Atomic Electrons in Strong Magnetic Fields: Transition from Elliptical to Helical Behavior.

The behavior of an atomic electron in a static magnetic field strong enough to correspond to the transition regime is examined. The field strength is characterized by the parameter L^, the effective component of angular momentum. A Floquet-Mathieu analysis shows that the bifurcation of classical trajectories into elliptical and helical families is related to the 2:1 resonance which occurs at L^=L^T. Quantum mechanics gives an avoided crossing at L^T; we examine the nature of the wave functions as L^ passes through the resonance. Semiclassical calculations accurately reproduce the quantum eigenvalues and produce trajectories which underlie the quantum wave functions. The avoided crossing is expressed in semiclassical terms as a switch between elliptical and helical families. The bifurcation of the classical motion means that, at the primitive semiclassical level, some states may be missed and others may be generated in both elliptical and helical representations

Prevalence of gastro-intestinal symptoms during pregnancy: a questionnaire based study in a tertiary care center of South Asia

Background: Gastrointestinal symptoms lead to morbidity in pregnancy, yet remain a surprisingly under-researched topic. The objective was to find out the prevalence of various gastro-intestinal symptoms in pregnant women, the status before pregnancy, and their perceived impact.Methods: A questionnaire incorporating various gastro-intestinal problems was prepared and used over 184 pregnant women to know their prevalence in different trimesters of pregnancy and compare them with prevalence before pregnancy. 184 matched non-pregnant women were also interrogated as additional control group.Results: Constipation was seen significantly more often during pregnancy (24.5%) and was maximum in the first trimester (31.8%) followed by third trimester (26.3%) and second trimester (19.0%) as compared to only 9.8% of women in non-pregnant state. Diarrhea was also more rampant in pregnancy (9.2%), especially in third trimester (13.1%) than before pregnancy (1.6%). Constipation, diarrhea and fecal incontinence were much commoner in pregnant as compared to non-pregnant controls.Conclusions: There is a very high prevalence of gastro-intestinal symptoms during pregnancy as compared to non-pregnant state. More studies are needed to highlight the Quality-Of-Life issues with these symptoms

Locking bandwidth of two laterally coupled semiconductor lasers subject to optical injection

We report here for the first time (to our knowledge), a new and universal mechanism by which a two-element laser array is locked to external optical injection and admits stably injection-locked states within a nontrivial trapezoidal region. The rate equations for the system are studied both analytically and numerically. We derive a simple mathematical expression for the locking conditions, which reveals that two parallel saddle-node bifurcation branches, not reported for conventional single lasers subject to optical injection, delimit the injection locking range and its width. Important parameters are the linewidth enhancement factor, the laser separation, and the frequency offset between the two laterally-coupled lasers; the influence of these parameters on locking conditions is explored comprehensively. Our analytic approximations are validated numerically by using a path continuation technique as well as direct numerical integration of the rate equations. More importantly, our results are not restricted by waveguiding structures and uncover a generic locking behavior in the lateral arrays in the presence of injection

Interactions between Surround Suppression and Interocular Suppression in Human Vision

Several types of suppression phenomena have been observed in the visual system. For example, the ability to detect a target stimulus is often impaired when the target is embedded in a high-contrast surround. This contextual modulation, known as surround suppression, was formerly thought to occur only in the periphery. Another type of suppression phenomena is interocular suppression, in which the sensitivity to a monocular target is reduced by a superimposed mask in the opposite eye. Here, we explored how the two types of suppression operating across different spatial regions interact with one another when they simultaneously exert suppressive influences on a common target presented at the fovea. In our experiments, a circular target grating presented to the fovea of one eye was suppressed interocularly by a noise pattern of the same size in the other eye. The foveal stimuli were either shown alone or surrounded by a monocular annular grating. The orientation and eye-of-origin of the surround grating were varied. We found that the detection of the foveal target subjected to interocular suppression was severely impaired by the addition of the surround grating, indicating strong surround suppression in the fovea. In contrast, when the interocular suppression was released by superimposing a binocular fusion ring onto both the target and the dichoptic mask, the surround suppression effect was found to be dramatically decreased. In addition, the surround suppression was found to depend on the contrast of the dichoptic noise with the greatest surround suppression effect being obtained only when the noise contrast was at an intermediate level. These findings indicate that surround suppression and interocular suppression are not independent of each other, but there are strong interactions between them. Moreover, our results suggest that strong surround suppression may also occur at the fovea and not just the periphery

Defining binding efficiency and specificity of auxins for SCF(TIR1/AFB)-Aux/IAA co-receptor complex formation.

Structure-activity profiles for the phytohormone auxin have been collected for over 70 years, and a number of synthetic auxins are used in agriculture. Auxin classification schemes and binding models followed from understanding auxin structures. However, all of the data came from whole plant bioassays, meaning the output was the integral of many different processes. The discovery of Transport Inhibitor-Response 1 (TIR1) and the Auxin F-Box (AFB) proteins as sites of auxin perception and the role of auxin as molecular glue in the assembly of co-receptor complexes has allowed the development of a definitive quantitative structure-activity relationship for TIR1 and AFB5. Factorial analysis of binding activities offered two uncorrelated factors associated with binding efficiency and binding selectivity. The six maximum-likelihood estimators of Efficiency are changes in the overlap matrixes, inferring that Efficiency is related to the volume of the electronic system. Using the subset of compounds that bound strongly, chemometric analyses based on quantum chemical calculations and similarity and self-similarity indices yielded three classes of Specificity that relate to differential binding. Specificity may not be defined by any one specific atom or position and is influenced by coulomb matrixes, suggesting that it is driven by electrostatic forces. These analyses give the first receptor-specific classification of auxins and indicate that AFB5 is the preferred site for a number of auxinic herbicides by allowing interactions with analogues having van der Waals surfaces larger than that of indole-3-acetic acid. The quality factors are also examined in terms of long-standing models for the mechanism of auxin binding

