Body Size Predicts Cardiac and Vascular Resistance Effects on Men\u27s and Women\u27s Blood Pressure

Key Points Summary We report how blood pressure, cardiac output and vascular resistance are related to height, weight, body surface area (BSA), and body mass index (BMI) in healthy young adults at supine rest and standing. Much inter-subject variability in young adult\u27s blood pressure, currently attributed to health status, may actually result from inter-individual body size differences. Each cardiovascular variable is linearly related to height, weight and/or BSA (more than to BMI). When supine, cardiac output is positively related, while vascular resistance is negatively related, to body size. Upon standing, the change in vascular resistance is positively related to size. The height/weight relationships of cardiac output and vascular resistance to body size are responsible for blood pressure relationships to body size. These basic components of blood pressure could help distinguish normal from abnormal blood pressures in young adults by providing a more effective scaling mechanism. Introduction: Effects of body size on inter-subject blood pressure (BP) variability are not well established in adults. We hypothesized that relationships linking stroke volume (SV), cardiac output (CO), and total peripheral resistance (TPR) with body size would account for a significant fraction of inter-subject BP variability. Methods: Thirty-four young, healthy adults (19 men, 15 women) participated in 38 stand tests during which brachial artery BP, heart rate, SV, CO, TPR, and indexes of body size were measured/calculated. Results: Steady state diastolic arterial BP was not significantly correlated with any index of body size when subjects were supine. However, upon standing, the more the subject weighed, or the taller s/he was, the greater the increase in diastolic pressure. Systolic pressure strongly correlated with body weight and height both supine and standing. Diastolic and systolic BP were more strongly related to height, weight and body surface area than to body mass index. When supine: lack of correlation between diastolic pressure and body size, resulted from the combination of positive SV correlation and negative TPR correlation with body size. The positive systolic pressure vs. body size relationship resulted from a positive SV vs. height relationship. In response to standing: the positive diastolic blood pressure vs. body size relationship resulted from the standing-induced, positive increase in TPR vs. body size relationship. The relationships between body weight or height with SV and TPR contribute new insight into mechanisms of BP regulation that may aid in the prediction of health in young adults by providing a more effective way to scale BP with body size

Spectral properties of XRBs in dusty early-type galaxies

We present spectral properties of a total of 996 discrete X-ray sources resolved in a sample of 23 dusty early-type galaxies selected from different environments. The combined X-ray luminosity function of all the 996 sources within the optical \D of the sample galaxies is well described by a broken power law with a break at 2.71$\times$\te \lum and is close to the Eddington limit for a 1.4\Msun neutron star. Out of the 996, about 63\p of the sources have their X-ray luminosities in the range between few\tim\ts to 2.0 \tim \tn \lum and are like normal LMXBs; about 15-20\p with luminosities $<$ few \tim 10$^{37}$ \lum are either super-soft or very-soft sources; while the remainder represents ULXs, HMXBs or unrelated heavily absorbed harder sources. More XRBs have been detected in the galaxies from isolated regions while those from rich groups and clusters host very few sources. The X-ray color-color plot for these sources has enabled us to classify them as SNRs, LMXBs, HMXBs and heavily absorbed AGNs. The composite X-ray spectra of the resolved sources within \D region of each of the galaxies are best represented by a power law with the average photon spectral index close to 1.65. The contribution of the resolved sources to the total X-ray luminosity of their host is found to vary greatly, in the sense that, in galaxies like NGC 3379 the XRB contribution is about 81\p while for NGC 5846 it is only 2\p. A correlation has been evidenced between the cumulative X-ray luminosity of the resolved sources against the star formation rate and the Ks band luminosity of the target galaxies indicating their primordial origin.Comment: 15 Pages, 6 Figures & 2 Tables, Accepted for publication in New Astronom

Future changes in tropical cyclone activity in the North Indian Ocean projected by high-resolution MRI-AGCMs

Open Access at publisher's web site: http://www.springerlink.com/content/b682734237171631

F-theory Yukawa Couplings and Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics

The localized fermions on the intersection curve $\Sigma$ of D7-branes, are connected to a N=2 supersymmetric quantum mechanics algebra. Due to this algebra the fields obey a global U(1) symmetry. This symmetry restricts the proton decay operators and the neutrino mass terms. Particularly, we find that several proton decay operators are forbidden and the Majorana mass term is the only one allowed in the theory. A special SUSY QM algebra is studied at the end of the paper. In addition we study the impact of a non-trivial holomorphic metric perturbation on the localized solutions along each matter curve. Moreover, we study the connection of the localized solutions to an N=2 supersymmetric quantum mechanics algebra when background fluxes are turned on.Comment: References added, New Material Added, Published versio

