4,549 research outputs found
Study of the Fusion-Fission Process in the Reaction
Fusion-fission and fully energy-damped binary processes of the
Cl+Mg reaction were investigated using particle-particle
coincidence techniques at a Cl bombarding energy of E
8 MeV/nucleon. Inclusive data were also taken in order to determine the partial
wave distribution of the fusion process. The fragment-fragment correlation data
show that the majority of events arises from a binary-decay process with a
relatively large multiplicity of secondary light-charged particles emitted by
the two primary excited fragments in the exit channel. No evidence is observed
for ternary-breakup processes, as expected from the systematics recently
established for incident energies below 15 MeV/nucleon and for a large number
of reactions. The binary-process results are compared with predictions of
statistical-model calculations. The calculations were performed using the
Extended Hauser-Feshbach method, based on the available phase space at the
scission point of the compound nucleus. This new method uses
temperature-dependent level densities and its predictions are in good agreement
with the presented experimental data, thus consistent with the fusion-fission
origin of the binary fully-damped yields.Comment: 30 pages standard REVTeX file, 10 eps Figures; to be published at the
European Physical Journal A - Hadrons and Nucle
Statistical Binary Decay of Cl + Mg at 8 MeV/nucleon
The properties of the two-body channels in the Cl + Mg reaction
at a bombarding energy of 275 MeV have been investigated by using
fragment-fragment coincident techniques. The exclusive data show that the
majority of events arises from a binary-decay process. The rather large number
of secondary light charged-particles emitted from the two excited exit
fragments are cnsistent with the expectations of the Extended Hauser-Feshbach
Method. No evidence for the occurence of ternary break-up events is observed.Comment: 8 pages, 3 Figures available upon request To be published at Z. Phys.
Functional Analysis of the Chemokine Receptor CCR3 on Airway Epithelial Cells
The function of chemokine receptors on structural cells is only partially known. We previously reported the expression of a functional CCR3 receptor on airway epithelial cells (EC). We speculated that CCR3 might drive wound repair and expression of inflammatory genes in epithelium. The human airway EC lines BEAS-2B, 16-HBE, and primary bronchial EC were used to test the effect of in vitro challenge with the CCR3 ligands CCL11/eotaxin, CCL24/eotaxin-2, or CCL26/eotaxin-3 on 1) wound repair, using an established wound model; 2) cell proliferation and chemotaxis, using specific fluorometric assays; and 3) gene expression, using pathway-specific arrays for inflammatory and profibrotic cytokines, chemokines, and chemokine receptor genes. Agonist specificity was tested by cell pretreatment with an AstraZeneca CCR3 antagonist (10(-8) - 10(-6) M). CCL24 challenge significantly accelerated epithelial wound closure, with similar effects exerted by CCL11 and CCL26. This effect was time dependent, submaximal at 1 nM, and comparable in potency to epidermal growth factor. CCL24 induced a concentration-dependent increase in EC proliferation and chemotaxis, with significant effects observed at 10 nM. The AstraZeneca compound selectively inhibited these CCL24-mediated responses. CCL11 induced the up-regulation of several profibrogenic molecules such as fibroblast growth factor 1 and 5 and of several CC and CXC chemokines. Epithelial immunostaining for CCR3 was stronger in bronchial biopsies of asthmatics displaying marked inflammatory changes than in nondiseased samples. Epithelial CCR3 participates in key functions for wound repair, amplifies the expression of profibrogenic and chemokine transcripts, and appears up-regulated in inflamed asthmatic airways
Fusion and Binary-Decay Mechanisms in the Cl+Mg System at E/A 8 MeV/Nucleon
Compound-nucleus fusion and binary-reaction mechanisms have been investigated
for the Cl+Mg system at an incident beam energy of E= 282
MeV. Charge distributions, inclusive energy spectra, and angular distributions
have been obtained for the evaporation residues and the binary fragments.
