12,849 research outputs found
Implicit cognition is impaired and dissociable in a head-injured group with executive deficits
Implicit or non-conscious cognition is traditionally assumed to be robust to pathology but Gomez-Beldarrain et al (1999, 2002) recently showed deficits on a single implicit task after head injury. Laboratory research suggests that implicit processes dissociate. This study therefore examined implicit cognition in 20 head-injured patients and age- and I.Q.-matched controls using a battery of four implicit cognition tasks: a Serial Reaction Time task (SRT), mere exposure effect task, automatic stereotype activation and hidden co-variation detection. Patients were assessed on an extensive neuropsychological battery, and MRI scanned. Inclusion criteria included impairment on at least one measure of executive function. The patient group was impaired relative to the control group on all the implicit cognition tasks except automatic stereotype activation. Effect size analyses using the control mean and standard deviation for reference showed further dissociations across patients and across implicit tasks. Patients impaired on implicit tasks had more cognitive deficits overall than those unimpaired, and a larger Dysexecutive Self/Other discrepancy (DEX) score suggesting greater behavioural problems. Performance on the SRT task correlated with a composite measure of executive function. Head-injury thus produced heterogeneous impairments in the implicit acquisition of new information. Implicit activation of existing knowledge structures appeared intact. Impairments in implicit cognition and executive function may interact to produce dysfunctional behaviour after head-injury. Future comparisons of implicit and explicit cognition should use several measures of each function, to ensure that they measure the latent variable of interest
Evidence of Double Phonon Excitations in ^{16}O + ^{208}Pb Reaction
The fusion cross-sections for ^{16}O + ^{208}Pb, measured to high precision,
enable the extraction of the distribution of fusion barriers. This shows a
structure markedly different from the single-barrier which might be expected
for fusion of two doubly-closed shell nuclei. The results of exact coupled
channel calculations performed to understand the observations are presented.
These calculations indicate that coupling to a double octupole phonon excited
state in ^{208}Pb is necessary to explain the experimental barrier
distributions.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, To be published in the Proceedings of the FUSION
97 Conference, South Durras, Australia, March 1997 (J. Phys. G
Two-Photon Beatings Using Biphotons Generated from a Two-Level System
We propose a two-photon beating experiment based upon biphotons generated
from a resonant pumping two-level system operating in a backward geometry. On
the one hand, the linear optical-response leads biphotons produced from two
sidebands in the Mollow triplet to propagate with tunable refractive indices,
while the central-component propagates with unity refractive index. The
relative phase difference due to different refractive indices is analogous to
the pathway-length difference between long-long and short-short in the original
Franson interferometer. By subtracting the linear Rayleigh scattering of the
pump, the visibility in the center part of the two-photon beating interference
can be ideally manipulated among [0, 100%] by varying the pump power, the
material length, and the atomic density, which indicates a Bell-type inequality
violation. On the other hand, the proposed experiment may be an interesting way
of probing the quantum nature of the detection process. The interference will
disappear when the separation of the Mollow peaks approaches the fundamental
timescales for photon absorption in the detector.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev. A (2008
Magnon-photon coupling in the noncollinear magnetic insulator Cu 2 OSeO 3
Anticrossing behavior between magnons in the noncollinear chiral magnet Cu2OSeO3 and a two-mode X-band microwave resonator was studied in the temperature range 5–100 K. In the field-induced ferrimagnetic phase, we observed a strong-coupling regime between magnons and two microwave cavity modes with a cooperativity reaching 3600. In the conical phase, cavity modes are dispersively coupled to a fundamental helimagnon mode, and we demonstrate that the magnetic phase diagram of Cu2OSeO3 can be reconstructed from the measurements of the cavity resonance frequency. In the helical phase, a hybridized state of a higher-order helimagnon mode and a cavity mode—a helimagnon polariton—was found. Our results reveal a class of magnetic systems where strong coupling of microwave photons to nontrivial spin textures can be observed
Age- and activity-related differences in the abundance of Myosin essential and regulatory light chains in human muscle
Traditional methods for phenotyping skeletal muscle (e.g., immunohistochemistry) are labor-intensive and ill-suited to multixplex analysis, i.e., assays must be performed in a series. Addressing these concerns represents a largely unmet research need but more comprehensive parallel analysis of myofibrillar proteins could advance knowledge regarding age- and activity-dependent changes in human muscle. We report a label-free, semi-automated and time efficient LC-MS proteomic workflow for phenotyping the myofibrillar proteome. Application of this workflow in old and young as well as trained and untrained human skeletal muscle yielded several novel observations that were subsequently verified by multiple reaction monitoring (MRM).We report novel data demonstrating that human ageing is associated with lesser myosin light chain 1 content and greater myosin light chain 3 content, consistent with an age-related reduction in type II muscle fibers. We also disambiguate conflicting data regarding myosin regulatory light chain, revealing that age-related changes in this protein more closely reflect physical activity status than ageing per se. This finding reinforces the need to control for physical activity levels when investigating the natural process of ageing. Taken together, our data confirm and extend knowledge regarding age- and activity-related phenotypes. In addition, the MRM transitions described here provide a methodological platform that can be fine-tuned to suite multiple research needs and thus advance myofibrillar phenotyping
Ghost Interference with Optical Parametric Amplifier
The 'Ghost' interference experiment is analyzed when the source of entangled
photons is a multimode Optical Parametric Amplifier(OPA) whose weak limit is
the two-photon Spontaneous Parametric Downconversion(SPDC) beam. The visibility
of the double-slit pattern is calculated, taking the finite coincidence time
window of the photon counting detectors into account. It is found that the
coincidence window and the bandwidth of light reaching the detectors play a
crucial role in the loss of visibility on coincidence detection, not only in
the 'Ghost' interference experiment but in all experiments involving
coincidence detection. The differences between the loss of visibility with
two-mode and multimode OPA sources is also discussed.
