330 research outputs found
Review of food toxicological issues associated in rubber products
Over the centuries, rubber latex gained its popularity in machinery application due to its unique thermal properties, high elasticity and excellent impact resistance. It is widely accepted in food industry as rubber has good resistance to chemicals, including acids, alkalis and salts. For instance, rubber components comprise of couplings, shields, dust covers, gaskets and seals exist as group or standalone component in food manufacturing equipments or machinery. Even though most of the rubber based products in food industry fulfil the requirements of Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, the presence of trace amount of chemicals upon the preceding processing of rubber might accidentally contaminate to the food products. The contamination that happened might caused changes in food quality in term of taste, smell or even visual appearance. Therefore, this paper aims to review some of the manufacturing process of natural rubber products and to understand the possibility of extractable and leachable contaminated food products. An overview of potential toxicological problems will be discussed and the finding will be summarized in this paper
Quasiparticle photoemission intensity in doped two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets
Using the self-consistent Born approximation, and the corresponding wave
function of the magnetic polaron, we calculate the quasiparticle weight
corresponding to destruction of a real electron (in contrast to creation of a
spinless holon), as a funtion of wave vector for one hole in a generalized
model and the strong coupling limit of a generalized Hubbard model. The
results are in excellent agreement with those obtained by exact diagonalization
of a sufficiently large cluster. Only the Hubbard weigth compares very well
with photoemission measurements in Sr_2CuO_2Cl_2.Comment: 11 pages, latex, 3 figure
Dispersion of a single hole in the t-J model
The dispersion of a single hole in the t-J model obtained by the exact result
of 32 sites and the results obtained by self-consistent Born approximation and
the Green function Monte Carlo method can be simply derived by a mean-field
theory with d-RVB and antiferromagnetic order parameters. In addition, it
offers a simple explanation for the difference observed between those results.
The presence of the extended van Hove region at (pi,0) is a consequence of the
d-RVB pairing independenct of the antiferromagnetic order. Results including t'
and t" are also presented and explained consistently in a similar way.Comment: LaTex file, 5 pages with 5 embedded eps figure
An Exact Algorithm for Side-Chain Placement in Protein Design
Computational protein design aims at constructing novel or improved functions
on the structure of a given protein backbone and has important applications in
the pharmaceutical and biotechnical industry. The underlying combinatorial
side-chain placement problem consists of choosing a side-chain placement for
each residue position such that the resulting overall energy is minimum. The
choice of the side-chain then also determines the amino acid for this position.
Many algorithms for this NP-hard problem have been proposed in the context of
homology modeling, which, however, reach their limits when faced with large
protein design instances.
In this paper, we propose a new exact method for the side-chain placement
problem that works well even for large instance sizes as they appear in protein
design. Our main contribution is a dedicated branch-and-bound algorithm that
combines tight upper and lower bounds resulting from a novel Lagrangian
relaxation approach for side-chain placement. Our experimental results show
that our method outperforms alternative state-of-the art exact approaches and
makes it possible to optimally solve large protein design instances routinely
Electron momentum distribution in underdoped cuprates
We investigate the electron momentum distribution function (EMD) in a weakly
doped two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnet (AFM) as described by the t-J
model. Our analytical results for a single hole in an AFM based on the
self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA) indicate an anomalous momentum
dependence of EMD showing 'hole pockets' coexisting with a signature of an
emerging large Fermi surface. The position of the incipient Fermi surface and
the structure of the EMD is determined by the momentum of the ground state. Our
analysis shows that this result remains robust in the presence of next-nearest
neighbor hopping terms in the model. Exact diagonalization results for small
clusters are with the SCBA reproduced quantitatively.Comment: 5 pages, submitted to PR
Low energy and dynamical properties of a single hole in the t-Jz model
We review in details a recently proposed technique to extract information
about dynamical correlation functions of many-body hamiltonians with a few
Lanczos iterations and without the limitation of finite size. We apply this
technique to understand the low energy properties and the dynamical spectral
weight of a simple model describing the motion of a single hole in a quantum
antiferromagnet: the model in two spatial dimension and for a double
chain lattice. The simplicity of the model allows us a well controlled
numerical solution, especially for the two chain case. Contrary to previous
approximations we have found that the single hole ground state in the infinite
system is continuously connected with the Nagaoka fully polarized state for
. Analogously we have obtained an accurate determination of the
dynamical spectral weight relevant for photoemission experiments. For
an argument is given that the spectral weight vanishes at the Nagaoka energy
faster than any power law, as supported also by a clear numerical evidence. It
is also shown that spin charge decoupling is an exact property for a single
hole in the Bethe lattice but does not apply to the more realistic lattices
where the hole can describe closed loop paths.Comment: RevTex 3.0, 40 pages + 16 Figures in one file self-extracting, to
appear in Phys. Rev
Dynamic Evolution Model of Isothermal Voids and Shocks
We explore self-similar hydrodynamic evolution of central voids embedded in
an isothermal gas of spherical symmetry under the self-gravity. More
specifically, we study voids expanding at constant radial speeds in an
isothermal gas and construct all types of possible void solutions without or
with shocks in surrounding envelopes. We examine properties of void boundaries
and outer envelopes. Voids without shocks are all bounded by overdense shells
and either inflows or outflows in the outer envelope may occur. These
solutions, referred to as type void solutions, are further
divided into subtypes and
according to their characteristic behaviours across the sonic critical line
(SCL). Void solutions with shocks in envelopes are referred to as type
voids and can have both dense and quasi-smooth edges.
