841 research outputs found
Native submerged macrophyte distribution in seasonally-flowing, south-western Australian streams in relation to stream condition
Submerged macrophytes are important structural and biological components of many lowland streams with potential to support ecosystem processes in degraded streams, provided that growth is not excessive. In a low-gradient agricultural landscape, a survey was used to explore associations between submerged macrophyte growth, biodiversity and variables assessing stream condition in seasonally-flowing streams. These variables were sampled across fifty-three reaches on seven adjacent streams in the mediterranean climate region of south-western Australia. Native submerged macrophytes were present in 43 % of sampled reaches, forming two distinct macrophyte assemblages dominated either by Potamogeton spp. together with Otteliaovalifolia, or by Cycnogeton spp. The Potamogeton/Ottelia assemblage was present in degraded reaches with higher light availability and deposition of fine sediments, but did not show excessive growth, even under nutrient-enriched conditions. Conversely, Cycnogeton spp. were associated with shaded conditions and greater flow. Reaches with macrophytes present had significantly higher macroinvertebrate abundance and family richness than those without, although rarefied family richness was similar among reaches with and without submerged macrophytes. The more structurally complex Potamogeton/Ottelia assemblage supported a greater abundance of grazers, shredders and predators than the simpler Cycnogeton spp. In degraded agricultural streams, remnant and colonising populations of submerged macrophytes may compensate for loss of riparian-derived habitat and resources for macroinvertebrates, and thus the food supply for predatory species
The Association of Surgeons in Training Conference: #ASiT2015 Glasgow
AbstractThe Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT) is a professional body and registered charity working to promote excellence in surgical training for the benefit of junior doctors and patients alike. ASiT is in-dependent of the National Health Service (NHS), Surgical Royal Colleges, and specialty associations and represents trainees in all ten surgical specialties.ASiT was delighted to welcome a number of distinguished guests and speakers to Glasgow for #ASiT2015. The theme of ‘The Future of Surgery’ delved into challenges surgical training faces, exciting developments into using technology to help patients, a glance at the past with the development of the Glasgow Coma Score and whether mortality truly is the future of measured outcomes. More than £3500 of prizes was awarded by the incoming President, Miss. Rhiannon Harries to the highest scoring papers presented selected from over 1000 abstracts submitted
Evidence for two-quark content of in exclusive decays
Inspired by a large decay branching ratio (BR) of
measured by Belle recently, we propose that a significant evidence of the
component of in could be
demonstrated in exclusive decays by the observation of in
the final states and . We predict the BRs of to be () while
the unknown wave functions of () are chosen to fit the
observed decays of .Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Revtex4, version to appear in PR
Innate immune responses to a single session of sprint interval training.
Sprint interval training (SIT) is a potent stimulus for physiological and metabolic adaptations comparable with those induced by traditional "aerobic" endurance training. There has been a great deal of recent research on SIT, which may lead to increased use of this type of training. The purpose of the present study was to determine the acute effects of SIT on aspects of innate immunity not previously researched in this context. Nine males completed 1 SIT and 1 resting control trial in a crossover design. Blood and saliva samples were obtained at pre-, post-, and 30 min postexercise to measure blood neutrophil oxidative burst activity (OBA) in addition to saliva secretary IgA (s-IgA) and lysozyme. SIT induced a significant depression of neutrophil fMLP-stimulated OBA (-30% for the 30-min postexercise time point, p 0.05). The main novel finding of the present study is that a single session of SIT causes significant exercise-induced immunodepression of some neutrophil functions but mucosal immunity was not depressed
The role of the supply chain in the elimination and reduction of construction rework and defects: an action research approach
Since 2007, Ireland has suffered a circa 80% reduction in construction output. This has
resulted in bankruptcy, unemployment and bad debt. Contractors have attached greater
emphasis to production efficiency and cost reduction as a means of survival. An Action
Research (AR) strategy was used in this research to improve processes adopted by a SME
contractor for the control of defects in its supply chain. It is conservatively estimated that
rework, typically accounts for, circa 5% of total project costs. Rework is wasteful and
presents an obvious target for improvement. The research reported here concerns the (first)
diagnosing stage of the AR cycle only, involving: observation of fieldwork, analysis of
contract documents, and semi-structured interviews with supply chain members. The results
indicate potential for supply chain participants to identify root causes of defects and propose
solutions, having regard to best practice to avoid re-occurrence. A lack of collaborative
forums to contribute to production improvement was identified. Additionally the processes,
used to collect, manage and disseminate data were unstructured and uncoordinated, indicating
scope for developing more efficient methods. The research indicates good understanding of
the potential benefits for supply chain collaboration but suggests that the tools and knowledge
to collaborate are currently lacking in the SME sector
Observation of Scaling Violations in Scaled Momentum Distributions at HERA
Charged particle production has been measured in deep inelastic scattering
(DIS) events over a large range of and using the ZEUS detector. The
evolution of the scaled momentum, , with in the range 10 to 1280
, has been investigated in the current fragmentation region of the Breit
frame. The results show clear evidence, in a single experiment, for scaling
violations in scaled momenta as a function of .Comment: 21 pages including 4 figures, to be published in Physics Letters B.
Two references adde
D* Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA
This paper presents measurements of D^{*\pm} production in deep inelastic
scattering from collisions between 27.5 GeV positrons and 820 GeV protons. The
data have been taken with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The decay channel
(+ c.c.) has been used in the study. The
cross section for inclusive D^{*\pm} production with
and is 5.3 \pms 1.0 \pms 0.8 nb in the kinematic region
{ GeV and }. Differential cross
sections as functions of p_T(D^{*\pm}), and are
compared with next-to-leading order QCD calculations based on the photon-gluon
fusion production mechanism. After an extrapolation of the cross section to the
full kinematic region in p_T(D^{*\pm}) and (D^{*\pm}), the charm
contribution to the proton structure function is
determined for Bjorken between 2 10 and 5 10.Comment: 17 pages including 4 figure
Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA
Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5
GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS
detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the
centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total
transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly
a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4
GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This
observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with
a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil
Shrinking a large dataset to identify variables associated with increased risk of Plasmodium falciparum infection in Western Kenya
Large datasets are often not amenable to analysis using traditional single-step approaches. Here, our general objective was to apply imputation techniques, principal component analysis (PCA), elastic net and generalized linear models to a large dataset in a systematic approach to extract the most meaningful predictors for a health outcome. We extracted predictors for Plasmodium falciparum infection, from a large covariate dataset while facing limited numbers of observations, using data from the People, Animals, and their Zoonoses (PAZ) project to demonstrate these techniques: data collected from 415 homesteads in western Kenya, contained over 1500 variables that describe the health, environment, and social factors of the humans, livestock, and the homesteads in which they reside. The wide, sparse dataset was simplified to 42 predictors of P. falciparum malaria infection and wealth rankings were produced for all homesteads. The 42 predictors make biological sense and are supported by previous studies. This systematic data-mining approach we used would make many large datasets more manageable and informative for decision-making processes and health policy prioritization
Global Search for New Physics with 2.0/fb at CDF
Data collected in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron are searched for
indications of new electroweak-scale physics. Rather than focusing on
particular new physics scenarios, CDF data are analyzed for discrepancies with
the standard model prediction. A model-independent approach (Vista) considers
gross features of the data, and is sensitive to new large cross-section
physics. Further sensitivity to new physics is provided by two additional
algorithms: a Bump Hunter searches invariant mass distributions for "bumps"
that could indicate resonant production of new particles; and the Sleuth
procedure scans for data excesses at large summed transverse momentum. This
combined global search for new physics in 2.0/fb of ppbar collisions at
sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV reveals no indication of physics beyond the standard model.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Final version which appeared in Physical Review D
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