842 research outputs found
The Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism: development and application among British Pagans
This article builds on the tradition of attitudinal measures of religiosity established by Leslie Francis and colleagues with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (and reflected in the Sahin-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Islam, the Katz-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism, and the Santosh-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Hinduism) by introducing a new measure to assess the attitudinal disposition of Pagans. A battery of items was completed by 75 members of a Pagan Summer Camp. These items were reduced to produce a 21-item scale that measured aspects of Paganism concerned with: the God/Goddess, worshipping, prayer, and coven. The scale recorded an alpha coefficient of 0.93. Construct validity of the Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism was demonstrated by the clear association with measures of participation in private rituals
Transport of charged particles by adjusting rf voltage amplitudes
We propose a planar architecture for scalable quantum information processing
(QIP) that includes X-junctions through which particles can move without
micromotion. This is achieved by adjusting radio frequency (rf) amplitudes to
move an rf null along the legs of the junction. We provide a proof-of-principle
by transporting dust particles in three dimensions via adjustable rf potentials
in a 3D trap. For the proposed planar architecture, we use regularization
techniques to obtain amplitude settings that guarantee smooth transport through
the X-junction.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure
Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Sympathetic Crystallization of Molecular Ions
It is shown that the translational degrees of freedom of a large variety of
molecules, from light diatomic to heavy organic ones, can be cooled
sympathetically and brought to rest (crystallized) in a linear Paul trap. The
method relies on endowing the molecules with an appropriate positive charge,
storage in a linear radiofrequency trap, and sympathetic cooling. Two
well--known atomic coolant species, and
, are sufficient for cooling the molecular mass range
from 2 to 20,000 amu. The large molecular charge required for simultaneous
trapping of heavy molecules and of the coolant ions can easily be produced
using electrospray ionization. Crystallized molecular ions offer vast
opportunities for novel studies.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
The Five Factor Model of personality and evaluation of drug consumption risk
The problem of evaluating an individual's risk of drug consumption and misuse
is highly important. An online survey methodology was employed to collect data
including Big Five personality traits (NEO-FFI-R), impulsivity (BIS-11),
sensation seeking (ImpSS), and demographic information. The data set contained
information on the consumption of 18 central nervous system psychoactive drugs.
Correlation analysis demonstrated the existence of groups of drugs with
strongly correlated consumption patterns. Three correlation pleiades were
identified, named by the central drug in the pleiade: ecstasy, heroin, and
benzodiazepines pleiades. An exhaustive search was performed to select the most
effective subset of input features and data mining methods to classify users
and non-users for each drug and pleiad. A number of classification methods were
employed (decision tree, random forest, -nearest neighbors, linear
discriminant analysis, Gaussian mixture, probability density function
estimation, logistic regression and na{\"i}ve Bayes) and the most effective
classifier was selected for each drug. The quality of classification was
surprisingly high with sensitivity and specificity (evaluated by leave-one-out
cross-validation) being greater than 70\% for almost all classification tasks.
The best results with sensitivity and specificity being greater than 75\% were
achieved for cannabis, crack, ecstasy, legal highs, LSD, and volatile substance
abuse (VSA).Comment: Significantly extended report with 67 pages, 27 tables, 21 figure
A functional riboSNitch in the 3' untranslated region of FKBP5 alters MicroRNA-320a binding efficiency and mediates vulnerability to chronic post-traumatic pain
Previous studies have shown that common variants of the gene coding for FK506-binding protein 51 (FKBP5), a critical regulator of glucocorticoid sensitivity, affect vulnerability to stress-related disorders. In a previous report, FKBP5 rs1360780 was identified as a functional variant because of its effect on gene methylation. Here we report evidence for a novel functional FKBP5 allele, rs3800373. This study assessed the association between rs3800373 and post-traumatic chronic pain in 1607 women and men from two ethnically diverse human cohorts. The molecular mechanism through which rs3800373 affects adverse outcomes was established via in silico, in vivo, and in vitro analyses. The rs3800373 minor allele predicted worse adverse outcomes after trauma exposure, such that individuals with the minor (risk) allele developed more severe post-traumatic chronic musculoskeletal pain. Among these individuals, peritraumatic circulating FKBP5 expression levels increased as cortisol and glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1) mRNA levels increased, consistent with increased glucocorticoid resistance. Bioinformatic, in vitro, and mutational analyses indicate that the rs3800373 minor allele reduces the binding of a stress-and pain-associated microRNA, miR-320a, to FKBP5 via altering the FKBP5 mRNA 3'UTR secondary structure (i.e., is a riboSNitch). This results in relatively greater FKBP5 translation, unchecked by miR-320a. Overall, these results identify an important gene–miRNA interaction influencing chronic pain risk in vulnerable individuals and suggest that exogenous methods to achieve targeted reduction in poststress FKBP5 mRNA expression may constitute useful therapeutic strategies
Comparison of some Reduced Representation Approximations
In the field of numerical approximation, specialists considering highly
complex problems have recently proposed various ways to simplify their
underlying problems. In this field, depending on the problem they were tackling
and the community that are at work, different approaches have been developed
with some success and have even gained some maturity, the applications can now
