Sensory acceptance of organic and conventional food by children in the age of 2 to 7 years

This study is initialized to find out which sensory factors might influence the acceptance of organic food by young children. 138 children aged from 2 to 7 years were recruited at the German Research Institute of Child Nutrition in Dortmund. All these children are participating in the DONALD-Study. Detailed nutrition records are available about breastfeeding and feeding of these children from birth to the age of one and further on. In a 2-year testing-period children tasted organic and conventional food in two-sided Paired Comparison Tests. In both years parents were asked a number of questions, mainly about the nutrition behaviour of their children. Sensory tests were analyzed and connected in different ways: with data of sensory profiles, nutrition records and different questionnaires

Elimination of IR/UV via Gravity in Noncommutative Field Theory

Models of particle physics with Noncommutative Geometry (NCG) generally suffer from a manifestly non-Wilsonian coupling of infrared and ultraviolet degrees of freedom known as the "IR/UV Problem" which would tend to compromise their phenomenological relevance. In this Letter we explicitly show how one may remedy this by coupling NCG to gravity. In the simplest scenario the Lagrangian gets multiplied by a nonconstant background metric; in $\phi-4$ theory the theorem that $\int d^4 x \phi \star \phi = \int d^4 x \phi^2$ is no longer true and the field propagator gets modified by a factor which depends on both NCG and the variation of the metric. A suitable limit of this factor as the propagating momentum gets asymptotically large then eradicates the IR/UV problem. With gravity and NCG coupled to each other, one might expect anti-symmetric components to arise in the metric. Cosmological implications of such are subsequently discussed.Comment: 6 pages; MPLA versio

Bovine Anaplasmosis: An Overview

Bovine Anaplasmosis is an infectious disease of adult cattle caused by the hemotrophic rickettsial parasite Anaplasma marginale. Cattle of all ages may become infected with Anaplasma marginale, but clinical disease increases in severity with age. Anaplasmosis is rarely observed in calveslessthan sixmonths of age. Cattle over three years of age are most susceptible and have the highest mortality rate (30-50%). Anaplasmosis is a cyclical disease with outbreaks occurring every five to seven years. The American National Cattlemen\u27s Association has considered anaplasmosis as a major disease problem with annual losses and disease control estimated to be $300 millio

Theory of Exciton Migration and Field-Induced Dissociation in Conjugated Polymers

The interplay of migration, recombination, and dissociation of excitons in disordered media is studied theoretically in the low temperature regime. An exact expression for the photoluminescence spectrum is obtained. The theory is applied to describe the electric field-induced photoluminescence-quenching experiments by Kersting et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 1440 (1994)] and Deussen et al. [Synth. Met. 73, 123 (1995)] on conjugated polymer systems. Good agreement with experiment is obtained using an on-chain dissociation mechanism, which implies a separation of the electron-hole pair along the polymer chain.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 2 Postscript figure

Causal Consistency of Structural Equation Models

Complex systems can be modelled at various levels of detail. Ideally, causal models of the same system should be consistent with one another in the sense that they agree in their predictions of the effects of interventions. We formalise this notion of consistency in the case of Structural Equation Models (SEMs) by introducing exact transformations between SEMs. This provides a general language to consider, for instance, the different levels of description in the following three scenarios: (a) models with large numbers of variables versus models in which the `irrelevant' or unobservable variables have been marginalised out; (b) micro-level models versus macro-level models in which the macro-variables are aggregate features of the micro-variables; (c) dynamical time series models versus models of their stationary behaviour. Our analysis stresses the importance of well specified interventions in the causal modelling process and sheds light on the interpretation of cyclic SEMs.Comment: equal contribution between Rubenstein and Weichwald; accepted manuscrip

Enhancement of the ferromagnetic order of graphite after sulphuric acid treatment

We have studied the changes in the ferromagnetic behavior of graphite powder and graphite flakes after treatment with diluted sulphuric acid. We show that this kind of acid treatment enhances substantially the ferromagnetic magnetization of virgin graphite micrometer size powder as well as in graphite flakes. The anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) amplitude at 300 K measured in a micrometer size thin graphite flake after acid treatment reaches values comparable to polycrystalline cobalt.Comment: 3.2 pages, 4 figure