1,407 research outputs found
A UserâFriendly Workbook to Facilitate Rapid and Accurate Rare Earth Element Analyses by ICPâMS for Multispiked Samples
The rare earth elements (REEs) are widely used as geochemical tracers in the earth, planetary, and ocean sciences. Inductively coupled plasmaâmass spectrometry (ICPâMS) has become the method of choice to analyze REE concentrations because it can rapidly measure the entire REE spectrum at the same time. This Technical Report presents a userâfriendly "REE Calculation Workbook" in Microsoft Excel to be used for calculating REE abundances in samples equilibrated with a multielement REE spike. This Workbook can be conveniently used to calculate REE concentrations in natural samples for spiked and unspiked elements measured by ICPâMS. For the spiked elements, their concentrations are calculated using isotope dilution equations. Using these spiked elements as references, concentrations of the four monoâisotopic REE elements, and other REE elements that are treated as monoâisotopic elements (in our case, La and Lu), can be calculated. The REE Workbook can be easily set up for use with different REE spikes. Evaluation of our analytical quality using a quadrupole ICPâMS on 10âmlâsized seawater samples shows that our analyses are comparable to highâprecision thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) studies, with much less time spent processing and analyzing, and with the added advantages of determining monoâisotopic elements. An important result is the clear demonstration of enrichments in Gd and Er compared to neighboring elements in seawater samples. In addition, we compare and evaluate commonly used reference standards BCRâ1, PostâArchean Australian Shale (PAAS), and North American Shale Composite (NASC)
Wound healing and hyper-hydration - a counter intuitive model
Winters seminal work in the 1960s relating to providing an optimal level of moisture to aid wound healing (granulation and re-epithelialisation) has been the single most effective advance in wound care over many decades. As such the development of advanced wound dressings that manage the fluidic wound environment have provided significant benefits in terms of healing to both patient and clinician. Although moist wound healing provides the guiding management principle confusion may arise between what is deemed to be an adequate level of tissue hydration and the risk of developing maceration. In addition, the counter-intuitive model âhyper-hydrationâ of tissue appears to frustrate the moist wound healing approach and advocate a course of intervention whereby tissue is hydrated beyond what is a normally acceptable therapeutic level. This paper discusses tissue hydration, the cause and effect of maceration and distinguishes these from hyper-hydration of tissue. The rationale is to provide the clinician with a knowledge base that allows optimisation of treatment and outcomes and explains the reasoning behind wound healing using hyper-hydration
The association between incident vertebral deformities, health-related quality of life and functional impairment: a 10.7-year cohort study
We aimed to describe longitudinal changes in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) measures associated with incident vertebral deformities (VDs) over 10.7 years. Incident VDs are associated with clinically significant functional impairment in men, and reduction in overall HRQoL in older women. Increasing severity and number of incident VDs are associated with clinically meaningful functional impairment in men, but not women
Native Tertiary Structure and Nucleoside Modifications Suppress tRNA's Intrinsic Ability to Activate the Innate Immune Sensor PKR
Interferon inducible protein kinase PKR is an essential component of innate immunity. It is activated by long stretches of dsRNA and provides the first line of host defense against pathogens by inhibiting translation initiation in the infected cell. Many cellular and viral transcripts contain nucleoside modifications and/or tertiary structure that could affect PKR activation. We have previously demonstrated that a 5âČ-end triphosphate-a signature of certain viral and bacterial transcripts-confers the ability of relatively unstructured model RNA transcripts to activate PKR to inhibit translation, and that this activation is abrogated by certain modifications present in cellular RNAs. In order to understand the biological implications of native RNA tertiary structure and nucleoside modifications on PKR activation, we study here the heavily modified cellular tRNAs and the unmodified or the lightly modified mitochondrial tRNAs (mt-tRNA). We find that both a T7 transcript of yeast tRNAPhe and natively extracted total bovine liver mt-tRNA activate PKR in vitro, whereas native E. coli, bovine liver, yeast, and wheat tRNAPhe do not, nor do a variety of base- or sugar-modified T7 transcripts. These results are further supported by activation of PKR by a natively folded T7 transcript of tRNAPhe in vivo supporting the importance of tRNA modification in suppressing PKR activation in cells. We also examine PKR activation by a T7 transcript of the A14G pathogenic mutant of mt-tRNALeu, which is known to dimerize, and find that the misfolded dimeric form activates PKR in vitro while the monomeric form does not. Overall, the in vitro and in vivo findings herein indicate that tRNAs have an intrinsic ability to activate PKR and that nucleoside modifications and native RNA tertiary folding may function, at least in part, to suppress such activation, thus serving to distinguish self and non-self tRNA in innate immunity
On the derivative of the associated Legendre function of the first kind of integer order with respect to its degree
