7,745 research outputs found
On the volume functional of compact manifolds with boundary with constant scalar curvature
We study the volume functional on the space of constant scalar curvature
metrics with a prescribed boundary metric. We derive a sufficient and necessary
condition for a metric to be a critical point, and show that the only domains
in space forms, on which the standard metrics are critical points, are geodesic
balls. In the zero scalar curvature case, assuming the boundary can be
isometrically embedded in the Euclidean space as a compact strictly convex
hypersurface, we show that the volume of a critical point is always no less
than the Euclidean volume bounded by the isometric embedding of the boundary,
and the two volumes are equal if and only if the critical point is isometric to
a standard Euclidean ball. We also derive a second variation formula and apply
it to show that, on Euclidean balls and ''small'' hyperbolic and spherical
balls in dimensions 3 to 5, the standard space form metrics are indeed saddle
points for the volume functional
The comparative clinical course of pregnant and non-pregnant women hospitalised with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection
Introduction: The Influenza Clinical Information Network (FLU-CIN) was established to gather detailed clinical and epidemiological information about patients with laboratory confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection in UK hospitals. This report focuses on the clinical course and outcomes of infection in pregnancy.Methods: A standardised data extraction form was used to obtain detailed clinical information from hospital case notes and electronic records, for patients with PCR-confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection admitted to 13 sentinel hospitals in five clinical 'hubs' and a further 62 non-sentinel hospitals, between 11th May 2009 and 31st January 2010.Outcomes were compared for pregnant and non-pregnant women aged 15-44 years, using univariate and multivariable techniques.Results: Of the 395 women aged 15-44 years, 82 (21%) were pregnant; 73 (89%) in the second or third trimester. Pregnant women were significantly less likely to exhibit severe respiratory distress at initial assessment (OR?=?0.49 (95% CI: 0.30-0.82)), require supplemental oxygen on admission (OR?=?0.40 (95% CI: 0.20-0.80)), or have underlying co-morbidities (p-trend <0.001). However, they were equally likely to be admitted to high dependency (Level 2) or intensive care (Level 3) and/or to die, after adjustment for potential confounders (adj. OR?=?0.93 (95% CI: 0.46-1.92). Of 11 pregnant women needing Level 2/3 care, 10 required mechanical ventilation and three died.Conclusions: Since the expected prevalence of pregnancy in the source population was 6%, our data suggest that pregnancy greatly increased the likelihood of hospital admission with A(H1N1)pdm09. Pregnant women were less likely than non-pregnant women to have respiratory distress on admission, but severe outcomes were equally likely in both groups
Generalized persistence exponents: an exactly soluble model
It was recently realized that the persistence exponent appearing in the
dynamics of nonequilibrium systems is a special member of a continuously
varying family of exponents, describing generalized persistence properties. We
propose and solve a simplified model of coarsening, where time intervals
between spin flips are independent, and distributed according to a L\'evy law.
Both the limit distribution of the mean magnetization and the generalized
persistence exponents are obtained exactly.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures Submitted to PR
Anisotropic Coarsening: Grain Shapes and Nonuniversal Persistence
We solve a coarsening system with small but arbitrary anisotropic surface
tension and interface mobility. The resulting size-dependent growth shapes are
significantly different from equilibrium microcrystallites, and have a
distribution of grain sizes different from isotropic theories. As an
application of our results, we show that the persistence decay exponent depends
on anisotropy and hence is nonuniversal.Comment: 4 pages (revtex), 2 eps figure
Life at high Deborah number
In many biological systems, microorganisms swim through complex polymeric
fluids, and usually deform the medium at a rate faster than the inverse fluid
relaxation time. We address the basic properties of such life at high Deborah
number analytically by considering the small-amplitude swimming of a body in an
arbitrary complex fluid. Using asymptotic analysis and differential geometry,
we show that for a given swimming gait, the time-averaged leading-order
swimming kinematics of the body can be expressed as an integral equation on the
solution to a series of simpler Newtonian problems. We then use our results to
demonstrate that Purcell's scallop theorem, which states that time-reversible
body motion cannot be used for locomotion in a Newtonian fluid, breaks down in
polymeric fluid environments
Arabidopsis ILITHYIA protein is necessary for proper chloroplast biogenesis and root development independent of eIF2alpha phosphorylation
