1,849 research outputs found
Human health risks due to consumption of chemically contaminated fishery products.
A small proportion of fishery products contaminated with appreciable amounts of potentially hazardous inorganic and organic contaminants from natural and environmental sources seem to pose the greatest potential for toxicity to consumers of fishery products in the United States. Health risks due to chemicals (e.g., modest changes in the overall risk of cancer, subtle deficits of neurological development in fetuses and children) are difficult to measure directly in people exposed to low levels. Immunocompetence may increase cancer risk. Inferences about the potential magnitude of these problems must be based on the levels of specific chemical present, observations of human populations and experimental animals exposed to relatively high doses, and theories about the likely mechanisms of action of specific intoxicants and the population distribution of sensitivity of human exposure. Lognormal distributions were found to provide good descriptions of the pattern of variation of contaminant concentrations among different species and geographic areas; this variability offers a solution for reduction of exposure through restricting harvest of aquatic animals from certain sites and by excluding certain species. Available information suggest that risks are not generally of high magnitude; nevertheless, their control will significantly improve public health.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS
Experimental results on strangeness production in proton-proton collisions at COSY
The production of K+ and K- mesons in elementary proton-proton collision has
been investigated at the Cooler Synchrotron COSY in Juelich. A high quality
proton beam with low emittance and small momentum spread permitted to study the
creation of these mesons very close to the kinematical threshold. The energy
dependence of the total cross section is investigated using internal beam
facilities providing a high accuracy particle momentum determination as well as
an external non-magnetic detection setup with a large geometrical acceptance.
The determination of the four-momentum vectors for all ejectiles of each
registered event gives the complete kinematical information allowing to study
the interaction of the outgoing particles. Results on the performed studies of
the pp --> pp K+ K-, pp --> p Lambda K+ and pp --> p Sigma0 K+ reactions will
be presented and their relevance to the interpretation of heavy ion collisions
will be discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, plenary talk at 6th International Conference On
Strange Quarks in Matter: '2001 - A Flavorspace Odyssey' (SQM2001),
Frankfurt, Germany, September 25-29, 2001, to be published in J. Phys. G:
Nucl. Part. Phy
Light Meson Dynamics Workshop. Mini proceedings
The mini-proceedings of the Light Meson Dynamics Workshop held in Mainz from
February 10th to 12th, 2014, are presented. The web page of the conference,
which contains all talks, can be found at
https://indico.cern.ch/event/287442/overview .Comment: 46 pages, 17 contributions. Editors: W. Gradl, P. Masjuan, M.
Ostrick, and S. Schere
Effect of maternal panic disorder on mother-child interaction and relation to child anxiety and child self-efficacy
To determine whether mothers with panic disorder with or without agoraphobia interacted differently with their children than normal control mothers, 86 mothers and their adolescents (aged between 13 and 23 years) were observed during a structured play situation. Maternal as well as adolescent anxiety status was assessed according to a structured diagnostic interview. Results showed that mothers with panic disorder/agoraphobia showed more verbal control, were more criticizing and less sensitive during mother-child interaction than mothers without current mental disorders. Moreover, more conflicts were observed between mother and child dyadic interactions when the mother suffered from panic disorder. The comparison of parenting behaviors among anxious and non-anxious children did not reveal any significant differences. These findings support an association between parental over-control and rejection and maternal but not child anxiety and suggest that particularly mother anxiety status is an important determinant of parenting behavior. Finally, an association was found between children’s perceived self-efficacy, parental control and child anxiety symptoms
A method to disentangle single- and multi-meson production in missing mass spectra from quasi-free pn --> pn X reactions
The separation of contributions from multi- and single-meson production in
the missing mass spectrum of the quasi-free pn --> pnX reaction constitutes
a~challenging task when the reaction is studied close to threshold. This is
especially true if the resolution of the mass determination is comparable with
the excess energy and if the investigated signal appears close to the
kinematical limit. In this article we outline a method which permits the
extraction of the signal originating from the creation of a single meson
without the necessity of conducting model-dependent simulations. For the pd -->
pnXp(spectator) reactions, the method allows one to combine events
corresponding to multi-meson production at various excess energies with respect
to the pn --> pn meson process, and hence leads to an increase of the
statistics needed for the determination of the shape of the multi-meson
background.
As an example of the application of the method, we demonstrate that the
evaluation of the data from the pd --> pnXp(sp) process according to the
described technique enables one to extract a signal of the pn --> pn eta
reaction whose shape is consistent with expectations, supporting the
correctness and usefulness of the method introduced.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure
Educational outcomes in extremely preterm children : neuropsychological correlates and predictors of attainment
This study assessed the impact of extremely preterm birth on academic attainment at 11 years of
age, investigated neuropsychological antecedents of attainment in reading and mathematics, and
examined early predictors of educational outcomes. Children born extremely preterm had significantly
poorer academic attainment and a higher prevalence of learning difficulties than their term
peers. General cognitive ability and specific deficits in visuospatial skills or phoneme deletion at 6
years were predictive of mathematics and reading attainment at 11 years in both extremely preterm
and term children. Phonological processing, attention, and executive functions at 6 years were also
associated with academic attainment in children born extremely preterm. Furthermore, social factors,
neonatal factors (necrotizing enterocolitis, breech delivery, abnormal cerebral ultrasound, early
breast milk provision), and developmental factors at 30 months (head circumference, cognitive development),
were independent predictors of educational outcomes at 11 years. Neonatal complications
combined with assessments of early cognitive function provide moderate prediction for educational
outcomes in children born extremely preterm
General thoughts to the Kaon pair production in the threshold region
Simple--minded thoughts about the cross sections for the reactions
pp-->ppK+K- and pp-->ppK0K0 are presented, which certainly do not account for
the complex coupled channel problem but rather provide some ideas into the
mutual reaction dynamics.Comment: Talk given at 9th International Workshop on Meson Production,
Properties and Interaction, Cracow, Poland, 9-13 June 2006. 3 pages, 2
figure
Determination of the total width of the eta' meson
Taking advantage of both the low-emittance proton-beam of the Cooler
Synchrotron COSY and the high momentum precision of the COSY-11 detector
system, the mass distribution of the eta' meson was measured with a resolution
of 0.33 MeV/c^2 (FWHM), improving the experimental mass resolution by almost an
order of magnitude with respect to previous results. Based on the sample of
more than 2300 reconstructed pp --> pp eta' events the total width of the eta'
meson was determined to be 0.226 +- 0.017(stat.) +- 0.014(syst.) MeV/c^2.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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