Asymptotically, outflows, breezes, inflows, accretions and static outer
envelopes may all surround such type voids. Both cases of
constant and varying temperatures across isothermal shock fronts are analyzed;
they are referred to as types and
void shock solutions. We apply the `phase net matching procedure' to construct
various self-similar void solutions. We also present analysis on void
generation mechanisms and describe several astrophysical applications. By
including self-gravity, gas pressure and shocks, our isothermal self-similar
void (ISSV) model is adaptable to various astrophysical systems such as
planetary nebulae, hot bubbles and superbubbles in the interstellar medium as
well as supernova remnants.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figuers, accepted by ApS
Association of untargeted urinary metabolomics and lung cancer risk among never-smoking women in China
Importance Chinese women have the highest rate of lung cancer among female never-smokers in the world, and the etiology is poorly understood.
Objective To assess the association between metabolomics and lung cancer risk among never-smoking women.
Design, Setting, and Participants This nested case-control study included 275 never-smoking female patients with lung cancer and 289 never-smoking cancer-free control participants from the prospective Shanghai Women’s Health Study recruited from December 28, 1996, to May 23, 2000. Validated food frequency questionnaires were used for the collection of dietary information. Metabolomic analysis was conducted from November 13, 2015, to January 6, 2016. Data analysis was conducted from January 6, 2016, to November 29, 2018.
Exposures Untargeted ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance metabolomic profiles were characterized using prediagnosis urine samples. A total of 39 416 metabolites were measured.
Main Outcomes and Measures Incident lung cancer.
Results Among the 564 women, those who developed lung cancer (275 participants; median [interquartile range] age, 61.0 [52-65] years) and those who did not develop lung cancer (289 participants; median [interquartile range] age, 62.0 [53-66] years) at follow-up (median [interquartile range] follow-up, 10.9 [9.0-11.7] years) were similar in terms of their secondhand smoke exposure, history of respiratory diseases, and body mass index. A peak metabolite, identified as 5-methyl-2-furoic acid, was significantly associated with lower lung cancer risk (odds ratio, 0.57 [95% CI, 0.46-0.72]; P < .001; false discovery rate = 0.039). Furthermore, this peak was weakly correlated with self-reported dietary soy intake (ρ = 0.21; P < .001). Increasing tertiles of this metabolite were associated with lower lung cancer risk (in comparison with first tertile, odds ratio for second tertile, 0.52 [95% CI, 0.34-0.80]; and odds ratio for third tertile, 0.46 [95% CI, 0.30-0.70]), and the association was consistent across different histological subtypes and follow-up times. Additionally, metabolic pathway analysis found several systemic biological alterations that were associated with lung cancer risk, including 1-carbon metabolism, nucleotide metabolism, oxidative stress, and inflammation.
Conclusions and Relevance This prospective study of the untargeted urinary metabolome and lung cancer among never-smoking women in China provides support for the hypothesis that soy-based metabolites are associated with lower lung cancer risk in never-smoking women and suggests that biological processes linked to air pollution may be associated with higher lung cancer risk in this population
Signatures of Relativistic Neutrinos in CMB Anisotropy and Matter Clustering
We present a detailed analytical study of ultra-relativistic neutrinos in
cosmological perturbation theory and of the observable signatures of
inhomogeneities in the cosmic neutrino background. We note that a modification
of perturbation variables that removes all the time derivatives of scalar
gravitational potentials from the dynamical equations simplifies their solution
notably. The used perturbations of particle number per coordinate, not proper,
volume are generally constant on superhorizon scales. In real space an
analytical analysis can be extended beyond fluids to neutrinos.
The faster cosmological expansion due to the neutrino background changes the
acoustic and damping angular scales of the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
But we find that equivalent changes can be produced by varying other standard
parameters, including the primordial helium abundance. The low-l integrated
Sachs-Wolfe effect is also not sensitive to neutrinos. However, the gravity of
neutrino perturbations suppresses the CMB acoustic peaks for the multipoles
with l>~200 while it enhances the amplitude of matter fluctuations on these
scales. In addition, the perturbations of relativistic neutrinos generate a
*unique phase shift* of the CMB acoustic oscillations that for adiabatic
initial conditions cannot be caused by any other standard physics. The origin
of the shift is traced to neutrino free-streaming velocity exceeding the sound
speed of the photon-baryon plasma. We find that from a high resolution, low
noise instrument such as CMBPOL the effective number of light neutrino species
can be determined with an accuracy of sigma(N_nu) = 0.05 to 0.09, depending on
the constraints on the helium abundance.Comment: 38 pages, 7 figures. Version accepted for publication in PR
Horizontal deflection of single particle in a paramagnetic fluid
This paper describes the horizontal deflection behaviour of a single particle in paramagnetic fluids under a high-gradient superconducting magnetic field. A glass box was designed to carry out experiments and test assumptions. It was found that the particles were deflected away from the magnet bore centre and particles with different density and/or susceptibility settled at a certain position on the container floor due to the combined forces of gravity and magneto-Archimedes as well as lateral buoyant (displacement) force. Matlab was chosen to simulate the movement of the particle in the magnetic fluid, the simulation results were in good accordance with experimental data. The results presented here, though, are still very much in their infancy, which could potentially form the basis of a new approach to separating materials based on a combination of density and susceptibility. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.
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