Studies of nucleon resonance structure in exclusive meson electroproduction

Studies of the structure of excited baryons are key factors to the N* program at Jefferson Lab (JLab). Within the first year of data taking with the Hall B CLAS12 detector following the 12 GeV upgrade, a dedicated experiment will aim to extract the N* electrocouplings at high photon virtualities Q 2. This experiment will allow exploration of the structure of N* resonances at the highest photon virtualities ever achieved, with a kinematic reach up to Q2 = 12 GeV2. This high-Q 2 reach will make it possible to probe the excited nucleon structures at distance scales ranging from where effective degrees of freedom, such as constituent quarks, are dominant through the transition to where nearly massless bare-quark degrees of freedom are relevant. In this document, we present a detailed description of the physics that can be addressed through N* structure studies in exclusive meson electroproduction. The discussion includes recent advances in reaction theory for extracting N* electrocouplings from meson electroproduction off protons, along with Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD)-based approaches to the theoretical interpretation of these fundamental quantities. This program will afford access to the dynamics of the nonperturbative strong interaction responsible for resonance formation, and will be crucial in understanding the nature of confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in baryons, and how excited nucleons emerge from QCD. © 2013 World Scientific Publishing Company.

An assessment of the economic impact of climate change on the health sector In Jamaica

Climate change is a naturally occurring phenomenon in which the earth‘s climate goes through cycles of warming and cooling; these changes usually take place incrementally over millennia. Over the past century, there has been an anomalous increase in global temperature, giving rise to accelerated climate change. It is widely accepted that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities such as industries have contributed significantly to the increase in global temperatures. The existence and survival of all living organisms is predicated on the ability of the environment in which they live not only to provide conditions for their basic needs but also conditions suitable for growth and reproduction. Unabated climate change threatens the existence of biophysical and ecological systems on a planetary scale. The present study aims to examine the economic impact of climate change on health in Jamaica over the period 2011-2050. To this end, three disease conditions with known climate sensitivity and importance to Jamaican public health were modelled. These were: dengue fever, leptospirosis and gastroenteritis in children under age 5. Historical prevalence data on these diseases were obtained from the Ministry of Health Jamaica, the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre, the Climate Studies Group Mona, University of the West Indies Mona campus, and the Meteorological Service of Jamaica. Data obtained spanned a twelve-year period of 1995-2007. Monthly data were obtained for dengue and gastroenteritis, while for leptospirosis, the annual number of cases for 1995-2005 was utilized. The two SRES emission scenarios chosen were A2 and B2 using the European Centre Hamburg Model (ECHAM) global climate model to predict climate variables for these scenarios. A business as usual (BAU) scenario was developed using historical disease data for the period 2000-2009 (dengue fever and gastroenteritis) and 1995-2005 (leptospirosis) as the reference decades for the respective diseases. The BAU scenario examined the occurrence of the diseases in the absence of climate change. It assumed that the disease trend would remain unchanged over the projected period and the number of cases of disease for each decade would be the same as the reference decade. The model used in the present study utilized predictive empirical statistical modelling to extrapolate the climate/disease relationship in time, to estimate the number of climate change-related cases under future climate change scenarios. The study used a Poisson regression model that considered seasonality and lag effects to determine the best-fit model in relation to the diseases under consideration. Zhang and others (2008), in their review of climate change and the transmission of vector-borne diseases, found that: ―Besides climatic variables, few of them have included other factors that can affect the transmission of vector-borne disease….‖ (Zhang 2008) Water, sanitation and health expenditure are key determinants of health. In the draft of the second communication to IPCC, Jamaica noted the vulnerability of public health to climate change, including sanitation and access to water (MSJ/UNDP, 2009). Sanitation, which in its broadest context includes the removal of waste (excreta, solid, or other hazardous waste), is a predictor of vector-borne diseases (e.g. dengue fever), diarrhoeal diseases (such as gastroenteritis) and zoonoses (such as leptospirosis). In conceptualizing the model, an attempt was made to include non-climate predictors of these climate-sensitive diseases. The importance of sanitation and water access to the control of dengue, gastroenteritis and leptospirosis were included in the Poisson regression model. The Poisson regression model obtained was then used to predict the number of disease cases into the future (2011-2050) for each emission scenario. After projecting the number of cases, the cost associated with each scenario was calculated using four cost components. 1. Treatment cost morbidity estimate. The treatment cost for the number of cases was calculated using reference values found in the literature for each condition. The figures were derived from studies of the cost of treatment and represent ambulatory and non-fatal hospitalized care for dengue fever and gastroenteritis. Due to the paucity of published literature on the health care cost associated with leptospirosis, only the cost of diagnosis and antibiotic therapy were included in the calculation. 2. Mortality estimates. Mortality estimates are recorded as case fatality rates. Where local data were available, these were utilized. Where these were unavailable, appropriate reference values from the literature were used. 3. Productivity loss. Productivity loss was calculated using a human capital approach, by multiplying the expected number of productive days lost by the caregiver and/or the infected person, by GDP per capita per day (US$ 14) at 2008 GDP using 2008 US$ exchange rates. 4. No-option cost. The no-option cost refers to adaptation strategies for the control of dengue fever which are ongoing and already a part of the core functions of the Vector Control Division of the Ministry of Health, Jamaica. An estimated US$ 2.1 million is utilized each year in conducting activities to prevent the post-hurricane spread of vector borne diseases and diarrhoea. The cost includes public education, fogging, laboratory support, larvicidal activities and surveillance. This no-option cost was converted to per capita estimates, using population estimates for Jamaica up to 2050 obtained from the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN, 2006) and the assumption of one expected major hurricane per decade. During the decade 2000-2009, Jamaica had an average inflation of 10.4% (CIA Fact book, last updated May 2011). This average decadal inflation rate was applied to the no-option cost, which was inflated by 10% for each successive decade to adjust for changes in inflation over time.