High Energy Physics in the Atmosphere: Phenomenology of Cosmic Ray Air Showers

The properties of cosmic rays with energies above 10**6 GeV have to be deduced from the spacetime structure and particle content of the air showers which they initiate. In this review we summarize the phenomenology of these giant air showers. We describe the hadronic interaction models used to extrapolate results from collider data to ultra high energies, and discuss the prospects for insights into forward physics at the LHC. We also describe the main electromagnetic processes that govern the longitudinal shower evolution, as well as the lateral spread of particles. Armed with these two principal shower ingredients and motivation from the underlying physics, we provide an overview of some of the different methods proposed to distinguish primary species. The properties of neutrino interactions and the potential of forthcoming experiments to isolate deeply penetrating showers from baryonic cascades are also discussed. We finally venture into a terra incognita endowed with TeV-scale gravity and explore anomalous neutrino-induced showers.Comment: Typo in caption of Fig. 8 corrected, references adde

Outside Money: The Advantages of Owning the Magic Porridge Pot

Over the past two decades there has been a revival of Georg Friedrich Knapp's "state money" approach, also known as chartalism. The modern version has come to be called Modern Money Theory. Much of the recent research has delved into three main areas: mining previous work, applying the theory to analysis of current sovereign monetary operations, and exploring the policy space open to sovereign currency issuers. This paper focuses on "outside" money - the currency issued by the sovereign - and the advantages that accrue to nations that make full use of the policy space provided by outside money

Is There Room for Bulls, Bears, and States in the Circuit?

This paper takes off from Jan Kregel's paper 'Shylock and Hamlet, or Are There Bulls and Bears in the Circuit?' (1986), which aimed to remedy shortcomings in most expositions of the circuit approach. While some circuitistes have rejected John Maynard Keynes's liquidity preference theory, Kregel argued that such rejection leaves the relation between money and capital asset prices, and thus investment theory, hanging. This paper extends Kregel's analysis to an examination of the role that banks play in the circuit, and argues that banks should be modeled as active rather than passive players. This also requires an extension of the circuit theory of money, along the lines of the credit and state money approaches of modern Chartalists who follow A. Mitchell Innes. Further, we need to take Charles Goodhart's argument about default seriously: agents in the circuit are heterogeneous credit risks. The paper concludes with links to the work of French circuitist Alain Parguez

Seed supply for broadscale restoration: maximizing evolutionary potential

Restoring degraded land to combat environmental degradation requires the collection of vast quantities of germplasm (seed). Sourcing this material raises questions related to provenance selection, seed quality and harvest sustainability. Restoration guidelines strongly recommend using local sources to maximize local adaptation and prevent outbreeding depression, but in highly modified landscapes this restricts collection to small remnants where limited, poor quality seed is available, and where harvesting impacts may be high. We review three principles guiding the sourcing of restoration germplasm: (i) the appropriateness of using ‘local’ seed, (ii) sample sizes and population characteristics required to capture sufficient genetic diversity to establish self-sustaining populations and (iii) the impact of over-harvesting source populations. We review these topics by examining current collection guidelines and the evidence supporting these, then we consider if the guidelines can be improved and the consequences of not doing so. We find that the emphasis on local seed sourcing will, in many cases, lead to poor restoration outcomes, particularly at broad geographic scales. We suggest that seed sourcing should concentrate less on local collection and more on capturing high quality and genetically diverse seed to maximize the adaptive potential of restoration efforts to current and future environmental change

The Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey. III. A constraint on dust grain lifetime in early-type galaxies

Passive early-type galaxies (ETGs) provide an ideal laboratory for studying the interplay between dust formation around evolved stars and its subsequent destruction in a hot gas. Using Spitzer-IRS and Herschel data we compare the dust production rate in the envelopes of evolved AGB stars with a constraint on the total dust mass. Early-type galaxies which appear to be truly passively evolving are not detected by Herschel. We thus derive a distance independent upper limit to the dust grain survival time in the hostile environment of ETGs of &lt;46 \ub1 25 Myr for amorphous silicate grains. This implies that ETGs which are detected at far-infrared wavelengths have acquired a cool dusty medium via interaction. Given likely time-scales for ram-pressure stripping, this also implies that only galaxies with dust in a cool (atomic) medium can release dust into the intra-cluster medium