Study of e+e−→ppˉe^+e^- \rightarrow p\bar{p} in the vicinity of ψ(3770)\psi(3770)

Using 2917 $\rm{pb}^{-1}$ of data accumulated at 3.773~$\rm{GeV}$, 44.5~$\rm{pb}^{-1}$ of data accumulated at 3.65~$\rm{GeV}$ and data accumulated during a $\psi(3770)$ line-shape scan with the BESIII detector, the reaction $e^+e^-\rightarrow p\bar{p}$ is studied considering a possible interference between resonant and continuum amplitudes. The cross section of $e^+e^-\rightarrow\psi(3770)\rightarrow p\bar{p}$, $\sigma(e^+e^-\rightarrow\psi(3770)\rightarrow p\bar{p})$, is found to have two solutions, determined to be ($0.059\pm0.032\pm0.012$) pb with the phase angle $\phi = (255.8\pm37.9\pm4.8)^\circ$ ($<$0.11 pb at the 90% confidence level), or $\sigma(e^+e^-\rightarrow\psi(3770)\rightarrow p\bar{p}) = (2.57\pm0.12\pm0.12$) pb with $\phi = (266.9\pm6.1\pm0.9)^\circ$ both of which agree with a destructive interference. Using the obtained cross section of $\psi(3770)\rightarrow p\bar{p}$, the cross section of $p\bar{p}\rightarrow \psi(3770)$, which is useful information for the future PANDA experiment, is estimated to be either ($9.8\pm5.7$) nb ($<17.2$ nb at 90% C.L.) or $(425.6\pm42.9)$ nb

PENGARUH CAR, NPL, LDR TERHADAP PROFITABILITAS PERBANKAN (STUDI KASUS PADA BANK UMUM YANG LISTED DI BURSA EFEK INDONESIA TAHUN 2010-2012)

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh dari variabel CAR, NPL dan LDR terhadap Profitabilitas Perbankan yang dilihat dari ROA. Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini diperoleh dari Laporan Keuangan Publikasi Tahunan dari website masing-masing Bank Umum Tahun 2010-2012. Jumlah sampel sebanyak 10 bank umum yang tercatat di Bursa Efek Indonesia dengan periode 2010-2012 yang diambil melalui purposive sampling. Teknik analisis yang digunakan adalah analisis regresi linier berganda. Hasil peneliian menunjukan bahwa variabel CAR berpengaruh positif dan tidak signifikan terhadap ROA. Variabel NPL dan LDR berpengaruh negatif dan tidak signifikan terhadap ROA. Kemampuan prediksi dari ketiga variabel independen terhadap ROA adalah sebesar 16,2% yang ditunjukan dari besarnya adjusted R2, sisanya sebesar 83,8% dijelaskan oleh variabel lainnya di luar model penelitian.   Kata Kunci : CAR, NPL, LDR dan ROA

A new rapid colorimetric detection method of Mn2+ based on tripolyphosphate modified silver nanoparticles

A new facile and rapid colorimetric method is proposed for detection of manganese ion (Mn2+) with high sensitivity and excellent selectivity using tripolyphosphate stabilized silver nanoparticles (P3O10 5？–AgNPs). The silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were prepared by reducing silver nitrate with sodium borohydride in the presence of sodium tripolyphosphate. Energy dispersive X-ray spectrum (EDS) and infrared spectra (IR) indicate that tripolyphosphates anions (P3O10 5？) are capped on the surfaces of AgNPs. The P3O10 5？–AgNPs aggregate quickly in the presence of Mn2+, which leads to color change of the nanoparticle dispersion from yellow to reddish brown and decrease of the surface plasmon absorption intensity. The Mn2+ can form a six-coordinated structure with P3O10 5？ coating on the AgNPs and leads to formation of large particles aggregation. The selectivity of P3O10 5？–AgNPs detection system for Mn2+ is excellent comparing with other ions and mixture of the above ions except Mn2+. Furthermore, this Mn2+ detection method based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) absorption by ultraviolet and visible spectrophotometer (UV–vis) offers a wide linear detection range from 0.05 M to 20 M. The lowest detection concentration by the naked eyes is 0.1 M, which is also lower than the national table-water standard (1.8 M). The results of Mn2+ detection in real water samples reinforce that our P3O10 5？–AgNPs detection system is applicable for Mn2+ detection in the real environmental water samples

Support system and coping strategies of occupational therapy graduates Batch 2016 and 2017 of De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute

The study used a phenomenological research study. the study used a face-to-face and online interview via Facebook messenger and Skype. The study used purposive sampling since the population of the study was chosen based on the characteristics and the objective of the study. The population of the study is occupational therapy graduates of De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute belonging to Batch 2016 and 2017 that met the inclusion criteria set by the researchers. The researchers used the social media specifically Facebook as a method of finding Occupational Therapy Graduates of De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute. The researchers used a pre-screening tool in order to identify the graduates who qualified the inclusion criteria. The tool contained questions that determined the graduates\u27 level of difficulty experienced in college, and those who at least underwent one removal exam during their academic years. An interview guide was used during the interview. Colaizzi\u27s research method as a mode of data analysis, since it is a phenomenological type of research method, which basically included most qualities of models that are essential for qualitative research. The study concluded that stressors, support strategies and coping mechanism of the occupational therapy graduates indicate a cycle process in relation to the academic and clinical performance