911 research outputs found
Subplate in a rat model of preterm hypoxia-ischemia.
OBJECTIVE: Hypoxia-ischemia (HI) in preterm infants primarily leads to injuries in the cerebral white matter. However, there is growing evidence that perinatal injury in preterms can also involve other zones including the cortical gray matter. In a neonatal rat model of HI, selective vulnerability of subplate has been suggested using BrdU birth-dating methods. In this study, we aimed to investigate the neuropathological changes of the subplate and deep layers of the cortex following cerebral HI in neonatal rats with specific cell markers.
METHODS: P2 rats underwent permanent occlusion of the right common carotid artery followed by a period of hypoxia. P8 rats were analyzed using immunohistochemistry; subplate and deep layers cells were quantified and compared with sham-operated case.
RESULTS: A large variability in the extent of the cerebral injury was apparent. For the three analyzed subplate populations (Nurr1+, Cplx3+, and Ctgf+ cells), no significant cell reduction was observed in mild and moderate cases. Only in severe cases, subplate cells were strongly affected, but these injuries were always accompanied by the cell reductions in layers VI and V.
INTERPRETATION: We could therefore not confirm a specific vulnerability of subplate cells compared to other deep layers or the white matter in our model
Dusty Cometary Globules in W5
We report the discovery of four dusty cometary tails around low mass stars in
two young clusters belonging to the W5 star forming region. Fits to the
observed emission profiles from 24 micron observations with the Spitzer Space
Telescope give tail lifetimes < 30 Myr, but more likely < 5 Myr. This result
suggests that the cometary phase is a short lived phenomenon, occurring after
photoevaporation by a nearby O star has removed gas from the outer disk of a
young low mass star (see also Balog et al. 2006; Balog et al. 2008).Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication to ApJ Letter
Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles
A simple model with a novel type of dynamics is introduced in order to
investigate the emergence of self-ordered motion in systems of particles with
biologically motivated interaction. In our model particles are driven with a
constant absolute velocity and at each time step assume the average direction
of motion of the particles in their neighborhood with some random perturbation
() added. We present numerical evidence that this model results in a
kinetic phase transition from no transport (zero average velocity, ) to finite net transport through spontaneous symmetry breaking of the
rotational symmetry. The transition is continuous since is
found to scale as with
Spin-Peierls Dimerization of a s=1/2 Heisenberg Antiferromagnet on a Square Lattice
Dimerization of a spin-half Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a square lattice is
investigated for several possible dimerized configurations, some of which are
shown to have lower ground state energies than the others. In particular, the
lattice deformations resulting in alternate stronger and weaker couplings along
both the principal axes of a square lattice are shown to result in a larger
gain in magnetic energy. In addition, a `columnar' configuration is shown to
have a lower ground state energy and a faster increase in the energy gap
parameter than a `staggered' configuration. The inclusion of unexpanded
exchange coupling leads to a power law behaviour for the magnetic energy gain
and energy gap, which is qualitatively different from that reported earlier.
Instead of increasing as , the two quantities depend on
as This is true both in the near critical
regime as well as in the far regime . It is suggested that the unexpanded exchange coupling is as much a source
of the logarithmic dependence as a correction due to the contribution of
umklapp processes. Staggered magnetization is shown to follow the same -dependence in all the configurations in the small -regime, while for
, it follows the power law .Comment: 12 pages, 7 Postscript figures, RevTex forma
Rhenium oxyhalides: a showcase for anisotropic-triangular-lattice quantum antiferromagnets
The spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on an anisotropic triangular lattice
(ATL) is an archetypal spin system hosting exotic quantum magnetism and
dimensional crossover. However, the progress in experimental research on this
field has been limited due to the scarcity of ideal model materials. Here, we
show that rhenium oxyhalides ReO, where spin-1/2 Re
ions form a layered structure of ATLs, allow for flexible chemical substitution
in both cation ( = Ca, Sr, Ba, Pb) and anion ( = Cl, Br)
sites, leading to seven synthesizable compounds. By combining magnetic
susceptibility and high-field magnetization measurements with theoretical
calculations using the orthogonalized finite-temperature Lanczos method, we
find that the anisotropy ranges from 0.25 to 0.45 depending on the
chemical composition. Our findings demonstrate that ReO is an
excellent platform for realizing diverse effective spin Hamiltonians that
differ in the strength of the anisotropy as well as the relevance of
perturbation terms such as the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and interlayer
exchange coupling.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, SM: 4 pages, 2 figure
The role of mothers-in-law in antenatal care decision-making in Nepal: a qualitative study
Background
Antenatal care (ANC) has been recognised as a way to improve health outcomes for pregnant women and their babies. However, only 29% of pregnant women receive the recommended four antenatal visits in Nepal but reasons for such low utilisation are poorly understood. As in many
countries of South Asia, mothers-in-law play a crucial role in the decisions around accessing health care facilities and providers. This paper aims to explore the mother-in-law’s role in (a) her daughter-in-law’s ANC uptake; and (b) the decision-making process about using ANC services in Nepal.
