11,173 research outputs found
An overview of the effect of probiotics and exercise on mood and associated health conditions
The present paper provides a review of the current knowledge relating to the health benefits of probiotics, specially focused on the effects they may have together with physical exercise on mood disorders and related chronic medical conditions. With both these conditions being a substantial contributor to the global disease burden any alternative therapy must be considered. Probiotics influence the gut microbiota through a complex network of events which can influence mechanisms leading to development of mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Similarly, through a complex interaction between psychological and neurobiological mechanisms, exercise has been found to play a key role in mood enhancement
Depolarization remote sensing by orthogonality breaking
A new concept devoted to sensing the depolarization strength of materials
from a single measurement is proposed and successfully validated on a variety
of samples. It relies on the measurement of the orthogonality breaking between
two orthogonal states of polarization after interaction with the material to be
characterized. The two fields orthogonality being preserved after propagation
in birefringent media, this concept is shown to be perfectly suited to
depolarization remote sensing through fibers, opening the way to real time
depolarization endoscopy.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
The power of information : the impact of mobile phones on farmers'welfare in the Philippines
The authors explore the impact of access to information on poor farmersâ consumption. The analysis combines spatially coded data on mobile phone coverage with household panel data on farmers from some of the poorest areas of the Philippines. Both the ordinary least squares and instrumental variable estimates indicate that purchasing a mobile phone has a large, positive impact on the household-level growth rate of per capita consumption. Estimates range from 11 to 17 percent, depending on the sample and the specification chosen. The authors perform a range of reliability tests, the results of which all suggest that the instruments are valid. They also present evidence consistent with the argument that easier access to information allows farmers to strike better price deals within their existing trading relationships and to make better choices in terms of where they choose to sell their goods.E-Business,Access to Finance,Rural Poverty Reduction,Debt Markets,Poverty Lines
Do community-driven development projects enhance social capital ? evidence from the Philippines
This paper explores the social capital impacts of a large-scale, community-driven development project in the Philippines in which communities competed for block grants for infrastructure investment. The analysis uses a unique data set of about 2,100 households collected before the project started (2003) and after one cycle of sub-project implementation (2006) in 66 treatment and 69 matched control communities. Participation in village assemblies, the frequency with which local officials meet with residents and trust towards strangers increased as a result of the project. However, there is a decline in group membership and participation in informal collective action activities. This may have been because households were time-constrained, so that in order to participate in project activities, they needed to temporarily reduce their participation in informal activities. An alternative explanation is that the project improved the efficiency of formal forms of social capital and thus households needed to rely less on informal forms. Finally, the results indicate that, in the short run, the project might have reduced the number of other investments.Housing&Human Habitats,Access to Finance,Social Accountability,Social Capital,Banks&Banking Reform
Zooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic
Born in rapidly evolving mini-halos during the first billion years of the
Universe, super- massive black holes (SMBH) feed from gas flows spanning many
orders of magnitude, from the cosmic web in which they are embedded to their
event horizon. As such, accretion onto SMBHs constitutes a formidable challenge
to tackle numerically, and currently requires the use of sub-grid models to
handle the flow on small, unresolved scales. In this paper, we study the impact
of resolution on the accretion pattern of SMBHs initially inserted at the heart
of dense galactic gas clouds, using a custom super-Lagrangian refinement scheme
to resolve the black hole (BH) gravitational zone of influence. We find that
once the self-gravitating gas cloud host is sufficiently well re- solved,
accretion onto the BH is driven by the cloud internal structure, independently
of the BH seed mass, provided dynamical friction is present during the early
stages of cloud collapse. For a pristine gas mix of hydrogen and helium, a slim
disc develops around the BH on sub-parsec scales, turning the otherwise chaotic
BH accretion duty cycle into an episodic one, with potentially important
consequences for BH feedback. In the presence of such a nuclear disc, BH mass
growth predominantly occurs when infalling dense clumps trigger disc
instabilities, fuelling intense albeit short-lived gas accretion episodes.Comment: Resubmitted to mnras after reviewer comments, 24 page
Combined scanning force microscopy and scanning tunneling spectroscopy of an electronic nano-circuit at very low temperature
We demonstrate the combination of scanning force microscopy and scanning
tunneling spectroscopy in a local probe microscope operating at very low
temperature (60 mK). This local probe uses a quartz tuning fork ensuring high
tunnel junction stability. We performed the spatially-resolved spectroscopic
study of a superconducting nano-circuit patterned on an insulating substrate.
Significant deviations from the BCS prediction are observed.Comment: 4 page
A road to trust
The authors explore the relationship between transaction costs and generalized trust. Using panel data from 2,100 households in 135 rural communities of the Philippines, the paper shows that where transaction costs are reduced (proxied by road construction), there is an increase in generalized trust. Consistent with the argument that generalized trust is built through repeated interactions, the authors find that the individuals most likely to engage in exchange exhibit an increase in trust after road construction. These results suggest that, rather than being an input to economic growth, trust might be a product of reduced transaction costs (which also favors growth).Post Conflict Reconstruction,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Rural Roads&Transport,Social Capital,Corporate Law
Frequency-dependent effective permeability tensor of unsaturated polycrystalline ferrites
Frequency-dependent permeability tensor for unsaturated polycrystalline
ferrites is derived through an effective medium approximation that combines
both domain-wall motion and rotation of domains in a single consistent
scattering framework. Thus derived permeability tensor is averaged on a
distribution function of the free energy that encodes paramagnetic states for
anhysteretic loops. The initial permeability is computed and frequency spectra
are given by varying macroscopic remanent field.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figure
Spinal cord gray matter segmentation using deep dilated convolutions
Gray matter (GM) tissue changes have been associated with a wide range of
neurological disorders and was also recently found relevant as a biomarker for
disability in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The ability to automatically
segment the GM is, therefore, an important task for modern studies of the
spinal cord. In this work, we devise a modern, simple and end-to-end fully
automated human spinal cord gray matter segmentation method using Deep
Learning, that works both on in vivo and ex vivo MRI acquisitions. We evaluate
our method against six independently developed methods on a GM segmentation
challenge and report state-of-the-art results in 8 out of 10 different
evaluation metrics as well as major network parameter reduction when compared
to the traditional medical imaging architectures such as U-Nets.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
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