999 research outputs found
Search for the hero: an investigation into the sports heroes of British sports fans
This is an initial study into British sports fansâ heroes. A questionnaire was sent to 95 students (average age ÂŒ 19.75) to identify their sporting hero, the heroâs sport and nationality and the reasons for this choice. Football was the most common source of sports heroes, identified by 49% of participants with a sporting hero. The majority (60%, N ÂŒ 48) of heroes chosen by participants were British, with David Beckham the most popular choice. Differences were observed between the gender of participants, gender of hero chosen and the reasons for choosing the hero. The most common reason for selecting a hero was a personal trait rather than skill, while in the questionnaire a category of Local Affiliation was added to those suggested by previous work. It was concluded that to become a hero athletes should combine skill with devotion to family, charity work and a place in popular culture
Ionospheric effects of the solar flares of September 23, 1998 and July 29, 1999 as deduced from global GPS network data
This paper presents data from first GPS measurements of global response of
the ionosphere to solar flares of September 23, 1998 and July 29, 1999. The
analysis used novel technology of a global detection of ionospheric effects
from solar flares (GLOBDET) as developed by one of the authors (Afraimovich E.
L.). The essence of the method is that use is made of appropriate filtering and
a coherent processing of variations in total electron content (TEC) in the
ionosphere which is determined from GPS data, simultaneously for the entire set
of visible (over a given time interval) GPS satellites at all stations used in
the analysis. It was found that fluctuations of TEC, obtained by removing the
linear trend of TEC with a time window of about 5 min, are coherent for all
stations and beams to the GPS satellites on the dayside of the Earth. The time
profile of TEC responses is similar to the time behavior of hard X-ray emission
variations during flares in the energy range 25-35 keV if the relaxation time
of electron density disturbances in the ionosphere of order 50-100 s is
introduced. No such effect on the nightside of the Earth has been detected yet.Comment: EmTeX-386, 13 pages, 5 figure
Newtonian Collapse of Scalar Field Dark Matter
In this letter, we develop a Newtonian approach to the collapse of galaxy
fluctuations of scalar field dark matter under initial conditions inferred from
simple assumptions. The full relativistic system, the so called
Einstein-Klein-Gordon, is reduced to the Schr\"odinger-Newton one in the weak
field limit. The scaling symmetries of the SN equations are exploited to track
the non-linear collapse of single scalar matter fluctuations. The results can
be applied to both real and complex scalar fields.Comment: 4 pages RevTex4 file, 4 eps figure
Blood feeding in juvenile Paragnathia formica (Isopoda: Gnathiidae): biochemical characterization of trypsin inhibitors, detection of anticoagulants, and molecular identification of fish hosts
SUMMARYThe 3 post-marsupial juvenile stages of the gnathiid isopod, Paragnathia formica, are haematophagous ectoparasites of fishes that may, in heavy infestations, cause host mortality. Protein digestion in fed stage 3 juveniles is accomplished by cysteine proteinases, but what bioactive compounds attenuate host haemostatic, inflammatory and immunological responses during feeding is unknown. Trypsin inhibitory activity and anticoagulant activity were detected in crude extracts of unfed P. formica stage 1 juveniles; fractionation of stage 1 crude extracts by ion exchange chromatography resulted in 3 preparations each displaying these bioactivities. Further characterization revealed anti-thrombin activity in 2 of these preparations, whilst the third displayed the strongest anticoagulant activity that targeted a factor of the intrinsic coagulation pathway. Three trypsin inhibitors (18 kDa, 21 kDa, and 22 kDa) were also detected using reverse zymography. In parallel, homogenates of fed stage 2 and 3 juveniles were used to identify their fish hosts by amplifying the 16S mitochondrial rDNA and 18S genomic rDNA vertebrate gene regions. Blood from at least 4 fish families had been ingested by separate individuals during feeding. This study demonstrates that trypsin inhibitors and anticoagulants are present in P. formica juveniles which could suppress host haemostatic, inflammatory and immunological responses during feeding, and that juveniles are not host specific
Surface and capillary transitions in an associating binary mixture model
We investigate the phase diagram of a two-component associating fluid mixture
