Light charged particles emitted in proton-induced fission reactions on 208 Pb have been measured at different kinetic energies: 370A, 500A, and 650A MeV. The experiment was performed by the SOFIA ...Collaboration at the GSI facilities in Darmstadt (Germany). The inverse kinematics technique was combined with a setup especially designed to measure light charged particles in coincidence with fission fragments. This measurement allowed us, for the first time, to obtain correlations between the light charged particles emitted during the fission process and the charge distributions of the fission fragments. These correlations were compared with different model calculations to assess the ground-to-saddle dynamics. The results confirm that transient and dissipative effects are required for an accurate description of the fission observables.
Peter Heil and
Dexter R. F. Irvine
Department of Psychology, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia
Heil, Peter and Dexter R. F. Irvine. First-spike timing of auditory-nerve fibers and ...comparison with auditory cortex. J. Neurophysiol. 78: 2438-2454, 1997. The timing of the first spike of cat auditory-nerve (AN) fibers in response to onsets of characteristic frequency (CF) tone bursts was studied and compared with that of neurons in primary auditory cortex (AI), reported previously. Tones were shaped with cosine-squared rise functions, and rise time and sound pressure level were parametrically varied. Although measurement of first-spike latency of AN fibers was somewhat compromised by effects of spontaneous activity, latency was an invariant and inverse function of the maximum acceleration of peak pressure (i.e., a feature of the 2nd derivative of the stimulus envelope), as previously found in AI, rather than of tone level or rise time. Latency-acceleration functions of all AN fibers were of very similar shape, similar to that observed in AI. As in AI, latency-acceleration functions of different fibers were displaced along the latency axis, reflecting differences in minimum latency, and along the acceleration axis, reflecting differences in sensitivity to acceleration neuronal transient sensitivity (S). S estimates increased with spontaneous rate (SR), but values of high-SR fibers exceeded those in AI. This suggests that S estimates are biased by SR per se, and that unbiased true S values would be less tightly correlated with response properties covarying with SR, such as firing threshold. S estimates varied with CF in a fashion similar to the cat's audiogram and, for low- and medium-SR fibers, matched those for AI neurons. Minimum latency decreased with increasing SR and CF. As in AI, the standard deviation of first-spike timing (SD) in AN was also an inverse function of maximum acceleration of peak pressure. The characteristics of the increase of SD with latency in a given AN fiber/AI neuron and across AN fibers/AI neurons revealed that the precision of first-spike timing to some stimuli can actually be higher in AI than in AN. The data suggest that the basic characteristics of the latency-acceleration functions of transient onset responses seen in cortex are generated at inner hair cell-AN fiber synapses. Implications for signal processing in the auditory system and for first-spike generation and adaptation in AN are discussed.
Low energy fission of (234,235,236,238)u and Np-237,Np-381 radioactive beams, provided by the GSI/FRS facility, has been studied using the (RB)-B-3/SOFIA setup. The latter allows, on an ...event-by-event basis, to simultaneously identify, in terms of their mass and atomic numbers, the fissioning nucleus in coincidence with both fission fragments after prompt-neutron emission. This presentation reports on new results on elemental, isobaric and isotopic yields.
Wound Bed Preparation is a paradigm to optimize chronic wound treatment. This holistic approach examines the treatment of the cause and patient-centered concerns to determine if a wound is healable, ...a maintenance wound, or nonhealable (palliative). For healable wounds (with adequate blood supply and a cause that can be corrected), moisture balance is indicated along with active debridement and control of local infection or abnormal inflammation. In maintenance and nonhealable wounds, the emphasis changes to patient comfort, relieving pain, controlling odor, preventing infection by decreasing bacteria on the wound surface, conservative debridement of slough, and moisture management including exudate control. In this fourth revision, the authors have reformulated the model into 10 statements. This article will focus on the literature in the last 5 years or new interpretations of older literature. This process is designed to facilitate knowledge translation in the clinical setting and improve patient outcomes at a lower cost to the healthcare system.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Low energy fission of 234,235,236,238U and 237,238Np radioactive beams, provided by the GSI/FRS facility, has been studied using the R3B/SOFIA setup. The latter allows, on an event-by-event basis, to ...simultaneously identify, in terms of their mass and atomic numbers, the fissioning nucleus in coincidence with both fission fragments after prompt-neutron emission. This presentation reports on new results on elemental, isobaric and isotopic yields.
