8,486 research outputs found
Microbial Air Contamination in an Intensive Care Unit
Unit layout affects every aspect of intensive care services, including patient safety. A previous study has shown that patients admitted to beds adjacent to the sink and to the door of a large bayroom had the highest number of positive blood cultures and the highest blood culture incidence density, respectively. The present study measures microbial air contamination in a medical intensive care unit of a medical center in central Taiwan. Of the 17 rooms, 8 rooms with distinct physical environmental characteristics were selected. Sampling tests were conducted between December 2013 and February 2014 with a microbial air sampler (MAS-100NT). TSA was used for bacteria collection and DG18 for fungi collection. The overall average bacterial and fungal concentrations were 83CFU/m3 and 69CFU/m3, respectively. The ranges were between 8-354 CFU/m3 and 0-1468 CFU/m3, respectively. A significant difference was found in the bacterial concentration (p=.005) between different room locations. The highest concentration was found in the rooms located at the front end of the circulation (99 CFU/m3), while the lowest was found in the rooms located at the rear end of the circulation (55CFU/m3). Differences in fungal concentrations for different room locations did not reach statistical significance. In addition, differences in bacterial and fungal concentrations for rooms with different sink locations did not reach statistical significance. Even though the microbial concentrations generally complied with standards, the results may help designers and hospital administrators develop a healthier environment for patients
Nd-142/Nd-144 in SNCs and early differentiation of a heterogeneous Martian mantle
Sm/Nd correlated variations in Nd-142/Nd-144 have been observed for mineral phases of achondrites from decay of live Sm-146 in the early solar system. Crystallization ages of shergottites-nakhlites-Chassigny (SNC) meteorites are less than or = 1.3 Ga, so variations of Nd-142/Nd-144 among mineral phases of the SNC's are not expected. However, if SNC's were derived from source reservoirs of differing Sm/Nd ratios, established while Sm-146 was still alive, and which remained isolated except for magma extraction, then variations in Nd-142/Nd-144 would exist among individual SNC meteorites. Rb-Sr and U-Pb isotopic data for the shergottites imply differentiation of their parent planet approximately 4.6 Ga ago. The confirmation of the conclusion that the nakhlites and shergottites were derived from different source regions, and that, consequently, the shergottite parent body (SPB) mantle was heterogeneous is presented
Molecular evidence of genetic diversity of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato detected in Ixodes granulatus ticks removed from rodents in Taiwan
Comparative genomics approaches accurately predict deleterious variants in plants
Recent advances in genome resequencing have led to increased interest in prediction of the functional consequences of genetic variants. Variants at phylogenetically conserved sites are of particular interest, because they are more likely than variants at phylogenetically variable sites to have deleterious effects on fitness and contribute to phenotypic variation. Numerous comparative genomic approaches have been developed to predict deleterious variants, but the approaches are nearly always assessed based on their ability to identify known disease-causing mutations in humans. Determining the accuracy of deleterious variant predictions in nonhuman species is important to understanding evolution, domestication, and potentially to improving crop quality and yield. To examine our ability to predict deleterious variants in plants we generated a curated database of 2,910 Arabidopsis thaliana mutants with known phenotypes. We evaluated seven approaches and found that while all performed well, their relative ranking differed from prior benchmarks in humans. We conclude that deleterious mutations can be reliably predicted in A. thaliana and likely other plant species, but that the relative performance of various approaches does not necessarily translate from one species to another
Quantum teleportation between moving detectors in a quantum field
We consider the quantum teleportation of continuous variables modeled by
Unruh-DeWitt detectors coupled to a common quantum field initially in the
Minkowski vacuum. An unknown coherent state of an Unruh-DeWitt detector is
teleported from one inertial agent (Alice) to an almost uniformly accelerated
agent (Rob, for relativistic motion), using a detector pair initially entangled
and shared by these two agents. The averaged physical fidelity of quantum
teleportation, which is independent of the observer's frame, always drops below
the best fidelity value from classical teleportation before the detector pair
becomes disentangled with the measure of entanglement evaluated around the
future lightcone of the joint measurement event by Alice. The distortion of the
quantum state of the entangled detector pair from the initial state can
suppress the fidelity significantly even when the detectors are still strongly
entangled around the lightcone. We point out that the dynamics of entanglement
of the detector pair observed in Minkowski frame or in quasi-Rindler frame are
not directly related to the physical fidelity of quantum teleportation in our
setup. These results are useful as a guide to making judicious choices of
states and parameter ranges and estimation of the efficiency of quantum
teleportation in relativistic quantum systems under environmental influences.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure
Notes on SUSY and R-Symmetry Breaking in Wess-Zumino Models
We study aspects of Wess-Zumino models related to SUSY and R-symmetry
breaking at tree-level. We present a recipe for constructing a wide class of
tree-level SUSY and R-breaking models. We also deduce a general property shared
by all tree-level SUSY breaking models that has broad application to model
building. In particular, it explains why many models of direct gauge mediation
have anomalously light gauginos (even if the R-symmetry is broken spontaneously
by an order one amount). This suggests new approaches to dynamical SUSY
breaking which can generate large enough gaugino masses.Comment: 23 pages. v2: references added, minor changes. v3: comment on
non-renormalizable case adde
Measurement of the Dynamical Structure Factor of a 1D Interacting Fermi Gas
We present measurements of the dynamical structure factor of an
interacting one-dimensional (1D) Fermi gas for small excitation energies. We
use the two lowest hyperfine levels of the Li atom to form a
pseudo-spin-1/2 system whose s-wave interactions are tunable via a Feshbach
resonance. The atoms are confined to 1D by a two-dimensional optical lattice.
Bragg spectroscopy is used to measure a response of the gas to density
("charge") mode excitations at a momentum and frequency . The
spectrum is obtained by varying , while the angle between two laser
beams determines , which is fixed to be less than the Fermi momentum
. The measurements agree well with Tomonaga-Luttinger theory
Sm-Nd for Norite 78236 and Eucrite Y980318/433: Implications for Planetary and Solar System Processes
Here, we compare Sm-147-Nd-143 and Sm-146-Nd-142 data for lunar norite 78236 to those for approximately 4.54-4.56 Ga old cumulate eucrite Yamato 980318/433 and show that the norite data are compatible with its derivation from an isotopic reservoir similar to that from whence the eucrite pair came. Thus, lunar-like Sm-Nd isotopic systematics are not unique to the Earth-Moon system
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