In our recent works [R. Szmytkowski, J. Phys. A 39 (2006) 15147; corrigendum:
40 (2007) 7819; addendum: 40 (2007) 14887], we have investigated the derivative
of the Legendre function of the first kind, , with respect to its
degree . In the present work, we extend these studies and construct
several representations of the derivative of the associated Legendre function
of the first kind, , with respect to the degree , for
. At first, we establish several contour-integral
representations of . They are then
used to derive Rodrigues-type formulas for with . Next, some closed-form
expressions for are
obtained. These results are applied to find several representations, both
explicit and of the Rodrigues type, for the associated Legendre function of the
second kind of integer degree and order, ; the explicit
representations are suitable for use for numerical purposes in various regions
of the complex -plane. Finally, the derivatives
, and , all with , are evaluated in terms
of .Comment: LateX, 40 pages, 1 figure, extensive referencin
What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works
This paper is a comparative review of four seminal works on communities of practice. It is argued that the ambiguities of the terms community and practice are a source of the concept's reusability allowing it to be reappropriated for different purposes, academic and practical. However, it is potentially confusing that the works differ so markedly in their conceptualizations of community, learning, power and change, diversity and informality. The three earlier works are underpinned by a common epistemological view, but Lave and Wenger's 1991 short monograph is often read as primarily about the socialization of newcomers into knowledge by a form of apprenticeship, while the focus in Brown and Duguid's article of the same year is, in contrast, on improvising new knowledge in an interstitial group that forms in resistance to management. Wenger's 1998 book treats communities of practice as the informal relations and understandings that develop in mutual engagement on an appropriated joint enterprise, but his focus is the impact on individual identity. The applicability of the concept to the heavily individualized and tightly managed work of the twenty-first century is questionable. The most recent work by Wenger â this time with McDermott and Snyder as coauthors â marks a distinct shift towards a managerialist stance. The proposition that managers should foster informal horizontal groups across organizational boundaries is in fact a fundamental redefinition of the concept. However it does identify a plausible, if limited, knowledge management (KM) tool. This paper discusses different interpretations of the idea of 'co-ordinating' communities of practice as a management ideology of empowerment
Determination of pi-N scattering lengths from pionic hydrogen and pionic deuterium data
The pi-N s-wave scattering lengths have been inferred from a joint analysis
of the pionic hydrogen and the pionic deuterium x-ray data using a
non-relativistic approach in which the pi-N interaction is simulated by a
short-ranged potential. The pi-d scattering length has been calculated exactly
by solving the Faddeev equations and also by using a static approximation. It
has been shown that the same very accurate static formula for pi-d scattering
length can be derived (i) from a set of boundary conditions; (ii) by a
reduction of Faddeev equations; and (iii) through a summation of Feynman
diagrams. By imposing the requirement that the pi-d scattering length,
resulting from Faddeev-type calculation, be in agreement with pionic deuterium
data, we obtain bounds on the pi-N scattering lengths. The dominant source of
uncertainty on the deduced values of the pi-N scattering lengths are the
experimental errors in the pionic hydrogen data.Comment: RevTeX, 20 pages,4 PostScript figure
Independence of , Poincare Invariance and the Non-Conservation of Helicity
A relativistic constituent quark model is found to reproduce the recent data
regarding the ratio of proton form factors, . We show that
imposing Poincare invariance leads to substantial violation of the helicity
conservation rule, as well as an analytic result that the ratio
for intermediate values of .Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, to be submitted to Phys. Rev. C typos corrected,
references added, 1 new figure to show very high Q^2 behavio
A Survey of Volunteered Open Geo-Knowledge Bases in the Semantic Web
Over the past decade, rapid advances in web technologies, coupled with
innovative models of spatial data collection and consumption, have generated a
robust growth in geo-referenced information, resulting in spatial information
overload. Increasing 'geographic intelligence' in traditional text-based
information retrieval has become a prominent approach to respond to this issue
and to fulfill users' spatial information needs. Numerous efforts in the
Semantic Geospatial Web, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), and the
Linking Open Data initiative have converged in a constellation of open
knowledge bases, freely available online. In this article, we survey these open
knowledge bases, focusing on their geospatial dimension. Particular attention
is devoted to the crucial issue of the quality of geo-knowledge bases, as well
as of crowdsourced data. A new knowledge base, the OpenStreetMap Semantic
Network, is outlined as our contribution to this area. Research directions in
information integration and Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) are then
reviewed, with a critical discussion of their current limitations and future
prospects
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