The Come Back Programme: a rehabilitation programme for patients with brain injury with psychosocial problems despite previous rehabilitatio

In 1994 the Come Back Programme (CBP) started in the rehabilitation centre, Groot Klimmendaal, in Arnhem, The Netherlands. The CBP is a rehabilitation programme for (young) adults with brain injury (BI) having problems with their psychosocial functioning despite having undergone a rehabilitation programme previously. The main goal of the CBP is to regain maximal independence in psychosocial functioning.The objectives of the study were to assess problems experienced after BI, despite having undergone a rehabilitation programme previously, and whether the CBP can improve psychosocial functioning. The study was retrospective, through investigating medical records and via a structured questionnaire sent to patients who participated in the CBP between 1994 and 1998 (n = 25). Follow-up was at least 1 year after the CBP. There was an 80% response (n = 20). The mean age at BI was 22 years. The patients had severe BI (mean duration of coma 4.7 weeks) and 17 had traumatic BI. Prior to the CBP negative consequences were seen on independence of living, employability, relationships and contact with friends. No or little effect was seen on contact with family and leisure activities. After the CBP, positive effects were found on employability and independence of living but not on premorbid levels. The effect on the other aspects were absent or not clear. Most patients wanted support at follow-up. The authors concluded that the CBP had a positive effect on independence of living and employability. A ‘second’ rehabilitation programme can be useful if psychosocial problems are present. Long-lasting support and structural control seem necessary and are recommended

Aspects of String-Gas Cosmology at Finite Temperature

We study string-gas cosmology in dilaton gravity, inspired by the fact that it naturally arises in a string theory context. Our main interest is the thermodynamical treatment of the string-gas and the resulting implications for the cosmology. Within an adiabatic approximation, thermodynamical equilibrium and a small, toroidal universe as initial conditions, we numerically solve the corresponding equations of motions in two different regimes describing the string-gas thermodynamics: (i) the Hagedorn regime, with a single scale factor, and (ii) an almost-radiation dominated regime, which includes the leading corrections due to the lightest Kaluza Klein and winding modes, with two scale factors. The scale factor in the Hagedorn regime exhibits very slow time evolution with nearly constant energy and negligible pressure. By contrast, in case (ii) we find interesting cosmological solutions where the large dimensions continue to expand and the small ones are kept undetectably small.Comment: 21 pages, 5 eps figure

The long-time dynamics of two hydrodynamically-coupled swimming cells

Swimming micro-organisms such as bacteria or spermatozoa are typically found in dense suspensions, and exhibit collective modes of locomotion qualitatively different from that displayed by isolated cells. In the dilute limit where fluid-mediated interactions can be treated rigorously, the long-time hydrodynamics of a collection of cells result from interactions with many other cells, and as such typically eludes an analytical approach. Here we consider the only case where such problem can be treated rigorously analytically, namely when the cells have spatially confined trajectories, such as the spermatozoa of some marine invertebrates. We consider two spherical cells swimming, when isolated, with arbitrary circular trajectories, and derive the long-time kinematics of their relative locomotion. We show that in the dilute limit where the cells are much further away than their size, and the size of their circular motion, a separation of time scale occurs between a fast (intrinsic) swimming time, and a slow time where hydrodynamic interactions lead to change in the relative position and orientation of the swimmers. We perform a multiple-scale analysis and derive the effective dynamical system - of dimension two - describing the long-time behavior of the pair of cells. We show that the system displays one type of equilibrium, and two types of rotational equilibrium, all of which are found to be unstable. A detailed mathematical analysis of the dynamical systems further allows us to show that only two cell-cell behaviors are possible in the limit of $t\to\infty$, either the cells are attracted to each other (possibly monotonically), or they are repelled (possibly monotonically as well), which we confirm with numerical computations

k-Essence, superluminal propagation, causality and emergent geometry

The k-essence theories admit in general the superluminal propagation of the perturbations on classical backgrounds. We show that in spite of the superluminal propagation the causal paradoxes do not arise in these theories and in this respect they are not less safe than General Relativity.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figure

Production of η′\eta\prime Mesons in the pp→ppη′pp \to pp\eta\prime Reaction at 3.67 GeV/c

The ratio of the total exclusive production cross sections for $\eta\prime$ and $\eta$ mesons has been measured in the $pp$ reaction at $p_{beam}=3.67$ GeV/c. The observed $\eta\prime/\eta$ ratio is $(0.83\pm{0.11}^{+0.23}_{-0.18})\times 10^{-2}$ from which the exclusive $\eta\prime$ meson production cross section is determined to be $(1.12\pm{0.15}^{+0.42}_{-0.31})\mu b$. Differential cross section distributions have been measured. Their shape is consistent with isotropic $\eta\prime$ meson production.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, accepted by Phys.Lett.

