Your search

The extreme energy densities generated by ultra-relativistic collisions between heavy atomic nuclei produce a state of matter that behaves surprisingly like a fluid, with exceptionally high temperature and low viscosity. Non-central collisions have angular momenta of the order of 1,000h, and the resulting fluid may have a strong vortical structure that must be understood to describe the fluid properly. The vortical structure is also of particular interest because the restoration of fundamental symmetries of quantum chromodynamics is expected to produce novel physical effects in the presence of strong vorticity. However, no experimental indications of fluid vorticity in heavy ion collisions have yet been found. Since vorticity represents a local rotational structure of the fluid, spin-orbit coupling can lead to preferential orientation of particle spins along the direction of rotation. Here we present measurements of an alignment between the global angular momentum of a non-central collision and the spin of emitted particles (in this case the collision occurs between gold nuclei and produces Λ baryons), revealing that the fluid produced in heavy ion collisions is the most vortical system so far observed. (At high energies, this fluid is a quark-gluon plasma.) We find that Λ and hyperons show a positive polarization of the order of a few per cent, consistent with some hydrodynamic predictions. (A hyperon is a particle composed of three quarks, at least one of which is a strange quark; the remainder are up and down quarks, found in protons and neutrons.) A previous measurement that reported a null result, that is, zero polarization, at higher collision energies is seen to be consistent with the trend of our observations, though with larger statistical uncertainties. These data provide experimental access to the vortical structure of the nearly ideal liquid created in a heavy ion collision and should prove valuable in the development of hydrodynamic models that quantitatively connect observations to the theory of the strong force. © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.

PURPOSE: To examine the effect of a long-term structured physical activity (PA) intervention on accelerometer-derived metrics of activity pattern changes in mobility-impaired older adults., METHODS: Participants were randomized to either a PA or health education (HE) program. The PA intervention included a walking regimen with strength, flexibility, and balance training. The HE program featured health-related discussions and a brief upper body stretching routine. Participants (n = 1341) wore a hip-worn accelerometer for >=10 h.d for >=3 d at baseline and again at 6, 12, and 24 months postrandomization. Total PA (TPA)-defined as movements registering 100+ counts per minute-was segmented into the following intensities: low-light PA (LLPA; 100-759 counts per minute), high light PA (HLPA; 760-1040 counts per minute), low moderate PA (LMPA; 1041-2019 counts per minute), and high moderate and greater PA (HMPA; 2020+ counts per minute). Patterns of activity were characterized as bouts (defined as the consecutive minutes within an intensity)., RESULTS: Across groups, TPA decreased an average of 74 min.wk annually. The PA intervention attenuated this effect (PA = -68 vs HE: -112 min.wk, P = 0.002). This attenuation shifted TPA composition by increasing time in LLPA (10+ bouts increased 6 min.wk), HLPA (1+, 2+, 5+, and 10+ bouts increased 6, 3, 2, and 1 min.wk, respectively), LMPA (1+, 2+, 5+, and 10+ bouts increased: 19, 17,16, and 8 min.wk, respectively), and HMPA (1+, 2+, 5+, and 10+ bouts increased 23, 21, 17, and 14 min.wk, respectively)., CONCLUSIONS: The PA intervention increased PA by shifting the composition of activity toward higher-intensity activity in longer-duration bouts. However, a long-term structured PA intervention did not completely eliminate overall declines in total daily activity experienced by mobility-impaired older adults.

