The relationship between the adoption of Internet banking and electronic connectivity: - An international comparison

This paper is concerned with the relationship between the adoption rate of Internet banking and electronic connectivity. Electronic connectivity is measured using three components: personal computer connectivity, Internet connectivity and mobile phone connectivity. Regression is used to analyse these relationships for a sample of developed and developing economies. The results indicate that changes in electronic connectivity, however defined, have a significant impact on the adoption rate of Internet banking. The most significant influence on the adoption rate of Internet banking would appear to be the increase in the percentage of the population owning personal computers.Internet banking; Electronic connectivity; Information technology

Gulf War Syndrome: A role for organophosphate induced plasticity of locus coeruleus neurons

Gulf War syndrome is a chronic multi-symptom illness that has affected about a quarter of the deployed veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Exposure to prolonged low-level organophosphate insecticides and other toxic chemicals is now thought to be responsible. Chlorpyrifos was one commonly used insecticide. The metabolite of chlorpyrifos, chlorpyrifos oxon, is a potent irreversible inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase, much like the nerve agent Sarin. To date, the target brain region(s) most susceptible to the neuroactive effects of chlorpyrifos oxon have yet to be identified. To address this we tested ability of chlorpyrifos oxon to influence neuronal excitability and induce lasting changes in the locus coeruleus, a brain region implicated in anxiety, substance use, attention and emotional response to stress. Here we used an ex vivo rodent model to identify a dramatic effect of chlorpyrifos oxon on locus coeruleus noradrenergic neuronal activity. Prolonged exposure to chlorpyrifos oxon caused acute inhibition and a lasting rebound excitatory state expressed after days of exposure and subsequent withdrawal. Our findings indicate that the locus coeruleus is a brain region vulnerable to chlorpyrifos oxon-induced neuroplastic changes possibly leading to the neurological symptoms affecting veterans of the Gulf War

Electrically driven spin resonance in a bent disordered carbon nanotube

Resonant manipulation of carbon nanotube valley-spin qubits by an electric field is investigated theoretically. We develop a new analysis of electrically driven spin resonance exploiting fixed physical characteristics of the nanotube: a bend and inhomogeneous disorder. The spectrum is simulated for an electron valley-spin qubit coupled to a hole valley-spin qubit and an impurity electron spin, and features that coincide with a recent measurement are identified. We show that the same mechanism allows resonant control of the full four-dimensional spin-valley space.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Targeting Cancer Gene Therapy with Magnetic Nanoparticles

Recent advances in cancer genomics have opened up unlimited potential for treating cancer by directly targeting culprit genes. However, novel delivery methods are needed in order for this potential to be translated into clinically viable treatments for patients. Magnetic nanoparticle technology offers the potential to achieve selective and efficient delivery of therapeutic genes by using external magnetic fields, and also allows simultaneous imaging to monitor the delivery in vivo. Compared to conventional gene delivery strategies, this technique has been shown to significantly increase gene delivery to human xenograft tumors models, as well as various internal organs (e.g. liver, kidney) and the central nervous system. Magnetic nanoparticle technology, therefore, has the potential to turn the challenge of gene therapy in vivo into a new frontier for cancer treatment

Directed flow of neutral strange particles at AGS

Directed flow of neutral strange particles in heavy ion collisions at AGS is studied in the ART transport model. Using a lambda mean-field potential which is 2/3 of that for a nucleon as predicted by the constituent quark model, lambdas are found to flow with protons but with a smaller flow parameter as observed in experiments. For kaons, their repulsive potential, which is calculated from the impulse approximation using the measured kaon-nucleon scattering length, leads to a smaller anti-flow than that shown in the preliminary E895 data. Implications of this discrepancy are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Influence of Hemianopic Visual Field Loss on Visual Motor Control

