6,605 research outputs found
Inter-trial variability in sensory-evoked cortical hemodynamic responses: the role of the magnitude of pre-stimulus fluctuations
Brain imaging techniques utilize hemodynamic changes that accompany brain activation. However, stimulus-evoked hemodynamic responses display considerable inter-trial variability and the sources of this variability are poorly understood. One of the sources of this response variation could be ongoing spontaneous hemodynamic fluctuations. We recently investigated this issue by measuring cortical hemodynamics in response to sensory stimuli in anesthetized rodents using 2-dimensional optical imaging spectroscopy. We suggested that sensory-evoked cortical hemodynamics displayed distinctive response characteristics and magnitudes depending on the phase of ongoing fluctuations at stimulus onset due to a linear superposition of evoked and ongoing hemodynamics (Saka et al., 2010). However, the previous analysis neglected to examine the possible influence of variability of the size of ongoing fluctuations. Consequently, data were further analyzed to examine whether the size of pre-stimulus hemodynamic fluctuations also influenced the magnitude of subsequent stimulus-evoked responses. Indeed, in the case of all individual trials, a moderate correlation between the size of the pre-stimulus fluctuations and the magnitudes of the subsequent sensory-evoked responses were observed. However, different correlations between the size of the pre-stimulus fluctuations and magnitudes of the subsequent sensory-evoked cortical hemodynamic responses could be observed depending on their phase at stimulus onset. These analyses suggest that both the size and phase of pre-stimulus fluctuations in cortical hemodynamics contribute to inter-trial variability in sensory-evoked responses
Linear superposition of sensory-evoked and ongoing cortical hemodynamics.
Modern non-invasive brain imaging techniques utilize changes in cerebral blood flow, volume and oxygenation that accompany brain activation. However, stimulus-evoked hemodynamic responses display considerable inter-trial variability even when identical stimuli are presented and the sources of this variability are poorly understood. One of the sources of this response variation could be ongoing spontaneous hemodynamic fluctuations. To investigate this issue, 2-dimensional optical imaging spectroscopy was used to measure cortical hemodynamics in response to sensory stimuli in anesthetized rodents. Pre-stimulus cortical hemodynamics displayed spontaneous periodic fluctuations and as such, data from individual stimulus presentation trials were assigned to one of four groups depending on the phase angle of pre-stimulus hemodynamic fluctuations and averaged. This analysis revealed that sensory evoked cortical hemodynamics displayed distinctive response characteristics and magnitudes depending on the phase angle of ongoing fluctuations at stimulus onset. To investigate the origin of this phenomenon, "null-trials" were collected without stimulus presentation. Subtraction of phase averaged "null trials" from their phase averaged stimulus-evoked counterparts resulted in four similar time series that resembled the mean stimulus-evoked response. These analyses suggest that linear superposition of evoked and ongoing cortical hemodynamic changes may be a property of the structure of inter-trial variability
Human Capital Development and Poverty in Nigeria, 1960 - 2009: An Econometric Assessment
This study examined the relationship between human capital development and poverty in Nigeria using data spanning 1960-2009. The human capital development variable was measured using conventional variables i.e. education and health, with government expenditures on education and health being used as the proxies. Other variables on  communication, transportation and utility were used as control. A readily available poverty measure, gross domestic product per capita was used to capture poverty status. This is based on the fact that poverty is mostly measured in monetary terms captured by income or consumption per capita or household in the absence of direct primary data observation. After carrying out the diagnostic tests, the cointegration analysis carried out proved that, to some extent, a cointegrating relationship exists between the poverty measure and human capital development indicators. However, the Granger causality estimation results show that both education and health expenditures are fundamental in reducing poverty level based on the uni-directional causality while no causality runs from poverty status to the indicators. Keywords: Poverty, Human Capital Development, Cointegration, Granger Causalit
Accurate structure factors from pseudopotential methods
Highly accurate experimental structure factors of silicon are available in
the literature, and these provide the ideal test for any \emph{ab initio}
method for the construction of the all-electron charge density. In a recent
paper [J. R. Trail and D. M. Bird, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 60}, 7863 (1999)] a method
has been developed for obtaining an accurate all-electron charge density from a
first principles pseudopotential calculation by reconstructing the core region
of an atom of choice. Here this method is applied to bulk silicon, and
structure factors are derived and compared with experimental and Full-potential
Linear Augmented Plane Wave results (FLAPW). We also compare with the result of
assuming the core region is spherically symmetric, and with the result of
constructing a charge density from the pseudo-valence density + frozen core
electrons. Neither of these approximations provide accurate charge densities.
