585 research outputs found
Trace elements in the nutrition and immunological response of grazing livestock
Sheep and cattle are complex biological factories. Outputs or
products from these factories may be meat, milk, wool, developing fetus,
etc. The inputs or raw products going into the system include oxygen,
water, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals. Production can be
slowed down when any of the operating inputs is out of
balance.
Some minerals are required in relatively large amounts and are known
as the major elements. Others are required in much smaller amounts and
generally function in various enzymatic reactions in the body. Minerals in
this last group are referred to as trace elements and include cobalt (Co),
copper (Cu), iron (Fe), iodine (I), manganese (Mn), selenium (Se), zinc
(Zn), and molybdenum (Mo)
Anti-Mullerian hormone attenuates the effects of FSH on follicle development in the mouse ovary
Although ovarian follicle growth is under the influence of many growth
factors and hormones of which FSH remains one of the most prominent
regulators. Therefore, factors affecting the sensitivity of ovarian
follicles to FSH are also important for follicle growth. The aim of the
present study was to investigate whether anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) has
an inhibitory effect on follicle growth by decreasing the sensitivity of
ovarian follicles to FSH. Furthermore, the combined action of AMH and FSH
on ovarian follicle development was examined. Three different experiments
were performed. Using an in vitro follicle culture system it was shown
that FSH-stimulated preantral follicle growth is attenuated in the
presence of AMH. This observation was confirmed by an in vivo experiment
showing that in immature AMH-deficient females, more follicles start to
grow under the influence of exogenous FSH than in their wild-type
littermates. In a third experiment, examination of the follicle population
of 4-month-old wild-type, FSH beta-, AMH-, and AMH-/FSH beta-deficient
females revealed that loss of FSH expression has no impact on the number
of primordial and preantral follicles, but the loss of inhibitory action
of AMH on the recruitment of primordial follicles in AMH-deficient mice is
increased in the absence of FSH. In conclusion, these studies show that
AMH inhibits FSH-stimulated follicle growth in the mouse, suggesting that
AMH is one of the factors determining the sensitivity of ovarian follicles
for FSH and that AMH is a dominant regulator of early follicle growth
Precision Measurement of the Proton and Deuteron Spin Structure Functions g2 and Asymmetries A2
We have measured the spin structure functions g2p and g2d and the virtual
photon asymmetries A2p and A2d over the kinematic range 0.02 < x < 0.8 and 0.7
< Q^2 < 20 GeV^2 by scattering 29.1 and 32.3 GeV longitudinally polarized
electrons from transversely polarized NH3 and 6LiD targets. Our measured g2
approximately follows the twist-2 Wandzura-Wilczek calculation. The twist-3
reduced matrix elements d2p and d2n are less than two standard deviations from
zero. The data are inconsistent with the Burkhardt-Cottingham sum rule if there
is no pathological behavior as x->0. The Efremov-Leader-Teryaev integral is
consistent with zero within our measured kinematic range. The absolute value of
A2 is significantly smaller than the sqrt[R(1+A1)/2] limit.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 2 table
Observing the First Stars and Black Holes
The high sensitivity of JWST will open a new window on the end of the
cosmological dark ages. Small stellar clusters, with a stellar mass of several
10^6 M_sun, and low-mass black holes (BHs), with a mass of several 10^5 M_sun
should be directly detectable out to redshift z=10, and individual supernovae
(SNe) and gamma ray burst (GRB) afterglows are bright enough to be visible
beyond this redshift. Dense primordial gas, in the process of collapsing from
large scales to form protogalaxies, may also be possible to image through
diffuse recombination line emission, possibly even before stars or BHs are
formed. In this article, I discuss the key physical processes that are expected
to have determined the sizes of the first star-clusters and black holes, and
the prospect of studying these objects by direct detections with JWST and with
other instruments. The direct light emitted by the very first stellar clusters
and intermediate-mass black holes at z>10 will likely fall below JWST's
detection threshold. However, JWST could reveal a decline at the faint-end of
the high-redshift luminosity function, and thereby shed light on radiative and
other feedback effects that operate at these early epochs. JWST will also have
the sensitivity to detect individual SNe from beyond z=10. In a dedicated
survey lasting for several weeks, thousands of SNe could be detected at z>6,
with a redshift distribution extending to the formation of the very first stars
at z>15. Using these SNe as tracers may be the only method to map out the
earliest stages of the cosmic star-formation history. Finally, we point out
that studying the earliest objects at high redshift will also offer a new
window on the primordial power spectrum, on 100 times smaller scales than
probed by current large-scale structure data.Comment: Invited contribution to "Astrophysics in the Next Decade: JWST and
Concurrent Facilities", Astrophysics & Space Science Library, Eds. H.
