Gravitoelectromagnetism and Dark Energy in Superconductors

A gravitomagnetic analogue of the London moment in superconductors can explain the anomalous Cooper pair mass excess reported by Janet Tate. Ultimately the gravitomagnetic London moment is attributed to the breaking of the principle of general covariance in superconductors. This naturally implies non-conservation of classical energy-momentum. Possible relation with the manifestation of dark energy in superconductors is questioned.Comment: 10 pages. Poster presented at "From Quantum to Cosmos - Fundamental Physics Research in Space" 22-24 May 2006, To Appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Fermi gas in harmonic oscillator potentials

Assuming the validity of grand canonical statistics, we study the properties of a spin-polarized Fermi gas in harmonic traps. Universal forms of Fermi temperature $T_F$, internal energy $U$ and the specific heat per particle of the trapped Fermi gas are calculated as a {\it function} of particle number, and the results compared with those of infinite number particles.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, LATE

Integrated housing supply chain model for innovation: Narrative analysis towards developing pathways methodology

There are significant problems in the supply of housing in Australia yet very little attention has been paid to the housing construction supply chain. To date the housing supply debate has been largely focussed on housing demand, affordability and land supply. It is contended that one of the key causal factors of poor housing supply is the poor coordination between supply chain actors. The development of integrated supply delivery solutions have not been extensively recognised in the Australian residential sector. Ad hoc examples and applications by some major building companies has seen some limited success, however, this has not been diffused throughout the sector with little real impact on overall sector performance and individual company competitiveness. Whole-scale industry improvement requires a concerted effort to undertake a stepwise change. A key to the solution is to investigate successful examples of integrated supply chains which have resulted in productivity and/or innovation performance improvements. The aim of this research is to undertake a case study analysis of successful implementation of delivering an innovation to the Australian housing construction industry which required an integrated construction supply chain model. The paper describes the theoretical background to the study and the preliminary results of the case study

BPS black holes in N=2 five dimensional AdS supergravity

BPS black hole solutions of U(1) gauged five-dimensional supergravity are obtained by solving the Killing spinor equations. These extremal static black holes live in an asymptotic AdS_5 space time. Unlike black holes in asymptotic flat space time none of them possess a regular horizon. We also calculate the influence, of a particular class of these solutions, on the Wilson loops calculation.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX, corrected the potentia

Aligning Community-Engaged Research to Context.

Community-engaged research is understood as existing on a continuum from less to more community engagement, defined by participation and decision-making authority. It has been widely assumed that more is better than less engagement. However, we argue that what makes for good community engagement is not simply the extent but the fit or alignment between the intended approach and the various contexts shaping the research projects. This article draws on case studies from three Community Engagement Cores (CECs) of NIEHS-funded Environmental Health Science Core Centers (Harvard University, UC Davis and University of Arizona,) to illustrate the ways in which community engagement approaches have been fit to different contexts and the successes and challenges experienced in each case. We analyze the processes through which the CECs work with researchers and community leaders to develop place-based community engagement approaches and find that different strategies are called for to fit distinct contexts. We find that alignment of the scale and scope of the environmental health issue and related research project, the capacities and resources of the researchers and community leaders, and the influences of the sociopolitical environment are critical for understanding and designing effective and equitable engagement approaches. These cases demonstrate that the types and degrees of alignment in community-engaged research projects are dynamic and evolve over time. Based on this analysis, we recommend that CBPR scholars and practitioners select a range of project planning and management techniques for designing and implementing their collaborative research approaches and both expect and allow for the dynamic and changing nature of alignment

Information theoretical analysis of differences in information transmission in cerebellar Purkinje cells across species

Abstract from the 23rd Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS 2014. © 2014 Kidd et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise statedThe dendrite of the cerebellar Purkinje cell is one of the most complex structures in the mammalian brain, receiving more than 150,000 synaptic inputs. It is also one of the most extensively modelled neurons in the mammalian brain, with theoretical analysis of the input-output relationships in its dendrite extending back 40 years. While most of this experimental and modelling work has been conducted using mammalian neurons, it has also often been noted that overall cerebellar structure as well as the general morphology of Purkinje cells has been highly conserved in all vertebrate species. The work described here seeks to identify conserved features of Purkinje cell function by examining the relationship between structure and function in a range of vertebrate species from fish to mammalsPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Thermodynamics of quantum gases for the entire range of temperature

We have analytically explored thermodynamics of free Bose and Fermi gases for the entire range of temperature, and have extended the same for harmonically trapped cases. We have obtained approximate chemical potentials of the quantum gases in closed forms of temperature so that the thermodynamic properties of the quantum gases become plausible specially in the intermediate regime between the classical and quantum limits.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Teaching Articl

Striatal dopamine D1-type receptor availability: no difference from control but association with cortical thickness in methamphetamine users.

Chronic methamphetamine use poses potentially devastating consequences for directly affected individuals and for society. Lower dopamine D2-type receptor availability has been observed in striata of methamphetamine users as compared with controls, but an analogous comparison of D1-type receptors has been conducted only on post-mortem material, with no differences in methamphetamine users from controls in the caudate nucleus and putamen and higher D1-receptor density in the nucleus accumbens. Released from neurons when methamphetamine is self-administered, dopamine binds to both D1- and D2-type receptors in the striatum, with downstream effects on cortical activity. Thus, both receptor subtypes may contribute to methamphetamine-induced alterations in cortical morphology and behavior. In this study, 21 methamphetamine-dependent subjects and 23 healthy controls participated in positron emission tomography and structural magnetic resonance imaging for assessment of striatal D1- and D2-type receptor availability and cortical gray-matter thickness, respectively. Although D2-type receptor availability (BPnd) was lower in the methamphetamine group, as shown previously, the groups did not differ in D1-type BPnd. In the methamphetamine group, mean cortical gray-matter thickness was negatively associated with cumulative methamphetamine use and craving for the drug. Striatal D1-type but not D2-type BPnd was negatively associated with global mean cortical gray-matter thickness in the methamphetamine group, but no association was found between gray-matter thickness and BPnd for either dopamine receptor subtype in the control group. These results suggest a role of striatal D1-type receptors in cortical adaptation to chronic methamphetamine use