2,956 research outputs found
First Principles Study of Structural, Electronic and Magnetic Interplay in Ferroelectromagnetic Yttrium Manganite
We present results of local spin density approximation pseudopotential
calculations for the ferroelectromagnet, yttrium manganite (YMnO3). The origin
of the differences between ferroelectric and non-ferroelectric perovskite
manganites is determined by comparing the calculated properties of yttrium
manganite in its ferroelectric hexagonal and non-ferroelectric orthorhombic
phases. In addition, orthorhombic YMnO3 is compared with the prototypical
non-ferroelectric manganite, lanthanum manganite. We show that, while the
octahedral crystal field splitting of the cubic perovskite structure causes a
centro-symmetric Jahn-Teller distortion around the Mn3+ ion, the markedly
different splitting in hexagonal perovskites creates an electronic
configuration consistent with ferroelectric distortion. We explain the nature
of the distortion, and show that a local magnetic moment on the Mn3+ ion is a
requirement for it to occur.Comment: Replacement of earlier version with error in pseudopotentia
Recommended from our members
Upper tropospheric ozone production from lightning NOx-impacted convection: Smoke ingestion case study from the DC3 campaign
©2015. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. As part of the Deep Convective Cloud and Chemistry (DC3) experiment, the National Science Foundation/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Gulfstream-V (GV) and NASA DC-8 research aircraft probed the chemical composition of the inflow and outflow of two convective storms (north storm, NS, south storm, SS) originating in the Colorado region on 22 June 2012, a time when the High Park wildfire was active in the area. A wide range of trace species were measured on board both aircraft including biomass burning (BB) tracers hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and acetonitrile (ACN). Acrolein, a much shorter lived tracer for BB, was also quantified on the GV. The data demonstrated that the NS had ingested fresh smoke from the High Park fire and as a consequence had a higher VOC OH reactivity than the SS. The SS lofted aged fire tracers along with other boundary layer ozone precursors and was more impacted by lightning NOx (LNOx) than the NS. The NCAR master mechanism box model was initialized with measurements made in the outflow of the two storms. The NS and SS were predicted to produce 11 and 14ppbv of O3, respectively, downwind of the storm over 2days. Sensitivity tests revealed that the ozone production potential of the SS was highly dependent on LNOx. Normalized excess mixing ratios, ΔX/ΔCO, for HCN and ACN were determined in both the fire plume and the storm outflow and found to be 7.0±0.5 and 2.3±0.5pptvppbv-1, respectively, and 1.4±0.3pptvppbv-1 for acrolein in the outflow only
Recommended from our members
A pilot randomised controlled trial of personalised care for depressed patients with symptomatic coronary heart disease in South London general practices: the UPBEAT-UK RCT protocol and recruitment.
ABSTRACT:
Background: Community studies reveal people with coronary heart disease (CHD) are twice as likely to be depressed as the general population and that this co-morbidity negatively affects the course and outcome of both conditions. There is evidence for the efficacy of collaborative care and case management for depression treatment, and whilst NICE guidelines recommend these approaches only where depression has not responded to psychological, pharmacological, or combined treatments, these care approaches may be particularly relevant to the needs of people with CHD and depression in the earlier stages of stepped care in primary care settings.
Methods: This pilot randomised controlled trial will evaluate whether a simple intervention involving a personalised care plan, elements of case management and regular telephone review is a feasible and acceptable intervention that leads to better mental and physical health outcomes for these patients. The comparator group will be usual general practitioner (GP) care.
81 participants have been recruited from CHD registers of 15 South London general practices. Eligible participants have probable major depression identified by a score of ≥8 on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale depression subscale (HADS-D) together with symptomatic CHD identified using the Modified Rose Angina Questionnaire.
Consenting participants are randomly allocated to usual care or the personalised care intervention which involves a comprehensive assessment of each participant’s physical and mental health needs which are documented in a care plan, followed by regular telephone reviews by the case manager over a 6-month period. At each review, the intervention participant’s mood, function and identified problems are reviewed and the case manager uses evidence based behaviour change techniques to facilitate achievement of goals specified by the patient with the aim of increasing the patient’s self efficacy to solve their problems.
Depressive symptoms measured by HADS score will be collected at baseline and 1, 6- and 12 months post randomisation. Other outcomes include CHD symptoms, quality of life, wellbeing and health service utilisation.
Discussion: This practical and patient-focused intervention is potentially an effective and accessible approach to the health and social care needs of people with depression and CHD in primary care.