Nuclear fission is a complex dynamical process, whose description involves the coupling between intrinsic and collective degrees of freedom, as well as different quantum-mechanical phenomena. For ...this reason, to this day it still lacks a satisfactory and complete microscopic description. In addition to the importance of describing fission itself, studies of the r-process in astrophysics depend on fission observables to constrain the theoretical models that explain the isotopic abundances in the Universe. To improve on the existing data, fission reactions of heavy nuclei in inverse kinematics are produced in quasi-free (p,2p) scattering reactions, which induce fission through particle-hole excitations that can range from few to tens of MeV. In order to study the evolution of the fission yields with temperature, the excitation energy of the fissioning system must be reconstructed, which is possible by measuring the four-momenta of the two outgoing protons. Performing this kind of experiment requires a complex experimental setup, providing full isotopic identification of both fission fragments and an accurate measurement of the momenta of the two outgoing protons. This was realized recently at the GSI/FAIR facility and some of the results obtained for the charge distributions are presented in this work.
Towards a new measurement of the neutron electric dipole moment Altarev, I.; Ban, G.; Bison, G. ...
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment,
12/2009, Letnik:
611, Številka:
2
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The effort towards a new measurement of the neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) at the Paul Scherrer Institut's (PSI) new high intensity source of ultracold neutrons (UCN) is described. The ...experimental technique relies on Ramsey's method of separated oscillatory fields, using UCN in vacuum with the apparatus at ambient temperature. In the first phase, R&D towards the upgrade of the RAL/Sussex/ILL apparatus is being performed at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL). In the second phase the apparatus, moved from ILL to PSI, will allow an improvement in experimental sensitivity by a factor of 5. In the third phase, a new spectrometer should gain another order of magnitude in sensitivity. The improvements will be mainly due to (1) much higher UCN intensity, (2) improved magnetometry and magnetic field control, and (3) a double chamber configuration with opposite electric field directions.
Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) play a key role in the breakdown of extracellular matrix and in inflammatory processes. MMP1
is the most highly expressed interstitial collagenase degrading fibrillar ...collagens. Overexpression of MMP1 has been shown
in tumor tissues and has been suggested to be associated with tumor invasion and metastasis. Nine haplotype tagging and additional
two intronic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of MMP1 were genotyped in a case control sample, consisting of 635 lung cancer cases with onset of disease below 51 years of age
and 1,300 age- and sex-matched cancer-free controls. Two regions of linkage disequilibrium (LD) of MMP1 could be observed: a region of low LD comprising the 5′ region including the promoter and a region of high LD starting from
exon 1 to the end of the gene and including the 3′ flanking region. Several SNPs were identified to be individually significantly
associated with risk of early-onset lung cancer. The most significant effect was seen for rs1938901 ( P = 0.0089), rs193008 ( P = 0.0108), and rs996999 ( P = 0.0459). For rs996999, significance vanished after correction for multiple testing. For each of these SNPs, the major allele
was associated with an increase in risk with an odds ratio between 1.2 and 1.3 (95% confidence interval, 1.0-1.5). The haplotype
analysis supported these findings, especially for subgroups with high smoking intensity. In summary, we identified MMP1 to be associated with an increased risk for lung cancer, which was modified by smoking. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev
2008;17(5):1127–35)
Molecular defects in genes encoding enzymes involved in homocysteine metabolism may account for mild hyperhomocysteinaemia, an independent and graded risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). ...Although heterozygosity for cystathionine beta-synthase (CBS) deficiency has been excluded as a major genetic cause of mild hyperhomocysteinaemia in vascular disease, mutations in (non-)coding DNA sequences may lead to a mildly decreased CBS expression and, consequently, to elevated plasma homocysteine levels. We assessed the association between a 31 bp VNTR, that spans the exon 13-intron 13 boundary of the CBS gene, and fasting, post-methionine load and increase upon methionine load plasma homocysteine levels in 190 patients with arterial occlusive disease, and in 381 controls. The 31 bp VNTR consists of 16, 17, 18, 19 or 21 repeat units and shows a significant increase in plasma homocysteine concentrations with an increasing number of repeat elements, in particular after methionine loading. In 26 vascular disease patients the relationship between this 31 bp VNTR and CBS enzyme activity in cultured fibroblasts was studied. The CBS enzyme activity decreased with increasing number of repeat units of the 31 bp VNTR. RT-PCR experiments showed evidence of alternative splicing at the exon 13-intron 13 splice junction site. The 31 bp VNTR in the CBS gene is associated with post-methionine load hyperhomocysteinaemia that may predispose individuals to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.