Full-wave electromagnetic modes and hybridization in nanoparticle dimers

The plasmon hybridization theory is based on a quasi-electrostatic approximation of the Maxwell’s equations. It does not take into account magnetic interactions, retardation effects, and radiation losses. Magnetic interactions play a dominant role in the scattering from dielectric nanoparticles. The retardation effects play a fundamental role in the coupling of the modes with the incident radiation and in determining their radiative strength; their exclusion may lead to erroneous predictions of the excited modes and of the scattered power spectra. Radiation losses may lead to a significant broadening of the scattering resonances. We propose a hybridization theory for non-Hermitian composite systems based on the full-Maxwell equations that, overcoming all the limitations of the plasmon hybridization theory, unlocks the description of dielectric dimers. As an example, we decompose the scattered field from silicon and silver dimers, under different excitation conditions and gap-sizes, in terms of dimer modes, pinpointing the hybridizing isolated-sphere modes behind them

Recent finding and new technologies in nephrolithiasis: a review of the recent literature

This review summarizes recent literature on advances regarding renal and ureteral calculi, with particular focus in areas of recent advances in the overall field of urolithiasis. Clinical management in everyday practice requires a complete understanding of the issues regarding metabolic evaluation and subgrouping of stone-forming patients, diagnostic procedures, effective treatment regime in acute stone colic, medical expulsive therapy, and active stone removal. In this review we focus on new perspectives in managing nephrolitihiasis and discuss recentadvances, including medical expulsive therapy, new technologies, and refinements of classical therapy such as shock wave lithotripsy, give a fundamental modification of nephrolithiasis management. Overall, this field appears to be the most promising, capable of new developments in ureterorenoscopy and percutaneous approaches. Further improvements are expected from robotic-assisted procedures, such as flexible robotics in ureterorenoscopy

Comorbid depressive disorders in ADHD. the role of ADHD severity, subtypes and familial psychiatric disorders

ObjectiveaaTo evaluate the presence of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Dysthymic Disorder (DD) in a sample of Italian children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and to explore specific features of comorbid depressive disorders in ADHD. MethodsaaThree hundred and sixty-six consecutive, drug-naïve Caucasian Italian outpatients with ADHD were recruited and comorbid disorders were evaluated using DSM-IV-TR criteria. To evaluate ADHD severity, parents of all children filled out the ADHD Rating Scale. Thirty-seven children with comorbid MDD or DD were compared with 118 children with comorbid conduct disorder and 122 without comorbidity for age, sex, IQ level, family psychiatric history, and ADHD subtypes and severity. Resultsaa42 of the ADHD children displayed comorbid depressive disorders: 16 exhibited MDD, 21 DD, and 5 both MDD and DD. The frequency of hyperactive-impulsive subtypes was significantly lower in ADHD children with depressive disorders, than in those without any comorbidity. ADHD children with depressive disorders showed a higher number of familial psychiatric disorders and higher score in the Inattentive scale of the ADHD Rating Scale, than children without any comorbidity. No differences were found for age, sex and IQ level between the three groups. Conclusions: Consistent with previous studies in other countries, depressive disorders affect a significant proportion of ADHD children in Italy. Patient assessment and subsequent treatment should take into consideration the possible presence of this comorbidity, which could specifically increase the severity of ADHD attention problems

Government and private sector joint venturing in natural resource development: The Queensland plantation forestry joint venture scheme

This paper examines the role of joint ventures between government and resource owners to develop natural resources, with particular reference for forestry plantations. Findings of a survey of landholders participating or expressing interest in the Queensland Plantation Joint Venture Scheme are presented. Joint venture arrangements are found to overcome investment constraints, particularly with respect to capital, technical knowledge and resource security. Complementarities between resource supplies of joint venture partners lead to increased output relative to wholly owned investments. Participants expressed a high degree of satisfaction with this program, although making some suggestions for changes in arrangements. Plantation joint ventures can contribute towards timber self-sufficiency and to ecologically sustainable land-use. Opportunities exist for joint ventures between government and private firms with respect to other natural-resource-based enterprises where market failure is apparent

Performance Comparison of Technological Solutions for Spark Applications in AWS

Cloud computing is providing a pay-as-you-go in-frastructure for the deployment of complex applications, with auto-scaling support and the ability to manage and process huge amount of data. However, due to the underlying complexity of the cloud infrastructure, it is not trivial to evaluate the setup providing the best performance of such scenario. To this aim the present paper proposes a thorough performance evaluation of a real application in a Cloud platform, measuring the impact of several design choices and technological solution. The experimental results, based on a real application and on realistic data can provide a significant insight that can integrate the traditional approach of cloud performance evaluation based on synthetic benchmarks

Unveiling the Mysteries of Aceh, Indonesia: Local and Global Intersections of Women\u27s Agency

Forces of globalization, local culture, and Islam continuously inform one another and dynamically manifest in cultures across the world. Scholars often assume that these influences may have distinct and independent effects. However, we argue that these global forces occur simultaneously and they may contradict or complement each other along a spectrum within Aceh, Indonesia. The manifestations and responses vary depending on the nature of the interactions of global and local factors. This spectrum represents various ways in which women negotiate identity and agency, specifically within the context of the implementation of Shari’ah Law. This research investigates the specific ways in which women’s identities influence and are influenced by the globalization of feminism, matrifocal traditions, and Islamic veiling practices in Aceh. In the summer of 2012, the authors conducted field research in Aceh, Indonesia through interviews and observations. These included over 70 participants and 20 organizations which varied in formality and size. The interview participants include: activists, academicians, spiritual leaders, government officials, law enforcement agents, university students, and other community members from both rural and urban areas