Isolation, X-ray crystal structure and theoretical calculations of the new compound 8-Eepicordatin and identification of others terpenes and steroids from the bark and leaves of Croton palanostigma Klotzsch

Estudos fitoquímicos com as cascas do caule e com as folhas de Croton palanostigma Klotzsch (Euphorbiaceae) levaram ao isolamento do novo diterpeno clerodânico 8-epicordatina (2), além de éster metílico do ácido 12-oxohardwickiico (3), aparisthmano, cordatina (1), ácido ent-trachiloban-18-óico, óxido de ent-13-epimanoila, óxido de ent-3-oxo-13-epimanoila, óxido de ent-3β-hidroxi-13-epimanoila, sitosterol, estigmasterol, estigmastan-3-ona, 6β-hidroxiestigmast-4-en-3-ona, 6β-hidroxiestigmasta-4,22-dien-3-ona, estigmast-4-en-3-ona, estigmasta-4,22-dien-3-ona, ácido 3-O-acetilaleuritolico, 11α-hidroxiurs-12-en-3-ona, α-amirenona, 24-metilenocicloartenona e lupenona. Estas substâncias foram isoladas através de procedimentos fitoquímicos usuais e suas estruturas foram deduzidas por estudos espectroscópicos, incluindo experimentos em 2D. Adicionalmente, a estrutura cristalina de 8-epicordatina (2) foi determinada por difração de raios-X. Cálculos teóricos de RMN ao nível B3PW91/DGDZVP foram usados para confirmação dos assinalamentos dos deslocamentos químicos dos hidrogênios H-7α e H-7β de 8-epicordatina.

Engineered nanoparticles and organic matter: a review of the state-of-the-art

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Planet formation in a triple stellar system: implications of the third star's orbital inclination

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Comparative study of the ovarian morphology in the order Polydesmida (Diplopoda) and description of unusual structures in the female reproductive system

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Karyotype of the invasive species Pterois volitans (Scorpaeniformes: Scorpaenidae) from Margarita Island, Venezuela

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Molecular phylogeny of the highly diversified catfish subfamily Loricariinae (Siluriformes, Loricariidae) reveals incongruences with morphological classification

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

B chromosomes in species of the genus Prochilodus (Characiformes, Prochilodontidae): morphological identity and dispersion

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

The People's Hour and the Social Gospel: George Howard Gibson's Gilded Age Search for an Organization of the Kingdom of God

Previous studies of the Social Gospel movement have acknowledged the fact that Social Gospelers were involved in multiple social reform movements during the Gilded Age and into the Progressive Era. However, most of these studies have failed to explain how the reform experiences of the Social Gospelers contributed to the development of the Social Gospel. The Social Gospelers’ ideas regarding the need to transform society and their strategies for doing so were largely a result of their personal experiences as reformers and their collaboration with other reformers. The knowledge and insight gained from interaction with a variety of reform methods played a vital role in the development of the ideology and theology of the Social Gospel. George Howard Gibson is exemplary of the connections between the Social Gospel movement and several other social reform movements of the time. He was involved in the Temperance movement, was a member of both the Prohibition Party and the People’s Party, and co-founded a Christian socialist cooperative colony. His writings illustrate the formation of his identity as a Social Gospeler as well as his attempts to find an organization through which to realize the kingdom of God on earth. Failure to achieve the changes he desired via prohibition encouraged him to broaden his reform goals. Like many Midwestern Social Gospelers Gibson believed he had found “God’s Party” in the People’s Party, but he rejected reform via the political system once the Populists restricted their attention to the silver issue and fused with the Democratic Party. Yet his involvement with the People’s Party demonstrates the attraction many Social Gospelers had to the reforms proposed in the Omaha Platform of 1892 as well as to the party’s use of revivalistic language and emphasis on producerism and brotherhood. Gibson’s experimentation with a variety of ways to achieve the kingdom of God on earth provides new insight into the experiences and contributions of lay Social Gospelers. Adviser: Kenneth J. Winkle