Angle-integrated cross sections have been determined for evaporation residues
from both the complete and incomplete fusion mechanisms. Energy spectra for
binary fragment channels near to the entrance-channel mass partition are
characterized by an inelastic contribution that is in addition to a fully
energy damped component. The fully damped component which is observed in all
the binary mass channels can be associated with decay times that are comparable
to, or longer than the rotation period. The observed mass-dependent cross
sections for the fully damped component are well reproduced by the fission
transition-state model, suggesting a fusion followed by fission origin. The
present data cannot, however, rule out the possibility that a long-lived
orbiting mechanism accounts for part or all of this yield.Comment: 41 pages standard REVTeX file, 14 Figures available upon request -
Vanishing spin alignment : experimental indication of triaxial nuclear molecule
Fragment-fragment- coincidences have been measured for at an energy corresponding to the population of a conjectured
resonance in Ni. Fragment angular distributions as well as -ray
angular correlations indicate that the spin orientations of the outgoing
fragments are perpendicular to the orbital angular momentum. This differs from
the and the resonances, and
suggests two oblate nuclei interacting in an equator-to-equator
molecular configuration.Comment: 14 pages standard REVTeX file, 3 ps Figures -- Accepted for
publication in Physical Review C (Rapid Communication
Fission and cluster decay of Sr nucleus in the ground-state and formed in heavy-ion reactions
Calculations for fission and cluster decay of are presented for
this nucleus to be in its ground-state or formed as an excited compound system
in heavy-ion reactions. The predicted mass distribution, for the dynamical
collective mass transfer process assumed for fission of , is clearly
asymmetric, favouring -nuclei. Cluster decay is studied within a
preformed cluster model, both for ground-state to ground-state decays and from
excited compound system to the ground-state(s) or excited states(s) of the
fragments.Comment: 14 pages LaTeX, 5 Figures available upon request Submitted to Phys.
Rev.
Maternal psychological distress in primary care and association with child behavioural outcomes at age three
Observational studies indicate children whose mothers have poor mental health are at increased risk of socio-emotional behavioural difficulties, but it is unknown whether these outcomes vary by the mothers’ mental health recognition and treatment status. To examine this question, we analysed linked longitudinal primary care and research data from 1078 women enrolled in the Born in Bradford cohort. A latent class analysis of treatment status and self-reported distress broadly categorised women as (a) not having a common mental disorder (CMD) that persisted through pregnancy and the first 2 years after delivery (N = 756, 70.1 %), (b) treated for CMD (N = 67, 6.2 %), or (c) untreated (N = 255, 23.7 %). Compared to children of mothers without CMD, 3-year-old children with mothers classified as having untreated CMD had higher standardised factor scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (d = 0.32), as did children with mothers classified as having treated CMD (d = 0.27). Results were only slightly attenuated in adjusted analyses. Children of mothers with CMD may be at risk for socio-emotional and behavioural difficulties. The development of effective treatments for CMD needs to be balanced by greater attempts to identify and treat women. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00787-015-0777-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users
Down regulation of the high-affinity IgE receptor associated with successful treatment of chronic idiopathic urticaria with omalizumab
Chronic idiopathic urticaria is a condition that is often controllable with antihistamine therapy. However, some patients have disease burden that is difficult to manage, non-responsive to antihistamines and often requires immunosuppressive medications such as corticosteroids or cyclosporine. We present here a study that demonstrates the effectiveness of omalizumab in treating this condition and the temporal relationship between improvement and down regulation of the high affinity IgE receptor (FcεRI). For this, blood samples were obtained from a symptomatic patient before each treatment and processed for flow cytometric analysis of FcεRI levels on the surface of blood basophils. Down regulation of FcεRI was observed in association with significant clinical improvement and discontinuation of immunosuppressive medications
GiViP: A Visual Profiler for Distributed Graph Processing Systems
Analyzing large-scale graphs provides valuable insights in different
application scenarios. While many graph processing systems working on top of
distributed infrastructures have been proposed to deal with big graphs, the
tasks of profiling and debugging their massive computations remain time
consuming and error-prone. This paper presents GiViP, a visual profiler for
distributed graph processing systems based on a Pregel-like computation model.
GiViP captures the huge amount of messages exchanged throughout a computation
and provides an interactive user interface for the visual analysis of the
collected data. We show how to take advantage of GiViP to detect anomalies
related to the computation and to the infrastructure, such as slow computing
units and anomalous message patterns.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 25th International Symposium on
Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017
- …