Thronson, A. Tielens, M. Stiavelli, Springer: Dordrecht (2008
Search for R-Parity Violating Decays of Scalar Fermions at LEP
A search for pair-produced scalar fermions under the assumption that R-parity
is not conserved has been performed using data collected with the OPAL detector
at LEP. The data samples analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of
about 610 pb-1 collected at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) 189-209 GeV. An
important consequence of R-parity violation is that the lightest supersymmetric
particle is expected to be unstable. Searches of R-parity violating decays of
charged sleptons, sneutrinos and squarks have been performed under the
assumptions that the lightest supersymmetric particle decays promptly and that
only one of the R-parity violating couplings is dominant for each of the decay
modes considered. Such processes would yield final states consisting of
leptons, jets, or both with or without missing energy. No significant
single-like excess of events has been observed with respect to the Standard
Model expectations. Limits on the production cross- section of scalar fermions
in R-parity violating scenarios are obtained. Constraints on the supersymmetric
particle masses are also presented in an R-parity violating framework analogous
to the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model.Comment: 51 pages, 24 figures, Submitted to Eur. Phys. J.
Measurement of the Hadronic Photon Structure Function F_2^gamma at LEP2
The hadronic structure function of the photon F_2^gamma is measured as a
function of Bjorken x and of the factorisation scale Q^2 using data taken by
the OPAL detector at LEP. Previous OPAL measurements of the x dependence of
F_2^gamma are extended to an average Q^2 of 767 GeV^2. The Q^2 evolution of
F_2^gamma is studied for average Q^2 between 11.9 and 1051 GeV^2. As predicted
by QCD, the data show positive scaling violations in F_2^gamma. Several
parameterisations of F_2^gamma are in agreement with the measurements whereas
the quark-parton model prediction fails to describe the data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of Photon 2001,
Ascona, Switzerlan
Discovery of a gamma-ray black widow pulsar by GPU-accelerated Einstein@Home
We report the discovery of 1.97 ms period gamma-ray pulsations from the 75 minute orbital-period binary pulsar now named PSR J1653−0158. The associated Fermi Large Area Telescope gamma-ray source 4FGL J1653.6−0158 has long been expected to harbor a binary millisecond pulsar. Despite the pulsar-like gamma-ray spectrum and candidate optical/X-ray associations—whose periodic brightness modulations suggested an orbit—no radio pulsations had been found in many searches. The pulsar was discovered by directly searching the gamma-ray data using the GPU-accelerated Einstein@Home distributed volunteer computing system. The multidimensional parameter space was bounded by positional and orbital constraints obtained from the optical counterpart. More sensitive analyses of archival and new radio data using knowledge of the pulsar timing solution yield very stringent upper limits on radio emission. Any radio emission is thus either exceptionally weak, or eclipsed for a large fraction of the time. The pulsar has one of the three lowest inferred surface magnetic-field strengths of any known pulsar with B surf ≈ 4 × 107 G. The resulting mass function, combined with models of the companion star's optical light curve and spectra, suggests a pulsar mass gsim2 M ⊙. The companion is lightweight with mass ~0.01 M ⊙, and the orbital period is the shortest known for any rotation-powered binary pulsar. This discovery demonstrates the Fermi Large Area Telescope's potential to discover extreme pulsars that would otherwise remain undetected
Search for scalar bottom quarks and third-generation leptoquarks in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV
We report the results of a search for pair production of scalar bottom quarks
(sbottom) and scalar third-generation leptoquarks in 5.2 fb-1 of ppbar
collisions at the D0 experiment of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. Scalar
bottom quarks are assumed to decay to a neutralino and a quark, and we set
95% C.L. lower limits on their production in the (m_sbottom, m_neutralino) mass
plane such as m_sbottom>247 GeV for m_neutralino=0 and m_neutralino>110 GeV for
160<m_sbottom<200 GeV. The leptoquarks are assumed to decay to a tau neutrino
and a quark, and we set a 95% C.L. lower limit of 247 GeV on the mass of a
charge-1/3 third-generation scalar leptoquark.Comment: Published by Phys. Lett.
Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS
We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a
significant distance from their production point into a final state containing
charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is
conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV
and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS
detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles
is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We
observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of
supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the
neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino
masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final
version to appear in Physics Letters
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