11,334 research outputs found
Burden of fetal alcohol syndrome in a rural West Coast area of South Africa
Background. Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is common in parts of South Africa; rural residence is a frequently cited risk factor. We conducted a FAS school prevalence survey of an isolated rural community in a West Coast village of Western Cape Province, so obtaining the first directly measured rate, focusing specifically on a South African rural area, of FAS and partial FAS (PFAS).
Methods. The study area (Aurora village), a community of about 2 500 people in a grain-producing region, has one primary school. All learners were eligible for study inclusion. Initial anthropometry screening was followed by a diagnostic stage entailing examination by a dysmorphologist for features of FAS, neurodevelopmental assessment, and an interview assessing maternal alcohol consumption.
Results. Of 160 learners screened, 78 (49%) were screen-positive, of whom 63 (81%) were clinically assessed for FAS. The overall FAS/PFAS rate among the screened learners was 17.5% (95% confidence interval 12.0 - 24.2%), with 16 (10.0%) children having FAS and 12 (7.5%) PFAS. High rates of stunting, underweight and microcephaly were noted in all learners, especially those with FAS or PFAS. Five (18%) mothers of affected children were deceased by the time of assessment.
Conclusion. We describe very high rates of FAS/PFAS in an isolated rural part of the Western Cape that is not located in a viticultural region. Our study suggests that the prevalence of FA S may be very high in isolated communities, or in particular hot-spots. It adds to the growing evidence that FAS/PFAS is a significant, and underestimated, health problem in South Africa. Expanded screening and surveillance programmes, and preventive interventions, are urgently needed
Measuring frequency fluctuations in nonlinear nanomechanical resonators
Advances in nanomechanics within recent years have demonstrated an always
expanding range of devices, from top-down structures to appealing bottom-up
MoS and graphene membranes, used for both sensing and component-oriented
applications. One of the main concerns in all of these devices is frequency
noise, which ultimately limits their applicability. This issue has attracted a
lot of attention recently, and the origin of this noise remains elusive up to
date. In this Letter we present a very simple technique to measure frequency
noise in nonlinear mechanical devices, based on the presence of bistability. It
is illustrated on silicon-nitride high-stress doubly-clamped beams, in a
cryogenic environment. We report on the same dependence of the frequency
noise power spectra as reported in the literature. But we also find unexpected
{\it damping fluctuations}, amplified in the vicinity of the bifurcation
points; this effect is clearly distinct from already reported nonlinear
dephasing, and poses a fundamental limit on the measurement of bifurcation
frequencies. The technique is further applied to the measurement of frequency
noise as a function of mode number, within the same device. The relative
frequency noise for the fundamental flexure lies in the range
ppm (consistent with literature for cryogenic MHz devices), and
decreases with mode number in the range studied. The technique can be applied
to {\it any types} of nano-mechanical structures, enabling progresses towards
the understanding of intrinsic sources of noise in these devices.Comment: Published 7 may 201
The various manifestations of collisionless dissipation in wave propagation
The propagation of an electrostatic wave packet inside a collisionless and
initially Maxwellian plasma is always dissipative because of the irreversible
acceleration of the electrons by the wave. Then, in the linear regime, the wave
packet is Landau damped, so that in the reference frame moving at the group
velocity, the wave amplitude decays exponentially with time. In the nonlinear
regime, once phase mixing has occurred and when the electron motion is nearly
adiabatic, the damping rate is strongly reduced compared to the Landau one, so
that the wave amplitude remains nearly constant along the characteristics. Yet,
we show here that the electrons are still globally accelerated by the wave
packet, and, in one dimension, this leads to a non local amplitude dependence
of the group velocity. As a result, a freely propagating wave packet would
shrink, and, therefore, so would its total energy. In more than one dimension,
not only does the magnitude of the group velocity nonlinearly vary, but also
its direction. In the weakly nonlinear regime, when the collisionless damping
rate is still significant compared to its linear value, this leads to an
effective defocussing effect which we quantify, and which we compare to the
self-focussing induced by wave front bowing.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure
Photonic Hall effect in cold atomic clouds
On the basis of exact numerical simulations and analytical calculations, we
describe qualitatively and quantitatively the interference processes at the
origin of the photonic Hall effect for resonant Rayleigh (point-dipole)
scatterers in a magnetic field. For resonant incoming light, the induced giant
magneto-optical effects result in relative Hall currents in the percent range,
