32,189 research outputs found
A Proposed Fishery Conservation and Management Act for the Republic of China
This article has two parts. It begins with the text of the proposed (fishery) act. Following the text is a brief section-by-section analysis of the proposed act
A sum-of-sinusoids based simulation model for the joint shadowing process in urban peer-to-peer radio channels
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Cerebellar Morphometry and Cognition in the Context of Chronic Alcohol Consumption and Cigarette Smoking.
BackgroundCerebellar atrophy (especially involving the superior-anterior cerebellar vermis) is among the most salient and clinically significant effects of chronic hazardous alcohol consumption on brain structure. Smaller cerebellar volumes are also associated with chronic cigarette smoking. The present study investigated effects of both chronic alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking on cerebellar structure and its relation to performance on select cognitive/behavioral tasks.MethodsUsing T1-weighted Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs), the Cerebellar Analysis Tool Kit segmented the cerebellum into bilateral hemispheres and 3 vermis parcels from 4 participant groups: smoking (s) and nonsmoking (ns) abstinent alcohol-dependent treatment seekers (ALC) and controls (CON) (i.e., sALC, nsALC, sCON, and nsCON). Cognitive and behavioral data were also obtained.ResultsWe found detrimental effects of chronic drinking on all cerebellar structural measures in ALC participants, with largest reductions seen in vermis areas. Furthermore, both smoking groups had smaller volumes of cerebellar hemispheres but not vermis areas compared to their nonsmoking counterparts. In exploratory analyses, smaller cerebellar volumes were related to lower measures of intelligence. In sCON, but not sALC, greater smoking severity was related to smaller cerebellar volume and smaller superior-anterior vermis area. In sALC, greater abstinence duration was associated with larger cerebellar and superior-anterior vermis areas, suggesting some recovery with abstinence.ConclusionsOur results show that both smoking and alcohol status are associated with smaller cerebellar structural measurements, with vermal areas more vulnerable to chronic alcohol consumption and less affected by chronic smoking. These morphometric cerebellar deficits were also associated with lower intelligence and related to duration of abstinence in sALC only
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Cosmogenic-neutron activation of TeO2 and implications for neutrinoless double- ÎČ decay experiments
Flux-averaged cross sections for cosmogenic-neutron activation of natural tellurium were measured using a neutron beam containing neutrons of kinetic energies up to âŒ800 MeV and having an energy spectrum similar to that of cosmic-ray neutrons at sea level. Analysis of the radioisotopes produced reveals that Ag110m will be a dominant contributor to the cosmogenic-activation background in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-ÎČ decay of Te130, such as the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Plus (SNO+). An estimate of the cosmogenic-activation background in the CUORE experiment has been obtained using the results of this measurement and cross-section measurements of proton activation of tellurium. Additionally, the measured cross sections in this work are also compared with results from semiempirical cross-section calculations
Inflation and the cosmic microwave background
I give a status report and outlook concerning the use of the cosmic microwave
background anisotropies to constrain the inflationary cosmology, and stress its
crucial role as an underlying paradigm for the estimation of cosmological
parameters.Comment: 8 pages LaTeX file, with two figures incorporated using epsf. To
appear, proceedings of `The non-sleeping universe', Porto (Astrophysics and
Space Science
On the role of magnetic reconnection in jet/accretion disk systems
The most accepted model for jet production is based on the
magneto-centrifugal acceleration out off an accretion disk that surrounds the
central source (Blandford & Payne, 1982). This scenario, however, does not
explain, e.g., the quasi-periodic ejection phenomena often observed in
different astrophysical jet classes. de Gouveia Dal Pino & Lazarian (2005)
(hereafter GDPL) have proposed that the large scale superluminal ejections
observed in microquasars during radio flare events could be produced by violent
magnetic reconnection (MR) episodes. Here, we extend this model to other
accretion disk systems, namely: active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and young stellar
objects (YSOs), and also discuss its role on jet heating and particle
acceleration.Comment: To be published in the IAU Highlights of Astronomy, Volume 15, XXVII
IAU General Assembly, August 2009, Ian F. Corbett et al., eds., 201
Neural Interfaces: Nanoporous Gold Biointerfaces: Modifying Nanostructure to Control Neural Cell Coverage and Enhance Electrophysiological Recording Performance (Adv. Funct. Mater. 3/2017)
L-Convex Polyominoes are Recognizable in Real Time by 2D Cellular Automata
A polyomino is said to be L-convex if any two of its cells are connected by a
4-connected inner path that changes direction at most once. The 2-dimensional
language representing such polyominoes has been recently proved to be
recognizable by tiling systems by S. Brocchi, A. Frosini, R. Pinzani and S.
Rinaldi. In an attempt to compare recognition power of tiling systems and
cellular automata, we have proved that this language can be recognized by
2-dimensional cellular automata working on the von Neumann neighborhood in real
time.
Although the construction uses a characterization of L-convex polyominoes
that is similar to the one used for tiling systems, the real time constraint
which has no equivalent in terms of tilings requires the use of techniques that
are specific to cellular automata
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