Correlation of the middle Eocene Kellogg Shale of northern California

The Kellogg Shale of northern California has traditionally been considered to be late Eocene in age on the basis of benthic foraminifer, radiolarian, and diatom correlations. The 30-m-thick Kellogg section exposed west of Byron, California, however, contains middle Eocene planktonic foraminifers (Zone P12), coccoliths (Subzones CP13c and CP14a), silicoflagellates (Dictyocha hexacantha Zone), and diatoms. Quantitative studies of the silicoflagellates and diatoms show a general cooling trend through the section which is consistent with paleoclimatic trends for this part of the middle Eocene (ca. 42-45 Ma) from elsewhere in the world. Seven new silicoflagellate taxa (Corbisema angularis. C, exilis, C, hastate miranda, C. inermis ballantina, C. regina, Dictyocha byronalis, Naviculopsis Americana) and one new coccolithophorid species (Helicosphaera neolophota) are described.

Pissing Glass and the Body Crass: Adaptations of the Scatological in Théophile

Examination of scatological motifs in Théophile de Viau’s (1590-1626) libertine, or ‘cabaret’ poetry is important in terms of how the scatological contributes to the depiction of the Early Modern body in the French lyric.1 This essay does not examine Théophile’s portrait of the body strictly in terms of the ‘Baroque’ or the ‘neo-Classical.’ Rather, it argues that the scatological context in which he situates the body (either his, or those of others), reflects a keen sensibility of the body representative of the transition between these two eras. Théophile reinforces what Bernard Beugnot terms the body’s inherent ‘eloquence’ (17), or what Patrick Dandrey describes as an innate ‘textuality’ in what the body ‘writes’ (31), and how it discloses meaning. The poet’s scatological lyric, much of which was published in the Pamasse Satyrique of 1622, projects a different view of the body’s ‘eloquence’ by depicting a certain realism and honesty about the body as well as the pleasure and suffering it experiences. This Baroque realism, which derives from a sense of the grotesque and the salacious, finds itself in conflict with the Classical body which is frequently characterized as elegant, adorned, and ‘domesticated’ (Beugnot 25). Théophile’s private body is completely exposed, and, unlike the public body of the court, does not rely on masking and pretension to define itself. Mitchell Greenberg contends that the body in late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century French literature is often depicted in a chaotic manner because, ‘the French body politic was rent by tumultuous religious and social upheavals’ (62).2 While one could argue that Théophile’s portraits of a syphilis-ridden narrators are more a reflection of his personal agony rather than that of France as a whole, what emerges in Théophile is an emphasis on the movement, if not decomposition of the body.3 Given Théophile’s public persona and the satirical dimension of his work, it is difficult to imagine that the degeneration he portrays is limited only to his individual experience. On a collective level, Théophile reflects what Greenberg calls ‘a continued, if skewed apprehension of the world in both its physical and metaphysical dimensions’(62–3) typical of the era. To a large extent, the body Théophile depicts is a scatological body, one whose deterioration takes the form of waste, disease, and evacuation as represented in both the private and public domain. Of course, one could cast aside any serious reading of Théophile’s libertine verse, and virtually all of scatological literature for that matter, as an immature indulgence in the prurient. Nonetheless, it was for his dissolute behavior and his scatological poetry that Théophile was imprisoned and condemned to death. Consequently, this part of his work merits serious consideration in terms of the personal and poetic (if not occasionally political) statement it represents. With the exception of Claire Gaudiani’s outstanding critical edition of Théophile’s cabaret lyric, there exist no extensive studies of the poet’s libertine œuvre.4 Clearly however, these poems should be taken seriously with respect to their philosophical and aesthetic import. As a consequence, the objective becomes that of enhancing the reader’s understanding of the lyric contexts in which Théophile’s scatological offerings situate themselves. Structurally, the reader sees how the poet’s libertine ceuvre is just that — an integrated work in which the various components correspond to one another to set forth a number of approaches from which the texts are to be read. These points of view are not always consistent, and Théophile cannot be thought of as writing in a sequential manner along the lines of devotional Baroque poets such as Jean de La Ceppède and Jean de Sponde. However, there is a tendency not to read these poems in their vulgar totality, and to overlook the formal and substantive unity in this category of Théophile’s work. The poet’s resistance to poetic and cultural standards takes a profane, if not pornographic form because it seeks to disgust and arouse while denigrating the self, the lyric other, and the reader. Théophile’s pornography makes no distinction between the erotic and scatological. The poet conflates sex and shit because they present a double form of protest to artistic and social decency while titillating and attacking the reader’s sensibilities. Examination of the repugnant gives way to a cathartic experience which yields an understanding of, if not ironic delight in, one’s own filthy nature.