[EN] One of the main mechanisms blocking translation after stress situations is mediated by phosphorylation of the alpha-subunit of the eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (eIF2), performed in Arabidopsis by the protein kinase GCN2 which interacts and is activated by ILITHYIA(ILA). ILA is involved in plant immunity and its mutant lines present phenotypes not shared by the gcn2 mutants. The functional link between these two genes remains elusive in plants. In this study, we show that, although both ILA and GCN2 genes are necessary to mediate eIF2 alpha phosphorylation upon treatments with the aromatic amino acid biosynthesis inhibitor glyphosate, their mutants develop distinct root and chloroplast phenotypes. Electron microscopy experiments reveal that ila mutants, but not gcn2, are affected in chloroplast biogenesis, explaining the macroscopic phenotype previously observed for these mutants. ila3 mutants present a complex transcriptional reprogramming affecting defense responses, photosynthesis and protein folding, among others. Double mutant analyses suggest that ILA has a distinct function which is independent of GCN2 and eIF2 alpha phosphorylation. These results suggest that these two genes may have common but also distinct functions in Arabidopsis.Microarray experiments were done in the Genomics Facility of the IBMCP. MTH was supported by the Austrian Science Found (FWF) projectF03707. This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Education (Plan Nacional 2008-2011).Faus, I.; Niñoles Rodenes, R.; Kesari, V.; Llabata, P.; Tam, E.; Nebauer, SG.; Santiago, J.... (2018). Arabidopsis ILITHYIA protein is necessary for proper chloroplast biogenesis and root development independent of eIF2alpha phosphorylation. Journal of Plant Physiology. 224:173-182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jplph.2018.04.003S17318222
Scaling of thermal conductivity of helium confined in pores
We have studied the thermal conductivity of confined superfluids on a
bar-like geometry. We use the planar magnet lattice model on a lattice with . We have applied open boundary conditions on the bar
sides (the confined directions of length ) and periodic along the long
direction. We have adopted a hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm to efficiently deal
with the critical slowing down and in order to solve the dynamical equations of
motion we use a discretization technique which introduces errors only
in the time step . Our results demonstrate the
validity of scaling using known values of the critical exponents and we
obtained the scaling function of the thermal resistivity. We find that our
results for the thermal resistivity scaling function are in very good agreement
with the available experimental results for pores using the tempComment: 5 two-column pages, 3 figures, Revtex
fMRI Activities in the Emotional Cerebellum: A Preference for Negative Stimuli and Goal-Directed Behavior
Several studies indicate that the cerebellum might play a role in experiencing and/or controlling emphatic emotions, but it remains to be determined whether there is a distinction between positive and negative emotions, and, if so, which specific parts of the cerebellum are involved in these types of emotions. Here, we visualized activations of the cerebellum and extracerebellar regions using high-field fMRI, while we asked participants to observe and imitate images with pictures of human faces expressing different emotional states or with moving geometric shapes as control. The state of the emotions could be positive (happiness and surprise), negative (anger and disgust), or neutral. The positive emotional faces only evoked mild activations of crus 2 in the cerebellum, whereas the negative emotional faces evoked prominent activations in lobules VI and VIIa in its hemispheres and lobules VIII and IX in the vermis. The cerebellar activations associated with negative emotions occurred concomitantly with activations of mirror neuron domains such as the insula and amygdala. These data suggest that the potential role of the cerebellum in control of emotions may be particularly relevant for goal-directed behavior that is required for observing and reacting to another person’s (negative) expressions
The prescribed mean curvature equation in weakly regular domains
We show that the characterization of existence and uniqueness up to vertical
translations of solutions to the prescribed mean curvature equation, originally
proved by Giusti in the smooth case, holds true for domains satisfying very
mild regularity assumptions. Our results apply in particular to the
non-parametric solutions of the capillary problem for perfectly wetting fluids
in zero gravity. Among the essential tools used in the proofs, we mention a
\textit{generalized Gauss-Green theorem} based on the construction of the weak
normal trace of a vector field with bounded divergence, in the spirit of
classical results due to Anzellotti, and a \textit{weak Young's law} for
-minimizers of the perimeter.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure --- The results on the weak normal trace of vector
fields have been now extended and moved in a self-contained paper available
at: arXiv:1708.0139
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