Background: Homonymous hemianopia (HH) is an anisotropic visual impairment characterized by the binocular inability to see one side of the visual field. Patients with HH often misperceive visual space. Here we investigated how HH affects visual motor control. Methods and Findings: Seven patients with complete HH and no neglect or cognitive decline and seven gender- and age-matched controls viewed displays in which a target moved randomly along the horizontal or the vertical axis. They used a joystick to control the target movement to keep it at the center of the screen. We found that the mean deviation of the target position from the center of the screen along the horizontal axis was biased toward the blind side for five out of seven HH patients. More importantly, while the normal vision controls showed more precise control and larger response amplitudes when the target moved along the horizontal rather than the vertical axis, the control performance of the HH patients was not different between these two target motion experimental conditions. Conclusions: Compared with normal vision controls, HH affected patients' control performance when the target moved horizontally (i.e., along the axis of their visual impairment) rather than vertically. We conclude that hemianopia affects the use of visual information for online control of a moving target specific to the axis of visual impairment. The implications of the findings for driving in hemianopic patients are discussed

Deep crustal heating by neutrinos from the surface of accreting neutron stars

We present a new mechanism for deep crustal heating in accreting neutron stars. Charged pions ($\pi^+$) are produced in nuclear collisions on the neutron star surface during active accretion and upon decay they provide a flux of neutrinos into the neutron star crust. For massive and/or compact neutron stars, neutrinos deposit $\approx 1\textrm{--} 2 \, \mathrm{MeV}$ of heat per accreted nucleon into the inner crust. The strength of neutrino heating is comparable to the previously known sources of deep crustal heating, such as from pycnonuclear fusion reactions, and is relevant for studies of cooling neutron stars. We model the thermal evolution of a transient neutron star in a low-mass X-ray binary, and in the particular case of the neutron star MXB~1659-29 we show that additional deep crustal heating requires a higher thermal conductivity for the neutron star inner crust. A better knowledge of pion production cross sections near threshold would improve the accuracy of our predictions.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables; [Added a new figure and edited the text in response to Referee's remarks and suggestions

Ecogeomorphic feedbacks and flood loss of riparian tree seedlings in meandering channel experiments

During floods, fluvial forces interact with riparian plants to influence evolution of river morphology and floodplain plant community development. Understanding of these interactions, however, is constrained by insufficient precision and control of drivers in field settings, and insufficient realism in laboratory studies. We completed a novel set of flume experiments using woody seedlings planted on a sandbar within an outdoor meandering stream channel. We quantified effects on local sedimentation and seedling loss to scour and burial across realistic ranges of woody plant morphologies (Populus versus Tamarix species), densities (240 plants m-2 versus 24 m-2), and sediment supply (equilibrium versus deficit). Sedimentation was higher within Tamarix patches than Populus patches, reflecting Tamarix’s greater crown frontal area and lower maximum crown density. Plant dislodgement occurred rarely (1% of plants) and was induced in plants with shorter roots. Complete burial was most frequent for small Tamarix that occurred at high densities. Burial risk decreased 3% for Populus and 13% for Tamarix for every centimeter increment in stem height, and was very low for plants \u3e50 cm tall. These results suggest that Tamarix are proportionally more vulnerable than Populus when small (\u3c20 cm tall), but that larger plants of both species are resistant to both burial and scour. Thus, plant morphological traits and development windows must be considered in addition to physical drivers when designing process-based restoration efforts on regulated rivers such as flow releases to benefit native tree species

GOing Forward With the Cardiac Conduction System Using Gene Ontology

The cardiac conduction system (CCS) comprises critical components responsible for the initiation and coordination of the action potential. Aberrant CCS development can cause conduction abnormalities, including sick sinus syndrome and atrioventricular and bundle branch blocks. Gene Ontology (GO; http://geneontology.org/) is an invaluable global bioinformatics resource which can provide structured, computable knowledge describing the functions of gene products. Many gene products are known be involved in CCS development; however, this information is not comprehensively captured by GO. Our study aimed to describe the specific roles of essential proteins that have been reported in the literature to be involved with development and/or function of the CCS. 14 proteins were prioritised for GO annotation which led to the curation of 15 peer-reviewed primary experimental articles using carefully selected GO terms. 152 descriptive GO annotations, including those describing sinoatrial node and atrioventricular node development were created and submitted to the GO Consortium database. A functional enrichment analysis of the 35 proteins known to have a role in CCS confirmed that this work has improved the in silico interpretation of this CCS dataset. Our contribution to the GO database may help elucidate the key mechanisms involved in CCS disorders as previous annotation projects have focussed predominantly on development of the heart rather than that of the CCS. This work may improve future heart disease investigations applying high-throughput methods such as genome-wide association studies analysis, proteomics and transcriptomics