Trial registration: ISRCTN21615909
Recommended from our members
The impact of deregulation and re-regulation on bank efficiency: evidence from Asia
Following the 1997 crisis, banking sector reforms in Asia have been characterised by the emphasis on prudential regulation, associated with increased financial liberalisation. Using a panel data set of commercial banks from eight major Asian economies over the period 2001-2010, this study explores how the coexistence of liberalisation and prudential regulation affects banks’ cost characteristics. Given the presence of heterogeneity of technologies across countries, we use a stochastic frontier approach followed by the estimation of a deterministic meta-frontier to provide ‘true’ estimates of bank cost efficiency measures. Our results show that the liberalization of bank interest rates and the increase in foreign banks' presence have had a positive and significant impact on technological progress and cost efficiency. On the other hand, we find that prudential regulation might adversely affect bank cost performance. When designing an optimal regulatory framework, policy makers should combine policies which aim to foster financial stability without hindering financial intermediation
Pontocerebellar hypoplasia type 2: a neuropathological update
Pontocerebellar hypoplasia type 2 (PCH-2; MIM 277470), an autosomal recessive neurodegeneration with fetal onset, was studied in six autopsies with ages at death ranging between 1 and 22 years. Three patients were distantly related. A case of olivopontocerebellar hypoplasia (OPCH; MIM 225753) was studied for comparison. Typical findings are: short cerebellar folia with poor branching (“hypoplasia”), relative sparing of the vermis, sharply demarcated areas of full thickness loss of cerebellar cortex probably resulting from regression at an early stage of development, segmental loss of dentate nuclei with preserved islands and reactive changes, segmental loss in the inferior olivary nucleus with reactive changes, loss of ventral pontine nuclei with near absence of transverse pontine fibers and sparing of spinal anterior horn cells. Variable findings are: cystic cerebellar degeneration, found in two, with vascular changes limited to the cerebellum in one. Comparison to olivopontocerebellar hypoplasia (OPCH) strongly suggests a continuum of pathology between this disorder and PCH-2. Immunohistochemical evaluation of the endoplasmic reticulum stress response is negative. We conclude that the neuropathological findings in PCH-2 are sufficiently specific to enable an unequivocal diagnosis based on neuropathology
One-dimensional dynamics of the d-electrons in -NaVO
We have studied the electronic properties of the ladder compound
-NaVO, adopting a joint experimental and theoretical
approach. The momentum-dependent loss function was measured using electron
energy-loss spectroscopy in transmission. The optical conductivity derived from
the loss function by a Kramers-Kronig analysis agrees well with our results
from LSDA+U band-structure calculations upon application of an
antiferromagnetic alignment of the V~3 spins along the legs and an
on-site Coulomb interaction U of between 2 and 3 eV. The decomposition of the
calculated optical conductivity into contributions from transitions between
selected energy regions of the DOS reveals the origin of the observed
anisotropy of the optical conductivity. In addition, we have investigated the
plasmon excitations related to transitions between the vanadium states within
an effective 16 site vanadium cluster model. Good agreement between the
theoretical and experimental loss function was obtained using the hopping
parameters derived from the tight binding fit to the band-structure and
moderate Coulomb interactions between the electrons within the ab plane.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures; submitted to PR
Formation of Supermassive Black Holes
Evidence shows that massive black holes reside in most local galaxies.
Studies have also established a number of relations between the MBH mass and
properties of the host galaxy such as bulge mass and velocity dispersion. These
results suggest that central MBHs, while much less massive than the host (~
0.1%), are linked to the evolution of galactic structure. In hierarchical
cosmologies, a single big galaxy today can be traced back to the stage when it
was split up in hundreds of smaller components. Did MBH seeds form with the
same efficiency in small proto-galaxies, or did their formation had to await
the buildup of substantial galaxies with deeper potential wells? I briefly
review here some of the physical processes that are conducive to the evolution
of the massive black hole population. I will discuss black hole formation
processes for `seed' black holes that are likely to place at early cosmic
epochs, and possible observational tests of these scenarios.Comment: To appear in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review. The final
publication is available at http://www.springerlink.co
Informing the design of a national screening and treatment programme for chronic viral hepatitis in primary care: qualitative study of at-risk immigrant communities and healthcare professionals
n Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain
Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article,
unless otherwise statedThis paper presents independent research funded by the National Institute
for Health Research (NIHR) under the Programme Grants for Applied
Research programme (RP-PG-1209-10038).
An Optimized Chloroplast DNA Extraction Protocol for Grasses (Poaceae) Proves Suitable for Whole Plastid Genome Sequencing and SNP Detection
peer-reviewedBackground
Obtaining chloroplast genome sequences is important to increase the knowledge about the fundamental biology of plastids, to understand evolutionary and ecological processes in the evolution of plants, to develop biotechnological applications (e.g. plastid engineering) and to improve the efficiency of breeding schemes. Extraction of pure chloroplast DNA is required for efficient sequencing of chloroplast genomes. Unfortunately, most protocols for extracting chloroplast DNA were developed for eudicots and do not produce sufficiently pure yields for a shotgun sequencing approach of whole plastid genomes from the monocot grasses.
Methodology/Principal Findings
We have developed a simple and inexpensive method to obtain chloroplast DNA from grass species by modifying and extending protocols optimized for the use in eudicots. Many protocols for extracting chloroplast DNA require an ultracentrifugation step to efficiently separate chloroplast DNA from nuclear DNA. The developed method uses two more centrifugation steps than previously reported protocols and does not require an ultracentrifuge.
Conclusions/Significance
The described method delivered chloroplast DNA of very high quality from two grass species belonging to highly different taxonomic subfamilies within the grass family (Lolium perenne, Pooideae; Miscanthus×giganteus, Panicoideae). The DNA from Lolium perenne was used for whole chloroplast genome sequencing and detection of SNPs. The sequence is publicly available on EMBL/GenBank
- …