Higher Equations of Motion in Boundary Liouville Field Theory

In addition to the ordinary bulk higher equations of motion in the boundary version of the Liouville conformal field theory, an infinite set of relations containing the boundary operators is found. These equations are in one-to-one correspondence with the singular representations of the Virasoro algebra. We comment on the possible applications in the context of minimal boundary Liouville gravity.Comment: 18 page

Head Position in Stroke Trial (HeadPoST)- sitting-up vs lying-flat positioning of patients with acute stroke: study protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial

Background Positioning a patient lying-flat in the acute phase of ischaemic stroke may improve recovery and reduce disability, but such a possibility has not been formally tested in a randomised trial. We therefore initiated the Head Position in Stroke Trial (HeadPoST) to determine the effects of lying-flat (0°) compared with sitting-up (≥30°) head positioning in the first 24 hours of hospital admission for patients with acute stroke. Methods/Design We plan to conduct an international, cluster randomised, crossover, open, blinded outcome-assessed clinical trial involving 140 study hospitals (clusters) with established acute stroke care programs. Each hospital will be randomly assigned to sequential policies of lying-flat (0°) or sitting-up (≥30°) head position as a ‘business as usual’ stroke care policy during the first 24 hours of admittance. Each hospital is required to recruit 60 consecutive patients with acute ischaemic stroke (AIS), and all patients with acute intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) (an estimated average of 10), in the first randomised head position policy before crossing over to the second head position policy with a similar recruitment target. After collection of in-hospital clinical and management data and 7-day outcomes, central trained blinded assessors will conduct a telephone disability assessment with the modified Rankin Scale at 90 days. The primary outcome for analysis is a shift (defined as improvement) in death or disability on this scale. For a cluster size of 60 patients with AIS per intervention and with various assumptions including an intracluster correlation coefficient of 0.03, a sample size of 16,800 patients at 140 centres will provide 90 % power (α 0.05) to detect at least a 16 % relative improvement (shift) in an ordinal logistic regression analysis of the primary outcome. The treatment effect will also be assessed in all patients with ICH who are recruited during each treatment study period. Discussion HeadPoST is a large international clinical trial in which we will rigorously evaluate the effects of different head positioning in patients with acute stroke. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02162017 (date of registration: 27 April 2014); ANZCTR identifier: ACTRN12614000483651 (date of registration: 9 May 2014). Protocol version and date: version 2.2, 19 June 2014

Conical Defects in Higher Spin Theories

We study conical defect geometries in the SL(N) Chern-Simons formulation of higher spin gauge theories in AdS_3. We argue that (for N\geq 4) there are special values of the deficit angle for which these geometries are actually smooth configurations of the underlying theory. We also exhibit a gauge in which these geometries can be viewed as wormholes interpolating between two distinct asymptotically AdS_3 spacetimes. Remarkably, the spectrum of smooth SL(N,C) solutions, after an appropriate analytic continuation, exactly matches that of the so-called "light primaries" in the minimal model W_N CFTs at finite N. This gives a candidate bulk interpretation of the latter states in the holographic duality proposed in [1].Comment: 38 page

Affine sl(N) conformal blocks from N=2 SU(N) gauge theories

Recently Alday and Tachikawa proposed a relation between conformal blocks in a two-dimensional theory with affine sl(2) symmetry and instanton partition functions in four-dimensional conformal N=2 SU(2) quiver gauge theories in the presence of a certain surface operator. In this paper we extend this proposal to a relation between conformal blocks in theories with affine sl(N) symmetry and instanton partition functions in conformal N=2 SU(N) quiver gauge theories in the presence of a surface operator. We also discuss the extension to non-conformal N=2 SU(N) theories.Comment: 40 pages. v2: minor changes and clarification

Fermionic Coset, Critical Level W^(2)_4-Algebra and Higher Spins

The fermionic coset is a limit of the pure spinor formulation of the AdS5xS5 sigma model as well as a limit of a nonlinear topological A-model, introduced by Berkovits. We study the latter, especially its symmetries, and map them to higher spin algebras. We show the following. The linear A-model possesses affine \AKMSA{pgl}{4}{4}_0 symmetry at critical level and its \AKMSA{psl}{4}{4}_0 current-current perturbation is the nonlinear model. We find that the perturbation preserves $\mathcal{W}^{(2)}_4$-algebra symmetry at critical level. There is a topological algebra associated to \AKMSA{pgl}{4}{4}_0 with the properties that the perturbation is BRST-exact. Further, the BRST-cohomology contains world-sheet supersymmetric symplectic fermions and the non-trivial generators of the $\mathcal{W}^{(2)}_4$-algebra. The Zhu functor maps the linear model to a higher spin theory. We analyze its \SLSA{psl}{4}{4} action and find finite dimensional short multiplets.Comment: 25 page

Unexpected combination of acute croup and myocarditis: Case report

BACKGROUND: Lower vaccination coverage among foreign-born children is of concern because they live in households and communities characterized by more intense exposure to infectious diseases. Because of their higher prevalence rates, there is an increasing occurrence of infectious diseases imported into developed countries. This case report emphasizes the emerging necessity for new clinicians and pathologists of having competence with old infectious disease pathology. CASE PRESENTATION: A three and a half year old girl, who presented with croup history of 5 days and has been in severe respiratory distress, was admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in shock and acute respiratory failure. The patient was immediately intubated, and a grayish nonadherent membrane extending through the glottis down into the larynx was apparent during the procedure. Echocardiographic findings, which were consistent with acute myocarditis, confirmed poor left ventricular contractility despite escalating high doses of inotropes. Autopsy showed numerous strains of toxigenic corynobacterium diphtheriae, which also grew on the Loeffler cultures of membranes received during the intubation. CONCLUSION: It is critical that new generations of clinicians and bio-pathologists not only be trained in the subspecialty of infectious disease pathology, but that they also be willing participants in the diagnosis and investigation of infectious diseases