1,774 research outputs found
Squamous cell carcinoma of the tonsil managed by conventional surgery and postoperative radiation
BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to report the long-term outcome of patients with squamous cell cancer (SCC) of the tonsil managed by surgery followed by postoperative radiotherapy (PORT). METHODS: Eighty-eight patients treated between 1985 and 2005 were analyzed. Overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS), and recurrence-free survival (RFS) were determined by the Kaplan-Meier method. Factors predictive of outcome were determined by univariate and multivariate analysis. RESULTS: Forty-eight percent of patients had T3 to T4 disease and 75% had a positive neck. Five-year OS, DSS, and RFS were 66%, 82%, and 80%, respectively. The status of the neck was not predictive of outcome (DSS 80% for N0 vs 82% for N+; p = .97). Lymphovascular invasion was an independent predictor of OS, DSS, and RFS on multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: Lymphovascular invasion but not pathological stage of the neck is an independent predictor of outcome in patients with tonsillar SCC. (c) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck, 2014
Preparation, characterization and antibacterial effects of eco-friendly gold nanorods
Purpose: To synthesize and characterize eco-friendly gold nanorods (Au-NRs) and to assess their effects against two bacterial strains.Methods: Synthesis of eco-friendly gold nanorods was done from an aqueous solution of chloroauric acid and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide by mixing Olea europaea fruit and Acacia nilotica husk extracts with the latter as a reducing agent. The synthesis was monitored by ultraviolet–visible (UV) spectrophotmetry and a zetasizer, while the morphology of the resulting nanorods was assessed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with an energy-dispersive spectrophotometer (EDS). The effect of the prepared eco-nanorods on growth of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria were investigated by agar diffusion method.Results: The synthesized Au-NRs were mostly rod-shaped, with mean size of 96 nm. They exhibited a potent antibacterial activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative microorganisms (Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus).Conclusion: The findings suggest that the nanoformulation of the biomaterial mix of Olea europaea fruit and Acacia nilotica husk extracts is a cost-effective, eco-friendly, and non-toxic synthesis of Au- NRs which has therpeautic potential.Keywords: Olea europaea, Acacia nilotica, Gold nanorods, Eco-friendly synthesis, Gram-positive and Gram-negative microorganism
Subjective response to antipsychotic treatment and compliance in schizophrenia. A naturalistic study comparing olanzapine, risperidone and haloperidol (EFESO Study)
BACKGROUND: In order to compare the effectiveness of different antipsychotic drugs in the treatment of schizophrenia it is very important to evaluate subjective response and compliance in patient cohorts treated according to routine clinical practice. METHOD: Outpatients with schizophrenia entered this prospective, naturalistic study when they received a new prescription for an antipsychotic drug. Treatment assignment was based on purely clinical criteria, as the study did not include any experimental intervention. Patients treated with olanzapine, risperidone or haloperidol were included in the analysis. Subjective response was measured using the 10-item version of the Drug Attitude Inventory (DAI-10), and treatment compliance was measured using a physician-rated 4 point categorical scale. RESULTS: A total of 2128 patients initiated treatment (as monotherapy) with olanzapine, 417 with risperidone, and 112 with haloperidol. Olanzapine-treated patients had significantly higher DAI-10 scores and significantly better treatment compliance compared to both risperidone- and haloperidol-treated patients. Risperidone-treated patients had a significantly higher DAI-10 score compared to haloperidol-treated patients. CONCLUSION: Subjective response and compliance were superior in olanzapine-treated patients, compared to patients treated with risperidone and haloperidol, in routine clinical practice. Differences in subjective response were explained largely, but not completely, by differences in incidence of EPS
Quest for Localized 4-D Black Holes in Brane Worlds
We investigate the possibility of obtaining localized black hole solutions in
brane worlds by introducing a dependence of the four-dimensional line--element
on the extra dimension. An analysis, performed for the cases of an empty bulk
and of a bulk containing either a scalar or a gauge field, reveals that no
conventional type of matter can support such a dependence. Considering a
particular ansatz for the five-dimensional line--element that corresponds to a
black hole solution with a ``decaying'' horizon, we determine the bulk
energy--momentum tensor capable of sustaining such a behaviour. It turns out
that an exotic, shell-like distribution of matter is required. For such
solutions, the black hole singularity is indeed localized near the brane and
the spacetime is well defined near the AdS horizon, in contrast to the
behaviour found in black string type solutions.Comment: 17 pages, RevTex, 3 figures, version to appear in Physical Review D,
comments and references added, typos correcte
Quasilocal Thermodynamics of Kerr and Kerr-anti-de Sitter Spacetimes and the AdS/CFT Correspondence