in the presence of selectively adsorbing substrates. The mixture is
characterized by a bulk phase diagram which displays peculiar features such as
closed loops of immiscibility. The presence of the substrates may interfere the
physical mechanism involved in the appearance of these phase diagrams, leading
to an enhanced tendency to phase separate below the lower critical solution
point. Three different cases are considered: a planar solid surface in contact
with a bulk fluid, while the other two represent two models of porous systems,
namely a slit and an array on infinitely long parallel cylinders. We confirm
that surface transitions, as well as capillary transitions for a large
area/volume ratio, are stabilized in the one-phase region. Applicability of our
results to experiments reported in the literature is discussed.Comment: 12 two-column pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Physical
Review E; corrected versio
Evolution of the Schr\"odinger--Newton system for a self--gravitating scalar field
Using numerical techniques, we study the collapse of a scalar field
configuration in the Newtonian limit of the spherically symmetric
Einstein--Klein--Gordon (EKG) system, which results in the so called
Schr\"odinger--Newton (SN) set of equations. We present the numerical code
developed to evolve the SN system and topics related, like equilibrium
configurations and boundary conditions. Also, we analyze the evolution of
different initial configurations and the physical quantities associated to
them. In particular, we readdress the issue of the gravitational cooling
mechanism for Newtonian systems and find that all systems settle down onto a
0--node equilibrium configuration.Comment: RevTex file, 19 pages, 26 eps figures. Minor changes, matches version
to appear in PR
Chromatic perceptual learning
Perceptual learning has been shown on a wide variety of achromatic visual tasks. However, very little work has explored the possibility of improvements on chromatically based tasks. Here, we used a transfer of learning paradigm to assess the specificity of improvements at discriminating the orientation of a chromatically defined edge presented in luminance noise. Chromatic thresholds were estimated for two different hues and retinal locations, before and after a ten day training period. During training observers discriminated the orientation of a chromatic edge at just one location and hue. Whilst performance improved following training, these improvements failed to transfer across either retinal location or hue. Our findings suggest that improvements in chromatically-mediated discrimination may involve plasticity at early, retinotopically mapped, stages of visual analysis. Further, they suggest that categorical perception of colour might in part arise from chromatic perceptual learning at colour category boundaries. © 2011 - John Benjamins B.V
Special fast diffusion with slow asymptotics. Entropy method and flow on a Riemannian manifold
We consider the asymptotic behaviour of positive solutions of the
fast diffusion equation
posed for x\in\RR^d, , with a precise value for the exponent
. The space dimension is so that , and even
for . This case had been left open in the general study \cite{BBDGV} since
it requires quite different functional analytic methods, due in particular to
the absence of a spectral gap for the operator generating the linearized
evolution.
The linearization of this flow is interpreted here as the heat flow of the
Laplace-Beltrami operator of a suitable Riemannian Manifold (\RR^d,{\bf g}),
with a metric which is conformal to the standard \RR^d metric.
Studying the pointwise heat kernel behaviour allows to prove {suitable
Gagliardo-Nirenberg} inequalities associated to the generator. Such
inequalities in turn allow to study the nonlinear evolution as well, and to
determine its asymptotics, which is identical to the one satisfied by the
linearization. In terms of the rescaled representation, which is a nonlinear
Fokker--Planck equation, the convergence rate turns out to be polynomial in
time. This result is in contrast with the known exponential decay of such
representation for all other values of .Comment: 37 page
Determinant Representations for Correlation Functions of Spin-1/2 XXX and XXZ Heisenberg Magnets
We consider correlation functions of the spin-\half XXX and XXZ Heisenberg
chains in a magnetic field. Starting from the algebraic Bethe Ansatz we derive
representations for various correlation functions in terms of determinants of
Fredholm integral operators.Comment: 23 pages, TeX, BONN-TH-94-14, revised version: typos correcte
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