Use of the painDETECT tool in rheumatoid arthritis suggests neuropathic and sensitization components in pain reporting.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory autoimmune condition typified by systemic inflammation targeted toward synovial joints. Inhibition of proinflammatory networks by disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, eg, methotrexate and biologic therapies, including tumor necrosis factor-α inhibitors, often leads to suppression of disease activity observed at the clinical level. However, despite the era of widespread use of disease-modifying treatments, there remain significant groups of patients who continue to experience pain. Our study formulated a pain assessment tool in the arthritis clinic to assess feasibility of measurements including the visual analog scale (VAS) and painDETECT to assess multimodal features of pain in people with established RA (n=100). Clinical measures of disease activity (Disease Activity Score in 28 Joints [DAS28]) were also recorded. Our data showed that despite the majority of subjects on at least one disease-modifying agent, the majority of patients reported severe pain (54%) by VAS, despite well-controlled clinical disease, with mean DAS28 2.07±0.9. Using the painDETECT questionnaire, 67% of patients had unlikely neuropathic pain. A significant proportion of subjects (28%) had possible neuropathic pain and 5% had features of likely neuropathic pain by painDETECT scoring. We found a positive correlation between VAS and painDETECT (R (2)=0.757). Of note, the group who had likely or probable neuropathic pain also showed significantly increased pain reporting by VAS (P30) also had statistically higher proportions of pain reporting (VAS 89.0±0.7 mm) compared with subjects who had a normal body mass index (VAS 45.2±21.8 mm), P<0.05. Our findings suggest that multimodal features of pain perception exist in RA, including neuropathic and sensitization elements, perhaps explaining why a subgroup of people with RA continue to experience ongoing pain, despite their apparent suppression of inflammation

Possible influence of the two string events on the hadron formation in a nuclear environment

One of the basic assumptions of the string model is that as a result of a DIS in nucleus a single string arises, which then breaks into hadrons. However the pomeron exchange considered in this work, leads to the production of two strings in the one event. The hadrons produced in these events have smaller formation lengths, than those with the same energy produced in the single string events. As a consequence, they undergo more substantial absorption in the nuclear matter

Hard diffraction in hadron--hadron interactions and in photoproduction

Hard single diffractive processes are studied within the framework of the triple--Pomeron approximation. Using a Pomeron structure function motivated by Regge--theory we obtain parton distribution functions which do not obey momentum sum rule. Based on Regge-- factorization cross sections for hard diffraction are calculated. Furthermore, the model is applied to hard diffractive particle production in photoproduction and in $p\bar{p}$ interactions.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, 13 uuencoded figure

Sequential Extensions of Causal and Evidential Decision Theory

Moving beyond the dualistic view in AI where agent and environment are separated incurs new challenges for decision making, as calculation of expected utility is no longer straightforward. The non-dualistic decision theory literature is split between causal decision theory and evidential decision theory. We extend these decision algorithms to the sequential setting where the agent alternates between taking actions and observing their consequences. We find that evidential decision theory has two natural extensions while causal decision theory only has one.Comment: ADT 201

Investigation of octupole vibrational states in 150Nd via inelastic proton scattering (p,p'g)

Octupole vibrational states were studied in the nucleus $^{150}\mathrm{Nd}$ via inelastic proton scattering with \unit[10.9]{MeV} protons which are an excellent probe to excite natural parity states. For the first time in $^{150}\mathrm{Nd}$, both the scattered protons and the $\gamma$ rays were detected in coincidence giving the possibility to measure branching ratios in detail. Using the coincidence technique, the $B(E1)$ ratios of the decaying transitions for 10 octupole vibrational states and other negative-parity states to the yrast band were determined and compared to the Alaga rule. The positive and negative-parity states revealed by this experiment are compared with Interacting Boson Approximation (IBA) calculations performed in the (spdf) boson space. The calculations are found to be in good agreement with the experimental data, both for positive and negative-parity states

Strain hardening behavior of lightweight hybrid polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber reinforced cement composites

Experimental results on the strain hardening and multiple cracking behaviors of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber reinforced cementitious composites under bending are reported in this paper. Different hybrid combinations of PVA fibers with different lengths and volume fractions are considered to reinforce the mortar matrix. Among different hybrid combinations, the composite containing 2% thicker PVA fibers of 12 mm length and 1% thinner PVA fibers of 6 mm length and the composite containing 2% thicker PVA fibers of 24 mm length and 1% thinner PVA fibers of 6 mm length showed the best performance in terms of highest ultimate load, largest CMOD (crack mouth opening displacement) at peak load and multiple cracking behavior. The effects of four types of light weight sands on the strain hardening and multiple cracking behavior of hybrid fiber composites are also evaluated in this study. It has been observed that the ultimate load and CMOD at peak load for all light weight hybrid fiber composites are almost the same irrespective of volume fractions of light weight sand. The composites containing finer light weight sands exhibited higher ultimate load than those containing coarser light weight sands. It is also observed that the hybrid fiber composite containing normal silica sand exhibited higher ultimate load than the composites with light weight sands

Neutrino Experiments: Status, Recent Progress, and Prospects

Neutrino physics has seen an explosion of activity and new results in the last decade. In this report the current state of the field is summarized, with a particular focus on progress in the last two years. Prospects for the near term (roughly 5 years) are also described.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, proceedings of plenary talk at EPS HEP 2007 Conference, Manchester, UK. Updated with citation added to Figure 1

Nonlinear kT factorization for Forward Dijets in DIS off Nuclei in the Saturation Regime

We develop the QCD description of the breakup of photons into forward dijets in small-x deep inelastic scattering off nuclei in the saturation regime. Based on the color dipole approach, we derive a multiple scattering expansion for intranuclear distortions of the jet-jet transverse momentum spectrum. A special attention is paid to the non-Abelian aspects of the propagation of color dipoles in a nuclear medium. We report a nonlinear $k_{\perp}$-factorization formula for the breakup of photons into dijets in terms of the collective Weizs\"acker-Williams (WW) glue of nuclei as defined in ref. \cite{Saturation,NSSdijet}. For hard dijets with the transverse momenta above the saturation scale the azimuthal decorrelation (acoplanarity) momentum is of the order of the nuclear saturation momentum QA. For minijets with the transverse momentum below the saturation scale the nonlinear kT-factorization predicts a complete disappearance of the jet-jet correlation. We comment on a possible relevance of the nuclear decorrelation of jets to the experimental data from the STAR-RHIC Collaboration.Comment: 40 pages, 7 figure

Diffractive deeply inelastic scattering of hadronic states with small transverse size

Diffractive deeply inelastic scattering from a hadron is described in terms of diffractive quark and gluon distributions. If the transverse size of the hadronic state is sufficiently small, these distributions are calculable using perturbation theory. We present such a calculation and discuss the underlying dynamics. We comment on the relation between this dynamics and the pattern of scaling violation observed in the hard diffraction of large-size states at HERA.Comment: 8 pages including 3 figures, REVTE

Energy Dependence of the Contribution of Pion Exchange to Large-Rapidity-Gap Events in Deep Inelastic Scattering

We study the energy dependence of the contribution of pion exchange to large-rapidity-gap events in deep inelastic scattering. The results show that this contribution can be quite significant at low energy and that the LRG events observed by E665 collaboration in \mu Xe and \mu D interactions at 490 $GeV$ can be reasonably well described in terms of meson exchange. We also show that the distribution of the maximum rapidity for all hadrons is quite different from that for charged hadrons only and that the former exhibits also shoulder-like structure for events at 490 $GeV$ similar to that at HERA.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, Phys. Rev. D (in press