Possible Origin of Antimatter Regions in the Baryon Dominated Universe

We discuss the evolution of U(1) symmetric scalar field at the inflation epoch with a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone tilt revealing after the end of exponential expansion of the Universe. The U(1) symmetry is supposed to be associated with baryon charge. It is shown that quantum fluctuations lead in natural way to baryon dominated Universe with antibaryon excess regions. The range of parameters is calculated at which the fraction of Universe occupied by antimatter and the size of antimatter regions satisfy the observational constraints, survive to the modern time and lead to effects, accessible to experimental search for antimatter.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Selective quantum evolution of a qubit state due to continuous measurement

We consider a two-level quantum system (qubit) which is continuously measured by a detector. The information provided by the detector is taken into account to describe the evolution during a particular realization of measurement process. We discuss the Bayesian formalism for such ``selective'' evolution of an individual qubit and apply it to several solid-state setups. In particular, we show how to suppress the qubit decoherence using continuous measurement and the feedback loop.Comment: 15 pages (including 9 figures

Thermodynamical Stability of Hagedorn and Radiation Regimes in Closed String Gas Cosmology

In this paper, we investigate thermal equilibrium in string gas cosmology which is dominated by closed string.We consider two interesting regimes, Hagedorn and radiation regimes.We find that for short strings in small radius of Hagedorn regime very large amount of energy requested to have thermal equilibrium but for long strings in such system a few energy is sufficient to have thermal equilibrium. On the other hand in the large radius of Hagedorn regime, which pressure is not negligible, we obtain a relation between the energy and pressure in terms of cosmic time which is satisfied by thermal equilibrium. Then we discuss about radiation regime and find that in all cases there is thermal equilibrium.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures. Title changed and figures improved. Journal reference adde

Linear Collider Capabilities for Supersymmetry in Dark Matter Allowed Regions of the mSUGRA Model

Recent comparisons of minimal supergravity (mSUGRA) model predictions with WMAP measurements of the neutralino relic density point to preferred regions of model parameter space. We investigate the reach of linear colliders (LC) with $\sqrt{s}=0.5$ and 1 TeV for SUSY in the framework of the mSUGRA model. We find that LCs can cover the entire stau co-annihilation region provided \tan\beta \alt 30. In the hyperbolic branch/focus point (HB/FP) region of parameter space, specialized cuts are suggested to increase the reach in this important ``dark matter allowed'' area. In the case of the HB/FP region, the reach of a LC extends well past the reach of the CERN LHC. We examine a case study in the HB/FP region, and show that the MSSM parameters $\mu$ and $M_2$ can be sufficiently well-measured to demonstrate that one would indeed be in the HB/FP region, where the lightest chargino and neutralino have a substantial higgsino component.Comment: 29 pages, 15 EPS figures; updated version slightly modified to conform with published versio

NuSTAR J033202-2746.8: Direct Constraints on the Compton Reflection in a Heavily Obscured Quasar at z ≈ 2

We report Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) observations of NuSTAR J033202-2746.8, a heavily obscured, radio-loud quasar detected in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South, the deepest layer of the NuSTAR extragalactic survey (~400 ks, at its deepest). NuSTAR J033202-2746.8 is reliably detected by NuSTAR only at E > 8 keV and has a very flat spectral slope in the NuSTAR energy band ($\Gamma =0.55^{+0.62}_{-0.64}$; 3-30 keV). Combining the NuSTAR data with extremely deep observations by Chandra and XMM-Newton (4 Ms and 3 Ms, respectively), we constrain the broad-band X-ray spectrum of NuSTAR J033202-2746.8, indicating that this source is a heavily obscured quasar ($N_{\rm H}=5.6^{+0.9}_{-0.8}\times 10^{23}$ cm–2) with luminosity L 10-40 keV ≈ 6.4 × 1044 erg s–1. Although existing optical and near-infrared (near-IR) data, as well as follow-up spectroscopy with the Keck and VLT telescopes, failed to provide a secure redshift identification for NuSTAR J033202-2746.8, we reliably constrain the redshift z = 2.00 ± 0.04 from the X-ray spectral features (primarily from the iron K edge). The NuSTAR spectrum shows a significant reflection component ($R=0.55^{+0.44}_{-0.37}$), which was not constrained by previous analyses of Chandra and XMM-Newton data alone. The measured reflection fraction is higher than the R ~ 0 typically observed in bright radio-loud quasars such as NuSTAR J033202-2746.8, which has L 1.4 GHz ≈ 1027 W Hz–1. Constraining the spectral shape of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), including bright quasars, is very important for understanding the AGN population, and can have a strong impact on the modeling of the X-ray background. Our results show the importance of NuSTAR in investigating the broad-band spectral properties of quasars out to high redshift