1,197 research outputs found
The Significance of Micas in Ancient Cross-bedded Sandstones
In our study of thin sections of the cross-bedded Coconino Sandstone we encountered muscovite as a trace mineral in almost every thin section of the hundreds that we cut. As we began to study other similar cross-bedded sandstones like the Tensleep, Lyons and Hopeman the same pattern began to emerge. All of these sandstones have been conventionally interpreted as desert wind-blown deposits.
A novel set of experiments were performed and recently published by some Cedarville University geology students and the lead author of this paper (Anderson et al., 2017). They found when muscovite-rich quartz sand was experimentally placed into a simulated eolian setting, muscovite only survived for a matter of days. When muscovite-rich quartz sand was experimentally placed into a simulated subaqueous setting it was still present after a year of constant agitation before the experiment was finally terminated. Even though this was a simple experiment and only a limited number of trials were performed it confirms field observations by the authors that mica is rare in modern eolian deposits (unless they are very near a granitic source) and its relative abundance in beach and marine sands.
The implications are significant. Although more experiments could be performed, the experiments and observations suggest that mica is rapidly degraded in wind-blown environments and survives when transported by water. Evidently water cushions the grain-to-grain collisions and prevents rapid deterioration of the muscovite in subaqueous settings.
This proposed paper will catalog and illustrate the large number of cross-bedded sandstones we have found that contain mica (mostly muscovite) as an accessory mineral. The dominant conventional view is that these sandstones are eolian, but the presence of muscovite based on experimental data and field observations suggests otherwise. The presence of muscovite in cross-bedded sandstones can be used as one of many criteria to argue for subaqueous deposition
Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide promotes lipid deposition in subcutaneous adipocytes in obese, type-2 diabetes patients: a maladaptive response
Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) beyond its insulinotropic effects may regulate postprandial lipid metabolism. Whereas the insulinotropic action of GIP is known to be impaired in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), its adipogenic effect is unknown. We hypothesized that GIP is anabolic in human subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) promoting triacylglycerol (TAG) deposition through reesterification of nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA), and this effect may differ according to obesity status or glucose tolerance. Twenty-three subjects categorized into four groups, normoglycemic lean (n = 6), normoglycemic obese (n = 6), obese with impaired glucose regulation (IGR; n = 6), and obese T2DM (n = 5), participated in a double-blind, randomized, crossover study involving a hyperglycemic clamp with a 240-min GIP infusion (2 pmol·kgâ1·minâ1) or normal saline. Insulin, NEFA, SAT-TAG content, and gene expression of key lipogenic enzymes were determined before and immediately after GIP/saline infusions. GIP lowered NEFA concentrations in the obese T2DM group despite diminished insulinotropic activity (mean NEFA AUC0-4 h ± SE, 41,992 ± 9,843 ”mol·lâ1·minâ1 vs. 71,468 ± 13,605 with placebo, P = 0.039, 95% CI: 0.31-0.95). Additionally, GIP increased SAT-TAG in obese T2DM (1.78 ± 0.4 vs 0.86 ± 0.1-fold with placebo, P = 0.043, 95% CI: 0.1-1.8). Such effect with GIP was not observed in other three groups despite greater insulinotropic activity. Reduction in NEFA concentration with GIP correlated with adipose tissue insulin resistance for all subjects (Pearson, r = 0.56, P = 0.005). There were no significant gene expression changes in key SAT lipid metabolism enzymes. In conclusion, GIP appears to promote fat accretion and thus may exacerbate obesity and insulin resistance in T2DM
An Open System for Social Computation
Part of the power of social computation comes from using the collective intelligence of humans to tame the aggregate uncertainty of (otherwise) low veracity data obtained from human and automated sources. We have witnessed a surge in development of social computing systems but, ironically, there have been few attempts to generalise across this activity so that creation of the underlying mechanisms themselves can be made more social. We describe a method for achieving this by standardising patterns of social computation via lightweight formal specifications (we call these social artifacts) that can be connected to existing internet architectures via a single model of computation. Upon this framework we build a mechanism for extracting provenance meta-data across social computations
Parametrizations of Inclusive Cross Sections for Pion Production in Proton-Proton Collisions
Accurate knowledge of cross sections for pion production in proton-proton
collisions finds wide application in particle physics, astrophysics, cosmic ray
physics and space radiation problems, especially in situations where an
incident proton is transported through some medium, and one requires knowledge
of the output particle spectrum given the input spectrum. In such cases
accurate parametrizations of the cross sections are desired. In this paper we
review much of the experimental data and compare to a wide variety of different
cross section parametrizations. In so doing, we provide parametrizations of
neutral and charged pion cross sections which provide a very accurate
description of the experimental data. Lorentz invariant differential cross
sections, spectral distributions and total cross section parametrizations are
presented.Comment: 32 pages with 15 figures. Published in Physical Review D62, 094030.
File includes 6 tex files. The main file is paper.tex which has include
statements refering to the rest. figures are in graphs.di
Age Determination of Six Intermediate-age SMC Star Clusters with HST/ACS
We present a photometric analysis of the star clusters Lindsay 1, Kron 3,
NGC339, NGC416, Lindsay 38, and NGC419 in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC),
observed with the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in
the F555W and F814W filters. Our color magnitude diagrams (CMDs) extend ~3.5
mag deeper than the main-sequence turnoff points, deeper than any previous
data. Cluster ages were derived using three different isochrone models: Padova,
Teramo, and Dartmouth, which are all available in the ACS photometric system.
