912 research outputs found
Eccentric Exercise Elicits Elevation of Resting Calcium in Skeletal Muscle. Periodic Acceleration Enhanced the Recovery
Initial assessment of safety and clinical feasibility of irreversible electroporation in the focal treatment of prostate cancer.
BACKGROUND: To evaluate the safety and clinical feasibility of focal irreversible electroporation (IRE) of the prostate.
METHODS: We assessed the toxicity profile and functional outcomes of consecutive patients undergoing focal IRE for localised prostate cancer in two centres. Eligibility was assessed by multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) and targeted and/or template biopsy. IRE was delivered under transrectal ultrasound guidance with two to six electrodes positioned transperineally within the cancer lesion. Complications were recorded and scored accordingly to the NCI Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events; the functional outcome was physician reported in all patients with at least 6 months follow-up. A contrast-enhanced MRI 1 week after the procedure was carried out to assess treatment effect with a further mpMRI at 6 months to rule out evidence of residual visible cancer.
RESULTS: Overall, 34 patients with a mean age of 65 years (s.d.=±6) and a median PSA of 6.1âng ml(-1) (interquartile range (IQR)= 4.3-7.7) were included. Nine (26%), 24 (71%) and 1 (3%) men had low, intermediate and high risk disease, respectively (D'Amico criteria). After a median follow-up of 6 months (range 1-24), 12 grade 1 and 10 grade 2 complications occurred. No patient had grade >/= 3 complication. From a functional point of view, 100% (24/24) patients were continent and potency was preserved in 95% (19/20) men potent before treatment. The volume of ablation was a median 12âml (IQR=5.6-14.5âml) with the median PSA after 6 months of 3.4âng ml(-1) (IQR=1.9-4.8âng ml(-1)). MpMRI showed suspicious residual disease in six patients, of whom four (17%) underwent another form of local treatment.
CONCLUSIONS: Focal IRE has a low toxicity profile with encouraging genito-urinary functional outcomes. Further prospective development studies are needed to confirm the functional outcomes and to explore the oncological potential
Wide binaries as a critical test of Classical Gravity
Modified gravity scenarios where a change of regime appears at acceleration
scales have been proposed. Since for systems the
acceleration drops below at scales of around 7000 AU, a statistical
survey of wide binaries with relative velocities and separations reaching
AU and beyond should prove useful to the above debate. We apply the
proposed test to the best currently available data. Results show a constant
upper limit to the relative velocities in wide binaries which is independent of
separation for over three orders of magnitude, in analogy with galactic flat
rotation curves in the same acceleration regime. Our results are
suggestive of a breakdown of Kepler's third law beyond
scales, in accordance with generic predictions of modified gravity theories
designed not to require any dark matter at galactic scales and beyond.Comment: accepted for publication in EPJ
MERIT Hydro: A High-Resolution Global Hydrography Map Based on Latest Topography Dataset
High-resolution raster hydrography maps are a fundamental data source for many geoscience applications. Here we introduce MERIT Hydro, a new global flow direction map at 3-arc sec resolution (~90 m at the equator) derived from the latest elevation data (MERIT DEM) and water body data sets (G1WBM, Global Surface Water Occurrence, and OpenStreetMap). We developed a new algorithm to extract river networks near automatically by separating actual inland basins from dummy depressions caused by the errors in input elevation data. After a minimum amount of hand editing, the constructed hydrography map shows good agreement with existing quality-controlled river network data sets in terms of flow accumulation area and river basin shape. The location of river streamlines was realistically aligned with existing satellite-based global river channel data. Relative error in the drainage area was <0.05 for 90% of Global Runoff Data Center (GRDC) gauges, confirming the accuracy of the delineated global river networks. Discrepancies in flow accumulation area were found mostly in arid river basins containing depressions that are occasionally connected at high water levels and thus resulting in uncertain watershed boundaries. MERIT Hydro improves on existing global hydrography data sets in terms of spatial coverage (between N90 and S60) and representation of small streams, mainly due to increased availability of high-quality baseline geospatial data sets. The new flow direction and flow accumulation maps, along with accompanying supplementary layers on hydrologically adjusted elevation and channel width, will advance geoscience studies related to river hydrology at both global and local scales
Decoupling of the S=1/2 antiferromagnetic zig-zag ladder with anisotropy
The spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic zig-zag ladder is studied by exact
diagonalization of small systems in the regime of weak inter-chain coupling. A
gapless phase with quasi long-range spiral correlations has been predicted to
occur in this regime if easy-plane (XY) anisotropy is present. We find in
general that the finite zig-zag ladder shows three phases: a gapless collinear
phase, a dimer phase and a spiral phase. We study the level crossings of the
spectrum,the dimer correlation function, the structure factor and the spin
stiffness within these phases, as well as at the transition points. As the
inter-chain coupling decreases we observe a transition in the anisotropic XY
case from a phase with a gap to a gapless phase that is best described by two
decoupled antiferromagnetic chains. The isotropic and the anisotropic XY cases
are found to be qualitatively the same, however, in the regime of weak
inter-chain coupling for the small systems studied here. We attribute this to a
finite-size effect in the isotropic zig-zag case that results from
exponentially diverging antiferromagnetic correlations in the weak-coupling
limit.Comment: to appear in Physical Review
Surface reservoirs dominate dynamic gas-surface partitioning of many indoor air constituents
Human health is affected by indoor air quality. One distinctive aspect of the indoor environment is its very large surface area that acts as a poorly characterized sink and source of gas-phase chemicals. In this work, air-surface interactions of 19 common indoor air contaminants with diverse properties and sources were monitored in a house using fast-response, on-line mass spectrometric and spectroscopic methods. Enhanced-ventilation experiments demonstrate that most of the contaminants reside in the surface reservoirs and not, as expected, in the gas phase. They participate in rapid air-surface partitioning that is much faster than air exchange. Phase distribution calculations are consistent with the observations when assuming simultaneous equilibria between air and large weakly polar and polar absorptive surface reservoirs, with acid-base dissociation in the polar reservoir. Chemical exposure assessments must account for the finding that contaminants that are fully volatile under outdoor air conditions instead behave as semivolatile compounds indoors
Animal welfare considerations for using large carnivores and guardian dogs as vertebrate biocontrol tools against other animals
Introducing consumptive and non-consumptive effects into food webs can have profound effects on individuals, populations and communities. This knowledge has led to the deliberate use of predation and/or fear of predation as an emerging technique for controlling wildlife. Many now advocate for the intentional use of large carnivores and livestock guardian dogs as more desirable alternatives to traditional wildlife control approaches like fencing, shooting, trapping, or poisoning. However, there has been very little consideration of the animal welfare implications of deliberately using predation as a wildlife management tool. We assess the animal welfare impacts of using dingoes, leopards and guardian dogs as biocontrol tools against wildlife in Australia and South Africa
following the âFive Domainsâ model commonly used to assess other wildlife management tools. Application of this model indicates that large carnivores and guardian dogs cause considerable lethal and non-lethal animal welfare impacts to the individual animals they are intended to control. These impacts are likely similar across different predator-prey systems, but are dependent on specific predator-prey combinations; combinations that result in short chases and quick kills will be rated as less harmful than those that result in long chases and protracted kills. Moreover, these impacts are typically rated greater than those caused by traditional wildlife control techniques. The intentional lethal and non-lethal harms caused by large carnivores and guardian dogs should not be ignored or dismissively assumed to be negligible. A greater understanding of the impacts they impose would benefit from empirical studies of the animal welfare outcomes arising from their use in different contexts
Evidence against or for topological defects in the BOOMERanG data ?
The recently released BOOMERanG data was taken as ``contradicting topological
defect predictions''. We show that such a statement is partly misleading.
Indeed, the presence of a series of acoustic peaks is perfectly compatible with
a non-negligible topological defects contribution. In such a mixed perturbation
model (inflation and topological defects) for the source of primordial
fluctuations, the natural prediction is a slightly lower amplitude for the
Doppler peaks, a feature shared by many other purely inflationary models. Thus,
for the moment, it seems difficult to rule out these models with the current
data.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. Some changes following extraordinarily slow
referee Reports and new data. Main results unchanged (sorry
Reionization by active sources and its effects on the cosmic microwave background
We investigate the possible effects of reionization by active sources on the
cosmic microwave background. We concentrate on the sources themselves as the
origin of reionization, rather than early object formation, introducing an
extra period of heating motivated by the active character of the perturbations.
Using reasonable parameters, this leads to four possibilities depending on the
time and duration of the energy input: delayed last scattering, double last
scattering, shifted last scattering and total reionization. We show that these
possibilities are only very weakly constrained by the limits on spectral
distortions from the COBE FIRAS measurements. We illustrate the effects of
these reionization possibilities on the angular power spectrum of temperature
anisotropies and polarization for simple passive isocurvature models and simple
coherent sources, observing the difference between passive and active models.
Finally, we comment on the implications of this work for more realistic active
sources, such as causal white noise and topological defect models. We show for
these models that non-standard ionization histories can shift the peak in the
CMB power to larger angular scales.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX with 11 eps figures; replaced with final version
accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
AirSWOT measurements of river water surface elevation and slope: Tanana River, AK
Fluctuations in water surface elevation (WSE) along rivers have important implications for water resources, flood hazards, and biogeochemical cycling. However, current in situ and remote sensing methods exhibit key limitations in characterizing spatiotemporal hydraulics of many of the world's river systems. Here we analyze new measurements of river WSE and slope from AirSWOT, an airborne analogue to the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission aimed at addressing limitations in current remotely sensed observations of surface water. To evaluate its capabilities, we compare AirSWOT WSEs and slopes to in situ measurements along the Tanana River, Alaska. Root-mean-square error is 9.0 cm for WSEs averaged over 1 km2 areas and 1.0 cm/km for slopes along 10 km reaches. Results indicate that AirSWOT can accurately reproduce the spatial variations in slope critical for characterizing reach-scale hydraulics. AirSWOT's high-precision measurements are valuable for hydrologic analysis, flood modeling studies, and for validating future SWOT measurements
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