Methods
In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 purposively selected antenatal or postnatal mothers (half users, half non-users of ANC), 10 husbands and 10 mothers-in-law in two different (urban and rural) communities.
Results
Our findings suggest that mothers-in-law sometime have a positive influence, for example when encouraging women to seek ANC, but more often it is negative. Like many rural women of their generation, all mothers-in-law in this study were illiterate and most had not used ANC themselves. The main factors leading mothers-in-law not to support/ encourage ANC check ups were expectations regarding pregnant women fulfilling their household duties, perceptions that ANC was not beneficial based largely on their own past experiences, the scarcity of resources
under their control and power relations between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. Individual knowledge and social class of the mothers-in-law of users and non-users differed significantly, which is likely to have had an effect on their perceptions of the benefits of ANC.
Conclusion
Mothers-in-law have a strong influence on the uptake of ANC in Nepal. Understanding their role is important if we are to design and target effective community-based health promotion interventions. Health promotion and educational interventions to improve the use of ANC should target women, husbands and family members, particularly mothers-in-law where they control access to family resources
Operator Ordering Problem of the Nonrelativistic Chern-Simons Theory
The operator ordering problem due to the quantization or regularization
ambiguity in the Chern-Simons theory exists. However, we show that this can be
avoided if we require Galilei covariance of the nonrelativistic Abelian
Chern-Simons theory even at the quantum level for the extended sources. The
covariance can be recovered only by choosing some particular operator orderings
for the generators of the Galilei group depending on the quantization
ambiguities of the commutation relation. We show that the
desired ordering for the unusual prescription is not the same as the well-known
normal ordering but still satisfies all the necessary conditions. Furthermore,
we show that the equations of motion can be expressed in a similar form
regardless of the regularization ambiguity. This suggests that the different
regularization prescriptions do not change the physics. On the other hand, for
the case of point sources the regularization prescription is uniquely
determined, and only the orderings, which are equivalent to the usual one, are
allowed.Comment: 18 page
Universality in Bacterial Colonies
The emergent spatial patterns generated by growing bacterial colonies have
been the focus of intense study in physics during the last twenty years. Both
experimental and theoretical investigations have made possible a clear
qualitative picture of the different structures that such colonies can exhibit,
depending on the medium on which they are growing. However, there are
relatively few quantitative descriptions of these patterns. In this paper, we
use a mechanistically detailed simulation framework to measure the scaling
exponents associated with the advancing fronts of bacterial colonies on hard
agar substrata, aiming to discern the universality class to which the system
belongs. We show that the universal behavior exhibited by the colonies can be
much richer than previously reported, and we propose the possibility of up to
four different sub-phases within the medium-to-high nutrient concentration
regime. We hypothesize that the quenched disorder that characterizes one of
these sub-phases is an emergent property of the growth and division of bacteria
competing for limited space and nutrients.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure
A Neutral Polyampholyte in an ionic solution
The behavior of a neutral polyampholyte () chain with monomers, in an
ionic solution, is analyzed in the framework of the full Debye-Hckel-Bjerrum-Flory theory. A chain, that in addition to the
neutral monomers, also contains an equal number of positively and negatively
charged monomers, is dissolved in an ionic solution. For \underline{high}
concentrations of salt and at high temperatures, the exists in an extended
state. As the temperature is decreased, the electrostatic energy becomes more
relevant and at a the system collapses into a dilute globular
state, or microelectrolyte. This state contains a concentration of salt higher
than the surrounding medium. As the temperature is decreased even further,
association between the monomers of the polymer and the ions of the salt
becomes relevant and there is a crossover from this globular state to a low
temperature extended state. For \underline{low} densities of salt, the system
is collapsed for almost all temperatures and exhibits a first-order phase
transition to an extended state at an unphysical low temperature.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex with epsf, 9 Postscript figures. Submitted to PR
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