Adolescents may be more sensitive to stress-induced alcohol drinking than adults, which would explain the higher prevalence of alcohol abuse and dependence in late adolescence than in adulthood. The present study analyzed the impact of restraint stress on the initiation of alcohol intake across 2 weeks of intermittent, two-bottle choice intake in male and female adolescent rats and adult female rats. Restraint stress significantly increased alcohol intake and preference in female adolescent rats but decreased alcohol intake and preference in male adolescent and female adult rats. The effects of restraint stress on alcohol intake were mitigated in adolescent females following administration of the kappa opioid receptor antagonist norbinaltorphimine. Adolescent but not adult female rats that were subjected to restraint stress spent more time on the open arms of the elevated plus maze. Female adolescents exposed to stress also exhibited greater risk-taking behaviors in a concentric square field test compared with non-stressed controls. These results indicate age- and sex-related differences in the sensitivity to alcohol-stress interactions that may facilitate the initiation of alcohol use in female adolescents. The facilitatory effect of stress on alcohol intake was related to greater exploratory and risk-taking behaviors in young females after stress exposure. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper analyzes spectrum management practices in the Philippines. The regulatory body allocates available spectrum via an administrative approach which lacks transparency and due process. The paper recommends that the regulatory body adopts the auction method in allocating spectrums which is more transparent, fair, and cost-effective if a suitable design is adopted.

Charming, quirky, and funny, this oh-so-relatable novel from the bestselling author of Out of Sorts shines a light on the always-complicated je ne sais quoi of every family’s relationship.As Martine and Jacques Le Guennec prepare for their annual family Christmas dinner, Martine reminds her husband to be on his best behavior. Their son Nicolas is bringing his girlfriend, Jeanne, to their home for the first time, and she doesn’t want Jacques to scare this one off.Jacques has always ruled his roost with patriarchal bravado, and he can’t help but verbally antagonize everyone—especially the wives of his sons. Jeanne, a strong-willed woman who grew up without a father, clashes with the curmudgeon, and she worries that her boyfriend might be too much like his father.It’s all starting to make Martine question everything about her relationship with her husband. And, though she makes that perfectly clear to him, the old dog is not anxious to learn new tricks.When Jeanne saves Jacques’s life, he begins to realize it may be time to change his ways if he wants to hold on to his wife and keep the family close. But is it too late?

AIM This study explored faculty responses to a survey about using technology to teach undergraduate nursing students. BACKGROUND Little is known regarding faculty confidence, technology use, or supports for integrating technology into nursing education. METHOD A descriptive correlational design was utilized to explore the relationship between technology use and technological self-efficacy in faculty (N = 272) who teach at Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education--accredited nursing programs. Instruments used were a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Roney Technology Use Scale, and the Technology Self-Efficacy Scale. RESULTS Participants who taught didactic content had moderate technology use as compared to those teaching didactic and clinical/laboratory who reported high levels of technology use. A weak relationship between age and technological self-efficacy (ρ =.127, p < .05) was also found. CONLUSION This research was an initial step in understanding levels of technology use and responses to this challenge by undergraduate nursing faculty.

BACKGROUND: In the 21st century, information technology (IT) literacy is crucial for all students, and may better prepare students with disabilities for transition to postsecondary employment or education. OBJECTIVE: In this study, the potential of IT literacy embedded into an online transition curriculum is explored in the context of secondary special education. The curriculum aligns with Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts that are relevant to reading comprehension, writing, as well as searching for and analyzing sources of information online. METHODS: A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was utilized in six high schools. RESULTS: Findings show that intervention group students improved in IT literacy; whereas, comparison group students did not make similar gains. CONCLUSION: Implications for embedding transition services into specific courses and curricula for secondary students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) are discussed. © 2017-IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.

Despite increased efforts by more organizations to be seen as “gay-friendly,” workplaces remain challenging sites for LGBTQ employees to navigate. We examine the ways in which LGBTQ employees experience dignity threats in the workplace and the protection strategies they use to deflect those threats. Interviews with 36 LGBTQ working adults revealed that their dignity is threatened by a range of identity-sensitive inequalities that undermine their safety and security when they claim authentic gendered/sexual identities. Specific safety and security threats to dignity include social harm, autonomy violations, career harm, and physical harm. To (re)claim their dignity, they engage in four primary dignity protection strategies: avoiding harm by seeking safe spaces, deflecting harm with sexual identity management, offsetting identity devaluations by emphasizing instrumental value, and creating safe spaces for authenticity and dignity. Copyright (C) 2017 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