PACS: 42.65.Yj, 42.50.Dv, 42.65.L
Earth resources-regional transfer activity contracts review
A regional transfer activity contracts review held by the Earth Resources Office was summarized. Contracts in the earth resources field primarily directed toward applications of satellite data and technology in solution of state and regional problems were reviewed. A summary of the progress of each contract was given in order to share experiences of researchers across a seven state region. The region included Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. Research in several earth science disciplines included forestry, limnology, water resources, land use, geology, and mathematical modeling. The use of computers for establishment of information retrieval systems was also emphasized
Enhanced hippocampal long-term potentiation and spatial learning in aged 11ß-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 knock-out mice
Glucocorticoids are pivotal in the maintenance of memory and cognitive functions as well as other essential physiological processes including energy metabolism, stress responses, and cell proliferation. Normal aging in both rodents and humans is often characterized by elevated glucocorticoid levels that correlate with hippocampus-dependent memory impairments. 11ß-Hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11ß-HSD1) amplifies local intracellular ("intracrine") glucocorticoid action; in the brain it is highly expressed in the hippocampus. We investigated whether the impact of 11ß-HSD1 deficiency in knock-out mice (congenic on C57BL/6J strain) on cognitive function with aging reflects direct CNS or indirect effects of altered peripheral insulin-glucose metabolism. Spatial learning and memory was enhanced in 12 month "middle-aged" and 24 month "aged" 11ß-HSD1<sup>–/–</sup> mice compared with age-matched congenic controls. These effects were not caused by alterations in other cognitive (working memory in a spontaneous alternation task) or affective domains (anxiety-related behaviors), to changes in plasma corticosterone or glucose levels, or to altered age-related pathologies in 11ß-HSD1<sup>–/–</sup> mice. Young 11ß-HSD1<sup>–/–</sup> mice showed significantly increased newborn cell proliferation in the dentate gyrus, but this was not maintained into aging. Long-term potentiation was significantly enhanced in subfield CA1 of hippocampal slices from aged 11ß-HSD1<sup>–/–</sup> mice. These data suggest that 11ß-HSD1 deficiency enhances synaptic potentiation in the aged hippocampus and this may underlie the better maintenance of learning and memory with aging, which occurs in the absence of increased neurogenesis
A silicon-based single-electron interferometer coupled to a fermionic sea
We study Landau-Zener-Stueckelberg-Majorana (LZSM) interferometry under the
influence of projective readout using a charge qubit tunnel-coupled to a
fermionic sea. This allows us to characterise the coherent charge qubit
dynamics in the strong-driving regime. The device is realised within a silicon
complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistor. We first read out
the charge state of the system in a continuous non-demolition manner by
measuring the dispersive response of a high-frequency electrical resonator
coupled to the quantum system via the gate. By performing multiple fast
passages around the qubit avoided crossing, we observe a multi-passage LZSM
interferometry pattern. At larger driving amplitudes, a projective measurement
to an even-parity charge state is realised, showing a strong enhancement of the
dispersive readout signal. At even larger driving amplitudes, two projective
measurements are realised within the coherent evolution resulting in the
disappearance of the interference pattern. Our results demonstrate a way to
increase the state readout signal of coherent quantum systems and replicate
single-electron analogues of optical interferometry within a CMOS transistor
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