877 research outputs found
Where does Flavour Mixing come from?
We argue that flavour mixing, both in the quark and charged lepton sector, is
basically determined by the lightest family mass generation mechanism. So, in
the chiral symmetry limit when the up and down quark masses vanish, all the
quark mixing angles vanish. This mechanism is not dependent on the number of
quark-lepton families nor on any ``vertical'' symmetry structure, unifying
quarks and leptons inside a family as in Grand Unified Theories. Together with
a hypothesis of maximal CP violation, the model leads to a completely
predictive ansatz for all the CKM matrix elements in terms of the quark masses.
Some implications for neutrino masses and oscillations are briefly discussed.Comment: 13 page LaTeX file, minor changes in fourth paragraph of Conclusion
and in Reference
Formal change impact analyses for emulated control software
Processor emulators are a software tool for allowing legacy computer programs to be executed on a modern processor. In the past emulators have been used in trivial applications such as maintenance of video games. Now, however, processor emulation is being applied to safety-critical control systems, including military avionics. These applications demand utmost guarantees of correctness, but no verification techniques exist for proving that an emulated system preserves the original system’s functional and timing properties. Here we show how this can be done by combining concepts previously used for reasoning about real-time program compilation, coupled with an understanding of the new and old software architectures. In particular, we show how both the old and new systems can be given a common semantics, thus allowing their behaviours to be compared directly
Ethical issues in neuroimaging health research:an IPA study with research participants
Neuroimaging is increasingly used to understand conditions like stroke and epilepsy. However, there is growing recognition that neuroimaging can raise ethical issues. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis to analyse interview data pre-and post-scan to explore these ethical issues. Findings show participants can become anxious prior to scanning and the protocol for managing incidental findings is unclear. Participants lacked a frame of reference to contextualize their expectations and often drew on medical narratives. Recommendations to reduce anxiety include dialogue between researcher and participant to clarify understanding during consent and the use of a `virtual tour' of the neuroimaging experience
On the Cauchy problem for the debar operator
We present new results concerning the solvability, of lack thereof, in the
Cauchy problem for the debar operator, with initial values assigned on a weakly
pseudoconvex hypersurface, and provide illustrative examples.Comment: This is the final version, which is appearing in Arkiv foer
Mathemati
Women, anger, and aggression an interpretative phenomenological analysis
This study reports a qualitative phenomenological investigation of anger and anger-related aggression in the context of the lives of individual women. Semistructured interviews with five women are analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. This inductive approach aims to capture the richness and complexity of the lived experience of emotional life. In particular, it draws attention to the context-dependent and relational dimension of angry feelings and aggressive behavior. Three analytic themes are presented here: the subjective experience of anger, which includes the perceptual confusion and bodily change felt by the women when angry, crying, and the presence of multiple emotions; the forms and contexts of aggression, paying particular attention to the range of aggressive strategies used; and anger as moral judgment, in particular perceptions of injustice and unfairness. The authors conclude by examining the analytic observations in light of phenomenological thinking
Minimal Mixing of Quarks and Leptons in the SU(3) Theory of Flavour
We argue that flavour mixing, both in the quark and lepton sector, follows
the minimal mixing pattern, according to which the whole of this mixing is
basically determined by the physical mass generation for the first family of
fermions. So, in the chiral symmetry limit when the masses of the lightest (
and ) quarks vanish, all the quark mixing angles vanish. This minimal
pattern is shown to fit extremely well the already established CKM matrix
elements and to give fairly distinctive predictions for the as yet poorly known
ones. Remarkably, together with generically small quark mixing, it also leads
to large neutrino mixing, provided that neutrino masses appear through the
ordinary ``see-saw'' mechanism. It is natural to think that this minimal
flavour mixing pattern presupposes some underlying family symmetry, treating
families of quarks and leptons in a special way. Indeed, we have found a local
chiral family symmetry model which leads, through its dominant
symmetry breaking vacuum configuration, to a natural realization of the
proposed minimal mechanism. It can also naturally generate the quark and lepton