As the number of children affected by obesity increases in the United States, it is necessary to intervene with preventive and intervention techniques that will enact change. Because children spend a significant amount of their time in school, it is of particular interest to target strategies during the school day. Given the recommendations for the total duration and intensity of physical activity children should participate in, recess period is a means of acquiring a portion of this daily recommendation. Contingent reinforcement is a technique that is consistently used in schools to promote behavior change. One of these techniques, group contingencies, has repeatedly been shown to increase desired behavior and decrease inappropriate behavior in schools. In the present study, a multiple baseline design was utilized to investigate the use of interdependent group contingencies in physical activity performance during recess, as measured by pedometers, with one class from each of the third, fourth, and fifth grades at an elementary school. Some of the variability existed in gender- and body mass index-specific (BMI) subgroups, in regard to the effectiveness of the intervention and continued maintenance of increased physical activity levels, following the removal of the intervention. However, the overall results support the use of an interdependent group contingency intervention to increase the amount of physical activity students engaged in during recess.

We study the relationship between the reduction number of a primary ideal of a local ring relative to one of its minimal reductions and the multiplicity of the corresponding Sally module. This paper is focused on three goals: (i) to develop a change of rings technique for the Sally module of an ideal to allow extension of results from Cohen–Macaulay rings to more general rings; (ii) to use the fiber of the Sally modules of almost complete intersection ideals to connect its structure to the Cohen–Macaulayness of the special fiber ring; (iii) to extend some of the results of (i) to two-dimensional Buchsbaum rings. Along the way, we provide an explicit realization of the S2S_{2} -fication of arbitrary Buchsbaum rings.

When a speaker talks, the consequences of this can both be heard (audio) and seen (visual). A novel visual phonemic restoration task was used to assess behavioral discrimination and neural signatures (event-related potentials, or ERP) of audiovisual processing in typically developing children with a range of social and communicative skills assessed using the social responsiveness scale, a measure of traits associated with autism. An auditory oddball design presented two types of stimuli to the listener, a clear exemplar of an auditory consonant-vowel syllable /ba/ (the more frequently occurring standard stimulus), and a syllable in which the auditory cues for the consonant were substantially weakened, creating a stimulus which is more like /a/ (the infrequently presented deviant stimulus). All speech tokens were paired with a face producing /ba/ or a face with a pixelated mouth containing motion but no visual speech. In this paradigm, the visual /ba/ should cause the auditory /a/ to be perceived as /ba/, creating an attenuated oddball response; in contrast, a pixelated video (without articulatory information) should not have this effect. Behaviorally, participants showed visual phonemic restoration (reduced accuracy in detecting deviant /a/) in the presence of a speaking face. In addition, ERPs were observed in both an early time window (N100) and a later time window (P300) that were sensitive to speech context (/ba/ or /a/) and modulated by face context (speaking face with visible articulation or with pixelated mouth). Specifically, the oddball responses for the N100 and P300 were attenuated in the presence of a face producing /ba/ relative to a pixelated face, representing a possible neural correlate of the phonemic restoration effect. Notably, those individuals with more traits associated with autism (yet still in the non-clinical range) had smaller P300 responses overall, regardless of face context, suggesting generally reduced phonemic discrimination.

New state records are provided for two recently de­scribed species of North American Acentrella Bengtsson, 1912. Acentrella nadineae McCafferty, Waltz & Webb, 2009 is newly reported from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, and A. rallatoma Burian & Myers, 2011 is reported from Minnesota.

