Increased Metabolic Rate in X-linked Hypophosphatemic Mice

Hyp mice are a model for human X-linked hypophosphatemia, the most common form of vitamin D-resistant rickets. It has previously been observed that Hyp mice have a greater food consumption per gram body weight than do normal mice. This led to the search for some alteration in metabolism in Hyp mice. We found that oxygen consumption was significantly higher in Hyp mice than in normal C57BL/6J mice and this was accompanied by an increased percentage of cardiac output being delivered to organs of heat production (liver and skeletal muscle), to the skin, and to bone and a decreased percentage to the gastrointestinal tract of Hyp mice. The increased oxygen consumption in Hyp mice was not associated with increased plasma free T4 levels and was not affected by alterations in plasma phosphate produced by a low phosphate diet. The cause of the increased oxygen consumption is not known, and the role that this change and reported changes in distribution of cardiac output may play in the development of X-linked hypophosphatemia is also unknown. Study of the cardiovascular and thermoregulatory systems in Hyp mice should help increase understanding of the underlying mechanisms of this disease

Listeners normalize speech for contextual speech rate even without an explicit recognition task

Speech can be produced at different rates. Listeners take this rate variation into account by normalizing vowel duration for contextual speech rate: An ambiguous Dutch word /m?t/ is perceived as short /mAt/ when embedded in a slow context, but long /ma:t/ in a fast context. Whilst some have argued that this rate normalization involves low-level automatic perceptual processing, there is also evidence that it arises at higher-level cognitive processing stages, such as decision making. Prior research on rate-dependent speech perception has only used explicit recognition tasks to investigate the phenomenon, involving both perceptual processing and decision making. This study tested whether speech rate normalization can be observed without explicit decision making, using a cross-modal repetition priming paradigm. Results show that a fast precursor sentence makes an embedded ambiguous prime (/m?t/) sound (implicitly) more /a:/-like, facilitating lexical access to the long target word "maat" in a (explicit) lexical decision task. This result suggests that rate normalization is automatic, taking place even in the absence of an explicit recognition task. Thus, rate normalization is placed within the realm of everyday spoken conversation, where explicit categorization of ambiguous sounds is rare

Time-Temperature Superposition of Structural Relaxation in a Viscous Metallic Liquid

Bulk metallic glass-forming Pd40Ni10Cu30P20 has been investigated in its equilibrium liquid by quasielastic neutron scattering. The quasielastic signal exhibits a structural relaxation as known from nonmetallic viscous liquids. Even well above the melting point, the structural relaxation is nonexponential and obeys a universal time-temperature superposition. From the mean relaxation times average diffusivities have been determined, resulting in values on a 10^-10 m^2 s^-1 scale, 3 orders of magnitude slower than in simple metallic liquids

Integrability of the critical point of the Kagom\'e three-state Potts mode

The vicinity of the critical point of the three-state Potts model on a Kagom\'e lattice is studied by mean of Random Matrix Theory. Strong evidence that the critical point is integrable is given.Comment: 1 LaTex file + 3 eps files 7 page

The Transition from School to Work: The Experiences of Blacks and Whites

Because much of the concern about youth unemployment is motivated by the large differences between the rates for blacks and whites, we have pursued our earlier work by analyzing separately for black and white youth the relationship between high school preparation and early labor force experience. We find no striking differences between the determinants of weeks worked by whites and non-whites upon graduation from high school. Although vocational training in high school bears little relationship to weeks worked upon graduation, hours worked while in high school bear a strong relationship to later employment for students and non-students, white and non-white. Academic performanceas measured by standardized test scores and high school class rank isalso positively related to later weeks worked by non-students, both white and non-white. Young persons find jobs in large part through friends and relatives or through direct application to employers orpossibly a combination of the two. Persons who are not looking forwork--and would then be classified as out of the labor force, according to standard definitions--are apparently quite distinct from personswho are looking for work. Those out of the labor force seem not tobe "discouraged workers" for the most part. Controlling for other individual attributes, non-whites are much more likely than whites to be in a post-secondary school full-time (although without controlling for these attributes the reverse is true). A large proportion of young men in school are also working part-time and a significant number are working full-time. A sizeable proportion of persons in post-secondary schools would be classified as unemployed based on official definitions. Indeed the unemployment rate among these full-time students is generally more than twice the rate among young men not inschool. Few high school graduates are chronically unemployed.

Discontinuous Distributions and Missing Persons: The Minimum Wage and Unemployed Youth

The effects of minimum wage legislation on the employment and wage rates of youth are estimated using a new statistical approach. We find that without the minimum, not only would the percent of out-of-school youth who are employed be 4 to 6 percent higher than it is, but also that these youth would earn more. In particular, the expected hourly earnings of youth with market wage rates below the 1978 minimum are 10 percent lower with the minimum than they would be without it. Thus, an effect of the minimum is to increase the concentration of non-employment among low-wage workers and to reduce their earnings relative to higher wage workers as well. The minimum wage accounts for possibly a third of the difference between the employment rates of black and white youth, according to our results. Our methodology is based on parameterization of the effect of the minimum on the distribution of "market" employment outcomes and market wage rates that would exist in the absence of the minimum. A concomitant of the estimation procedure is joint estimation of market wage and employment functions that would pertain if there were no minimum.

Binding between two-component bosons in one dimension

We investigate the ground state of one-dimensional few-atom Bose-Bose mixtures under harmonic confinement throughout the crossover from weak to strong inter-species attraction. The calculations are based on the numerically exact multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree method. For repulsive components we detail the condition for the formation of a molecular Tonks-Girardeau gas in the regime of intermediate inter-species interactions, and the formation of a molecular condensate for stronger coupling. Beyond a critical inter-species attraction, the system collapses to an overall bound state. Different pathways emerge for unequal particle numbers and intra-species interactions. In particular, for mixtures with one attractive component, this species can be viewed as an effective potential dimple in the trap center for the other, repulsive component.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure