The 1981 Springbok Tour and the anti-apartheid movement in Palmerston North : a research exercise completed in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Batchelor of Arts with Honours at Massey University

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Integration of anatomical and hemodynamical information in magnetic resonance angiography

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Electronic orders near the type-II van Hove singularity in BC3_3

Using the functional renormalization group, we investigate the electron instability in the single-sheet BC$_3$ when the electron filling is near a type-II van Hove singularity. For a finite Hubbard interaction, the ferromagnetic-like spin density wave order dominates in the immediate vicinity of the singularity. Elsewhere near the singularity the p-wave superconductivity prevails. We also find that a small nearest-neighbor Coulomb repulsion can enhance the superconductivity. Our results show that BC$_3$ would be a promising candidate to realize topological $p+ip'$ superconductivity, but the transition temperature is practically sizable only if the local interaction is moderately strong.Comment: 6 pages, 6 color figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1503.0047

Fermentation of animal components in strict carnivores: a comparative study with cheetah fecal inoculum

The natural diet of felids contains highly digestible animal tissues but also fractions resistant to small intestinal digestion, which enter the large intestine where they may be fermented by the resident microbial population. Little information exists on the microbial degradability of animal tissues in the large intestine of felids consuming a natural diet. This study aimed to rank animal substrates in their microbial degradability by means of an in vitro study using captive cheetahs fed a strict carnivorous diet as fecal donors. Fresh cheetah fecal samples were collected, pooled, and incubated with various raw animal substrates (chicken cartilage, collagen, glucosamine-chondroitin, glucosamine, rabbit bone, rabbit hair, and rabbit skin; 4 replicates per substrate) for cumulative gas production measurement in a batch culture technique. Negative (cellulose) and positive (casein and fructo-oligosaccharides; FOS) controls were incorporated in the study. Additionally, after 72 h of incubation, short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), including branched-chain fatty acids (BCFA), and ammonia concentrations were determined for each substrate. Glucosamine and glucosamine-chondroitin yielded the greatest OM cumulative gas volume (OMCV) among animal substrates (P < 0.05), whereas total SCFA production was greatest for collagen (P < 0.05). Collagen induced an acetate production comparable to FOS and a markedly high acetate-to-propionate ratio (8.41:1) compared to all other substrates (1.67:1 to 2.97:1)

A spatial model of calcification in scleractinian corals

Calcification in scleractinian corals is a highly complex process depending on a wide variety of physical, chemical and biological parameters that interact on a molecular, cellular, organismal and ecosystem level. Although many of these individual parameters have been identified during recent years, coral skeletogenesis on a systems level is still not well understood, limiting the possibility to accurately predict the effect of environmental changes. Therefore we have constructed a model of calcification in which existing knowledge on the factors influencing skeleton formation is integrated within a mathematical framework. In this model we have developed a spatial representation of the coral tissue where we simulate the relevant chemical reactions in the surrounding environment, the transport processes of inorganic carbon and calcium ions, photosymthesis, respiration and calcification in the different cell layers. We model the change in space and time of the different processes as a set of coupled reaction-diffusion equations. Simulations can also be employed to clarify the relative contribution of different individual processes such as ion transport, photosynthesis or mitochondrial respiration rates. Results of these simulations can be used to guide further experimental studies. In the future we hope to combine all these models in a multi-scale model of calcification which can be used to analyse the relations between the marine environment, genetic regulation, skeletogenesis and coral growth