5,999 research outputs found
We Don't Need Your Help, We Need Your Support: Mexican Immigrant Mothering and Community Organizing
Impaired osteoblast differentiation in annexin A2- and -A5-deficient cells.
Annexins are a class of calcium-binding proteins with diverse functions in the regulation of lipid rafts, inflammation, fibrinolysis, transcriptional programming and ion transport. Within bone, they are well-characterized as components of mineralizing matrix vesicles, although little else is known as to their function during osteogenesis. We employed shRNA to generate annexin A2 (AnxA2)- or annexin A5 (AnxA5)-knockdown pre-osteoblasts, and determined whether proliferation or osteogenic differentiation was altered in knockdown cells, compared to pSiren (Si) controls. We report that DNA content, a marker of proliferation, was significantly reduced in both AnxA2 and AnxA5 knockdown cells. Alkaline phosphatase expression and activity were also suppressed in AnxA2- or AnxA5-knockdown after 14 days of culture. The pattern of osteogenic gene expression was altered in knockdown cells, with Col1a1 expressed more rapidly in knock-down cells, compared to pSiren. In contrast, Runx2, Ibsp, and Bglap all revealed decreased expression after 14 days of culture. In both AnxA2- and AnxA5-knockdown, interleukin-induced STAT6 signaling was markedly attenuated compared to pSiren controls. These data suggest that AnxA2 and AnxA5 can influence bone formation via regulation of osteoprogenitor proliferation, differentiation, and responsiveness to cytokines in addition to their well-studied function in matrix vesicles
Excitation Function of Energy Density and Partonic Degrees of Freedom in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
We estimate the energy density pile-up at mid-rapidity in central Pb+Pb
collisions from 2 - 200 GeV/nucleon. The energy density is decomposed into
hadronic and partonic contributions. A detailed analysis of the collision
dynamics in the framework of a microscopic transport model shows the importance
of partonic degrees of freedom and rescattering of leading (di)quarks in the
early phase of the reaction for lab-energies > 30 GeV/nucleon. In Pb+Pb
collisions at 160 GeV/nucleon the energy density reaches up to 4 GeV/fm^3, 95%
of which are contained in partonic degrees of freedom.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
Reaction dynamics in Pb+Pb at the CERN/SPS: from partonic degrees of freedom to freeze-out
We analyze the reaction dynamics of central Pb+Pb collisions at 160
GeV/nucleon. First we estimate the energy density pile-up at mid-rapidity and
calculate its excitation function: The energy density is decomposed into
hadronic and partonic contributions. A detailed analysis of the collision
dynamics in the framework of a microscopic transport model shows the importance
of partonic degrees of freedom and rescattering of leading (di)quarks in the
early phase of the reaction for E > 30 GeV/nucleon. The energy density reaches
up to 4 GeV/fm^3, 95% of which are contained in partonic degrees of freedom. It
is shown that cells of hadronic matter, after the early reaction phase, can be
viewed as nearly chemically equilibrated. This matter never exceeds energy
densities of 0.4 GeV/fm^3, i.e. a density above which the notion of separated
hadrons loses its meaning. The final reaction stage is analyzed in terms of
hadron ratios, freeze-out distributions and a source analysis for final state
pions.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, Proceedings of the Erice School on Nuclear
Physics in Erice, Sicily, Italy, September 17 -25 1998; to be published in
Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics Vol. 4
Analysis of tide and offshore storm-induced water table fluctuations for structural characterization of a coastal island aquifer
Analysis of water table fluctuations can provide important insight into the hydraulic properties and structure of a coastal aquifer system including the connectivity between the aquifer and ocean. This study presents an improved approach for characterizing a permeable heterogeneous coastal aquifer system through analysis of the propagation of the tidal signal, as well as offshore storm pulse signals through a coastal aquifer. Offshore storms produce high wave activity, but are not necessarily linked to significant onshore precipitation. In this study, we focused on offshore storm events during which no onshore precipitation occurred. Extensive groundwater level data collected on a sand barrier island (Sable Island, NS, Canada) show nonuniform discontinuous propagation of the tide and offshore storm pulse signals through the aquifer with isolated inland areas showing enhanced response to both oceanic forcing signals. Propagation analysis suggests that isolated inland water table fluctuations may be caused by localized leakage from a confined aquifer that is connected to the ocean offshore but within the wave setup zone. Two-dimensional groundwater flow simulations were conducted to test the leaky confined-unconfined aquifer conceptualization and to identify the effect of key parameters on tidal signal propagation in leaky confined-unconfined coastal aquifers. This study illustrates that analysis of offshore storm signal propagation, in addition to tidal signal propagation, provides a valuable and low resource approach for large-scale characterization of permeable heterogeneous coastal aquifers. Such an approach is needed for the effective management of coastal environments where water resources are threatened by human activities and the changing climate
