10,775 research outputs found
Insulin resistance for glucose metabolism in disused soleus muscle of mice
Results of this study on mice provide the first direct evidence of insulin resistance for glucose metabolism in skeletal muscle that has undergone a previous period of reduced muscle usage. This lack of responsiveness to insulin developed in one day and in the presence of hypoinsulinemia. Future studies will utilize the model of hindlimb immobilization to determine the causes of these changes
Systematic study of Optical Feshbach Resonances in an ideal gas
Using a narrow intercombination line in alkaline earth atoms to mitigate
large inelastic losses, we explore the Optical Feshbach Resonance (OFR) effect
in an ultracold gas of bosonic Sr. A systematic measurement of three
resonances allows precise determinations of the OFR strength and scaling law,
in agreement with coupled-channels theory. Resonant enhancement of the complex
scattering length leads to thermalization mediated by elastic and inelastic
collisions in an otherwise ideal gas. OFR could be used to control atomic
interactions with high spatial and temporal resolution.Comment: Significant changes to text and figure presentation to improve
clarity. Extended supplementary material. 4 pages, 4 figures; includes
supplementary material 8 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to Physical Review
Letter
Sign problems, noise, and chiral symmetry breaking in a QCD-like theory
The Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model reduced to 2+1 dimensions has two different path
integral formulations: at finite chemical potential one formulation has a
severe sign problem similar to that found in QCD, while the other does not. At
large N, where N is the number of flavors, one can compute the probability
distributions of fermion correlators analytically in both formulations. In the
former case one finds a broad distribution with small mean; in the latter one
finds a heavy tailed positive distribution amenable to the cumulant expansion
techniques developed in earlier work. We speculate on the implications of this
model for QCD.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures; Published version with minor changes from the
origina
Amplitude dependent frequency, desynchronization, and stabilization in noisy metapopulation dynamics
The enigmatic stability of population oscillations within ecological systems
is analyzed. The underlying mechanism is presented in the framework of two
interacting species free to migrate between two spatial patches. It is shown
that that the combined effects of migration and noise cannot account for the
stabilization. The missing ingredient is the dependence of the oscillations'
frequency upon their amplitude; with that, noise-induced differences between
patches are amplified due to the frequency gradient. Migration among
desynchronized regions then stabilizes a "soft" limit cycle in the vicinity of
the homogenous manifold. A simple model of diffusively coupled oscillators
allows the derivation of quantitative results, like the functional dependence
of the desynchronization upon diffusion strength and frequency differences. The
oscillations' amplitude is shown to be (almost) noise independent. The results
are compared with a numerical integration of the marginally stable
Lotka-Volterra equations. An unstable system is extinction-prone for small
noise, but stabilizes at larger noise intensity
Winds of Planet Hosting Stars
The field of exoplanetary science is one of the most rapidly growing areas of
astrophysical research. As more planets are discovered around other stars, new
techniques have been developed that have allowed astronomers to begin to
characterise them. Two of the most important factors in understanding the
evolution of these planets, and potentially determining whether they are
habitable, are the behaviour of the winds of the host star and the way in which
they interact with the planet. The purpose of this project is to reconstruct
the magnetic fields of planet hosting stars from spectropolarimetric
observations, and to use these magnetic field maps to inform simulations of the
stellar winds in those systems using the Block Adaptive Tree Solar-wind Roe
Upwind Scheme (BATS-R-US) code. The BATS-R-US code was originally written to
investigate the behaviour of the Solar wind, and so has been altered to be used
in the context of other stellar systems. These simulations will give
information about the velocity, pressure and density of the wind outward from
the host star. They will also allow us to determine what influence the winds
will have on the space weather environment of the planet. This paper presents
the preliminary results of these simulations for the star Bo\"otis,
using a newly reconstructed magnetic field map based on previously published
observations. These simulations show interesting structures in the wind
velocity around the star, consistent with the complex topology of its magnetic
field.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed
proceedings of the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, held at the
University of South Australia, 29th September - 1st October 201
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