The aspherical reconstruction is found to be as accurate as FLAPW results, and
reproduces the residual error between the FLAPW and experimental results.Comment: 6 Pages, 3 figure
Finite size melting of spherical solid-liquid aluminium interfaces
We have investigated the melting of nano-sized cone shaped aluminium needles
coated with amorphous carbon using transmission electron microscopy. The
interface between solid and liquid aluminium was found to have spherical
topology. For needles with fixed apex angle, the depressed melting temperature
of this spherical interface, with radius , was found to scale linearly with
the inverse radius . However, by varying the apex angle of the needles we
show that the proportionality constant between the depressed melting
temperature and the inverse radius changes significantly. This lead us to the
conclusion that the depressed melting temperature is not controlled solely by
the inverse radius . Instead we found a direct relation between the
depressed melting temperature and the ratio between the solid-liquid interface
area and the molten volume.Comment: to appear in Philosophical Magazine (2009
Testing and Modeling Ethernet Switches and Networks for Use in ATLAS High-level Triggers
The ATLAS second level trigger will use a multi-layered LAN network to transfer 5 Gbyte/s detector data from ~1500 buffers to a few hundred processors. A model of the network has been constructed to evaluate its performance. A key component of the network model is a model of an individual switch, reproducing the behavior measured in real devices. A small number of measurable parameters are used to model a variety of commercial Ethernet switches. Using parameters measured on real devices, the impact on the overall network performance is modeled. In the Atlas context, both 100 Mbit and Gigabit Ethernet links are required. A system is described which is capable of characterizing the behavior of commercial switches with the required number of nodes under traffic conditions resembling those to be encountered in the Atlas experiment. Fast Ethernet traffic is provided by a high density, custom built tester based on FPGAs, programmed in Handel-C and VHDL, while the Gigabit Ethernet traffic is generated using Alteon NICs with custom firmware. The system is currently being deployed with 32 100Mbit ports and 16 Gigabit ports, and will be expanded to ~256 nodes of 100 Mbit and ~50 GBE nodes
N=1/2 Supersymmetric gauge theory in noncommutative space
A formulation of (non-anticommutative) N=1/2 supersymmetric U(N) gauge theory
in noncommutative space is studied. We show that at one loop
UV/IR mixing occurs. A generalization of Seiberg-Witten map to noncommutative
and non-anticommutative superspace is employed to obtain an action in terms of
commuting fields at first order in the noncommutativity parameter tetha. This
leads to abelian and non-abelian gauge theories whose supersymmetry
transformations are local and non-local, respectively.Comment: One reference added, published versio
A Massive S-duality in 4 dimensions
We reduce the Type IIA supergravity theory with a generalized Scherk-Schwarz
ansatz that exploits the scaling symmetry of the dilaton, the metric and the NS
2-form field. The resulting theory is a new massive, gauged supergravity theory
in four dimensions with a massive 2-form field and a massive 1-form field. We
show that this theory is S-dual to a theory with a massive vector field and a
massive 2-form field, which are dual to the massive 2-form and 1-form fields in
the original theory, respectively. The S-dual theory is shown to arise from a
Scherk-Schwarz reduction of the heterotic theory. Hence we establish a massive,
S-duality type relation between the IIA theory and the heterotic theory in four
dimensions. We also show that the Lagrangian for the new four dimensional
theory can be put in the most general form of a D=4, N=4 gauged Lagrangian
found by Schon and Weidner, in which (part of) the SL(2) group has been gauged.Comment: 20 pages, references adde
N=2 Instanton Effective Action in Omega-background and D3/D(-1)-brane System in R-R Background
We study the relation between the ADHM construction of instantons in the
Omega-background and the fractional D3/D(-1)-branes at the orbifold singularity
of C \times C^2/Z_2 in Ramond-Ramond (R-R) 3-form field strength background. We
calculate disk amplitudes of open strings connecting the D3/D(-1)-branes in
certain R-R background to obtain the D(-1)-brane effective action deformed by
the R-R background. We show that the deformed D(-1)-brane effective action
agrees with the instanton effective action in the Omega-background.Comment: 35 pages, no figures, references adde
Average Structures of a Single Knotted Ring Polymer
Two types of average structures of a single knotted ring polymer are studied
by Brownian dynamics simulations. For a ring polymer with N segments, its
structure is represented by a 3N -dimensional conformation vector consisting of
the Cartesian coordinates of the segment positions relative to the center of
mass of the ring polymer. The average structure is given by the average
conformation vector, which is self-consistently defined as the average of the
conformation vectors obtained from a simulation each of which is rotated to
minimize its distance from the average conformation vector. From each
conformation vector sampled in a simulation, 2N conformation vectors are
generated by changing the numbering of the segments. Among the 2N conformation
vectors, the one closest to the average conformation vector is used for one
type of the average structure. The other type of the averages structure uses
all the conformation vectors generated from those sampled in a simulation. In
thecase of the former average structure, the knotted part of the average
structure is delocalized for small N and becomes localized as N is increased.
In the case of the latter average structure, the average structure changes from
a double loop structure for small N to a single loop structure for large N,
which indicates the localization-delocalization transition of the knotted part.Comment: 15 pages, 19 figures, uses jpsj2.cl
- …