An Apparent Order of Sensory Ability Changes in Human Beings \ud

Examination of records and personal documents of 1309 human beings isolated an apparent order of sensory ability changes, for 154 members of the sample both records and personal documents were available. The five changes in the apparent order are (a) an improvement in auditory perception that always includes an increase in complexity of speech, (b) an improvement in ability to taste or to smell or both and comparative myopia in which the developing human being becomes more near-sighted than he or she has been, (c) an increase in ability to discern and separate aural or visual or aural and visual stimuli simultaneously received, (d) comparative hyperopia, and (e) a marked increase in ability in one or more up to all five of the sensory abilities considered in the research: audition, vision, gustation, olfaction, and touch. Truncation of movement through the order is a salient feature, and the fourth change, comparative hyperopia, may be skipped. If the apparent order is significant and supportable, it may lead to new, productive research in many affected disciplines

Labor markets and labor market institutions in transition economies

This paper summarizes the evolution of labor markets and labor market institutions and policies in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well as of Central Asia over the last two decades. The main focus is on the evolution of labor market institutions, which are among candidate explanations for the very diverse trajectories of labor markets in the region. We consider recent contributions that attempt to assess the effect of labor market institutions on labor market performance of TEs, including the policy-relevant issue of complementarity of institutions.

Potential of an ionic impurityin a large 4^4He cluster

This paper presents an analysis of the motion of an impurity ion in a nanometer scale $^4$He cluster. Due to induction forces, ions are strongly localized near the center of the cluster, with a root mean squared thermal displacements of only a few \AA. The trapping potential is found to be nearly harmonic, with a frequency of 2.3(1.0) GHz for a positive (negative) ion in a He cluster of radius 5 nm. The anharmonicity is small and positive (energy increases slightly faster than linear with quantum number). It is suggested that by using frequency sweep microwave radiation, it should be possible to drive the ion center of mass motion up to high quantum numbers, allowing the study of the critical velocity as a function of cluster size.Comment: 14 pages, 0 figures, To be published in Molecular Physic

Particle Filter Design Using Importance Sampling for Acoustic Source Localisation and Tracking in Reverberant Environments

Sequential Monte Carlo methods have been recently proposed to deal with the problem of acoustic source localisation and tracking using an array of microphones. Previous implementations make use of the basic bootstrap particle filter, whereas a more general approach involves the concept of importance sampling. In this paper, we develop a new particle filter for acoustic source localisation using importance sampling, and compare its tracking ability with that of a bootstrap algorithm proposed previously in the literature. Experimental results obtained with simulated reverberant samples and real audio recordings demonstrate that the new algorithm is more suitable for practical applications due to its reinitialisation capabilities, despite showing a slightly lower average tracking accuracy. A real-time implementation of the algorithm also shows that the proposed particle filter can reliably track a person talking in real reverberant rooms.This paper was performed while Eric A. Lehmann was working with National ICT Australia. National ICT Australia is funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Communications, Information Technology, and the Arts, the Australian Research Council, through Backing Australia’s Ability, and the ICT Centre of Excellence programs

Sequential Tunneling through Molecular Spin Rings

We consider electrical transport through molecules with Heisenberg-coupled spins arranged in a ring structure in the presence of an easy-axis anisotropy. The molecules are coupled to two metallic leads and a gate. In the charged state of the ring, a Zener double-exchange mechanism links transport properties to the underlying spin structure. This leads to a remarkable contact-site dependence of the current, which for an antiferromagnetic coupling of the spins can lead to a total suppression of the zero-bias conductance when the molecule is contacted at adjacent sites.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Cromakalim (BRL 34915) restores in vitro the membrane potential of depolarized human skeletal muscle fibres

The purpose of the present study was to analyze the effects of cromakalim (BRL 34915), a potent drug from a new class of drugs characterized as K+ channel openers, on the electrical activity of human skeletal muscle. Therefore, intracellular recordings were used to measure the effects of cromakalim on the membrane potential and input conductance of fibres from human skeletal muscle biopsies. Cromakalim in a concentration above 1 mol/l induced an increase in membrane K+ conductance. This effect resulted in a membrane hyperpolarization. The magnitude of this polarization depended on the difference between resting and K+ equilibrium potential. The effect had a rapid onset and was quickly reversible after washing. Fibres from two patients with hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis showed an excessive membrane depolarization during and also after exposure to an slightly elevated extracellular K+ concentration. In the latter situation, cromakalim repolarized the fibres to the normal resting potential. Tolbutamide (1 mmol/l) and Ba2+ (3 mmol/l) strongly antagonized the effect of cromakalim. The data show that cromakalim hyperpolarizes depolarized human skeletal muscle fibres maintained in vitro. The underlying mechanism is probably an activation of otherwise silent, ATP-regulated K+ channels. Such an effect may be of therapeutic benefit in a situation in which a membrane depolarization causes muscle paralysis

Quantum Hydrodynamic Model for the enhanced moments of Inertia of molecules in Helium Nanodroplets: Application to SF6_6

The increase in moment of inertia of SF$_6$ in helium nanodroplets is calculated using the quantum hydrodynamic approach. This required an extension of the numerical solution to the hydrodynamic equation to three explicit dimensions. Based upon an expansion of the density in terms of the lowest four Octahedral spherical harmonics, the predicted increase in moment of inertia is $170 {\rm u \AA^2}$, compared to an experimentally determined value of $310(10) {\rm u \AA^2}$, i.e., 55% of the observed value. The difference is likely in at least part due to lack of convergence with respect to the angular expansion, but at present we do not have access to the full densities from which a higher order expansion can be determined. The present results contradict those of Kwon et al., J. Chem. Phys. {\bf 113}, 6469 (2000), who predicted that the hydrodynamic theory predicted less than 10% of the observed increase in moment of inertia.Comment: 10 pages, including 1 figur