We consider the quasilocal thermodynamics of rotating black holes in
asymptotically flat and asymptotically anti de Sitter spacetimes. Using the
minimal number of intrinsic boundary counterterms inspired by the AdS/CFT
correspondence, we find that we are able to carry out an analysis of the
thermodynamics of these black holes for virtually all possible values of the
rotation parameter and cosmological constant that leave the quasilocal boundary
well-defined, going well beyond what is possible with background subtraction
methods. Specifically, we compute the quasilocal energy and angular
momentum for arbitrary values of the rotation, mass and cosmological
constant parameters for the 3+1 dimensional Kerr, Kerr-AdS black holes and 2+1
dimensional BTZ black hole. We perform a quasilocal stability analysis and find
phase behavior that is commensurate with previous analyses carried out at
infinity.Comment: Latex, 43 pages, 22 eps figures, several typos corrected, final
version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Improving Phase Change Memory Performance with Data Content Aware Access
A prominent characteristic of write operation in Phase-Change Memory (PCM) is
that its latency and energy are sensitive to the data to be written as well as
the content that is overwritten. We observe that overwriting unknown memory
content can incur significantly higher latency and energy compared to
overwriting known all-zeros or all-ones content. This is because all-zeros or
all-ones content is overwritten by programming the PCM cells only in one
direction, i.e., using either SET or RESET operations, not both. In this paper,
we propose data content aware PCM writes (DATACON), a new mechanism that
reduces the latency and energy of PCM writes by redirecting these requests to
overwrite memory locations containing all-zeros or all-ones. DATACON operates
in three steps. First, it estimates how much a PCM write access would benefit
from overwriting known content (e.g., all-zeros, or all-ones) by
comprehensively considering the number of set bits in the data to be written,
and the energy-latency trade-offs for SET and RESET operations in PCM. Second,
it translates the write address to a physical address within memory that
contains the best type of content to overwrite, and records this translation in
a table for future accesses. We exploit data access locality in workloads to
minimize the address translation overhead. Third, it re-initializes unused
memory locations with known all-zeros or all-ones content in a manner that does
not interfere with regular read and write accesses. DATACON overwrites unknown
content only when it is absolutely necessary to do so. We evaluate DATACON with
workloads from state-of-the-art machine learning applications, SPEC CPU2017,
and NAS Parallel Benchmarks. Results demonstrate that DATACON significantly
improves system performance and memory system energy consumption compared to
the best of performance-oriented state-of-the-art techniques.Comment: 18 pages, 21 figures, accepted at ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium
on Memory Management (ISMM
Kerr de Sitter Spacetimes in Various Dimension and dS/CFT Correspondence
We consider the Kerr-de Sitter (Kerr-dS) black hole in various dimensions.
Introducing a counterterm, we show that the total action of these spacetimes
are finite. We compute the masses and the angular momenta of Kerr-dS spaces
with one rotational parameter in four, five and seven dimensions. These
conserved charges are also computed for the case of Kerr-dS space with two
rotational parameters in five dimensions. Although the angular momentum density
due to the counterterm is nonzero, it gives a vanishing contribution to the
total angular momentum. We also find that the total angular momentum of the
spacetime is independent of the radius of the boundary for all cases, a fact
that is not true for the total mass of the system.Comment: 11 pages, no figure, reference added, the version to be published in
Phys. Rev. D6
Holography for Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theories from generalized dimensional reduction
We show that a class of Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton (EMD) theories are related
to higher dimensional AdS-Maxwell gravity via a dimensional reduction over
compact Einstein spaces combined with continuation in the dimension of the
compact space to non-integral values (`generalized dimensional reduction').
This relates (fairly complicated) black hole solutions of EMD theories to
simple black hole/brane solutions of AdS-Maxwell gravity and explains their
properties. The generalized dimensional reduction is used to infer the
holographic dictionary and the hydrodynamic behavior for this class of theories
from those of AdS. As a specific example, we analyze the case of a black brane
carrying a wave whose universal sector is described by gravity coupled to a
Maxwell field and two neutral scalars. At thermal equilibrium and finite
chemical potential the two operators dual to the bulk scalar fields acquire
expectation values characterizing the breaking of conformal and generalized
conformal invariance. We compute holographically the first order transport
coefficients (conductivity, shear and bulk viscosity) for this system.Comment: v2, Important additions: (1) discussion of the entropy current, (2)
postulated zeta/eta bound is generically violated. Some comments and
references added, typos corrected. 50 page
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