Lagrangian Variational Framework for Boundary Value Problems

A boundary value problem is commonly associated with constraints imposed on a system at its boundary. We advance here an alternative point of view treating the system as interacting "boundary" and "interior" subsystems. This view is implemented through a Lagrangian framework that allows to account for (i) a variety of forces including dissipative acting at the boundary; (ii) a multitude of features of interactions between the boundary and the interior fields when the boundary fields may differ from the boundary limit of the interior fields; (iii) detailed pictures of the energy distribution and its flow; (iv) linear and nonlinear effects. We provide a number of elucidating examples of the structured boundary and its interactions with the system interior. We also show that the proposed approach covers the well known boundary value problems.Comment: 41 pages, 3 figure

The BIM-based Integrated Design of the SHiP Project Decay Volume

The Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) experiment is a new general-purpose fixed target facility proposed at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator to search for longlived exotic particles associated with Hidden Sectors and Dark Matter. This paper reports on the BIM integrated design of SHiP’s decay volume, a conical steel vessel under vacuum that should host several large particle physics detector systems. The use of BIM characterized the design of the decay volume, both in the modeling and structural design phase, and in the process definition phase for the realization and implementation in the facility of the device. This procedure helps to minimize the risks of incorrect design and construction of the device during the whole process. With the automation of the virtual model and the use of interoperable software, in addition to speeding up the exchange of information, it is possible also to export the detailed information of the structural design directly to the numerical control machines for the prefabrication of the various steel modules. Then, the BIM approach to support the integrated design of the SHiP project decay volume from the conceptual planning to the construction phase is shown in this work

Differential gene expression of resistant and susceptible sweetpotato plants after infection with the causal agents of sweet potato virus disease

Sweet potato virus disease (SPVD) is one of the most devastating diseases affecting sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas), an important food crop in developing countries. SPVD develops when sweetpotato plants are dually infected with sweet potato feathery mottle virus (SPFMV) and sweet potato chlorotic stunt virus (SPCSV). To better understand the synergistic interaction between these viruses, global gene expression was previously studied in the susceptible cultivar Beauregard. In the current study, global gene expression between SPVD-affected plants and virus-tested control plants (VT) were compared in \u27Beauregard\u27 (Bx) and resistant \u27NASPOT 1\u27 (Nas) sweetpotato cultivars at 5, 9, 13, and 17 days post inoculation (DPI). Titer levels of SPFMV and SPCSV were significantly lower in inoculated resistant plants (Nas_SPVD) than in susceptible plants (Bx_SPVD) at most of the time points. Chloroplast genes and cell expansion-related genes (including xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolases) were suppressed in Bx_SPVD, while stress-related genes were induced. This trend was not observed in resistant NAS_SPVD. Genes related to protein synthesis (e.g., ribosomal proteins and elongation factor genes) were induced in resistant NAS_SPVD at 5 DPI before returning to levels comparable with NAS_VT plants. At this time (5 DPI), individual viruses could not be detected in NAS_SPVD samples, and no symptoms were observed. Induction of protein synthesis-related genes is common in susceptible plants after virus infection and is generally in proportion to virus accumulation. Our results show that induction of protein synthesis genes also occurs early in the infection process in resistant plants, while virus titers were below the level of detection, suggesting that virus accumulation is not required for induction

Undetectable ultrasensitive PSA after radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer predicts relapse-free survival

Radical retropubic prostatectomy is considered by many centres to be the treatment of choice for men aged less than 70 years with localized prostate cancer. A rise in serum prostate-specific antigen after radical prostatectomy occurs in 10–40% of cases. This study evaluates the usefulness of novel ultrasensitive PSA assays in the early detection of biochemical relapse. 200 patients of mean age 61.2 years underwent radical retropubic prostatectomy. Levels ≤ 0.01 ng ml–1 were considered undetectable. Mean pre-operative prostate-specific antigen was 13.3 ng ml–1. Biochemical relapse was defined as 3 consecutive rises. The 2-year biochemical disease-free survival for the 134 patients with evaluable prostate-specific antigen nadir data was 61.1% (95% CI: 51.6–70.6%). Only 2 patients with an undetectable prostate-specific antigen after radical retropubic prostatectomy biochemically relapsed (3%), compared to 47 relapses out of 61 patients (75%) who did not reach this level. Cox multivariate analysis confirms prostate-specific antigen nadir ≤ 0.01 ng ml–1 to be a superb independent variable predicting a favourable biochemical disease-free survival (P < 0.0001). Early diagnosis of biochemical relapse is feasible with sensitive prostate-specific antigen assays. These assays more accurately measure the prostate-specific antigen nadir, which is an excellent predictor of biochemical disease-free survival. Thus, sensitive prostate-specific antigen assays offer accurate prognostic information and expedite decision-making regarding the use of salvage prostate-bed radiotherapy or hormone therapy. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co