We report the first measurement of the elliptic anisotropy (v2) of the charm meson D0 at midrapidity (|y|<1) in Au+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV. The measurement was conducted by the STAR experiment at RHIC utilizing a new high-resolution silicon tracker. The measured D0 v2 in 0%-80% centrality Au+Au collisions can be described by a viscous hydrodynamic calculation for a transverse momentum (pT) of less than 4 GeV/c. The D0 v2 as a function of transverse kinetic energy (mT-m0, where mT=pT2+m02) is consistent with that of light mesons in 10%-40% centrality Au+Au collisions. These results suggest that charm quarks have achieved local thermal equilibrium with the medium created in such collisions. Several theoretical models, with the temperature-dependent, dimensionless charm spatial diffusion coefficient (2πTDs) in the range of ∼2-12, are able to simultaneously reproduce our D0 v2 result and our previously published results for the D0 nuclear modification factor. © 2017 American Physical Society.

Background: Tetrazole derivatives such as 1-substituted dinitrobenzyl tetrazoles and their oxa and selanyl analogs have previously been studied against drug-susceptible and multidrugresistant mycobacteria. In addition, other tetrazole derivatives have been shown to inhibit CTX-M class A μ-lactamases. Objective: To study the antibacterial activity of 5-substituted aryl 1H-tetrazole derivatives. Methods: The antibacterial activity of several known 5-substituted aryl 1H-tetrazole derivatives was evaluated against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The activity was assessed by determining the minimum inhibitory concentration of these tetrazole derivatives and comparing them to the known antibiotics amoxicillin, trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole. Results: Some derivatives showed significant antibacterial activity with the most active derivatives exhibiting a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 125-250 μg/mL against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. Using some of these tetrazole compounds in combination with trimethoprim led to a synergistic effect that gave MIC values ranging from 0.24-1.95 μg/mL against Escherichia coli and 3.91-31.3 μg/mL against Staphylococcus aureus. The tetrazole derivatives were prepared in an isopropanol/water mixture using microwave heating at 160 °C for 1h. The cycloaddition between organonitriles and sodium azide was catalyzed by indium chloride. Conclusion: This study shows a significant synergistic effect between the tetrazole compounds tested and trimethoprim which could be used to potentially develop new antibacterial agents. © 2017 Bentham Science Publishers.

This article is one of the first to systematically assess the ability of state fragility measures to predict violent protests and adverse regime changes in countries. We focus on the Arab Spring as an example of a situation that such measures ought to predict. Through a variety of analyses, we find that none of the measures are predictive. We then create a simple model using the literature of protest and revolts to predict both the level of violence and the extent of regime change in the Arab Spring countries. This simpler model does a better job of predicting the level of involvement in the Arab Spring than any of the complex State Fragility Indexes. Thus, the goal of this article is not to explain the causes of the Arab Spring, but to add to the discussion of the predictive value of measures of instability.

Second language (L2) classroom research has sought to shed light on the processes and practices that develop L2 learners' abilities [Nunan, D. 2004. Task-based language teaching. London: Continuum; Verplaetse, L. 2014. Using big questions to apprentice students into language-rich classroom practices. TESOL Quarterly, 179, 632-641; Zeungler, J., & Mori, J. 2002. Microanalyses of classroom discourse: A critical consideration of method. Applied Linguistics, 23(3), 283-288]. Honing in on the micro-level of classroom tasks and even further into the language of the tasks can help to reveal the patterns in teacher- and student-talk that help scaffold students' academic literacy. Literacy, from a systemic functional view of language learning, entails having the tools to function in the social contexts that are valued in students' lives. This study illustrates how grounded ethnography was used in conjunction with functional discourse analysis to illuminate bi-literacy development in two third-year university Spanish writing classes. Findings uncovered unique patterns of tasks and oral interactions that helped build students' academic bi-literacy. While grammar tasks helped build students' knowledge of wording-meaning relationships, culture and writing tasks supported their evolving understanding of how language construes content. This study puts forth a systemic functional curricular model for literacy-based tasks that aims to bridge the previously observed language-content gap.