mass hierarchies. Furthermore spontaneous CP violation is possible, leading to
a maximal CP violating phase , in the framework of the
MSSM extended by a high-scale chiral family symmetry.Comment: 52 pages, LaTex, no figures; some typos corrected; journal versio
C9ORF72 patient-derived endothelial cells drive blood-brain barrier disruption and contribute to neurotoxicity
The blood-brain barrier (BBB) serves as a highly intricate and dynamic interface connecting the brain and the bloodstream, playing a vital role in maintaining brain homeostasis. BBB dysfunction has been associated with multiple neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); however, the role of the BBB in neurodegeneration is understudied. We developed an ALS patient-derived model of the BBB by using cells derived from 5 patient donors carrying C9ORF72 mutations. Brain microvascular endothelial-like cells (BMEC-like cells) derived from C9ORF72-ALS patients showed altered gene expression, compromised barrier integrity, and increased P-glycoprotein transporter activity. In addition, mitochondrial metabolic tests demonstrated that C9ORF72-ALS BMECs display a significant decrease in basal glycolysis accompanied by increased basal and ATP-linked respiration. Moreover, our study reveals that C9-ALS derived astrocytes can further affect BMECs function and affect the expression of the glucose transporter Glut-1. Finally, C9ORF72 patient-derived BMECs form leaky barriers through a cell-autonomous mechanism and have neurotoxic properties towards motor neurons
Conforming to accreditation in Iranian hospitals
This paper examines the operation of an accreditation programme for hospitals in Iran. It explores the process of accreditation as a regulatory control system and analyses hospitals’ responses to this type of control. We draw on the notion of steering and argue that the accreditation system is transactional in nature. Our findings show that hospitals conform to the scheme, although they also resist some of its requirements. On a wider policy level, we suggest that accreditations offer the accreditor the opportunity to impact on how activities are undertaken, but hospitals require incentives in order to make the necessary organisational changes
Cosmological distance indicators
We review three distance measurement techniques beyond the local universe:
(1) gravitational lens time delays, (2) baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO), and
(3) HI intensity mapping. We describe the principles and theory behind each
method, the ingredients needed for measuring such distances, the current
observational results, and future prospects. Time delays from strongly lensed
quasars currently provide constraints on with < 4% uncertainty, and with
1% within reach from ongoing surveys and efforts. Recent exciting discoveries
of strongly lensed supernovae hold great promise for time-delay cosmography.
BAO features have been detected in redshift surveys up to z <~ 0.8 with
galaxies and z ~ 2 with Ly- forest, providing precise distance
measurements and with < 2% uncertainty in flat CDM. Future BAO
surveys will probe the distance scale with percent-level precision. HI
intensity mapping has great potential to map BAO distances at z ~ 0.8 and
beyond with precisions of a few percent. The next years ahead will be exciting
as various cosmological probes reach 1% uncertainty in determining , to
assess the current tension in measurements that could indicate new
physics.Comment: Review article accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews
(Springer), 45 pages, 10 figures. Chapter of a special collection resulting
from the May 2016 ISSI-BJ workshop on Astronomical Distance Determination in
the Space Ag
Diverse Durham collection phages demonstrate complex BREX defence responses
Bacteriophages (phages) outnumber bacteria ten-to-one and cause infections at a rate of 1025 per second. The ability of phages to reduce bacterial populations makes them attractive alternative antibacterials for use in combating the rise in antimicrobial resistance. This effort may be hindered due to bacterial defenses such as Bacteriophage Exclusion (BREX) that have arisen from the constant evolutionary battle between bacteria and phages. For phages to be widely accepted as therapeutics in Western medicine, more must be understood about bacteria–phage interactions and the outcomes of bacterial phage defense. Here, we present the annotated genomes of 12 novel bacteriophage species isolated from water sources in Durham, UK, during undergraduate practical classes. The collection includes diverse species from across known phylogenetic groups. Comparative analyses of two novel phages from the collection suggest they may be founding members of a new genus. Using this Durham phage collection, we determined that particular BREX defense systems were likely to confer a varied degree of resistance against an invading phage. We concluded that the number of BREX target motifs encoded in the phage genome was not proportional to the degree of susceptibility
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