3,030 research outputs found
Revitalizing Snow Brand Milk
This case study explores the food poisoning crisis at Snow Brand Milk, one of Japan\u27s largest dairy companies. It examines in particular how the firm successfully revitalized itself and saved the brand
Surface energy and stability of stress-driven discommensurate surface structures
A method is presented to obtain {\it ab initio} upper and lower bounds to
surface energies of stress-driven discommensurate surface structures, possibly
non-periodic or exhibiting very large unit cells. The instability of the
stressed, commensurate parent of the discommensurate structure sets an upper
bound to its surface energy; a lower bound is defined by the surface energy of
an ideally commensurate but laterally strained hypothetical surface system. The
surface energies of the phases of the Si(111):Ga and Ge(111):Ga systems and the
energies of the discommensurations are determined within eV.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX. 2 Figures not included. Ask for a hard copy (through
regular mail) to [email protected]
General Neutralino NLSPs at the Early LHC
Gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB) is a theoretically
well-motivated framework with rich and varied collider phenomenology. In this
paper, we study the Tevatron limits and LHC discovery potential for a wide
class of GMSB scenarios in which the next-to-lightest superpartner (NLSP) is a
promptly-decaying neutralino. These scenarios give rise to signatures involving
hard photons, 's, 's, jets and/or higgses, plus missing energy. In order
to characterize these signatures, we define a small number of minimal spectra,
in the context of General Gauge Mediation, which are parameterized by the mass
of the NLSP and the gluino. Using these minimal spectra, we determine the most
promising discovery channels for general neutralino NLSPs. We find that the
2010 dataset can already cover new ground with strong production for all NLSP
types. With the upcoming 2011-2012 dataset, we find that the LHC will also have
sensitivity to direct electroweak production of neutralino NLSPs.Comment: 26 page
Molecular basis for Staphylococcus aureus-mediated platelet aggregate formation under arterial shear in vitro.
OBJECTIVE: Staphylococcus aureus is the most frequent causative organism of infective endocarditis (IE) and is characterized by thrombus formation on a cardiac valve that can embolize to a distant site. Previously, we showed that S. aureus clumping factor A (ClfA) and fibronectin-binding protein A (FnBPA) can stimulate rapid platelet aggregation. METHODS AND RESULTS: In this study we investigate their relative roles in mediating aggregate formation under physiological shear conditions. Platelets failed to interact with immobilized wild-type S. aureus (Newman) at shear rates \u3c500\u3es(-1) but rapidly formed an aggregate at shear rates \u3e800 s(-1). Inactivation of the ClfA gene eliminated aggregate formation at any shear rate. Using surrogate hosts that do not interact with platelets bacteria overexpressing ClfA supported rapid aggregate formation under high shear with a similar profile to Newman whereas bacteria overexpressing FnBPA did not. Fibrinogen binding to ClfA was found to be essential for aggregate formation although fibrinogen-coated surfaces only allowed single-platelets to adhere under all shear conditions. Blockade of the platelet immunoglobulin receptor Fc gammaRIIa inhibited aggregate formation. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, fibrinogen and IgG binding to ClfA is essential for aggregate formation under arterial shear conditions and may explain why S. aureus is the major cause of IE
The FUSE survey of OVI absorption in and near the Galaxy
We present FUSE observations of OVI absorption in a sample of 100
extragalactic targets and 2 distant halo stars. We describe the details of the
calibration, alignment in velocity, continuum fitting, and manner in which
contaminants were removed (Galactic H2, absorption intrinsic to the background
target and intergalactic Ly-beta lines). We searched for OVI absorption in the
velocity range -1200 to 1200 km/s. With a few exceptions, we only find OVI
between -400 and 400 km/s; the exceptions may be intergalactic OVI. We discuss
the separation of the observed OVI absorption into components associated with
the Galactic halo and components at high-velocity, which are probably located
in the neighborhood of the Galaxy. We describe the measurements of equivalent
width and column density, and we analyze the different contributions to the
errors. We conclude that low-velocity Galactic OVI absorption occurs along all
sightlines - the few non-detections only occur in noisy spectra. We further
show that high-velocity OVI is very common, having equivalent width >65 mAA in
50% of the sightlines and >30 mAA in 70% of the high-quality sightlines. The
high-velocity OVI absorption has velocities relative to the LSR of
+/-(100--330) km/s; there is no correlation between velocity and absorption
strength. We present 50 km/s wide OVI channel maps. These show evidence for the
imprint of Galactic rotation. They also highlight two known HI high-velocity
clouds (complex~C and the Magellanic Stream). The channel maps further show
that OVI at velocities <-200 km/s occurs along all sightlines in the region
l=20-150, b200 km/s occurs along all sightlines
in the region l=180-300, b>20 (abbreviated).Comment: 85 pages, 127 figures, 13 color figures, 3 tables, AASTeX preprint
format. All figures are in PNG format due to space concerns. Bound copies of
manuscript and two accompanying articles are available upon request.
submitted to ApJ
Evaluation of treatment risks and the quality of information contained within the websites of specialist orthodontists
Facebook legal and regulatory advertising compliance by specialist orthodontic practices: a cross-sectional survey
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