501 research outputs found
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Is silt the most influential soil grain size fraction?
The contribution of individual grain size fractions (2000–500, 500–250, 250–63, 63–2 and < 2 μm) to bulk soil surface area and reactivity is discussed with reference to mineralogical and oxalate and dithionite extractions data. The 63–2 μm fraction contributed up to 56% and 67% of bulk soil volume and BET surface area, respectively. Consideration of these observations and the mineralogy of this fraction suggest that the 63–2 μm fraction may be the most influential for the release of elements via mineral dissolution in the bulk soil
A simulated study of implicit feedback models
In this paper we report on a study of implicit feedback models for unobtrusively tracking the information needs of searchers. Such models use relevance information gathered from searcher interaction and can be a potential substitute for explicit relevance feedback. We introduce a variety of implicit feedback models designed to enhance an Information Retrieval (IR) system's representation of searchers' information needs. To benchmark their performance we use a simulation-centric evaluation methodology that measures how well each model learns relevance and improves search effectiveness. The results show that a heuristic-based binary voting model and one based on Jeffrey's rule of conditioning [5] outperform the other models under investigation
Diabetogenic drugs in the vervet monkey
Alloxan and streptozotocin were used to cause beta cell lysis in vervet monkeys used as recipient models for pancreatic allografts. Tests were performed on these animals to evaluate the effect of the drugs on carbohydrate metabolism. Streptozotocin is preferred as the drug of choice in creating a non-pancreatectomised hyperglycaemic recipient for pancreatic allografting.S. Afr. Med. J., 48, 273 (1974)
Interpreting methane variations in the past two decades using measurements of CH4 mixing ratio and isotopic composition
The availability 13C-CH4 measurements from atmospheric samples has significantly improved in recent years, which allows the construction of time series spanning up to about 2 decades. We have used these measurements to investigate the cause of the methane growth rate decline since 1980, with a special focus on the period 1998–2006 when the methane growth came to a halt. The constraints
provided by the CH4 and 13C-CH4 measurements are used to construct hypothetical source and sink scenarios, which are translated into corresponding atmospheric concentrations using the atmospheric transport model TM3 for evaluation against the measurements. The base scenario, composed of anthropogenic emissions according to EDGAR 4.0, constant emissions from natural sources, and a constant atmospheric lifetime, overestimates the observed global growth rates of CH4 and 13C-CH4 by, respectively, 10 ppb yr−1 and
0.02‰yr−1 after the year 2000. It proves difficult to repair this inconsistency by modifying trends in emissions only, notably because a temporary reduction of isotopically light sources, such as natural wetlands, leads to a further increase of 13C-CH4. Furthermore, our results are difficult to reconcile with the estimated increase of 5 TgCH4 yr−1 in emissions from fossil fuel use in the period 2000–2005. On the other hand, we find that a moderate (less than 5% per decade) increase in the global OH concentration can bring the model in agreement with the measurements for plausible emission scenarios. This study demonstrates the value of global monitoring
of methane isotopes, and calls for further investigation into the role OH and anthropogenic emissions to further improve our understanding of methane variations in recent years.JRC.H.2-Air and Climat
Application of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group in momentum space
We investigate the application of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group
(DMRG) to the Hubbard model in momentum-space. We treat the one-dimensional
models with dispersion relations corresponding to nearest-neighbor hopping and
hopping and the two-dimensional model with isotropic nearest-neighbor
hopping. By comparing with the exact solutions for both one-dimensional models
and with exact diagonalization in two dimensions, we first investigate the
convergence of the ground-state energy. We find variational convergence of the
energy with the number of states kept for all models and parameter sets. In
contrast to the real-space algorithm, the accuracy becomes rapidly worse with
increasing interaction and is not significantly better at half filling. We
compare the results for different dispersion relations at fixed interaction
strength over bandwidth and find that extending the range of the hopping in one
dimension has little effect, but that changing the dimensionality from one to
two leads to lower accuracy at weak to moderate interaction strength. In the
one-dimensional models at half-filling, we also investigate the behavior of the
single-particle gap, the dispersion of spinon excitations, and the momentum
distribution function. For the single-particle gap, we find that proper
extrapolation in the number of states kept is important. For the spinon
dispersion, we find that good agreement with the exact forms can be achieved at
weak coupling if the large momentum-dependent finite-size effects are taken
into account for nearest-neighbor hopping. For the momentum distribution, we
compare with various weak-coupling and strong-coupling approximations and
discuss the importance of finite-size effects as well as the accuracy of the
DMRG.Comment: 15 pages, 11 eps figures, revtex
Developing specialist leaders of education: a research engagement approach
There has been little research to date on the continuing professional
development needs of the several thousand Specialist Leaders of
Education (SLE) now designated by the National College for Teaching
and Leadership in England to work across schools as consultants on
school-to-school support. This case study reports on the second and
third stages of a four-stage research process designed to address these
needs. The
fi
rst stage reported on the creation of a professional devel-
opment framework for SLE
’
s using consultancy research. These middle
stages test out this framework with a stakeholder group of SLEs, head-
teachers and broker in a Teaching Schools Alliance. The fourth stage will
track the implementation of professional development activities arising
from these
fi
ndings. Apart from the speci
fi
c needs of SLE, this study will
have wider relevance for all practitioners and researchers working in and
with schools on leadership development using Research Engagement
strategies and Joint Practice Development approaches in a so-called
‘
self-
improving
’
school system
Flexibility of KorA, a plasmid-encoded, global transcription regulator, in the presence and the absence of its operator
The IncP (Incompatibility group P) plasmids are important carriers in the spread of antibiotic resistance across Gram-negative bacteria. Gene expression in the IncP-1 plasmids is stringently controlled by a network of four global repressors, KorA, KorB, TrbA and KorC interacting cooperatively. Intriguingly, KorA and KorB can act as co-repressors at varying distances between their operators, even when they are moved to be on opposite sides of the DNA. KorA is a homodimer with the 101-amino acid subunits, folding into an N-terminal DNA-binding domain and a C-terminal dimerization domain. In this study, we have determined the structures of the free KorA repressor and two complexes each bound to a 20-bp palindromic DNA duplex containing its consensus operator sequence. Using a combination of X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, SAXS and molecular dynamics calculations, we show that the linker between the two domains is very flexible and the protein remains highly mobile in the presence of DNA. This flexibility allows the DNA-binding domains of the dimer to straddle the operator DNA on binding and is likely to be important in cooperative binding to KorB. Unexpectedly, the C-terminal domain of KorA is structurally similar to the dimerization domain of the tumour suppressor p53
Phase Transitions Between Topologically Distinct Gapped Phases in Isotropic Spin Ladders
We consider various two-leg ladder models exhibiting gapped phases. All of
these phases have short-ranged valence bond ground states, and they all exhibit
string order. However, we show that short-ranged valence bond ground states
divide into two topologically distinct classes, and as a consequence, there
exist two topologically distinct types of string order. Therefore, not all
gapped phases belong to the same universality class. We show that phase
transitions occur when we interpolate between models belonging to different
topological classes, and we study the nature of these transitions.Comment: 11 pages, 16 postscript figure
Phase diagrams of spin ladders with ferromagnetic legs
The low-temperature properties of the spin S=1/2 ladder with anisotropic
ferromagnetic legs are studied using the continuum limit bosonization approach.
The weak-coupling ground state phase diagram of the model is obtained for a
wide range of coupling constants and several unconventional gapless
''spin-liquid'' phases are shown to exist for ferromagnetic coupling. The
behavior of the ladder system in the vicinity of the ferromagnetic instability
point is discussed in detail.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
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