142 research outputs found
Preliminary Results for LP VPE X-Ray Detectors
Thick epitaxial layers have been grown using Low Pressure Vapour Phase
Epitaxy techniques with low free carrier concentrations . This type of material
is attractive as a medium for X-ray detection, because of its high conversion
efficiency for X-rays in the medically interesting energy range.Comment: 4 pages. PS file only - original in WORD. Also available at
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/preprints/97/07
Condensation and interaction range in harmonic boson traps: a variational approach
For a gas of N bosons interacting through a two-body Morse potential a
variational bound of the free energy of a confined system is obtained. The
calculation method is based on the Feynman-Kac functional projected on the
symmetric representation. Within the harmonic approximation a variational
estimate of the effect of the interaction range on the existence of
many-particle bound states, and on the N-T phase diagram is obtained.Comment: 14 pages+4 figures, submitted to phys.rev.
Infrared Properties of QCD from Dyson-Schwinger equations
I review recent results on the infrared properties of QCD from
Dyson-Schwinger equations. The topics include infrared exponents of
one-particle irreducible Green's functions, the fixed point behaviour of the
running coupling at zero momentum, the pattern of dynamical quark mass
generation and properties of light mesons.Comment: 47 pages, 19 figures, Topical Review to be published in J.Phys.G, v2:
typos corrected and some references adde
On the Nature of the Phase Transition in SU(N), Sp(2) and E(7) Yang-Mills theory
We study the nature of the confinement phase transition in d=3+1 dimensions
in various non-abelian gauge theories with the approach put forward in [1]. We
compute an order-parameter potential associated with the Polyakov loop from the
knowledge of full 2-point correlation functions. For SU(N) with N=3,...,12 and
Sp(2) we find a first-order phase transition in agreement with general
expectations. Moreover our study suggests that the phase transition in E(7)
Yang-Mills theory also is of first order. We find that it is weaker than for
SU(N). We show that this can be understood in terms of the eigenvalue
distribution of the order parameter potential close to the phase transition.Comment: 15 page
Configural and featural processing in humans with congenital prosopagnosia.
Prosopagnosia describes the failure to recognize faces, a deficiency that can be
devastating in social interactions. Cases of acquired prosopagnosia have often
been described over the last century. In recent years, more and more cases of
congenital prosopagnosia (CP) have been reported. In the present study we tried
to determine possible cognitive characteristics of this impairment. We used
scrambled and blurred images of faces, houses, and sugar bowls to separate
featural processing strategies from configural processing strategies. This
served to investigate whether congenital prosopagnosia results from
process-specific deficiencies, or whether it is a face-specific impairment.
Using a delayed matching paradigm, 6 individuals with CP and 6 matched healthy
controls indicated whether an intact test stimulus was the same identity as a
previously presented scrambled or blurred cue stimulus. Analyses of
d´ values indicated that congenital prosopagnosia
is a face-specific deficit, but that this shortcoming is particularly pronounced
for processing configural facial information
Retinal Degeneration Progression Changes Lentiviral Vector Cell Targeting in the Retina
In normal mice, the lentiviral vector (LV) is very efficient to target the RPE cells, but transduces retinal neurons well only during development. In the present study, the tropism of LV has been investigated in the degenerating retina of mice, knowing that the retina structure changes during degeneration. We postulated that the viral transduction would be increased by the alteration of the outer limiting membrane (OLM). Two different LV pseudotypes were tested using the VSVG and the Mokola envelopes, as well as two animal models of retinal degeneration: light-damaged Balb-C and Rhodopsin knockout (Rho-/-) mice. After light damage, the OLM is altered and no significant increase of the number of transduced photoreceptors can be obtained with a LV-VSVG-Rhop-GFP vector. In the Rho-/- mice, an alteration of the OLM was also observed, but the possibility of transducing photoreceptors was decreased, probably by ongoing gliosis. The use of a ubiquitous promoter allows better photoreceptor transduction, suggesting that photoreceptor-specific promoter activity changes during late stages of photoreceptor degeneration. However, the number of targeted photoreceptors remains low. In contrast, LV pseudotyped with the Mokola envelope allows a wide dispersion of the vector into the retina (corresponding to the injection bleb) with preferential targeting of Müller cells, a situation which does not occur in the wild-type retina. Mokola-pseudotyped lentiviral vectors may serve to engineer these glial cells to deliver secreted therapeutic factors to a diseased area of the retina
Degradation of YRA1 Pre-mRNA in the Cytoplasm Requires Translational Repression, Multiple Modular Intronic Elements, Edc3p, and Mex67p
The yeast YRA1 pre-mRNA contains multiple intronic elements that regulate transcript decay and translatability via the Edc3p decapping activator and the Mex67p/Mtr2p export receptor
The phylogenetic composition and structure of soil microbial communities shifts in response to elevated carbon dioxide
http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v6/n2/full/ismej201199a.htmlOne of the major factors associated with global change is the ever-increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2. Although the stimulating effects of elevated CO2 (eCO2) on plant growth and primary productivity have been established, its impacts on the diversity and function of soil microbial communities are poorly understood. In this study, phylogenetic microarrays (PhyloChip) were used to comprehensively survey the richness, composition and structure of soil microbial communities in a grassland experiment subjected to two CO2 conditions (ambient, 368 p.p.m., versus elevated, 560 p.p.m.) for 10 years. The richness based on the detected number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) significantly decreased under eCO2. PhyloChip detected 2269 OTUs derived from 45 phyla (including two from Archaea), 55 classes, 99 orders, 164 families and 190 subfamilies. Also, the signal intensity of five phyla (Crenarchaeota, Chloroflexi, OP10, OP9/JS1, Verrucomicrobia) significantly decreased at eCO2, and such significant effects of eCO2 on microbial composition were also observed at the class or lower taxonomic levels for most abundant phyla, such as Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Acidobacteria, suggesting a shift in microbial community composition at eCO2. Additionally, statistical analyses showed that the overall taxonomic structure of soil microbial communities was altered at eCO2. Mantel tests indicated that such changes in species richness, composition and structure of soil microbial communities were closely correlated with soil and plant properties. This study provides insights into our understanding of shifts in the richness, composition and structure of soil microbial communities under eCO2 and environmental factors shaping the microbial community structure
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