three orders of magnitude larger than with classical scatterers. This suggests
that the observation of the photonic Hall effect in cold atomic vapors is
within experimental reach.Comment: 4 pages 4 figure
Turbulence lifetimes: what we can learn from the physics of glasses
In this note, we critically discuss the issue of the possible finiteness of
the turbulence lifetime in subcritical transition to turbulence in shear flows,
which attracted a lot of interest recently. We briefly review recent
experimental and numerical results, as well as theoretical proposals, and
compare the difficulties arising in assessing this issue in subcritical shear
flow with that encountered in the study of the glass transition. In order to go
beyond the purely methodological similarities, we further elaborate on this
analogy and propose a qualitative mapping between these two apparently
unrelated situations, which could possibly foster new directions of research in
subcritical shear flows.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
Novel deletions causing pseudoxanthoma elasticum underscore the genomic instability of the ABCC6 region
Mutations in ABCC6 cause pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE), a heritable disease that affects elastic fibers. Thus far, >200 mutations have been characterized by various PCR-based techniques (primarily direct sequencing), identifying up to 90% of PXE-causing alleles. This study wanted to assess the importance of deletions and insertions in the ABCC6 genomic region, which is known to have a high recombinational potential. To detect ABCC6 deletions/insertions, which can be missed by direct sequencing, multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) was applied in PXE patients with an incomplete genotype. MLPA was performed in 35 PXE patients with at least one unidentified mutant allele after exonic sequencing and exclusion of the recurrent exon 23-29 deletion. Six multi-exon deletions and four single-exon deletions were detected. Using MLPA in addition to sequencing, we expanded the ABCC6 mutation spectrum with 9 novel deletions and characterized 25% of unidentified disease alleles. Our results further illustrate the instability of the ABCC6 genomic region and stress the importance of screening for deletions in the molecular diagnosis of PXE. Journal of Human Genetics (2010) 55, 112-117; doi: 10.1038/jhg.2009.132; published online 15 January 201
Being an Early-Career CMS Academic in the Context of Insecurity and ‘Excellence’: The Dialectics of Resistance and Compliance
Drawing on a dialectical approach to resistance, we conceptualise the latter as a multifaceted, pervasive and contradictory phenomenon. This enables us to examine the predicament in which early-career Critical Management Studies academics find themselves in the current times of academic insecurity and ‘excellence’, as gleaned through this group’s understandings of themselves as resisters and participants in the complex and contradictory forces constituting their field. We draw on 24 semi-structured interviews to map our participants’ accounts of themselves as resisters in terms of different approaches to tensions and contradictions between, on the one hand, the interviewees’ Critical Management Studies alignment and, on the other, the ethos of business school neoliberalism. Emerging from this analysis are three contingent and interlinked narratives of resistance and identity – diplomatic, combative and idealistic – each of which encapsulates a particular mode (negotiation, struggle, and laying one’s own path) of engaging with the relationship between Critical Management Studies and the business school ethos. The three narratives show how early-career Critical Management Studies academics not only use existing tensions, contradictions, overlaps and alliances between these positions to resist and comply with selected forces within each, but also contribute to the (re-)making of such overlaps, alliances, tensions and contradictions. Through this reworking of what it means to be both Critical Management Studies scholars and business school academics, we argue, early-career Critical Management Studies academics can be seen as active resisters and re-constituters of their complex field
Scalar field collapse in three-dimensional AdS spacetime
We describe results of a numerical calculation of circularly symmetric scalar
field collapse in three spacetime dimensions with negative cosmological
constant. The procedure uses a double null formulation of the Einstein-scalar
equations. We see evidence of black hole formation on first implosion of a
scalar pulse if the initial pulse amplitude is greater than a critical
value . Sufficiently near criticality the apparent horizon radius
grows with pulse amplitude according to the formula .Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure; references added, to appear in CQG(L
Dimensionality cross-over in magnetism: from domain walls (2D) to vortices (1D)
Dimensionality cross-over is a classical topic in physics. Surprisingly it
has not been searched in micromagnetism, which deals with objects such as
domain walls (2D) and vortices (1D). We predict by simulation a second-order
transition between these two objects, with the wall length as the Landau
parameter. This was conrmed experimentally based on micron-sized ux-closure
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