Morphology of sesamoid bones in keyboard musicians

Background: The sesamoid bones are small, usually oval bone structures often found in joints and under the tendons. Although their precise function is not fully understood, it is agreed upon that they protect the joints and make movements faster and less energy consuming. Sesamoid bones are found in hands, especially around first, second and fifth metacarpophalangeal joint and the interphalangeal joint of the thumb. Materials and methods: This study compares a group of 32 young musicians to 30 non-musicians of similar age and posture. The hands of the subjects were examined by ultrasound imaging for the presence of sesamoid bones. The results were noted and observed sesamoids were measured. Results: The results seem to prove that although there are no difference in the amount or the location of the sesamoid bones between the musicians and the non-musicians, there is statistically significant tendency for the musicians to have bigger sum of the sesamoid’s volume per hand (Fisher’s test p-value = 0.034 < 0.05). Conclusions: There was also observed an unusually shaped “Bactrian” sesamoid bone at the interphalangeal joint of the thumb in 8 cases in the musicians’ group and 1 case in the control group. All participants with the aforementioned structure were female

Strangeness counting in high energy collisions

The estimates of overall strange quark production in high energy e+e-, pp and ppbar collisions by using the statistical-thermal model of hadronisation are presented and compared with previous works. The parametrization of strangeness suppression within the model is discussed. Interesting regularities emerge in the strange/non-strange produced quark ratio which turns out to be fairly constant in elementary collisions while it is twice as large in SPS heavy ion collision.Comment: talk given at Strangeness in Quark Matter 98, submitted to J. Phys.

Review of Results from the NA49 Collaboration

New results of the NA49 collaboration on strange particle production are presented. Rapidity and transverse mass spectra as well as total multiplicities are discussed. The study of their evolution from AGS over SPS to the highest RHIC energy reveals a couple of interesting features. These include a sudden change in the energy dependence of the mt-spectra and of the yields of strange hadrons around 30 AGeV. Both are found to be difficult to be reproduced in a hadronic scenario, but might be an indication for a phase transition to a quark gluon plasma.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Proceedings of the SQM04 conference, Capetow

Comment on ``Strangeness enhancement in p+Ap+A and S+A+A interactions at energies near 200 AA GeV"

We argue that the recent analysis of strangeness production in nuclear collisions at 200 $A$ GeV/$c$ performed by Topor Pop {\it et al.} \cite{To:95} is flawed. The conclusions are based on an erroneous interpretation of the data and the numerical model results. The term ``strangeness enhancement" is used in a misleading way.Comment: 4 pages REVTEX 3.0, no figures; Comment submitted to Physical Review

Importance of reaction volume in hadronic collisions: Canonical enhancement

We study the canonical flavor enhancement arising from exact conservation of strangeness, and charm flavor. Both the theoretical motivation, and the practical consequences are explored. We argue using qualitative theoretical arguments and quantitative evaluation, that this proposal to reevaluate strangeness signature of quark--gluon plasma is not able to explain the majority of available experimental results.Comment: 14 pages including 6 figures, submitted to Journal of Physics G Presented at: Strange Quark Matter, September 2001, Frankfur

Optimizing Mining Ventilation Using 3D Technologies

Ventilation systems constitute an important piece of the industrial facility ecosystems. Creating proper working environmental conditions for humans is crucial, especially in hazardous sites with presence of various gases, such as underground mines. Combined with the vast amount of space to be ventilated in large mines, designing and maintaining such a system is challenging and costly. To alleviate these issues, the EIT-RM project VOT3D (Ventilation Optimizing Technology based on 3D scanning) proposes conducting advanced airflow modeling in the underground tunnel networks, utilizing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, modern surveying and 3D modeling approaches to reverse engineer a reliable geometric model of the mine and estimate the 3D airflow field inside it. In this paper, we present the challenges to be solved in this task and the proposed workflow to address them. An example related to an active industrial mine in Poland is reported as a basis for performing experimental data processing using the full, highly automatized procedure. Developments and results of underground mobile mapping (with a drone and a handheld system), point cloud processing and filtering, surface reconstruction and CFD modeling are presented. The detailed results of airflow field estimation show the advantages of the proposed solution and promise its high practical usefulness

Measurement of the diffractive structure function in deep inelastic scattering at HERA

This paper presents an analysis of the inclusive properties of diffractive deep inelastic scattering events produced in $ep$ interactions at HERA. The events are characterised by a rapidity gap between the outgoing proton system and the remaining hadronic system. Inclusive distributions are presented and compared with Monte Carlo models for diffractive processes. The data are consistent with models where the pomeron structure function has a hard and a soft contribution. The diffractive structure function is measured as a function of \xpom, the momentum fraction lost by the proton, of $\beta$, the momentum fraction of the struck quark with respect to \xpom, and of $Q^2$. The \xpom dependence is consistent with the form \xpoma where $a~=~1.30~\pm~0.08~(stat)~^{+~0.08}_{-~0.14}~(sys)$ in all bins of $\beta$ and $Q^2$. In the measured $Q^2$ range, the diffractive structure function approximately scales with $Q^2$ at fixed $\beta$. In an Ingelman-Schlein type model, where commonly used pomeron flux factor normalisations are assumed, it is found that the quarks within the pomeron do not saturate the momentum sum rule.Comment: 36 pages, latex, 11 figures appended as uuencoded fil

Baryon Stopping and Charged Particle Distributions in Central Pb+Pb Collisions at 158 GeV per Nucleon

Net proton and negative hadron spectra for central \PbPb collisions at 158 GeV per nucleon at the CERN SPS were measured and compared to spectra from lighter systems. Net baryon distributions were derived from those of net protons, utilizing model calculations of isospin contributions as well as data and model calculations of strange baryon distributions. Stopping (rapidity shift with respect to the beam) and mean transverse momentum \meanpt of net baryons increase with system size. The rapidity density of negative hadrons scales with the number of participant nucleons for nuclear collisions, whereas their \meanpt is independent of system size. The \meanpt dependence upon particle mass and system size is consistent with larger transverse flow velocity at midrapidity for \PbPb compared to \SS central collisions.Comment: This version accepted for publication in PRL. 4 pages, 3 figures. Typos corrected, some paragraphs expanded in response to referee comments, to better explain details of analysi

Independent Component Analysis-motivated Approach to Classificatory Decomposition of Cortical Evoked Potentials

BACKGROUND: Independent Component Analysis (ICA) proves to be useful in the analysis of neural activity, as it allows for identification of distinct sources of activity. Applied to measurements registered in a controlled setting and under exposure to an external stimulus, it can facilitate analysis of the impact of the stimulus on those sources. The link between the stimulus and a given source can be verified by a classifier that is able to "predict" the condition a given signal was registered under, solely based on the components. However, the ICA's assumption about statistical independence of sources is often unrealistic and turns out to be insufficient to build an accurate classifier. Therefore, we propose to utilize a novel method, based on hybridization of ICA, multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEA), and rough sets (RS), that attempts to improve the effectiveness of signal decomposition techniques by providing them with "classification-awareness." RESULTS: The preliminary results described here are very promising and further investigation of other MOEAs and/or RS-based classification accuracy measures should be pursued. Even a quick visual analysis of those results can provide an interesting insight into the problem of neural activity analysis. CONCLUSION: We present a methodology of classificatory decomposition of signals. One of the main advantages of our approach is the fact that rather than solely relying on often unrealistic assumptions about statistical independence of sources, components are generated in the light of a underlying classification problem itself

Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA

Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5 GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the $\gamma p$ centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4 GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil