1,810 research outputs found
Correlation of mechanical factors and gallbladder pain
Acalculous biliary pain occurs in patients with no gallstones, but is similar to that experienced by patients with gallstones. Surgical removal of the gallbladder (GB) in these patients is only successful in providing relief of symptoms to about half of those operated on, so a reliable pain-prediction model is needed. In this paper, a mechanical model is developed for the human biliary system during the emptying phase, based on a clinical test in which GB volume changes are measured in response to a standard stimulus and a recorded pain profile. The model can describe the bile emptying behaviour, the flow resistance in the biliary ducts, the peak total stress, including the passive and active stresses experienced by the GB during emptying. This model is used to explore the potential link between GB pain and mechanical factors. It is found that the peak total normal stress may be used as an effective pain indicator for GB pain. When this model is applied to clinical data of volume changes due to Cholecystokinin stimulation and pain from 37 patients, it shows a promising success rate of 88.2% in positive pain prediction
No Evidence Supporting Flare Driven High-Frequency Global Oscillations
The underlying physics that generates the excitations in the global
low-frequency, < 5.3 mHz, solar acoustic power spectrum is a well known process
that is attributed to solar convection; However, a definitive explanation as to
what causes excitations in the high-frequency regime, > 5.3 mHz, has yet to be
found. Karoff and Kjeldsen (Astrophys. J. 678, 73-76, 2008) concluded that
there is a correlation between solar flares and the global high-frequency solar
acoustic waves. We have used the Global Oscillations Network Group (GONG)
helioseismic data in an attempt to verify Karoff and Kjeldsen (2008) results as
well as compare the post-flare acoustic power spectrum to the pre-flare
acoustic power spectrum for 31 solar flares. Among the 31 flares analyzed, we
observe that a decrease in acoustic power after the solar flare is just as
likely as an increase. Furthermore, while we do observe variations in acoustic
power that are most likely associated with the usual p-modes associated with
solar convection, these variations do not show any significant temporal
association with flares. We find no evidence that consistently supports flare
driven high-frequency waves.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in Solar Physic
A critical analysis of the design, results and implications of the mortality and use of health services surveys
New Strong Interactons at the Tevatron ?
Recent results from CDF indicate that the inclusive cross section for jets
with GeV is significantly higher than that predicted by QCD. We
describe here a simple flavor-universal variant of the ``coloron" model of Hill
and Parke that can accommodate such a jet excess, and which is not in
contradiction with other experimental data. As such, the model serves as a
useful baseline with which to compare both the data and other models proposed
to describe the jet excess. An interesting theoretical feature of the model is
that if the global chiral symmetries of the quarks remain unbroken in the
confining phase of the coloron interaction, it realizes the possibility that
the ordinary quarks are composite particles.Comment: added contributions to scattering cross-sections; 10
pages, LaTeX, includes 1 figure. Full postscript version at
http://smyrd.bu.edu/htfigs/htfigs.htm
Interpreting Helioseismic Structure Inversion Results of Solar Active Regions
Helioseismic techniques such as ring-diagram analysis have often been used to
determine the subsurface structural differences between solar active and quiet
regions. Results obtained by inverting the frequency differences between the
regions are usually interpreted as the sound-speed differences between them.
These in turn are used as a measure of temperature and magnetic-field strength
differences between the two regions. In this paper we first show that the
"sound-speed" difference obtained from inversions is actually a combination of
sound-speed difference and a magnetic component. Hence, the inversion result is
not directly related to the thermal structure. Next, using solar models that
include magnetic fields, we develop a formulation to use the inversion results
to infer the differences in the magnetic and thermal structures between active
and quiet regions. We then apply our technique to existing structure inversion
results for different pairs of active and quiet regions. We find that the
effect of magnetic fields is strongest in a shallow region above 0.985R_sun and
that the strengths of magnetic-field effects at the surface and in the deeper
(r < 0.98R_sun) layers are inversely related, i.e., the stronger the surface
magnetic field the smaller the magnetic effects in the deeper layers, and vice
versa. We also find that the magnetic effects in the deeper layers are the
strongest in the quiet regions, consistent with the fact that these are
basically regions with weakest magnetic fields at the surface. Because the
quiet regions were selected to precede or follow their companion active
regions, the results could have implications about the evolution of magnetic
fields under active regions.Comment: Accepted for publication in Solar Physic
Spin Coulomb drag in the two-dimensional electron liquid
We calculate the spin-drag transresistivity
in a two-dimensional electron gas at temperature in the random phase
approximation. In the low-temperature regime we show that, at variance with the
three-dimensional low-temperature result [], the spin transresistivity of a two-dimensional {\it spin unpolarized}
electron gas has the form . In the
spin-polarized case the familiar form is
recovered, but the constant of proportionality diverges logarithmically as
the spin-polarization tends to zero. In the high-temperature regime we obtain
(where
is the effective Rydberg energy) {\it independent} of the density.
Again, this differs from the three-dimensional result, which has a logarithmic
dependence on the density. Two important differences between the spin-drag
transresistivity and the ordinary Coulomb drag transresistivity are pointed
out: (i) The singularity at low temperature is smaller, in the Coulomb
drag case, by a factor where is the Fermi wave vector and
is the separation between the layers. (ii) The collective mode contribution
to the spin-drag transresistivity is negligible at all temperatures. Moreover
the spin drag effect is, for comparable parameters, larger than the ordinary
Coulomb drag effect.Comment: 6 figures; various changes; version accepted for publicatio
External Operators and Anomalous Dimensions in Soft-Collinear Effective Theory
It has recently been argued that soft-collinear effective theory for
processes involving both soft and collinear partons contains a new
soft-collinear mode, which can communicate between the soft and collinear
sectors of the theory. The formalism incorporating the corresponding fields
into the effective Lagrangian is extended to include external current and
four-quark operators relevant to weak interactions. An explicit calculation of
the anomalous dimensions of these operators reveals that soft-collinear modes
are needed for correctly describing the ultraviolet behavior of the effective
theory.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure
Spatial Periodicity of Galaxy Number Counts, CMB Anisotropy, and SNIa Hubble Diagram Based on the Universe Accompanied by a Non-Minimally Coupled Scalar Field
We have succeeded in establishing a cosmological model with a non-minimally
coupled scalar field that can account not only for the spatial
periodicity or the {\it picket-fence structure} exhibited by the galaxy -
relation of the 2dF survey but also for the spatial power spectrum of the
cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) temperature anisotropy observed by
the WMAP satellite. The Hubble diagram of our model also compares well with the
observation of Type Ia supernovae. The scalar field of our model universe
starts from an extremely small value at around the nucleosynthesis epoch,
remains in that state for sufficiently long periods, allowing sufficient time
for the CMB temperature anisotropy to form, and then starts to grow in
magnitude at the redshift of , followed by a damping oscillation
which is required to reproduce the observed picket-fence structure of the
- relation. To realize such behavior of the scalar field, we have found
it necessary to introduce a new form of potential , with being a constant. Through this parameter ,
we can control the epoch at which the scalar field starts growing.Comment: 19 pages, 18 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics &
Space Scienc
Topcolor-Assisted Supersymmetry
It has been known that the supersymmetric flavor changing neutral current
problem can be avoided if the squarks take the following mass pattern, namely
the first two generations with the same chirality are degenerate with masses
around the weak scale, while the third generation is very heavy. We realize
this scenario through the supersymmetric extension of a topcolor model with
gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking.Comment: 12 pages, latex, no figure
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