The role of topography in landform development at an active temperate glacier in Arctic Norway
Topography exerts a strong control on how glaciers respond to changes in climate. Increased understanding of this role is important for both refining model predictions of future rates of glacier recession and for reconstructing climatic change from the glacial geological record. In this paper, we examine the geomorphological and sedimentological evidence in the foreland of Fingerbreen, a temperate outlet of the plateau icefield Ăstre Svartisen. The aim is to investigate the relationship between processes of landform generation and the changing influence of topography as recession progressed. The Fingerbreen foreland is dominated by bouldery Little Ice Age moraines and extensive areas of striated bedrock. A heavily fluted zone occurs in the central part of the foreland that is cross-cut by annual transverse and sawtooth moraines. Systematic investigations of the structural architecture of moraines at various locations in the foreland provide evidence for a range of moraine-forming processes, which can be linked to the topographic setting (e.g. deposition on a reverse bedrock slope) and drainage conditions. This includes push and bulldozing of proglacial sediments and squeezing of sub-glacial sediments and submarginal freeze-on of sediment slabs. We also identify variations in moraine spacing as a result of topography. This research demonstrates the importance of topography when interpreting moraine records in the context of climate and glacier dynamics
The variational Bayesian approach to fitting mixture models to circular wave direction data
The emerging variational Bayesian (VB) technique for approximate Bayesian statistical inference is a nonsimulation- based and time-efficient approach. It provides a useful, practical alternative to other Bayesian statistical approaches such as Markov chain Monte Carloâbased techniques, particularly for applications involving large datasets. This article reviews the increasingly popular VB statistical approach and illustrates how it can be used to fit Gaussian mixture models to circular wave direction data. This is done by taking the straightforward approach of padding the data; this method involves adding a repeat of a complete cycle of the data to the existing dataset to obtain a dataset on the real line. The padded dataset can then be analyzed using the standard VB technique. This results in a practical, efficient approach that is also appropriate for modeling other types of circular, or directional, data such as wind direction
Structural Probe of a Glass Forming Liquid: Generalized Compressibility
We introduce a new quantity to probe the glass transition. This quantity is a
linear generalized compressibility which depends solely on the positions of the
particles. We have performed a molecular dynamics simulation on a glass forming
liquid consisting of a two component mixture of soft spheres in three
dimensions. As the temperature is lowered (or as the density is increased), the
generalized compressibility drops sharply at the glass transition, with the
drop becoming more and more abrupt as the measurement time increases. At our
longest measurement times, the drop occurs approximately at the mode coupling
temperature . The drop in the linear generalized compressibility occurs at
the same temperature as the peak in the specific heat. By examining the
inherent structure energy as a function of temperature, we find that our
results are consistent with the kinetic view of the glass transition in which
the system falls out of equilibrium. We find no size dependence and no evidence
for a second order phase transition though this does not exclude the
possibility of a phase transition below the observed glass transition
temperature. We discuss the relation between the linear generalized
compressibility and the ordinary isothermal compressibility as well as the
static structure factor.Comment: 18 pages, Latex, 26 encapsulated postscript figures, revised paper is
shorter, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Hadronic freeze-out following a first order hadronization phase transition in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
We analyze the hadronic freeze-out in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions
at RHIC in a transport approach which combines hydrodynamics for the early,
dense, deconfined stage of the reaction with a microscopic non-equilibrium
model for the later hadronic stage at which the hydrodynamic equilibrium
assumptions are not valid. With this ansatz we are able to self-consistently
calculate the freeze-out of the system and determine space-time hypersurfaces
for individual hadron species. The space-time domains of the freeze-out for
several hadron species are found to be actually four-dimensional, and differ
drastically for the individual hadrons species. Freeze-out radii distributions
are similar in width for most hadron species, even though the Omega-baryon is
found to be emitted rather close to the phase boundary and shows the smallest
freeze-out radii and times among all baryon species. The total lifetime of the
system does not change by more than 10% when going from SPS to RHIC energies.Comment: 11 pages, 4 eps-figures included, revised versio
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