In vivo diffusion measurements of abdominal organs obtained with MR imaging may prove helpful in the identification and classification of abdominal disease.

Migration and morphology of human melanoma cells (MV3) depend on extracellular pH (pHe) and the activity of the Na+/H+ exchanger NHE1. To distinguish effects of NHE1 activity per se from effects of pHe we compared an NHE1-deficient mutant with rescued and wild-type cells. Time lapse video microscopy was used to investigate migratory and morphological effects caused by pHe and NHE1 activity, and a membrane-bound fluorescein conjugate was employed for ratiometric pH measurements at the outer leaflet of the cell membrane. As long as NHE1 remained inactive due to deficiency or inhibition by cariporide (HOE642) neither migration nor morphology was affected by changes in pHe. Under these conditions pH at the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane was uniform all over the cell surface. The typical pH dependence of MV3 cell migration and morphology could be reconstituted by restoring NHE1 activity. At the same time the proton gradient at the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane with the higher proton concentration at the leading edge and the lower one at the cell rear was re-established as well. Hence, NHE1 activity generates a proton gradient at the cell surface accompanied by the cells' ability to respond to changes in pHe (bulk pH). We conclude that NHE1 activity contributes to the generation of a well-defined cell surface pH by creating a proton gradient at the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane that is needed for (i) the development of a variety of morphologies including a distinct polarity and (ii) migration. A missing proton gradient at the cell surface cannot be compensated for by varying pHe.

Phase transitions in open quantum systems, which are associated with the formation of collective states of a large width and of trapped states with rather small widths, are related to exceptional points of the Hamiltonian. Exceptional points are the singularities of the spectrum and eigenfunctions, when they are considered as functions of a coupling parameter. In the present paper this parameter is the coupling strength to the continuum. It is shown that the positions of the exceptional points (their accumulation point in the thermodynamical limit) depend on the particular type and energy dependence of the coupling to the continuum in the same way as the transition point of the corresponding phase transition.

In vivo measurement of ADC has the potential for use as a noninvasive means to explore the functional status of the kidney.

Context. The complexity of the common-envelope phase and of magnetic stellar wind braking currently limits our understanding of close binary evolution. Because of their intrinsically simple structure, observational population studies of white dwarf plus main sequence (WDMS) binaries can potentially test theoretical models and constrain their parameters. Aims. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has provided a large and homogeneously selected sample of WDMS binaries, which we characterise in terms of orbital and stellar parameters. Methods. We have obtained radial velocity information for 385 WDMS binaries from follow-up spectroscopy and for an additional 861 systems from the SDSS subspectra. Radial velocity variations identify 191 of these WDMS binaries as post common-envelope binaries (PCEBs). Orbital periods of 58 PCEBs were subsequently measured, predominantly from time-resolved spectroscopy, bringing the total number of SDSS PCEBs with orbital parameters to 79. Observational biases inherent to this PCEB sample were evaluated through extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Results. We find that 21-24% of all SDSS WDMS binaries have undergone common-envelope evolution, which is in good agreement with published binary population models and high-resolution HST imaging of WDMS binaries unresolved from the ground. The bias-corrected orbital period distribution of PCEBs ranges from 1.9 h to 4.3 d and approximately follows a normal distribution in log(P orb ), peaking at ∼10.3 h. There is no observational evidence for a significant population of PCEBs with periods in the range of days to weeks. Conclusions. The large and homogeneous sample of SDSS WDMS binaries provides the means to test fundamental predictions of binary population models, hence to observationally constrain the evolution of all close compact binaries.

We propose a method based on the equal-time correlation matrix as a sensitive detector for phase-shape correlations in multivariate data sets. The key point of the method is that changes of the degree of synchronization between time series provoke level repulsions between eigenstates at both edges of the spectrum of the correlation matrix. Consequently, detailed information about the correlation structure of the multivariate data set is imprinted into the dynamics of the eigenvalues and into the structure of the corresponding eigenvectors. The performance of the technique is demonstrated by application to N(f)-tori, autoregressive models, and coupled chaotic systems. The high sensitivity, the comparatively small computational effort, and the excellent time resolution of the method recommend it for application to the analysis of complex, spatially extended, nonstationary systems.

No abstract

The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey is an optical imaging survey covering 104 deg 2 centered on the Virgo cluster. Currently, the complete survey area has been observed in the u * giz-bands and one third in the r-band. We present the photometric redshift estimation for the NGVS background sources. After a dedicated data reduction, we perform accurate photometry, with special attention to precise color measurements through point spread function-homogenization. We then estimate the photometric redshifts with the Le Phare and BPZ codes. We add a new prior which extends to i AB = 12.5 mag. When using the u * griz-bands, our photometric redshifts for 15.5 ≤ i 23 mag or z phot 1 galaxies have a bias |∆z| < 0.02, less than 5% outliers, and a scatter σ outl.rej. and an individual error on z phot that increase with magnitude (from 0.02 to 0.05 and from 0.03 to 0.10, respectively). When using the u * giz-bands over the same magnitude and redshift range, the lack of the r-band increases the uncertainties in the 0.3 z phot 0.8 range (−0.05 < ∆z < −0.02, σ outl.rej ∼ 0.06, 10-15% outliers, and z phot.err. ∼ 0.15). We also present a joint analysis of the photometric redshift accuracy as a function of redshift and magnitude. We assess the quality of our photometric redshifts by comparison to spectroscopic samples and by verifying that the angular autoand cross-correlation function w(θ) of the entire NGVS photometric redshift sample across redshift bins is in agreement with the expectations. NGVSLenS datathe original i-band filter (i.MP9701) which was damaged in 2008. Although we make the distinction in our pipeline, we write in this article i, regardless of the used passband, for simplicity.As detailed in Ferrarese et al. (2012), the NGVS data are used for a large variety of science projects. The different applications can be split in three categories: (1) the foreground-science, which will study the sources closer 27 m lim = ZP − 2.5 log(5 √ n pix × σ sky ), where ZP is the magnitude zeropoint, n pix is the number of pixels in a circle with radius 2. ′′ 0 and σ sky the sky background noise variation.