to teenagers; that teenagers did not perceive meningitis C as a significant threat should be a key concern of promotional information. While teenagers’ experiences of immunisation in school were not always positive, they seemed enthusiastic at the prospect of introducing more vaccines for their age group.</p>
Learning an atlas of a cognitive process in its functional geometry
Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference, IPMI 2011, Kloster Irsee, Germany, July 3-8, 2011.In this paper we construct an atlas that captures functional characteristics of a cognitive process from a population of individuals. The functional connectivity is encoded in a low-dimensional embedding space derived from a diffusion process on a graph that represents correlations of fMRI time courses. The atlas is represented by a common prior distribution for the embedded fMRI signals of all subjects. The atlas is not directly coupled to the anatomical space, and can represent functional networks that are variable in their spatial distribution. We derive an algorithm for fitting this generative model to the observed data in a population. Our results in a language fMRI study demonstrate that the method identifies coherent and functionally equivalent regions across subjects.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (IIS/CRCNS 0904625)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CAREER grant 0642971)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NCRR NAC P41- RR13218)National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (U.S.) (U54-EB005149)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (U41RR019703)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (P01CA067165)Seventh Framework Programme (European Commission) (nâ—¦257528 (KHRESMOI)
Holographic Symmetry-Breaking Phases in AdS/CFT
In this note we study the symmetry-breaking phases of 3D gravity coupled to
matter. In particular, we consider black holes with scalar hair as a model of
symmetry-breaking phases of a strongly coupled 1+1 dimensional CFT. In the case
of a discrete symmetry, we show that these theories admit metastable phases of
broken symmetry and study the thermodynamics of these phases. We also
demonstrate that the 3D Einstein-Maxwell theory shows continuous symmetry
breaking at low temperature. The apparent contradiction with the
Coleman-Mermin-Wagner theorem is discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figur
Topologically Massive Gravity and Ricci-Cotton Flow
We consider Topologically Massive Gravity (TMG), which is three dimensional
general relativity with a cosmological constant and a gravitational
Chern-Simons term. When the cosmological constant is negative the theory has
two potential vacuum solutions: Anti-de Sitter space and Warped Anti-de Sitter
space. The theory also contains a massive graviton state which renders these
solutions unstable for certain values of the parameters and boundary
conditions. We study the decay of these solutions due to the condensation of
the massive graviton mode using Ricci-Cotton flow, which is the appropriate
generalization of Ricci flow to TMG. When the Chern-Simons coupling is small
the AdS solution flows to warped AdS by the condensation of the massive
graviton mode. When the coupling is large the situation is reversed, and warped
AdS flows to AdS. Minisuperspace models are constructed where these flows are
studied explicitly
All stationary axi-symmetric local solutions of topologically massive gravity
We classify all stationary axi-symmetric solutions of topologically massive
gravity into Einstein, Schr\"odinger, warped and generic solutions. We
construct explicitly all local solutions in the first three sectors and present
an algorithm for the numerical construction of all local solutions in the
generic sector. The only input for this algorithm is the value of one constant
of motion if the solution has an analytic centre, and three constants of motion
otherwise. We present several examples, including soliton solutions that
asymptote to warped AdS.Comment: 42 pages, 9 figures. v2: Changed potentially confusing labelling of
one sector, added references. v3: Minor changes, matches published versio
Boundary Conditions and Unitarity: the Maxwell-Chern-Simons System in AdS_3/CFT_2
We consider the holography of the Abelian Maxwell-Chern-Simons (MCS) system
in Lorentzian three-dimensional asymptotically-AdS spacetimes, and discuss a
broad class of boundary conditions consistent with conservation of the
symplectic structure. As is well-known, the MCS theory contains a massive
sector dual to a vector operator in the boundary theory, and a topological
sector consisting of flat connections dual to U(1) chiral currents; the
boundary conditions we examine include double-trace deformations in these two
sectors, as well as a class of boundary conditions that mix the vector
operators with the chiral currents. We carefully study the symplectic product
of bulk modes and show that almost all such boundary conditions induce
instabilities and/or ghost excitations, consistent with violations of unitarity
bounds in the dual theory.Comment: 50+1 pages, 6 figures, PDFLaTeX; v2: added references, corrected
typo
Cohort-level brain mapping: learning cognitive atoms to single out specialized regions
International audienceFunctional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies map the human brain by testing the response of groups of individuals to carefully-crafted and contrasted tasks in order to delineate specialized brain regions and networks. The number of functional networks extracted is limited by the number of subject-level contrasts and does not grow with the cohort. Here, we introduce a new group-level brain mapping strategy to differentiate many regions reflecting the variety of brain network configurations observed in the population. Based on the principle of functional segregation, our approach singles out functionally-specialized brain regions by learning group-level functional profiles on which the response of brain regions can be represented sparsely. We use a dictionary-learning formulation that can be solved efficiently with on-line algorithms, scaling to arbitrary large datasets. Importantly, we model inter-subject correspondence as structure imposed in the estimated functional profiles, integrating a structure-inducing regularization with no additional computational cost. On a large multi-subject study, our approach extracts a large number of brain networks with meaningful functional profiles
A Proinflammatory Function of Toll-Like Receptor 2 in the Retinal Pigment Epithelium as a Novel Target for Reducing Choroidal Neovascularization in Age-Related Macular Degeneration
- …