The Relationship between the Distance of an External Focus of Attention and Lower Body Power in Rugby Athletes

The purpose of this investigation is to examine the relationship between the distance effect on power output during countermovement jumps in Rugby athletes. Hypothesis Testing was conducted utilizing a Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance (RM ANOVA) at a .05 significance level. A Pairwise comparison was conducted to determine if one variable had a greater amount of quantitative property. Statistical insignificance was determined after all data was analyzed Results were unable to show a positive relationship between the distance of an external focus of attention and lower body power output in rugby athletes

Straw application in paddy soil enhances methane production also from other carbon sources

Flooded rice fields are an important source of the greenhouse gas methane. Methane is produced from rice straw (RS), soil organic matter (SOM), and rice root organic carbon (ROC). Addition of RS is widely used for ameliorating soil fertility. However, this practice provides additional substrate for CH₄ production and results in increased CH₄ emission. Here, we found that decomposing RS is not only a substrate of CH₄ production, but in addition stimulates CH₄ production from SOM and ROC. Apart from accelerating the creation of reduced conditions in the soil environment, RS decomposition resulted in enhancement of SOM-derived CH₄ production. In particular, hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis from SOM-derived CO₂ was stimulated, presumably by H₂ released from RS decomposition. On the other hand, the enhancement of ROC-derived CH₄ production after RS application was probably caused by the significant increase of the abundance of methanogenic Archaea in the RS treatment compared with the untreated control. Our results show that traditional management of rice residues exerts a positive feedback on CH₄ production from rice fields, thus exacerbating its effect on the global CH₄ budget

Rectification effects in coherent transport through single molecules

A minimal model for coherent transport through a donor/acceptor molecular junction is presented. The two donor and acceptor sites are described by single levels energetically separated by an intramolecular tunnel barrier. In the limit of strong coupling to the electrodes a current rectification for different bias voltage polarities occurs. Contacts with recent experiments of molecular rectification are also given.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Electrical transport through a mechanically gated molecular wire

A surface-adsorbed molecule is contacted with the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) at a pre-defined atom. On tip retraction, the molecule is peeled off the surface. During this experiment, a two-dimensional differential conductance map is measured on the plane spanned by the bias voltage and the tip-surface distance. The conductance map demonstrates that tip retraction leads to mechanical gating of the molecular wire in the STM junction. The experiments are compared with a detailed ab initio simulation. We find that density functional theory (DFT) in the local density approximation (LDA) describes the tip-molecule contact formation and the geometry of the molecular junction throughout the peeling process with predictive power. However, a DFT-LDA-based transport simulation following the non-equilibrium Green's functions (NEGF) formalism fails to describe the behavior of the differential conductance as found in experiment. Further analysis reveals that this failure is due to the mean-field description of electron correlation in the local density approximation. The results presented here are expected to be of general validity and show that, for a wide range of common wire configurations, simulations which go beyond the mean-field level are required to accurately describe current conduction through molecules. Finally, the results of the present study illustrate that well-controlled experiments and concurrent ab initio transport simulations that systematically sample a large configuration space of molecule-electrode couplings allow the unambiguous identification of correlation signatures in experiment.Comment: 31 pages, 10 figure

Pharmakokinetisches und immunologisches Monitoring bei de novo Leber-Transplantat-Empfängern unter Ciclosporin A

Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es, bei Leber-Transplantat-Empfängern unter Immunsuppression mit Ciclosporin A als Mikroemulsion (Sandimmun® Optoral) durch Messungen der Blutspiegel von CsA zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten (C0, C2, C4, C6 und C12) genauere Ergebnisse und Erkenntnisse in der frühen postoperativen Phase insbesondere hinsichtlich der Güte des immunsuppressiven Therapieschemas zu erlangen. Zur weiteren Beurteilung des frühen Immunsuppressions-Managements wurden zum einen die Auswirkung der Immunsuppression auf die immunologischen Parameter Interleukin 2, Interleukin 2-Rezeptor und Interkeukin 6 erfasst. Zum anderen wurden die biologischen Parameter Kreatinin, Alanin- Aminotransferase (ALT), Aspartat-Aminotransferase (AST), Glutamat-Dehydrogenase (GLDH), Cholinesterase und Leukozyten in die Auswertung miteinbezogen. Die Untersuchung fand an 13 Patienten statt, die am Universitätsklinikum Bonn zwischen 2002 und 2004 lebertransplantiert wurden, wobei ein Patient nach Retransplantation ein weiteres Mal an der Studie partizipiert hat. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Erarbeitung des immunsuppressiven Therapieschemas durch die inter- und intraindividuelle Variabilität hinsichtlich Resorption, Verteilung, Metabolismus und Elimination von Ciclosporin A in der frühen postoperativen Phase erschwert wird. Die 2 Stunden nach Gabe gemessene CsA-Blutkonzentration (C2-Wert) ist im Gegensatz zum CsA-Talblutspiegel (CO-Wert) der besser geeignete Parameter zur Ermittlung der individuell ausreichenden Sandimmun® Optoral-Dosen und zur Prädiktion einer Abstoßungsreaktion. Dies zeigte sich sowohl beim Vergleich der CsA-Blutkonzentrationen zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten, in der Enzymfreisetzung als Schädigungsparameter, als auch beim Betrachten der immunologischen Parameter. Zur Überprüfung und Einstellung der Immunsuppression zeigte sich ein zusätzlicher Benefit unter Zuhilfenahme des Schädigungsparameters α-GST und des immunologischen Parameters IL-2. </p