Spermatophoric reaction reappraised: Novel insights into the functioning of the loliginid spermatophore based on Doryteuthis plei (Mollusca: Cephalopoda)

During copulation, spermatophores produced by male coleoid cephalopods undergo the spermatophoric reaction, a complex process of evagination that culminates in the attachment of the spermatangium (everted spermatophore containing the sperm mass) on the female's body. To better understand this complicated phenomenon, the present study investigated the functional morphology of the spermatophore of the squid Doryteuthis plei applying in vitro analysis of the reaction, as well as light and electron microscopy investigation of spermatangia obtained either in vitro, or naturally attached on females. Hitherto unnoticed functional features of the loliginid spermatophore require a reappraisal of some important processes involved in the spermatophoric reaction. The most striking findings concern the attachment mechanism, which is not carried out solely by cement adhesive material, as previously believed, but rather by an autonomous, complex process performed by multiple structures during the spermatophoric reaction. During evagination, the ejaculatory apparatus provides anchorage on the targeted tissue, presumably due to the minute stellate particles present in the exposed spiral filament. Consequently, the ejaculatory apparatus maintains the attachment of the tip of the evaginating spermatophore until the cement body is extruded. Subsequently, the cement body passes through a complex structural rearrangement, which leads to the injection of both its viscid contents and pointed oral region onto the targeted tissue. The inner membrane at the oral region of the cement body contains numerous stellate particles attached at its inner side; eversion of this membrane exposes these sharp structures, which presumably adhere to the tissue and augment attachment. Several naturally attached spermatangia were found with their bases implanted at the deposition sites, and the possible mechanisms of perforation are discussed based on present evidence. The function of the complex squid spermatophore and its spermatophoric reaction is revisited in light of these findings. J. Morphol. 2012. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

PHYTOCHEMICAL AND CHEMOSYSTEMATICS STUDIES OF Conchocarpus marginatus AND C. inopinatus (Rutaceae)

PHYTOCHEMICAL AND CHEMOSYSTEMATICS STUDIES OF Conchocarpus marginatus AND C. inopinatus (Rutaceae). Phytochemical studies of the leaves and stem have led to the identification of the known acridone alkaloids arborinine, methylarborinine, 1-hydroxy-3-methoxy-N-methyl acridone, xanthoxoline, 1,2,3,5-tetramethoxy-N-methylacridone, toddaliopsin C and the new seco acridone alkaloid inopinatin. The known quinoline alkaloids 2-phenyl-1-methyl-quinolin-4(1H)-one, 2-phenyl-1-methyl-7-methoxy-quinolin-4(1H)-one, dictamnine, and the coumarins scopoletin and marmesin were also isolated. The isolated compounds and the distribution of secondary metabolites, which are systematically important, obtained from literature, clearly confirmed that some species formerly described in the genera Angostura and Galipea in fact shall belong to the genus Conchocarpus.

Assessment of a Neurophysiological Model of the Mandibular Branch of the Facial Nerve in Rats by Electromyography

Objectives: Our objective was to develop an experimental model for the noninvasive and objective evaluation of facial nerve regeneration in rats using a motor nerve conduction test (electromyography). Methods: Twenty-two rats were submitted to neurophysiological evaluation using motor nerve conduction of the mandibular branch of the facial nerve to obtain the compound muscle action potentials (CMAPs). To record the CM APs, we used two needle electrodes that were inserted into the lower lip muscle of the rat. A supramaximal electrical stimulus was applied, and the values of CMAP latency, amplitude, length, area, and stimulus intensity obtained from each side were compared by use of the Wilcoxon test. Results: There was no significant difference (all p > 0.05) in latency, amplitude, duration, area, or intensity of stimuli between the two sides. The amplitudes ranged between 1.61 and 8.30 mV, the latencies between 1.03 and 1.97 ms, and the stimulus intensities between 1.50 and 2.90 mA. Conclusions: This is a noninvasive, easy, and highly reproducible method that contributes to an improvement of the techniques previously described and may contribute to future studies of the degeneration and regeneration of the facial nerve.