1,674 research outputs found
Small Extended Generalized Quadrangles
We consider extensions of generalized quadrangles with parameters (s, t), and establish lower bounds (in terms of s and t) for the number of points, sometimes under additional hypotheses. We also study the structure of geometries attaining these bounds, give several constructions and some uniqueness proofs, and examine the question of further extensions
How well do science teachers do? Differences in Teacher-Student interpersonal behavior between science teachers of other (school) subjects
The differences in teacher interpersonal behavior between science classes and other subject classes in secondary education are investigated using the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI). Multilevel analysis of variance was used on an existing Dutch data set containing 44,353 students and 605 teachers. 8,503 students (19.2 percent) reported on science teachers. Science teachers were perceived as less dominant and less cooperative. Science teachers perceived themselves as less cooperative. Dominance and cooperation are known to be favorable for learning results and students' subject related attitudes. Hence, science teachers' different interpersonal behavior contributes to lower appreciation and higher perceived difficulty levels for students regarding the science subjects
The cleavage of biglycan by aggrecanases
SummaryObjectiveAggrecanase-1 [a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs (ADAMTS)-4] and aggrecanase-2 (ADAMTS-5) have been named for their ability to degrade the proteoglycan aggrecan. While this may be the preferred substrate for these enzymes, they are also able to degrade other proteins. The aim of this work was to determine whether the aggrecanases could degrade biglycan and decorin.MethodsBiglycan, decorin and aggrecan were purified from human and bovine cartilage and subjected to degradation by recombinant aggrecanase-1 or aggrecanase-2. In vitro degradation was assessed by sodium dodecyl sulfate/polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS/PAGE) and immunoblotting, and the cleavage site in biglycan was determined by N-terminal amino acid sequencing. SDS/PAGE and immunoblotting were also used to assess in situ degradation in both normal and arthritic human articular cartilage.ResultsBoth aggrecanase-1 and aggrecanase-2 are able to cleave bovine and human biglycan at a site within their central leucine-rich repeat regions. Cleavage occurs at an asparagine–cysteine bond within the fifth leucine-rich repeat. In contrast, the closely related proteoglycan decorin is not a substrate for the aggrecanases. Analysis of human articular cartilage from osteoarthritic (OA) and rheumatoid arthritic (RA) joints showed that a biglycan degradation product of equivalent size is present in the extracellular matrix. No equivalent degradation product was, however, detectable in normal adult human articular cartilage.ConclusionBiglycan, which is structurally unrelated to aggrecan, can act as a substrate for aggrecanase-1 and aggrecanase-2, and these proteinases may account for at least part of the biglycan degradation that is present in arthritic cartilage
Plausibility functions and exact frequentist inference
In the frequentist program, inferential methods with exact control on error
rates are a primary focus. The standard approach, however, is to rely on
asymptotic approximations, which may not be suitable. This paper presents a
general framework for the construction of exact frequentist procedures based on
plausibility functions. It is shown that the plausibility function-based tests
and confidence regions have the desired frequentist properties in finite
samples---no large-sample justification needed. An extension of the proposed
method is also given for problems involving nuisance parameters. Examples
demonstrate that the plausibility function-based method is both exact and
efficient in a wide variety of problems.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, 3 table
Microwave conductivity of a d-wave superconductor disordered by extended impurities: a real-space renormalization group approach
Using a real-space renormalization group (RSRG) technique, we compute the
microwave conductivity of a d-wave superconductor disordered by extended
impurities. To do this, we invoke a semiclassical approximation which naturally
accesses the Andreev bound states localized near each impurity. Tunneling
corrections (which are captured using the RSRG) lead to a delocalization of
these quasiparticles and an associated contribution to the microwave
conductivity.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. 2 figures added to previous versio
Steiner t-designs for large t
One of the most central and long-standing open questions in combinatorial
design theory concerns the existence of Steiner t-designs for large values of
t. Although in his classical 1987 paper, L. Teirlinck has shown that
non-trivial t-designs exist for all values of t, no non-trivial Steiner
t-design with t > 5 has been constructed until now. Understandingly, the case t
= 6 has received considerable attention. There has been recent progress
concerning the existence of highly symmetric Steiner 6-designs: It is shown in
[M. Huber, J. Algebr. Comb. 26 (2007), pp. 453-476] that no non-trivial
flag-transitive Steiner 6-design can exist. In this paper, we announce that
essentially also no block-transitive Steiner 6-design can exist.Comment: 9 pages; to appear in: Mathematical Methods in Computer Science 2008,
ed. by J.Calmet, W.Geiselmann, J.Mueller-Quade, Springer Lecture Notes in
Computer Scienc
Pressure and linear heat capacity in the superconducting state of thoriated UBe13
Even well below Tc, the heavy-fermion superconductor (U,Th)Be13 has a large
linear term in its specific heat. We show that under uniaxial pressure, the
linear heat capacity increases in magnitude by more than a factor of two. The
change is reversible and suggests that the linear term is an intrinsic property
of the material. In addition, we find no evidence of hysteresis or of latent
heat in the low-temperature and low-pressure portion of the phase diagram,
showing that all transitions in this region are second order.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Moments of vicious walkers and M\"obius graph expansions
A system of Brownian motions in one-dimension all started from the origin and
conditioned never to collide with each other in a given finite time-interval
is studied. The spatial distribution of such vicious walkers can be
described by using the repulsive eigenvalue-statistics of random Hermitian
matrices and it was shown that the present vicious walker model exhibits a
transition from the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE) statistics to the Gaussian
orthogonal ensemble (GOE) statistics as the time is going on from 0 to .
In the present paper, we characterize this GUE-to-GOE transition by presenting
the graphical expansion formula for the moments of positions of vicious
walkers. In the GUE limit , only the ribbon graphs contribute and the
problem is reduced to the classification of orientable surfaces by genus.
Following the time evolution of the vicious walkers, however, the graphs with
twisted ribbons, called M\"obius graphs, increase their contribution to our
expansion formula, and we have to deal with the topology of non-orientable
surfaces. Application of the recent exact result of dynamical correlation
functions yields closed expressions for the coefficients in the M\"obius
expansion using the Stirling numbers of the first kind.Comment: REVTeX4, 11 pages, 1 figure. v.2: calculations of the Green function
and references added. v.3: minor additions and corrections made for
publication in Phys.Rev.
Quasiparticle density of states in dirty high-T_c superconductors
We study the density of quasiparticle states of dirty d-wave superconductors.
We show the existence of singular corrections to the density of states due to
quantum interference effects. We then argue that the density of states actually
vanishes in the localized phase as or depending on whether time
reversal is a good symmetry or not. We verify this result for systems without
time reversal symmetry in one dimension using supersymmetry techniques. This
simple, instructive calculation also provides the exact universal scaling
function for the density of states for the crossover from ballistic to
localized behaviour in one dimension. Above two dimensions, we argue that in
contrast to the conventional Anderson localization transition, the density of
states has critical singularities which we calculate in a
expansion. We discuss consequences of our results for various experiments on
dirty high- materials
Crossover from 2-dimensional to 1-dimensional collective pinning in NbSe3
We have fabricated NbSe structures with widths comparable to the
Fukuyama-Lee-Rice phase-coherence length. For samples already in the
2-dimensional pinning limit, we observe a crossover from 2-dimensional to
1-dimensional collective pinning when the crystal width is less than 1.6
m, corresponding to the phase-coherence length in this direction. Our
results show that surface pinning is negligible in our samples, and provide a
means to probe the dynamics of single domains giving access to a new regime in
charge-density wave physics.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, and 1 table. Accepted for publication in Physical
Review
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