23,743 research outputs found
Searching for Millisecond Pulsars: Surveys, Techniques and Prospects
Searches for millisecond pulsars (which we here loosely define as those with
periods 20 ms) in the Galactic field have undergone a renaissance in the
past five years. New or recently refurbished radio telescopes utilizing cooled
receivers and state-of-the art digital data acquisition systems are carrying
out surveys of the entire sky at a variety of radio frequencies. Targeted
searches for millisecond pulsars in point sources identified by the {\it Fermi}
Gamma-ray Space Telescope have proved phenomenally successful, with over 50
discoveries in the past five years. The current sample of millisecond pulsars
now numbers almost 200 and, for the first time in 25 years, now outnumbers
their counterparts in Galactic globular clusters. While many of these searches
are motivated to find pulsars which form part of pulsar timing arrays, a wide
variety of interesting systems are now being found. Following a brief overview
of the millisecond pulsar phenomenon, we describe these searches and present
some of the highlights of the new discoveries in the past decade. We conclude
with predictions and prospects for ongoing and future surveys.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Classical and
Quantum gravit
Effects of geometric constraints on the nuclear multifragmentation process
We include in statistical model calculations the facts that in the nuclear
multifragmentation process the fragments are produced within a given volume and
have a finite size. The corrections associated with these constraints affect
the partition modes and, as a consequence, other observables in the process. In
particular, we find that the favored fragmenting modes strongly suppress the
collective flow energy, leading to much lower values compared to what is
obtained from unconstrained calculations. This leads, for a given total
excitation energy, to a nontrivial correlation between the breakup temperature
and the collective expansion velocity. In particular we find that, under some
conditions, the temperature of the fragmenting system may increase as a
function of this expansion velocity, contrary to what it might be expected.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
Statistical multifragmentation model with discretized energy and the generalized Fermi breakup. I. Formulation of the model
The Generalized Fermi Breakup recently demonstrated to be formally equivalent
to the Statistical Multifragmentation Model, if the contribution of excited
states are included in the state densities of the former, is implemented. Since
this treatment requires the application of the Statistical Multifragmentation
Model repeatedly on the hot fragments until they have decayed to their ground
states, it becomes extremely computational demanding, making its application to
the systems of interest extremely difficult. Based on exact recursion formulae
previously developed by Chase and Mekjian to calculate the statistical weights
very efficiently, we present an implementation which is efficient enough to
allow it to be applied to large systems at high excitation energies. Comparison
with the GEMINI++ sequential decay code shows that the predictions obtained
with our treatment are fairly similar to those obtained with this more
traditional model.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
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Free healthy breakfasts in primary schools: A cluster randomised controlled trial of a policy intervention in Wales, UK
Objective: The present study evaluated the impact of a national school programme of universal free healthy breakfast provision in Wales, UK.
Design: A cluster randomised controlled trial with repeated cross-sectional design and a 12-month follow-up. Primary outcomes were breakfast skipping, breakfast diet and episodic memory. Secondary outcomes were frequency of eating breakfast at home and at school, breakfast attitudes, rest-of-day diet and class behaviour.
Setting: Primary schools in nine local education authority areas.
Subjects: A total of 4350 students (aged 9–11 years) at baseline and 4472 at follow-up in 111 schools.
Results: Students in intervention schools reported significantly higher numbers of healthy food items consumed at breakfast and more positive attitudes towards breakfast eating at 12 months. Parents in intervention schools reported significantly higher rates of consumption of breakfast at school and correspondingly lower rates of breakfast consumption at home. No other significant differences were found.
