3,550 research outputs found
DISTRACTION OSTEOGENESIS IN AN ORGAN CULTURE MODEL
Distraction osteogenesis (DO) is a surgical procedure in which applied strain stimulates new bone growth; however, the underlying mechanisms by which bone cells respond to load are still uncertain. An organ culture model of DO was developed and validated by using linear distraction on the femoral shafts of 5 day old Wistar rats. Two loading regimes were utilized: distracting the bones for 2 hrs on day 1 (GRP I); distracting the bones for 2 hrs on days 1, 3, and 5 (GRP II). After 1 week in culture, the bones were compared to unloaded contralateral controls and assessed for changes. Structural, dimensional, massing, micro-CT, areal, and viability properties were obtained from testing. Relative to paired controls, distracted bones demonstrated an increase in failure load (9.15% GRP I, 18.85% GRP II), increase in stiffness (31.28% GRP I, 53.21% GRP II), increases in areal and polar moments of inertia, and viability (6.21% GRP I, 13.02% GRP II). Our results suggest that DO can be modeled successfully with an organ culture, and continued use of this system will help to gain insight into the mechanisms and pathways by which distraction osteogenesis occurs
Neutron Capture Cross Sections for the Weak s Process
In past decades a lot of progress has been made towards understanding the
main s-process component that takes place in thermally pulsing Asymptotic Giant
Branch (AGB) stars. During this process about half of the heavy elements,
mainly between 90<=A<=209 are synthesized. Improvements were made in stellar
modeling as well as in measuring relevant nuclear data for a better description
of the main s process. The weak s process, which contributes to the production
of lighter nuclei in the mass range 56<=A<=90 operates in massive stars
(M>=8Msolar) and is much less understood. A better characterization of the weak
s component would help disentangle the various contributions to element
production in this region. For this purpose, a series of measurements of
neutron-capture cross sections have been performed on medium-mass nuclei at the
3.7-MV Van de Graaff accelerator at FZK using the activation method. Also,
neutron captures on abundant light elements with A<56 play an important role
for s-process nucleosynthesis, since they act as neutron poisons and affect the
stellar neutron balance. New results are presented for the (n,g) cross sections
of 41K and 45Sc, and revisions are reported for a number of cross sections
based on improved spectroscopic information
Neutron activation of natural zinc samples at kT = 25 keV
The neutron-capture cross sections of 64Zn, 68Zn, and 70Zn have been measured
with the activation technique in a quasistellar neutron spectrum corresponding
to a thermal energy of kT = 25 keV. By a series of repeated irradiations with
different experimental conditions, an uncertainty of 3% could be achieved for
the 64Zn(n,g)65Zn cross section and for the partial cross section
68Zn(n,g)69Zn-m feeding the isomeric state in 69Zn. For the partial cross
sections 70Zn(n,g)71Zn-m and 70Zn(n,g)71Zn-g, which had not been measured so
far, uncertainties of only 16% and 6% could be reached because of limited
counting statistics and decay intensities. Compared to previous measurements on
64,68Zn, the uncertainties could be significantly improved, while the 70Zn
cross section was found to be two times smaller than existing model
calculations. From these results Maxwellian average cross sections were
determined between 5 and 100 keV. Additionally, the beta-decay half-life of
71Zn-m could be determined with significantly improved accuracy. The
consequences of these data have been studied by network calculations for
convective core He burning and convective shell C burning in massive stars
Adjustment of interaural-time-difference analysis to sound level
To localize low-frequency sound sources in azimuth, the binaural system compares the timing of sound waves at the two ears with microsecond precision. A similarly high precision is also seen in the binaural processing of the envelopes of high-frequency complex sounds. Both for low- and high-frequency sounds, interaural time difference (ITD) acuity is to a large extent independent of sound level. The mechanisms underlying this level-invariant extraction of ITDs by the binaural system are, however, only poorly understood. We use high-frequency pip trains with asymmetric and dichotic pip envelopes in a combined psychophysical, electrophysiological, and modeling approach. Although the dichotic envelopes cannot be physically matched in terms of ITD, the match produced perceptually by humans is very reliable, and it depends systematically on the overall sound level. These data are reflected in neural responses from the gerbil lateral superior olive and lateral lemniscus. The results are predicted in an existing temporal-integration model extended with a level-dependent threshold criterion. These data provide a very sensitive quantification of how the peripheral temporal code is conditioned for binaural analysis
Origin of superconductivity and latent charge density wave in NbS
We elucidate the origin of the phonon-mediated superconductivity in
2-NbS using the ab initio anisotropic Migdal-Eliashberg theory including
Coulomb interactions. We demonstrate that superconductivity is associated with
Fermi surface hot spots exhibiting an unusually strong electron-phonon
interaction. The electron-lattice coupling is dominated by low-energy
anharmonic phonons, which place the system on the verge of a charge density
wave instability. We also provide definitive evidence for two-gap
superconductivity in 2-NbS, and show that the low- and high-energy peaks
observed in tunneling spectra correspond to the - and -centered
Fermi surface pockets, respectively. The present findings call for further
efforts to determine whether our proposed mechanism underpins superconductivity
in the whole family of metallic transition metal dichalcogenides.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures and Supplemental Materia
Stellar neutron capture cross sections of ⁴¹K and ⁴⁵Sc
The neutron capture cross sections of light nuclei (
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