18,939 research outputs found
Prolonged elevations in haemostatic and rheological responses following psychological stress in low socioeconomic status men and women
Low socioeconomic status (SES) and psychological stress are associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease, and both may influence haemostatic responses. Von Willebrand factor (vWF), Factor VIII, plasma viscosity, haematocrit, blood viscosity, tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) and fibrin D- dimer were measured at rest and following stressful tasks in 238 middle-aged British civil servants. SES was defined by grade of employment. Lower SES was associated with higher resting vWF, Factor VIII and plasma viscosity. Psychological stress stimulated increases in haemostatic and rheological factors. Initial stress responses did not vary with SES, but Factor VIII, plasma viscosity and blood viscosity remained more elevated 45 minutes post-stress in lower SES participants. High blood pressure stress reactivity was also associated with greater haemostatic responses. We conclude that lower SES is characterised by more prolonged elevations in procoagulant responses following psychological stress, and that these processes might contribute to increased cardiac risk
Stratigraphy and reserves of pumiceous sand deposits in Perry's 'Asparagus Block' at Horotiu
The stratigraphic relationships between the deposits of the Hinuera Formation and the Taupo Pumice Alluvium are described over a 16 ha plot of land known as the 'Asparagus Block' at Horotiu. The Hinuera Formation is exposed at the surface at the southern end of this block, and is overlain by a wedge of Taupo Pumice Alluvium which increases in thickness from 0 to 8 m northwards across the block. Lithofacies in the Hinuera Formation are dominated by trough cross-bedded gravelly sands (lithofacies AI), with common cross-laminated sands (lithofacies B) and massive to horizontally laminated silts (lithofacies D). The pumice content of these deposits is mainly 70%. Lithofacies in the Taupo Pumice Alluvium are dominated by horizontally to inclined (tabular cross-) bedded slightly gravelly sands and sands (lithofacies G 1/2), with common occurrences of horizontally bedded to massive sandy silts (lithofacies D). The pumice content of these Taupo deposits is high, typically >80%. Cross-sections are presented showing an interpreted subsurface distribution of these lithofacies from south to north through the 'Asparagus Block'. The estimated reserve of extractable pumice sand from the block is of the order of about 400,000 to 450,000 mÂł
Dynamic trust models for ubiquitous computing environments
A significant characteristic of ubiquitous computing is the need for interactions of highly mobile entities to be secure: secure both for the entity and the environment in which the entity operates. Moreover, ubiquitous computing is also characterised by partial views over the state of the global environment, implying that we cannot guarantee that an environment can always verify the properties of the mobile entity that it has just received. Secure in this context encompasses both the need for cryptographic security and the need for trust, on the part of both parties, that the interaction is functioning as expected. In this paper we make a broad assumption that trust and cryptographic security can be considered as orthogonal concerns (i.e. an entity might encrypt a deliberately incorrect answer to a legitimate request). We assume the existence of reliable encryption techniques and focus on the characteristics of a model that supports the management of the trust relationships between two entities during an interaction in a ubiquitous environment
Exploring Deep Space: Learning Personalized Ranking in a Semantic Space
Recommender systems leverage both content and user interactions to generate
recommendations that fit users' preferences. The recent surge of interest in
deep learning presents new opportunities for exploiting these two sources of
information. To recommend items we propose to first learn a user-independent
high-dimensional semantic space in which items are positioned according to
their substitutability, and then learn a user-specific transformation function
to transform this space into a ranking according to the user's past
preferences. An advantage of the proposed architecture is that it can be used
to effectively recommend items using either content that describes the items or
user-item ratings. We show that this approach significantly outperforms
state-of-the-art recommender systems on the MovieLens 1M dataset.Comment: 6 pages, RecSys 2016 RSDL worksho
AdS/CFT and the Information Paradox
The information paradox in the quantum evolution of black holes is studied
within the framework of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The unitarity of the CFT
strongly suggests that all information about an initial state that forms a
black hole is returned in the Hawking radiation. The CFT dynamics implies an
information retention time of order the black hole lifetime. This fact
determines many qualitative properties of the non-local effects that must show
up in a semi-classical effective theory in the bulk. We argue that no
violations of causality are apparent to local observers, but the semi-classical
theory in the bulk duplicates degrees of freedom inside and outside the event
horizon. Non-local quantum effects are required to eliminate this redundancy.
This leads to a breakdown of the usual classical-quantum correspondence
principle in Lorentzian black hole spacetimes.Comment: 16 pages, harvmac, reference added, minor correction
Modelling the Galactic Magnetic Field on the Plane in 2D
We present a method for parametric modelling of the physical components of
the Galaxy's magnetised interstellar medium, simulating the observables, and
mapping out the likelihood space using a Markov Chain Monte-Carlo analysis. We
then demonstrate it using total and polarised synchrotron emission data as well
as rotation measures of extragalactic sources. With these three datasets, we
define and study three components of the magnetic field: the large-scale
coherent field, the small-scale isotropic random field, and the ordered field.
In this first paper, we use only data along the Galactic plane and test a
simple 2D logarithmic spiral model for the magnetic field that includes a
compression and a shearing of the random component giving rise to an ordered
component. We demonstrate with simulations that the method can indeed constrain
multiple parameters yielding measures of, for example, the ratios of the
magnetic field components. Though subject to uncertainties in thermal and
cosmic ray electron densities and depending on our particular model
parametrisation, our preliminary analysis shows that the coherent component is
a small fraction of the total magnetic field and that an ordered component
comparable in strength to the isotropic random component is required to explain
the polarisation fraction of synchrotron emission. We outline further work to
extend this type of analysis to study the magnetic spiral arm structure, the
details of the turbulence as well as the 3D structure of the magnetic field.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, updated to published MNRAS versio
Nonsingular Black Hole Evaporation and ``Stable'' Remnants
We examine the evaporation of two--dimensional black holes, the classical
space--times of which are extended geometries, like for example the
two--dimensional section of the extremal Reissner--Nordstrom black hole. We
find that the evaporation in two particular models proceeds to a stable
end--point. This should represent the generic behavior of a certain class of
two--dimensional dilaton--gravity models. There are two distinct regimes
depending on whether the back--reaction is weak or strong in a certain sense.
When the back--reaction is weak, evaporation proceeds via an adiabatic
evolution, whereas for strong back--reaction, the decay proceeds in a somewhat
surprising manner. Although information loss is inevitable in these models at
the semi--classical level, it is rather benign, in that the information is
stored in another asymptotic region.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, harvmac and epsf, RU-93-12, PUPT-1399,
NSF-ITP-93-5
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