573 research outputs found
Evaluation of the Developmental Toxicity of Lead in the Danio rerio Body
Lead has been utilized throughout history and is widely distributed and mobilized globally. Although lead in the environment has been somewhat mitigated, the nature of lead and its extensive uses in the past prohibit it from being completely absent from our environment and exposure to lead is still a public health concern. Most studies regarding lead toxicity have focused on the brain. However, little is found in the literature on the effects of lead in other tissues. Here, we utilize the zebrafish model system to investigate effects of lead exposure during early developmental time windows at 24, 48 and 72 hours post fertilization in the body. We analyze whole body, notochord and somatic muscle changes, vascular changes of the body, as well as motor neuron alterations. We find lead exposure induces a curved body phenotype with concomitant changes in somite length, decreased notochord staining and abnormal muscle staining using live and in situ approaches. Furthermore, altered vasculature within the somatic regions, loss and/or alternations of motor neuron extension both dorsally and ventrally from the spinal cord, loss of Rohon-Beard sensory neurons, and increased areas of apoptosis were found. We conclude that lead is developmentally toxic to other areas of the developing embryo, not just the brain
The model of particle production by strong external sources
Using some knowledge of multiplicity disributions for high energy reactions,
it is possible to propose a simple analytical model of particle production by
strong external sources. The model describes qualitatively most peculiar
properties of the distributions. The generating function of the distribution
varies so drastically as it can happen at phase transitions.Comment: 7 pages, no Figures, LATEX; Eq. (10) corrected, Eqs (25), (26) added,
ref [20] corrected; Pisma v Zhetf 84, n5 (2006
Trends in the medical management of patients with heart failure
BACKGROUND: Despite the availability of effective therapies, heart failure (HF) remains a highly prevalent disease and the leading cause of hospitalizations in the U.S. Few data are available, however, describing changing trends in the use of various cardiac medications to treat patients with HF and factors associated with treatment. The objectives of this population-based study were to examine decade-long trends (1995 - 2004) in the use of several cardiac medications in patients hospitalized with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) and factors associated with evidence-based treatment.
METHODS: We reviewed the medical records of 9,748 residents of the Worcester, MA, metropolitan area who were hospitalized with ADHF at all 11 central Massachusetts medical centers in 1995, 2000, 2002, and 2004.
RESULTS: Between 1995 and 2004, respectively, the prescription upon hospital discharge of beta-blockers (23%; 67%), angiotensin pathway inhibitors (47%; 55%), statins (5%; 43%), and aspirin (35%; 51%) increased markedly, while the use of digoxin (51%; 29%), nitrates (46%; 24%), and calcium channel blockers (33%; 22%) declined significantly; nearly all patients received diuretics. Patients in the earliest study year, those with a history of obstructive pulmonary disease or anemia, incident HF, non-specific symptoms, and women were less likely to receive beta blockers and angiotensin pathway inhibitors than respective comparison groups. In 2004, 82% of patients were discharged on at least one of these recommended agents; however, only 41% were discharged on medications from both recommended classes.
CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that opportunities exist to further improve the use of HF therapeutics
Critical Behavior of Hadronic Fluctuations and the Effect of Final-State Randomization
The critical behaviors of quark-hadron phase transition are explored by use
of the Ising model adapted for hadron production. Various measures involving
the fluctuations of the produced hadrons in bins of various sizes are examined
with the aim of quantifying the clustering properties that are universal
features of all critical phenomena. Some of the measures involve wavelet
analysis. Two of the measures are found to exhibit the canonical power-law
behavior near the critical temperature. The effect of final-state randomization
is studied by requiring the produced particles to take random walks in the
transverse plane. It is demonstrated that for the measures considered the
dependence on the randomization process is weak. Since temperature is not a
directly measurable variable, the average hadronic density of a portion of each
event is used as the control variable that is measurable. The event-to-event
fluctuations are taken into account in the study of the dependence of the
chosen measures on that control variable. Phenomenologically verifiable
critical behaviors are found and are proposed for use as a signature of
quark-hadron phase transition in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.Comment: 17 pages (Latex) + 24 figures (ps file), submitted to Phys. Rev.
Congenital tumors and nonimmune hydrops fetalis
Peer Reviewe
Universal behavior of multiplicity differences in quark-hadron phase transition
The scaling behavior of factorial moments of the differences in
multiplicities between well separated bins in heavy-ion collisions is proposed
as a probe of quark-hadron phase transition. The method takes into account some
of the physical features of nuclear collisions that cause some difficulty in
the application of the usual method. It is shown in the Ginzburg-Landau theory
that a numerical value of the scaling exponent can be determined
independent of the parameters in the problem. The universality of
characterizes quark-hadron phase transition, and can be tested directly by
appropriately analyzed data.Comment: 15 pages, including 4 figures (in epsf file), Latex, submitted to
Phys. Rev.
Separating Agent-Functioning and Inter-Agent Coordination by Activated Modules: The DECOMAS Architecture
The embedding of self-organizing inter-agent processes in distributed
software applications enables the decentralized coordination system elements,
solely based on concerted, localized interactions. The separation and
encapsulation of the activities that are conceptually related to the
coordination, is a crucial concern for systematic development practices in
order to prepare the reuse and systematic integration of coordination processes
in software systems. Here, we discuss a programming model that is based on the
externalization of processes prescriptions and their embedding in Multi-Agent
Systems (MAS). One fundamental design concern for a corresponding execution
middleware is the minimal-invasive augmentation of the activities that affect
coordination. This design challenge is approached by the activation of agent
modules. Modules are converted to software elements that reason about and
modify their host agent. We discuss and formalize this extension within the
context of a generic coordination architecture and exemplify the proposed
programming model with the decentralized management of (web) service
infrastructures
A Color Mutation Model of Soft Interaction in High Energy Hadronic Collisions
A comprehensive model, called ECOMB, is proposed to describe multiparticle
production by soft interaction. It incorporates the eikonal formalism, parton
model, color mutation, branching and recombination. The physics is conceptually
opposite to the dynamics that underlies the fragmentation of a string. The
partons are present initially in a hadronic collision; they form a single,
large, color-neutral cluster until color mutation of the quarks leads to a
fission of the cluster into two color-neutral subclusters. The mutation and
branching processes continue until only pairs are left in each small
cluster. The model contains self-similar dynamics and exhibits scaling behavior
in the factorial moments. It can satisfactorily reproduce the intermittency
data that no other model has been able to fit.Comment: 24 pages including 11 figures in revtex epsf styl
Modified Gravity on the Brane and Dark Energy
We analyze the dynamics of an AdS5 braneworld with matter fields when gravity
is allowed to deviate from the Einstein form on the brane. We consider exact
5-dimensional warped solutions which are associated with conformal bulk fields
of weight -4 and describe on the brane the following three dynamics: those of
inhomogeneous dust, of generalized dark radiation, and of homogeneous
polytropic dark energy. We show that, with modified gravity on the brane, the
existence of such dynamical geometries requires the presence of non-conformal
matter fields confined to the brane.Comment: Revised version published in Gen. Rel. Grav. Typos corrected, updated
reference and some remarks added for clarity. 11 pages, latex, no figure
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