Thermodynamic Properties of the SU(2)f_f Chiral Quark-Loop Soliton

We consider a chiral one-loop hedgehog soliton of the bosonized SU(2)$_f$ Nambu & Jona-Lasinio model which is embedded in a hot medium of constituent quarks. Energy and radius of the soliton are determined in self-consistent mean-field approximation. Quasi-classical corrections to the soliton energy are derived by means of the pushing and cranking approaches. The corresponding inertial parameters are evaluated. It is shown that the inertial mass is equivalent to the total internal energy of the soliton. Corrected nucleon and $\Delta$ isobar masses are calculated in dependence on temperature and density of the medium. As a result of the self-consistently determined internal structure of the soliton the scaling between constituent quark mass, soliton mass and radius is noticeably disturbed.Comment: 34 pages, 7 Postscript figures, uses psfig.st

Advances in pre-processing and model generation for mass spectrometric data analysis

The analysis of complex signals as obtained by mass spectrometric measurements is complicated and needs an appropriate representation of the data. Thereby the kind of preprocessing, feature extraction as well as the used similarity measure are of particular importance. Focusing on biomarker analysis and taking the functional nature of the data into account this task is even more complicated. A new mass spectrometry tailored data preprocessing is shown, discussed and analyzed in a clinical proteom study compared to a standard setting

TestDaF oder ZOP? Welche Prüfung sagt mehr über die Studierfähigkeit aus?

The following article is about two tests of the knowledge of German as a foreign language on an advanced level: TestDaF and ZOP (Zentrale Oberstufenprüfung, Goethe-Institut). Each test type is first described and then analysed for its suitability as a university entry test for foreign students, as both are recognised as such by German universities. It is shown that every test type includes items, which are not valid for university applicants. Based on this analysis, the author works out criteria, which a university entry test should include

The semiclassical description of the energy spectrum of hydrogen in near-perpendicular fields

We examine the energy spectrum of hydrogen in weak near-perpendicular electric and magnetic fields using quantum computations and semiclassical analysis. The structure of the quantum spectrum is displayed in a lattice constructed by plotting the difference between total energy and first order energy versus first order energy, for all states of a given principal quantum number n. For some field parameters, the lattice structure is not regular, but has a lattice defect structure which may be characterized by the transport of lattice vectors. We find that in near-perpendicular fields the structure of the spectrum is divided into six distinct parameter regions, which we characterize by the presence and type of lattice defect. to explain this structure we examine a corresponding classical system which we have derived by classical perturbation theory. Starting from Kepler action and angle variables, we give a derivation of a classical Hamiltonian to second order in perturbation theory; the derivation is different from, but the final result agrees with previous work. We focus especially on the topological structure of the reduced phase space and on the resulting topological structure of the trajectories. We show that construction of action variables by the obvious methods leads to variables that have discontinuous derivatives. Smooth continuation of these primitive action variables leads to action variables that are multivalued. We show how these multivalued actions lead to lattice defects in the quantum spectrum. Finally we present a few correlation diagrams which show how quantum eigenvalues evolve from one region of near-perpendicular parameter space to another and show how the structure of the quantum correlations is related to structures in the classical phase space

Regulation of gene expression in specific mouse brain cells during neurodegenerative prion disease

Why neurodegenerative diseases target specific brain regions is poorly understood. We hypothesize that this selective vulnerability is caused by specific brain cells in these regions having unique strategies and capacities to cope with various disease related protein conformers that ultimately fail. To study how specific cell types in the mouse brain respond to a neurodegenerative disease we used prion infection (RML scrapie strain) as a model of neurodegenerative disease. Prion infection was combined with the RiboTag method to isolate ribosome associated, actively translated mRNA from specific brain cell types. Mice expressing the epitope-tagged ribosomes specifically in astrocytes or subsets of neurons, including glutamatergic, GABAergic, parvalbumin and somatostatin neurons, were injected with brain homogenate from either normal or prion infected mice. Early changes to gene expression were analyzed by next generation sequencing at a stage when clinical signs first become apparent (disease onset) and at a much earlier stage (preclinical time point) in the disease process. Neuropathological changes like microglia activation, astrogliosis, aggregated prions and spongiosis were analyzed by different immunohistochemistry stainings. This work gives clues into which cells are affected earliest and how they respond to the emerging disease. Investigating cell-type-specific mechanisms of selective vulnerability are needed for a better understanding of mechanism in neurodegenerative diseases and developing therapies