Conclusions: The intervention did not reduce breakfast skipping; rather, pupils substituted breakfast at home for breakfast at school. However, there were improvements in children’s nutritional intake at breakfast time, if not the rest of the day, and more positive attitudes to breakfast, which may have implications for life-course dietary behaviours. There was no impact on episodic memory or classroom behaviour, which may require targeting breakfast skippers
Canine liver transplantation under nva cyclosporine versus cyclosporine
The immunosuppressive qualities and other features of a new cyclosporine (CsA) analogue, Nva 2-cyclosporine (Nva 2-CsA) were examined using canine orthotopic liver allografts. The mean survival time was 11.8±9.6 (SD) days in dogs without treatment, 60.8±34.4 days with Nva 2-CsA and 65.1±33.0 days with CsA. Functional abnormalities indicating toxic side effects were not noted either with Nva 2-CsA or with CsA. Using the same oral dose, the rate of blood level rise and the amount of the rise were greater with Nva2-CsA. Histopathologically, Nva2-CsA the treatment was associated with the same degree of hydropic vocuolation in the pars recta of the proximal tubules as CsA treatment. Thus, in the dog, Nva2-CsA had identical immunosuppressive properties as CsA, with no functionally detectable toxicity affecting the liver and kidney. © 1986 by The Williams & Wilkins Co
Magnetic-Island Contraction and Particle Acceleration in Simulated Eruptive Solar Flares
The mechanism that accelerates particles to the energies required to produce
the observed high-energy impulsive emission in solar flares is not well
understood. Drake et al. (2006) proposed a mechanism for accelerating electrons
in contracting magnetic islands formed by kinetic reconnection in multi-layered
current sheets. We apply these ideas to sunward-moving flux ropes (2.5D
magnetic islands) formed during fast reconnection in a simulated eruptive
flare. A simple analytic model is used to calculate the energy gain of
particles orbiting the field lines of the contracting magnetic islands in our
ultrahigh-resolution 2.5D numerical simulation. We find that the estimated
energy gains in a single island range up to a factor of five. This is higher
than that found by Drake et al. for islands in the terrestrial magnetosphere
and at the heliopause, due to strong plasma compression that occurs at the
flare current sheet. In order to increase their energy by two orders of
magnitude and plausibly account for the observed high-energy flare emission,
the electrons must visit multiple contracting islands. This mechanism should
produce sporadic emission because island formation is intermittent. Moreover, a
large number of particles could be accelerated in each
magnetohydrodynamic-scale island, which may explain the inferred rates of
energetic-electron production in flares. We conclude that island contraction in
the flare current sheet is a promising candidate for electron acceleration in
solar eruptions.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (2016
Adaptive evolution of molecular phenotypes
Molecular phenotypes link genomic information with organismic functions,
fitness, and evolution. Quantitative traits are complex phenotypes that depend
on multiple genomic loci. In this paper, we study the adaptive evolution of a
quantitative trait under time-dependent selection, which arises from
environmental changes or through fitness interactions with other co-evolving
phenotypes. We analyze a model of trait evolution under mutations and genetic
drift in a single-peak fitness seascape. The fitness peak performs a
constrained random walk in the trait amplitude, which determines the
time-dependent trait optimum in a given population. We derive analytical
expressions for the distribution of the time-dependent trait divergence between
populations and of the trait diversity within populations. Based on this
solution, we develop a method to infer adaptive evolution of quantitative
traits. Specifically, we show that the ratio of the average trait divergence
and the diversity is a universal function of evolutionary time, which predicts
the stabilizing strength and the driving rate of the fitness seascape. From an
information-theoretic point of view, this function measures the
macro-evolutionary entropy in a population ensemble, which determines the
predictability of the evolutionary process. Our solution also quantifies two
key characteristics of adapting populations: the cumulative fitness flux, which
measures the total amount of adaptation, and the adaptive load, which is the
fitness cost due to a population's lag behind the fitness peak.Comment: Figures are not optimally displayed in Firefo
Nuclear isotope thermometry
We discuss different aspects which could influence temperatures deduced from
experimental isotopic yields in the multifragmentation process. It is shown
that fluctuations due to the finite size of the system and distortions due to
the decay of hot primary fragments conspire to blur the temperature
determination in multifragmentation reactions. These facts suggest that caloric
curves obtained through isotope thermometers, which were taken as evidence for
a first-order phase transition in nuclear matter, should be investigated very
carefully.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure
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