2,237 research outputs found
The onset of a small-scale turbulent dynamo at low magnetic Prandtl numbers
We study numerically the dependence of the critical magnetic Reynolds number
Rmc for the turbulent small-scale dynamo on the hydrodynamic Reynolds number
Re. The turbulence is statistically homogeneous, isotropic, and
mirror--symmetric. We are interested in the regime of low magnetic Prandtl
number Pm=Rm/Re<1, which is relevant for stellar convective zones, protostellar
disks, and laboratory liquid-metal experiments. The two asymptotic
possibilities are Rmc->const as Re->infinity (a small-scale dynamo exists at
low Pm) or Rmc/Re=Pmc->const as Re->infinity (no small-scale dynamo exists at
low Pm). Results obtained in two independent sets of simulations of MHD
turbulence using grid and spectral codes are brought together and found to be
in quantitative agreement. We find that at currently accessible resolutions,
Rmc grows with Re with no sign of approaching a constant limit. We reach the
maximum values of Rmc~500 for Re~3000. By comparing simulations with Laplacian
viscosity, fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-order hyperviscosity and Smagorinsky
large-eddy viscosity, we find that Rmc is not sensitive to the particular form
of the viscous cutoff. This work represents a significant extension of the
studies previously published by Schekochihin et al. 2004, PRL 92, 054502 and
Haugen et al. 2004, PRE, 70, 016308 and the first detailed scan of the
numerically accessible part of the stability curve Rmc(Re).Comment: 4 pages, emulateapj aastex, 2 figures; final version as published in
ApJL (but with colour figures
Cardiac Screening of Young Athletes: a Practical Approach to Sudden Cardiac Death Prevention.
PURPOSE OF REVIEW: We aim to report on the current status of cardiovascular screening of athletes worldwide and review the up-to-date evidence for its efficacy in reducing sudden cardiac death in young athletes. RECENT FINDINGS: A large proportion of sudden cardiac death in young individuals and athletes occurs during rest with sudden arrhythmic death syndrome being recognised as the leading cause. The international recommendations for ECG interpretation have reduced the false-positive ECG rate to 3% and reduced the cost of screening by 25% without compromising the sensitivity to identify serious disease. There are some quality control issues that have been recently identified including the necessity for further training to guide physicians involved in screening young athletes. Improvements in our understanding of young sudden cardiac death and ECG interpretation guideline modification to further differentiate physiological ECG patterns from those that may represent underlying disease have significantly improved the efficacy of screening to levels that may make screening more attractive and feasible to sporting organisations as a complementary strategy to increased availability of automated external defibrillators to reduce the overall burden of young sudden cardiac death
A Compromise between Neutrino Masses and Collider Signatures in the Type-II Seesaw Model
A natural extension of the standard gauge
model to accommodate massive neutrinos is to introduce one Higgs triplet and
three right-handed Majorana neutrinos, leading to a neutrino mass
matrix which contains three sub-matrices ,
and . We show that three light Majorana neutrinos (i.e., the mass
eigenstates of , and ) are exactly massless in this
model, if and only if
exactly holds. This no-go theorem implies that small but non-vanishing neutrino
masses may result from a significant but incomplete cancellation between
and terms in the Type-II
seesaw formula, provided three right-handed Majorana neutrinos are of TeV and experimentally detectable at the LHC. We propose three simple
Type-II seesaw scenarios with the flavor symmetry to
interpret the observed neutrino mass spectrum and neutrino mixing pattern. Such
a TeV-scale neutrino model can be tested in two complementary ways: (1)
searching for possible collider signatures of lepton number violation induced
by the right-handed Majorana neutrinos and doubly-charged Higgs particles; and
(2) searching for possible consequences of unitarity violation of the neutrino mixing matrix in the future long-baseline neutrino oscillation
experiments.Comment: RevTeX 19 pages, no figure
On the connection between gamma and radio radiation spectra in pulsars
The model of pulsar radio emission is discussed in which a coherent radio
emis-sion is excited in a vacuum gap above polar cap of neutron star. Pulsar X
and gamma radiation are considered as the result of low-frequency radio
emission inverse Comp-ton scattering on ultra relativistic electrons
accelerated in the gap. The influence of the pulsar magnetic field on Compton
scattering is taken into account. The relation of radio and gamma radiation
spectra has been found in the framework of the model.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, Russian version accepted to JETP, partly
published in JETP Letters, Vol. 85, #6 (2007
Perpendicular Ion Heating by Low-Frequency Alfven-Wave Turbulence in the Solar Wind
We consider ion heating by turbulent Alfven waves (AWs) and kinetic Alfven
waves (KAWs) with perpendicular wavelengths comparable to the ion gyroradius
