320 research outputs found
Inflammatory and metabolic responses to high-fat meals with and without dairy products in men.
Postprandial inflammation is an important factor for human health since chronic low-grade inflammation is associated with chronic diseases. Dairy products have a weak but significant anti-inflammatory effect on postprandial inflammation. The objective of the present study was to compare the effect of a high-fat dairy meal (HFD meal), a high-fat non-dairy meal supplemented with milk (HFM meal) and a high-fat non-dairy control meal (HFC meal) on postprandial inflammatory and metabolic responses in healthy men. A cross-over study was conducted in nineteen male subjects. Blood samples were collected before and 1, 2, 4 and 6 h after consumption of the test meals. Plasma concentrations of insulin, glucose, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, TAG and C-reactive protein (CRP) were measured at each time point. IL-6, TNF-α and endotoxin concentrations were assessed at baseline and endpoint (6 h). Time-dependent curves of these metabolic parameters were plotted, and the net incremental AUC were found to be significantly higher for TAG and lower for CRP after consumption of the HFM meal compared with the HFD meal; however, the HFM and HFD meals were not different from the HFC meal. Alterations in IL-6, TNF-α and endotoxin concentrations were not significantly different between the test meals. The results suggest that full-fat milk and dairy products (cheese and butter) have no significant impact on the inflammatory response to a high-fat meal
Low-Energy Universality in Atomic and Nuclear Physics
An effective field theory developed for systems interacting through
short-range interactions can be applied to systems of cold atoms with a large
scattering length and to nucleons at low energies. It is therefore the ideal
tool to analyze the universal properties associated with the Efimov effect in
three- and four-body systems. In this "progress report", we will discuss recent
results obtained within this framework and report on progress regarding the
inclusion of higher order corrections associated with the finite range of the
underlying interaction.Comment: Commissioned article for Few-Body Systems, 47 pp, 16 fig
Aharonov-Bohm Interferometry with Interacting Quantum Dots: Spin Configurations, Asymmetric Interference Patterns, Bias-Voltage-Induced Aharonov-Bohm Oscillations, and Symmetries of Transport Coefficients
We study electron transport through multiply-connected mesoscopic geometries
containing interacting quantum dots. Our formulation covers both equilibrium
and non-equilibrium physics. We discuss the relation of coherent transport
channels through the quantum dot to flux-sensitive Aharonov-Bohm oscillations
in the total conductance of the device. Contributions to transport in first and
second order in the intrinsic line width of the dot levels are addressed in
detail. We predict an interaction-induced asymmetry in the amplitude of the
interference signal around resonance peaks as a consequence of incoherence
associated with spin-flip processes. This asymmetry can be used to probe the
total spin of the quantum dot. Such a probe requires less stringent
experimental conditions than the Kondo effect, which provides the same
information. We show that first-order contributions can be partially or even
fully coherent. This contrasts with the sequential-tunneling picture, which
describes first-order transport as a sequence of incoherent tunneling
processes. We predict bias-voltage induced Aharonov-Bohm oscillations of
physical quantities which are independent of flux in the linear-response
regime. Going beyond the Onsager relations we analyze the relations between the
space symmetry group of the setup and the flux-dependent non-linear
conductance.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figure
Microscopic View on Short-Range Wetting at the Free Surface of the Binary Metallic Liquid Gallium-Bismuth: An X-ray Reflectivity and Square Gradient Theory Study
We present an x-ray reflectivity study of wetting at the free surface of the
binary liquid metal gallium-bismuth (Ga-Bi) in the region where the bulk phase
separates into Bi-rich and Ga-rich liquid phases. The measurements reveal the
evolution of the microscopic structure of wetting films of the Bi-rich,
low-surface-tension phase along different paths in the bulk phase diagram. A
balance between the surface potential preferring the Bi-rich phase and the
gravitational potential which favors the Ga-rich phase at the surface pins the
interface of the two demixed liquid metallic phases close to the free surface.
This enables us to resolve it on an Angstrom level and to apply a mean-field,
square gradient model extended by thermally activated capillary waves as
dominant thermal fluctuations. The sole free parameter of the gradient model,
i.e. the so-called influence parameter, , is determined from our
measurements. Relying on a calculation of the liquid/liquid interfacial tension
that makes it possible to distinguish between intrinsic and capillary wave
contributions to the interfacial structure we estimate that fluctuations affect
the observed short-range, complete wetting phenomena only marginally. A
critical wetting transition that should be sensitive to thermal fluctuations
seems to be absent in this binary metallic alloy.Comment: RevTex4, twocolumn, 15 pages, 10 figure
Monte Carlo Methods for Estimating Interfacial Free Energies and Line Tensions
Excess contributions to the free energy due to interfaces occur for many
problems encountered in the statistical physics of condensed matter when
coexistence between different phases is possible (e.g. wetting phenomena,
nucleation, crystal growth, etc.). This article reviews two methods to estimate
both interfacial free energies and line tensions by Monte Carlo simulations of
simple models, (e.g. the Ising model, a symmetrical binary Lennard-Jones fluid
exhibiting a miscibility gap, and a simple Lennard-Jones fluid). One method is
based on thermodynamic integration. This method is useful to study flat and
inclined interfaces for Ising lattices, allowing also the estimation of line
tensions of three-phase contact lines, when the interfaces meet walls (where
"surface fields" may act). A generalization to off-lattice systems is described
as well.
