128 research outputs found
Effects of zinc supplementation on cognitive function in healthy middle-aged and older adults: the ZENITH study
A randomised double-blind placebo-controlled design was employed to investigate the effects of Zn supplementation on cognitive function in 387 healthy adults aged 55â87 years. Several measures of visual memory, working memory, attention and reaction time were obtained using the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Test Battery at baseline and then after 3 and 6 months of 0 (placebo), 15 or 30 mg Zn/d. Younger adults (70 years), and performance improved with practice on some measures. For two out of eight dependent variables, there were significant interactions indicating a beneficial effect (at 3 months only) of both 15 and 30 mg/d on one measure of spatial working memory and a detrimental effect of 15 mg/d on one measure of attention. Further work is required to establish whether these findings generalise to older adults in poorer mental and physical health and with less adequate Zn intake and status than the present sample
Aquatic biosurvey of the Lovell River on UNH land
We assessed the physical, chemical and biological conditions at two sites along the Lovell River on University of New Hampshire (UNH) -owned conservation land. The discharge was 4.4 m3 s-1 at Site 1 and 5.7 m3 s -1 downstream at Site 2. Canopy coverage ranged from 8-25%. Canopy was dominated by Eastern Hemlock (79-84%). Much of the stream was strewn with large boulders and the substrate consisted of rocks of highly variable sizes ( 3-549 cm dia.). Specific conductivity (22.1-23.3 ”S), pH (6.4) and temperature (7.9-8.3 °C) varied little between sites. Macro-invertebrate bio-indices indicated either excellent water quality with no apparent organic pollution (3.0/10) or good water quality with possible slight organic pollution (4.4/10)
Impact of modulation on CMB B-mode polarization experiments
We investigate the impact of both slow and fast polarization modulation
strategies on the science return of upcoming ground-based experiments aimed at
measuring the B-mode polarization of the CMB. Using simulations of the Clover
experiment, we compare the ability of modulated and un-modulated observations
to recover the signature of gravitational waves in the polarized CMB sky in the
presence of a number of anticipated systematic effects. The general
expectations that fast modulation is helpful in mitigating low-frequency
detector noise, and that the additional redundancy in the projection of the
instrument's polarization sensitivity directions onto the sky when modulating
reduces the impact of instrumental polarization, are borne out by our
simulations. Neither low-frequency polarized atmospheric fluctuations nor
systematic errors in the polarization sensitivity directions are mitigated by
modulation. Additionally, we find no significant reduction in the effect of
pointing errors by modulation. For a Clover-like experiment, pointing jitter
should be negligible but any systematic mis-calibration of the polarization
coordinate reference system results in significant E-B mixing on all angular
scales and will require careful control. We also stress the importance of
combining data from multiple detectors in order to remove the effects of
common-mode systematics (such as 1/f atmospheric noise) on the measured
polarization signal. Finally we compare the performance of our simulated
experiment with the predicted performance from a Fisher analysis. We find good
agreement between the Fisher predictions and the simulations except for the
very largest scales where the power spectrum estimator we have used introduces
additional variance to the B-mode signal recovered from our simulations.Comment: Replaced with version accepted by MNRAS. Analysis of half-wave plate
systematic (differential transmittance) adde
Dynamical Dark Energy or Simply Cosmic Curvature?
We show that the assumption of a flat universe induces critically large
errors in reconstructing the dark energy equation of state at z>~0.9 even if
the true cosmic curvature is very small, O(1%) or less. The spuriously
reconstructed w(z) shows a range of unusual behaviour, including crossing of
the phantom divide and mimicking of standard tracking quintessence models. For
1% curvature and LCDM, the error in w grows rapidly above z~0.9 reaching
(50%,100%) by redshifts of (2.5,2.9) respectively, due to the long cosmological
lever arm. Interestingly, the w(z) reconstructed from distance data and Hubble
rate measurements have opposite trends due to the asymmetric influence of the
curved geodesics. These results show that including curvature as a free
parameter is imperative in any future analyses attempting to pin down the
dynamics of dark energy, especially at moderate or high redshifts.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. To appear in JCA
LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in
the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of
science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will
have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is
driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking
an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and
mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at
Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m
effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel
camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second
exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given
night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000
square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5
point-source depth in a single visit in will be (AB). The
project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations
by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg with
, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, ,
covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time
will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a
18,000 deg region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the
anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to . The
remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a
Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products,
including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion
objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures
available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie
Preventive evidence into practice (PEP) study: implementation of guidelines to prevent primary vascular disease in general practice protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial
There are significant gaps in the implementation and uptake of evidence-based guideline recommendations for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes in Australian general practice. This study protocol describes the methodology for a cluster randomised trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a model that aims to improve the implementation of these guidelines in Australian general practice developed by a collaboration between researchers, non-government organisations, and the profession.This study is funded by an Australian National Health and Medical Research
Council (NHMRC) Partnership grant (ID 568978) together with the Australian
National Heart Foundation, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners,
and the BUPA Foundation. MH is supported by a NHMRC Senior Principle
Research Fellowship
- âŠ