be applied to information analysis or for numerical simulation of PDE's. At
this point, a crossed analysis and effort for understanding the similarities
and the differences between these approaches that found their starting points
in different backgrounds is of interest. It is the purpose of this paper to
contribute to this effort by comparing some constructive reduced
representations of complex functions. We present here in full details the
Adaptive Cross Approximation (ACA) and the Empirical Interpolation Method (EIM)
together with other approaches that enter in the same category
Active Brownian Particles. From Individual to Collective Stochastic Dynamics
We review theoretical models of individual motility as well as collective
dynamics and pattern formation of active particles. We focus on simple models
of active dynamics with a particular emphasis on nonlinear and stochastic
dynamics of such self-propelled entities in the framework of statistical
mechanics. Examples of such active units in complex physico-chemical and
biological systems are chemically powered nano-rods, localized patterns in
reaction-diffusion system, motile cells or macroscopic animals. Based on the
description of individual motion of point-like active particles by stochastic
differential equations, we discuss different velocity-dependent friction
functions, the impact of various types of fluctuations and calculate
characteristic observables such as stationary velocity distributions or
diffusion coefficients. Finally, we consider not only the free and confined
individual active dynamics but also different types of interaction between
active particles. The resulting collective dynamical behavior of large
assemblies and aggregates of active units is discussed and an overview over
some recent results on spatiotemporal pattern formation in such systems is
given.Comment: 161 pages, Review, Eur Phys J Special-Topics, accepte
Internalized HIV Stigma Predicts Suboptimal Retention in Care among People Living with HIV in the United States
HIV-related stigma is a known barrier to retention in care. However, no large-scale, multi-site studies have prospectively evaluated the effect of internalized stigma on retention in care. The Centers for AIDS Research Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) cohort study integrates medical record and survey data from people living with HIV (PLWH) seen in HIV primary care clinics across the United States, and assesses internalized stigma yearly using a validated 4-item Likert scale. We used multivariable logistic regression models to evaluate associations between mean internalized stigma and two prospective retention in care outcomes: keeping the next primary care appointment and keeping all scheduled primary care appointments in the 12 months following stigma assessment. From February 2016 to November 2017, 5968 PLWH completed the stigma assessment and had adequate follow-up time. Mean stigma was 1.9 (standard deviation 1.08). Increased mean stigma scores were associated with decreased odds of attending the next primary care appointment [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 0.93, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.88-0.99, p = 0.02], and all primary care appointments in the subsequent 12 months (aOR = 0.94, 95% CI 0.89-0.99, p = 0.02). In both models, younger age and Black race were also independently associated with suboptimal appointment attendance. There was no support for interactions between internalized stigma and covariates. Internalized HIV stigma had an independent negative effect on the odds of subsequent appointment attendance. This study highlights the importance of identifying even low levels of internalized stigma. Interventions to address internalized HIV stigma are critical to supporting retention in care and improving clinical outcomes
A high-precision rf trap with minimized micromotion for an In+ multiple-ion clock
We present an experiment to characterize our new linear ion trap designed for
the operation of a many-ion optical clock using 115-In^+ as clock ions. For the
characterization of the trap as well as the sympathetic cooling of the clock
ions we use 172-Yb^+. The trap design has been derived from finite element
method (FEM) calculations and a first prototype based on glass-reinforced
thermoset laminates was built. This paper details on the trap manufacturing
process and micromotion measurement. Excess micromotion is measured using
photon-correlation spectroscopy with a resolution of 1.1nm in motional
amplitude, and residual axial rf fields in this trap are compared to FEM
calculations. With this method, we demonstrate a sensitivity to systematic
clock shifts due to excess micromotion of |({\Delta}{\nu}/{\nu})| = 8.5x10^-20.
Based on the measurement of axial rf fields of our trap, we estimate a number
of twelve ions that can be stored per trapping segment and used as an optical
frequency standard with a fractional inaccuracy of \leq 1x10^-18 due to
micromotion.Comment: 19 pages with 14 picture
Planck 2015 results. XXVII. The Second Planck Catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich Sources
We present the all-sky Planck catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) sources detected from the 29 month full-mission data. The catalogue (PSZ2) is the largest SZ-selected sample of galaxy clusters yet produced and the deepest all-sky catalogue of galaxy clusters. It contains 1653 detections, of which 1203 are confirmed clusters with identified counterparts in external data-sets, and is the first SZ-selected cluster survey containing > confirmed clusters. We present a detailed analysis of the survey selection function in terms of its completeness and statistical reliability, placing a lower limit of 83% on the purity. Using simulations, we find that the Y5R500 estimates are robust to pressure-profile variation and beam systematics, but accurate conversion to Y500 requires. the use of prior information on the cluster extent. We describe the multi-wavelength search for counterparts in ancillary data, which makes use of radio, microwave, infra-red, optical and X-ray data-sets, and which places emphasis on the robustness of the counterpart match. We discuss the physical properties of the new sample and identify a population of low-redshift X-ray under- luminous clusters revealed by SZ selection. These objects appear in optical and SZ surveys with consistent properties for their mass, but are almost absent from ROSAT X-ray selected samples
- …