The second method is based on the sampling of the order parameter
distribution of the system throughout the two-phase coexistence region of the
model. Both the interface free energies of flat interfaces and of (spherical or
cylindrical) droplets (or bubbles) can be estimated, including also systems
with walls, where sphere-cap shaped wall-attached droplets occur. The
curvature-dependence of the interfacial free energy is discussed, and estimates
for the line tensions are compared to results from the thermodynamic
integration method. Basic limitations of all these methods are critically
discussed, and an outlook on other approaches is given
Controlling gold nanoparticle assembly on electron beam-reduced nitrophenyl self-assembled monolayers <i>via</i> electron dose
Electron beam lithography is a well-established tool suitable for the modification of substrate surface chemistry. It therefore follows that the deposition and self-assembly of nanoparticles on a surface can be directed using this method. This work explores the effect of electron dose on the electron beam lithographic patterning of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on gold surfaces. Electron beam irradiation of the sample induces conversion of the SAM terminal functional aromatic nitro (NO2) moieties to aromatic amino (NH2) moieties. The cationic NH2 functionalised regions direct the site-specific assembly of anionic citrate-passivated gold nanoparticles in aqueous solution at pH 4.5. Control of nanoparticle attachment to the SAM is demonstrated over the exposure range 5000–125,000 uC/cm2. Overexposure led to significant numbers of secondary electrons reaching the surface, causing conversion of functional aromatic moieties outside of the regions irradiated, which reduced feature quality and regional selectivity of adsorption
A Solvable Regime of Disorder and Interactions in Ballistic Nanostructures, Part I: Consequences for Coulomb Blockade
We provide a framework for analyzing the problem of interacting electrons in
a ballistic quantum dot with chaotic boundary conditions within an energy
(the Thouless energy) of the Fermi energy. Within this window we show that the
interactions can be characterized by Landau Fermi liquid parameters. When ,
the dimensionless conductance of the dot, is large, we find that the disordered
interacting problem can be solved in a saddle-point approximation which becomes
exact as (as in a large-N theory). The infinite theory shows a
transition to a strong-coupling phase characterized by the same order parameter
as in the Pomeranchuk transition in clean systems (a spontaneous
interaction-induced Fermi surface distortion), but smeared and pinned by
disorder. At finite , the two phases and critical point evolve into three
regimes in the plane -- weak- and strong-coupling regimes separated
by crossover lines from a quantum-critical regime controlled by the quantum
critical point. In the strong-coupling and quantum-critical regions, the
quasiparticle acquires a width of the same order as the level spacing
within a few 's of the Fermi energy due to coupling to collective
excitations. In the strong coupling regime if is odd, the dot will (if
isolated) cross over from the orthogonal to unitary ensemble for an
exponentially small external flux, or will (if strongly coupled to leads) break
time-reversal symmetry spontaneously.Comment: 33 pages, 14 figures. Very minor changes. We have clarified that we
are treating charge-channel instabilities in spinful systems, leaving
spin-channel instabilities for future work. No substantive results are
change
Immune pathways and defence mechanisms in honey bees Apis mellifera
Social insects are able to mount both group-level and individual defences against pathogens. Here we focus on individual defences, by presenting a genome-wide analysis of immunity in a social insect, the honey bee Apis mellifera. We present honey bee models for each of four signalling pathways associated with immunity, identifying plausible orthologues for nearly all predicted pathway members. When compared to the sequenced Drosophila and Anopheles genomes, honey bees possess roughly one-third as many genes in 17 gene families implicated in insect immunity. We suggest that an implied reduction in immune flexibility in bees reflects either the strength of social barriers to disease, or a tendency for bees to be attacked by a limited set of highly coevolved pathogens
Quadrupole collectivity in neutron-rich Cd isotopes
4 pags., 2 figs. -- INPC 2013 – International Nuclear Physics ConferenceThe investigation of the excitation energies of the 21+ –states in the neutron-rich Cd isotopes shows an irregular behaviour when approaching the neutron shell-closure at N = 82. The energy of the 21+–state in 128Cd is lower than the one in 126Cd. The transition strength B(E2, 0gs+ → 21+) in the even isotopes 122−128Cd was measured in Coulomb excitation experiments with the high-purity germanium detector array MINIBALL at REXISOLDE (CERN). The values for 122,124Cd coincide with beyond-mean-field calculations with a resultant prolate deformation, whereas 126,128Cd are better described by shell-model calculations.This project is supported by BMBF (No. 06 DA 9036I, No. 05 P12 RDCIA, No. 05 P12 RDCIB and
No. 05 P12 PKFNE), HIC for FAIR, EU through EURONS (No. 506065) and ENSAR (No. 262010)
and the MINIBALL and REX-ISOLDE collaborations
Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS
We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a
significant distance from their production point into a final state containing
charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is
conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV
and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS
detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles
is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We
observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of
supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the
neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino
masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final
version to appear in Physics Letters
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