Fitting observed ridgelines for each cluster, we provide a homogeneous and
unique set of low-metallicity, single-age fiducial isochrones. The cluster CMDs
are best approximated by the Dartmouth isochrones for all clusters, except for
NGC419 where the Padova isochrones provided the best fit. The CMD of NGC419
shows several main-sequence turn-offs, which belong to the cluster and to the
SMC field. We thus derive an age range of 1.2-1.6 Gyr for NGC419.
Interestingly, our intermediate-age star clusters have a metallicity spread of
~0.6 dex, which demonstrates that the SMC does not have a smooth, monotonic
age-metallicity relation. We find an indication for centrally concentrated blue
straggler star candidates in NGC416, while for the other clusters these are not
present. Using the red clump magnitudes, we find that the closest cluster,
NGC419 (~50kpc), and the farthest cluster, Lindsay 38 (~67kpc), have a relative
distance of ~17kpc, which confirms the large depth of the SMC.Comment: 25 pages, 45 Figure
Spatial variation in the fine-structure constant -- new results from VLT/UVES
(abridged) We present a new analysis of a large sample of quasar
absorption-line spectra obtained using UVES (the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle
Spectrograph) on the VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile. In the VLT sample
(154 absorbers), we find evidence that alpha increases with increasing
cosmological distance from Earth. However, as previously shown, the Keck sample
(141 absorbers) provided evidence for a smaller alpha in the distant absorption
clouds. Upon combining the samples an apparent variation of alpha across the
sky emerges which is well represented by an angular dipole model pointing in
the direction RA=(17.3 +/- 1.0) hr, dec. = (-61 +/- 10) deg, with amplitude
(0.97 +0.22/-0.20) x 10^(-5). The dipole model is required at the 4.1 sigma
statistical significance level over a simple monopole model where alpha is the
same across the sky (but possibly different to the current laboratory value).
The data sets reveal a number of remarkable consistencies: various data cuts
are consistent and there is consistency in the overlap region of the Keck and
VLT samples. Assuming a dipole-only (i.e. no-monopole) model whose amplitude
grows proportionally with `lookback-time distance' (r=ct, where t is the
lookback time), the amplitude is (1.1 +/- 0.2) x 10^(-6) GLyr^(-1) and the
model is significant at the 4.2 sigma confidence level over the null model
[Delta alpha]/alpha = 0). We apply robustness checks and demonstrate that the
dipole effect does not originate from a small subset of the absorbers or
spectra. We present an analysis of systematic effects, and are unable to
identify any single systematic effect which can emulate the observed variation
in alpha.Comment: 47 pages, 35 figures. Accepted for publication by Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society. Please see
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~mmurphy/pub.html for an ASCII version of table
A1 and the full set of Voigt profile fits for appendix
Measuring Parton Densities in the Pomeron
We present a program to measure the parton densities in the pomeron using
diffractive deep inelastic scattering and diffractive photoproduction, and to
test the resulting parton densities by applying them to other processes such as
the diffractive production of jets in hadron-hadron collisions. Since QCD
factorization has been predicted NOT to apply to hard diffractive scattering,
this program of fitting and using parton densities might be expected to fail.
Its success or failure will provide useful information on the space-time
structure of the pomeron.Comment: Contains revisions based on Phys. Rev. D referee comments. RevTeX
version 3, epsf, 31 pages. Uuencoded compressed postscript figures appended.
Uncompressed postscript files available at
ftp://ftp.phys.psu.edu/pub/preprint/psuth136
Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide promotes lipid deposition in subcutaneous adipocytes in obese type 2 diabetes patients: a maladaptive response
Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) beyond its insulinotropic effects may regulate postprandial lipid metabolism. Whereas the insulinotropic action of GIP is known to be impaired in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), its adipogenic effect is unknown. We hypothesized that GIP is anabolic in human subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) promoting triacylglycerol (TAG) deposition through reesterification of nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA), and this effect may differ according to obesity status or glucose tolerance. Twenty-three subjects categorized into four groups, normoglycemic lean ( n = 6), normoglycemic obese ( n = 6), obese with impaired glucose regulation (IGR; n = 6), and obese T2DM ( n = 5), participated in a double-blind, randomized, crossover study involving a hyperglycemic clamp with a 240-min GIP infusion (2 pmol·kgâ1·minâ1) or normal saline. Insulin, NEFA, SAT-TAG content, and gene expression of key lipogenic enzymes were determined before and immediately after GIP/saline infusions. GIP lowered NEFA concentrations in the obese T2DM group despite diminished insulinotropic activity (mean NEFA AUC0â4 h ± SE, 41,992 ± 9,843 ”mol·lâ1·minâ1 vs. 71,468 ± 13,605 with placebo, P = 0.039, 95% CI: 0.31â0.95). Additionally, GIP increased SAT-TAG in obese T2DM (1.78 ± 0.4 vs 0.86 ± 0.1-fold with placebo, P = 0.043, 95% CI: 0.1â1.8). Such effect with GIP was not observed in other three groups despite greater insulinotropic activity. Reduction in NEFA concentration with GIP correlated with adipose tissue insulin resistance for all subjects (Pearson, r = 0.56, P = 0.005). There were no significant gene expression changes in key SAT lipid metabolism enzymes. In conclusion, GIP appears to promote fat accretion and thus may exacerbate obesity and insulin resistance in T2DM. </jats:p
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