and frequencies smaller than the ion cyclotron frequency. When the turbulence
amplitude exceeds a certain threshold, an ion's orbit becomes chaotic. The ion
then interacts stochastically with the time-varying electrostatic potential,
and the ion's energy undergoes a random walk. Using phenomenological arguments,
we derive an analytic expression for the rates at which different ion species
are heated, which we test by simulating test particles interacting with a
spectrum of randomly phased AWs and KAWs. We find that the stochastic heating
rate depends sensitively on the quantity epsilon = dv/vperp, where vperp is the
component of the ion velocity perpendicular to the background magnetic field
B0, and dv (dB) is the rms amplitude of the velocity (magnetic-field)
fluctuations at the gyroradius scale. In the case of thermal protons, when
epsilon << eps1, where eps1 is a constant, a proton's magnetic moment is nearly
conserved and stochastic heating is extremely weak. However, when epsilon >
eps1, the proton heating rate exceeds the cascade power that would be present
in strong balanced KAW turbulence with the same value of dv, and
magnetic-moment conservation is violated. For the random-phase waves in our
test-particle simulations, eps1 is approximately 0.2. For protons in low-beta
plasmas, epsilon is approximately dB/B0 divided by the square root of beta, and
epsilon can exceed eps1 even when dB/B0 << eps1. At comparable temperatures,
alpha particles and minor ions have larger values of epsilon than protons and
are heated more efficiently as a result. We discuss the implications of our
results for ion heating in coronal holes and the solar wind.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Ap
Size- and charge-dependent non-specific uptake of PEGylated nanoparticles by macrophages
The assessment of macrophage response to nanoparticles is a central component in the evaluation of new nanoparticle designs for future in vivo application. This work investigates which feature, nanoparticle size or charge, is more predictive of non-specific uptake of nanoparticles by macrophages. This was investigated by synthesizing a library of polymer-coated iron oxide micelles, spanning a range of 30–100 nm in diameter and −23 mV to +9 mV, and measuring internalization into macrophages in vitro. Nanoparticle size and charge both contributed towards non-specific uptake, but within the ranges investigated, size appears to be a more dominant predictor of uptake. Based on these results, a protease-responsive nanoparticle was synthesized, displaying a matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9)-cleavable polymeric corona. These nanoparticles are able to respond to MMP-9 activity through the shedding of 10–20 nm of hydrodynamic diameter. This MMP-9-triggered decrease in nanoparticle size also led to up to a six-fold decrease in nanoparticle internalization by macrophages and is observable by T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. These findings guide the design of imaging or therapeutic nanoparticles for in vivo targeting of macrophage activity in pathologic states
Using XDAQ in Application Scenarios of the CMS Experiment
XDAQ is a generic data acquisition software environment that emerged from a
rich set of of use-cases encountered in the CMS experiment. They cover not the
deployment for multiple sub-detectors and the operation of different processing
and networking equipment as well as a distributed collaboration of users with
different needs. The use of the software in various application scenarios
demonstrated the viability of the approach. We discuss two applications, the
tracker local DAQ system for front-end commissioning and the muon chamber
validation system. The description is completed by a brief overview of XDAQ.Comment: Conference CHEP 2003 (Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics,
La Jolla, CA
Sudden cardiac death athletes: a systematic review
Previous events evidence that sudden cardiac death (SCD) in athletes is still a reality and it keeps challenging cardiologists. Considering the importance of SCD in athletes and the requisite for an update of this matter, we endeavored to describe SCD in athletes. The Medline (via PubMed) and SciELO databases were searched using the subject keywords "sudden death, athletes and mortality". The incidence of SCD is expected at one case for each 200,000 young athletes per year. Overall it is resulted of complex dealings of factors such as arrhythmogenic substrate, regulator and triggers factors. In great part of deaths caused by heart disease in athletes younger than 35 years old investigations evidence cardiac congenital abnormalities. Athletes above 35 years old possibly die due to impairments of coronary heart disease, frequently caused by atherosclerosis. Myocardial ischemia and myocardial infarction are responsible for the most cases of SCD above this age (80%). Pre-participatory athletes' evaluation helps to recognize situations that may put the athlete's life in risk including cardiovascular diseases. In summary, cardiologic examinations of athletes' pre-competition routine is an important way to minimize the risk of SCD
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