217 research outputs found
Magnetic domain walls displacement : automotion vs. spin-transfer torque
The magnetization dynamics equation predicts that a domain wall that changes
structure should undergo a displacement by itself - automotion - due to the
relaxation of the linear momentum that is associated with the wall structure.
We experimentally demonstrate this effect in soft nanostrips,transforming under
spin transfer torque a metastable asymmetric transverse wall into a vortex
wall. Displacements more than three times as large as under spin transfer
torque only are measured for 1~ns pulses. The results are explained by
analytical and numerical micromagnetics. Their relevance to domain wall motion
under spin transfer torque is emphasized
Therapy modifies cystine kidney stones at the macroscopic scale. Do such alterations exist at the mesoscopic and nanometre scale?
International audienceWith an incidence of 1:7000 births, cystinuria, the most frequent cause of stone formation among genetic diseases, represents a major medical problem. Twentyfive cystine stones randomly selected from cystinuric patients were investigated. From a crystallographic point of view, cystine stones are composed of micrometre size crystallites, which are made up of an aggregation of nanocrystals. Through scanning electron microscopy, the morphology and size of the crystallites have been described, while the size of the nanocrystals was investigated by means of powder neutron diffraction. Powder neutron diffraction analysis and/or scanning electron microscopy examination of cystine stones provide evidence that usual alkalinization by sodium bicarbonate associated with high diuresis significantly reduces the size of both nanocrystals and crystallites, while for other treatments, including alkalinizing drugs and thiol derivatives, the data suggest mainly changes in the topology of crystallites. Alkalinization with sodium bicarbonate affects cystine kidney stones at the mesoscopic and nanoscopic scales, while other medical treatments only alter their surface. Such an approach may help to assess the interaction between drugs and cystine stones in cystinuric patients
Type 2 diabetes and uric acid stones: A powder neutron diffraction investigation
International audienceBackground: Recent epidemiologic investigations have identified an association between type 2 diabetes and uric acid kidney stones. This association was more apparent in women than in men. However, male patients are more prone than women to form uric acid stones in upper and lower urinary tract. In addition, uric acid stone morphology may be different according to stone location. Finally, it was shown that uric acid stone prevalence is increasing with the patientâs age. Aim of the study: To compare uric acid crystal size as determined by powder neutron diffraction with clinical data and the gender of patients. Material and methods: Uric acid stones from 43 patients (24 males, 19 females) identified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were investigated using Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy and Powder neutron diffraction.Results: Uric acid anhydrous was the main crystalline form of the stones. The mean size of the crystals was 91.3 ± 28.5 nm. No significant differences were found regarding uric acid crystal size in the stones by comparison to the stone location or the patientâs age. However, particle sizes of uric acid kidney stones were significantly different between male and female patients (84.7 ± 5.3 vs. 140.2 ± 6.7 nm, p < 0.000003) in the absence of diabetes mellitus. Interestingly, when type 2 diabetes appeared, this structural difference between male and female vanished (76.1 ± 3.9 vs. 78.8 ± 4.2 nm, not significant). Thus, the complete set of structural data is in line with observations regarding epidemiological data. Some explanations based on supersaturation are discussed
Cholinergic system changes in Parkinson's disease: emerging therapeutic approaches
In patients with Parkinson's disease, heterogeneous cholinergic system changes can occur in different brain regions. These changes correlate with a range of clinical features, both motor and non-motor, that are refractory to dopaminergic therapy, and can be conceptualised within a systems-level framework in which nodal deficits can produce circuit dysfunctions. The topographies of cholinergic changes overlap with neural circuitries involved in sleep and cognitive, motor, visuo-auditory perceptual, and autonomic functions. Cholinergic deficits within cognition network hubs predict cognitive deficits better than do total brain cholinergic changes. Postural instability and gait difficulties are associated with cholinergic system changes in thalamic, caudate, limbic, neocortical, and cerebellar nodes. Cholinergic system deficits can involve also peripheral organs. Hypercholinergic activity of mesopontine cholinergic neurons in people with isolated rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behaviour disorder, as well as in the hippocampi of cognitively normal patients with Parkinson's disease, suggests early compensation during the prodromal and early stages of Parkinson's disease. Novel pharmacological and neurostimulation approaches could target the cholinergic system to treat motor and non-motor features of Parkinson's disease
Toroidal automorphic forms, Waldspurger periods and double Dirichlet series
The space of toroidal automorphic forms was introduced by Zagier in the
1970s: a GL_2-automorphic form is toroidal if it has vanishing constant Fourier
coefficients along all embedded non-split tori. The interest in this space
stems (amongst others) from the fact that an Eisenstein series of weight s is
toroidal for a given torus precisely if s is a non-trivial zero of the zeta
function of the quadratic field corresponding to the torus.
In this paper, we study the structure of the space of toroidal automorphic
forms for an arbitrary number field F. We prove that it decomposes into a space
spanned by all derivatives up to order n-1 of an Eisenstein series of weight s
and class group character omega precisely if s is a zero of order n of the
L-series corresponding to omega at s, and a space consisting of exactly those
cusp forms the central value of whose L-series is zero.
The proofs are based on an identity of Hecke for toroidal integrals of
Eisenstein series and a result of Waldspurger about toroidal integrals of cusp
forms combined with non-vanishing results for twists of L-series proven by the
method of double Dirichlet series.Comment: 14 page
Small representations of finite classical groups
Finite group theorists have established many formulas that express
interesting properties of a finite group in terms of sums of characters of the
group. An obstacle to applying these formulas is lack of control over the
dimensions of representations of the group. In particular, the representations
of small dimensions tend to contribute the largest terms to these sums, so a
systematic knowledge of these small representations could lead to proofs of
important conjectures which are currently out of reach. Despite the
classification by Lusztig of the irreducible representations of finite groups
of Lie type, it seems that this aspect remains obscure. In this note we develop
a language which seems to be adequate for the description of the "small"
representations of finite classical groups and puts in the forefront the notion
of rank of a representation. We describe a method, the "eta correspondence", to
construct small representations, and we conjecture that our construction is
exhaustive. We also give a strong estimate on the dimension of small
representations in terms of their rank. For the sake of clarity, in this note
we describe in detail only the case of the finite symplectic groups.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publications in the proceedings of
the conference on the occasion of Roger Howe's 70th birthday (1-5 June 2015,
Yale University, New Haven, CT
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