797 research outputs found
Stipe anatomical studies on selected pteridophytes of South India
Present study is based on the stipe anatomy of 13 selected species of pteridophytes of South India. Detailed description, key to the taxa based on stipe anatomy, photographs and descriptions are provided
Amplitude death in complex networks induced by environment
We present a mechanism for amplitude death in coupled nonlinear dynamical
systems on a complex network having interactions with a common environment-like
external system. We develop a general stability analysis that is valid for any
network topology and obtain the threshold values of coupling constants for the
onset of amplitude death. An important outcome of our study is a universal
relation between the critical coupling strength and the largest non-zero
eigenvalue of the coupling matrix. Our results are fully supported by the
detailed numerical analysis for different network topologies.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Psychological Injuries at Work - What Every Manager Should Know
A psychological injury is a diagnosable illness that affects a person’s thinking, emotional state and behavior. It can disrupt their ability to work and carry out other daily activities, and to engage in satisfying personal relationships. Unlike a physical injury, a psychological injury cannot be easily recognized and understood. This research document is a conceptual work, which tries to define and isolate stress and stress related injuries, as well as psychological injuries at work. Such an understanding would help the top management to cater and prevent injuries of such extent. Based on literature, a model has been developed for the study and the research document has defined “Psychological injury as an employee’s explicit manifestation of distress in the form of affective behavioral and cognitive dysfunction in work context”. This research document can be considered a seminal work done in Indian context. This works gains importance in the light of increasing number of lawsuits in Indian courts on work- related stress and agony. India still does not have any laws that deal with emotional health and stress related injuries at work or psychological injuries as compared to other countries like Canada, U.K and the U.
Multiplexed measurements of immunomodulator levels in peripheral blood of healthy subjects: Effects of analytical variables based on anticoagulants, age, and gender
Multiplex microbead immunoassay (MMIA) is a powerful technology for a wide range of biomedical and clinical applications. It is important to study the normal concentration ranges of immunomodulators under different sample preparation conditions and age groups of subjects in order to more precisely determine their reference values for use in assessing alterations of their levels in disease. The aim of this study was to determine the plasma concentrations of immunomodulators (cytokines, chemokines, and growth factors) in the peripheral blood from healthy subjects by the use of a large multiplex panel, and to determine the effects of different anticoagulants, age, and gender on the immunomodulator levels. In addition, the assay precision for these biomarker analytes was determined. Plasma samples from 107 healthy subjects, aged 18 to 85 years, were collected in three different anticoagulants (sodium citrate, EDTA, Heparin); corresponding serum samples were also obtained. Multiplex microbead immunoassays were performed for measuring a total of 23 analytes including chemokines, cytokines, and growth factors (IL-1β, IL-1ra, IL-2, IL-6, IL-7, IL-8, IL-12 p70, IL-17, IFN-γ, IP-10, MCP-1, PDGF-BB, RANTES, TNF-α, IL-1a, IL-16, HGF, MIG, TNF-β, PDGF-ABBB, EGF, Flt-3 Ligand, VEGF). For these analytes, our results showed that the anticoagulant affected the concentration measurements and the coefficients of variation. However, the relative levels of the analytes (profiles) of samples collected in a particular anticoagulant are consistent. The analytes IL-1β, IL-7, Flt-3 Ligand, and IL-12p70 show the largest variation (up to fourfold) between the age groups. In addition, no statistically significant differences in the level of the analytes were found between the sexes
Optical observations of the bright long duration peculiar GRB 021004 afterglow
The CCD magnitudes in Johnson and Cousins and photometric
passbands are determined for the bright long duration GRB 021004 afterglow from
2002 October 4 to 16 starting 3 hours after the ray burst.
Light curves of the afterglow emission in ,, and passbands are
obtained by combining these measurements with other published data. The
earliest optical emission appears to originate in a revese shock. Flux decay of
the afterglow shows a very uncommon variation relative to other well-observed
GRBs. Rapid light variations, especially during early times (
days) is superposed on an underlying broken power law decay typical of a jetted
afterglow. The flux decay constants at early and late times derived from least
square fits to the light curve are and respectively,
with a jet break at around 7 day. Comparison with a standard fireball model
indicates a total extinction of mag in the direction of the
burst. Our low-resolution spectra corrected for this extinction provide a
spectral slope . This value and the flux decay constants
agree well with the electron energy index used in the model. The
derived jet opening angle of about implies a total emitted
gamma-ray energy erg at a cosmological distance
of about 20 Gpc. Multiwavelength observations indicate association of this GRB
with a star forming region, supporting the case for collapsar origin of long
duration GRBs.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, BASI, 31, 1
General mechanism for amplitude death in coupled systems
We introduce a general mechanism for amplitude death in coupled
synchronizable dynamical systems. It is known that when two systems are coupled
directly, they can synchronize under suitable conditions. When an indirect
feedback coupling through an environment or an external system is introduced in
them, it is found to induce a tendency for anti-synchronization. We show that,
for sufficient strengths, these two competing effects can lead to amplitude
death. We provide a general stability analysis that gives the threshold values
for onset of amplitude death. We study in detail the nature of the transition
to death in several specific cases and find that the transitions can be of two
types - continuous and discontinuous. By choosing a variety of dynamics for
example, periodic, chaotic, hyper chaotic, and time-delay systems, we
illustrate that this mechanism is quite general and works for different types
of direct coupling, such as diffusive, replacement, and synaptic couplings and
for different damped dynamics of the environment.Comment: 12 pages, 17 figure
Search for violation in the decay at Belle
We search for violation in the charged charm meson decay
, based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of collected by the Belle experiment at the KEKB
asymmetric-energy collider. The measured violating asymmetry
is , which is consistent with
the standard model prediction and has a significantly improved precision
compared to previous results.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
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