The Add-On Effect of Solifenacin for Patients with Remaining Overactive Bladder after Treatment with Tamsulosin for Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms Suggestive of Benign Prostatic Obstruction

Objectives. To investigate the add-on effect of solifenacin for Japanese men with remaining overactive bladder (OAB) symptoms after tamsulosin monotherapy for lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) suggestive of benign prostatic obstruction (BPO) in real-life clinical practice. Methods. Patients aged ≥ 50 having remaining OAB symptoms (≥ 3 of OAB symptom score (OABSS) with ≥2 of urgency score) after at least 4 weeks treatment by 0.2 mg of tamsulosin for BPO/LUTS received 2.5 or 5.0 mg of solifenacin for 12 weeks. The International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), QOL index and OABSS, maximum flow rate (Qmax) and postvoid residual urine volume (PVR) were determined. Results. A total of 48 patients (mean age 72.5 years) completed the study. There were significant improvement in IPSS (15.1 to 11.2) and QOL index (4.2 to 3.0) by add-on of solifenacin. Although the IPSS storage symptom score was significantly improved, there were no changes observed in the IPSS voiding symptom score. The OABSS showed significant improvement (8.0 to 4.8). No changes were observed in Qmax and PVR. Conclusions. Under the supervision of an experienced urologist, the additional administration of solifenacin to patients with BPO/LUTS treated with tamsulosin, is effective in controlling remaining OAB symptoms

One-Loop Corrections to the S and T Parameters in a Three Site Higgsless Model

In this paper we compute the the one-loop chiral logarithmic corrections to the S and T parameters in a highly deconstructed Higgsless model with only three sites. In addition to the electroweak gauge bosons, this model contains a single extra triplet of vector states (which we denote \rho^{\pm} and \rho^0), rather than an infinite tower of "KK" modes. We compute the corrections to S and T in 'tHooft-Feynman gauge, including the ghost, unphysical Goldstone-boson, and appropriate "pinch" contributions required to obtain gauge-invariant results for the one-loop self-energy functions. We demonstrate that the chiral-logarithmic corrections naturally separate into two parts, a model-independent part arising from scaling below the \rho mass, which has the same form as the large Higgs-mass dependence of the S or T parameter in the standard model, and a second model-dependent contribution arising from scaling between the \rho mass and the cutoff of the model. The form of the universal part of the one-loop result allows us to correctly interpret the phenomenologically derived limits on the S and T parameters (which depend on a "reference" Higgs-boson mass) in this three-site Higgsless model. Higgsless models may be viewed as dual to models of dynamical symmetry breaking akin to "walking technicolor", and in these terms our calculation is the first to compute the subleading 1/N corrections to the S and T parameters. We also discuss the reduction of the model to the ``two-site'' model, which is the usual electroweak chiral lagrangian, noting the ``non-decoupling'' contributions present in the limit as M_\rho goes to infinity.Comment: 58 pages; uses JHEP and axodraw. Extensively corrected to incorporate consistent perturbative expansion, additional pinch contributions, and running of delocalization parameter. Footnotes adde

Intake of Radionuclides in the Trees of Fukushima Forests 4. Binding of Radioiodine to Xyloglucan

The 1, 4-linked glucans such as xyloglucan and amylose are known to form a complex with iodine/iodide ions and to also be precipitated with CaCl2 in the presence of iodine. Here, we show that iodine gas could be specifically incorporated into xyloglucan. Furthermore, we show that [125I]I2 gas is, over time, incorporated at high levels into the entire outer surface of poplar seedlings but that spraying seedlings with abscisic acid to close stomata decreases the incorporation of the gas. There was less incorporation of the gas in a transgenic poplar overexpressing xyloglucanase at the early stages when compared with a wild type. This shows that xyloglucan serves as a key absorber of iodine gas into a plant body. After individual leaves of cultured seedlings were exposed to the gas for 30 min, no radioiodine was emitted from those leaves over the following two weeks, indicating that no turnover occurs in radioiodine once it is bound to the polysaccharides in plant tissues. We conclude that forest trees could serve as one of the largest enormous capture systems for the radioiodine fallout following the nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima

Gauged Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with extra dimensions

We investigate phase structure of the D (> 4)-dimensional gauged Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with $\delta(=D-4)$ extra dimensions compactified on TeV scale, based on the improved ladder Schwinger-Dyson (SD) equation in the bulk. We assume that the bulk running gauge coupling in the SD equation for the SU(N_c) gauge theory with N_f massless flavors is given by the truncated Kaluza-Klein effective theory and hence has a nontrivial ultraviolet fixed point (UVFP). We find the critical line in the parameter space of two couplings, the gauge coupling and the four-fermion coupling, which is similar to that of the gauged NJL model with fixed (walking) gauge coupling in four dimensions. It is shown that in the presence of such walking gauge interactions the four-fermion interactions become ``nontrivial'' even in higher dimensions, similarly to the four-dimensional gauged NJL model. Such a nontriviality holds only in the restricted region of the critical line (``nontrivial window'') with the gauge coupling larger than a non-vanishing value (``marginal triviality (MT)'' point), in contrast to the four-dimensional case where such a nontriviality holds for all regions of the critical line except for the pure NJL point. In the nontrivial window the renormalized effective potential yields a nontrivial interaction which is conformal invariant. The exisitence of the nontrivial window implies ``cutoff insensitivity'' of the physics prediction in spite of the ultraviolet dominance of the dynamics. In the formal limit D -> 4, the nontrivial window coincides with the known condition of the nontriviality of the four-dimensional gauged NJL model, $9/(2N_c) < N_f - N_c < 9/2 N_c$.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, references added, to appear in Phys.Rev.D. The title is changed in PR

Bifurcations of a driven granular system under gravity

Molecular dynamics study on the granular bifurcation in a simple model is presented. The model consists of hard disks, which undergo inelastic collisions; the system is under the uniform external gravity and is driven by the heat bath. The competition between the two effects, namely, the gravitational force and the heat bath, is carefully studied. We found that the system shows three phases, namely, the condensed phase, locally fluidized phase, and granular turbulent phase, upon increasing the external control parameter. We conclude that the transition from the condensed phase to the locally fluidized phase is distinguished by the existence of fluidized holes, and the transition from the locally fluidized phase to the granular turbulent phase is understood by the destabilization transition of the fluidized holes due to mutual interference.Comment: 35 pages, 17 figures, to be published in PR

Topped MAC with extra dimensions?

We perform the most attractive channel (MAC) analysis in the top mode standard model with TeV-scale extra dimensions, where the standard model gauge bosons and the third generation of quarks and leptons are put in D(=6,8,10,...) dimensions. In such a model, bulk gauge couplings rapidly grow in the ultraviolet region. In order to make the scenario viable, only the attractive force of the top condensate should exceed the critical coupling, while other channels such as the bottom and tau condensates should not. We then find that the top condensate can be the MAC for D=8, whereas the tau condensation is favored for D=6. The analysis for D=10 strongly depends on the regularization scheme. We predict masses of the top (m_t) and the Higgs (m_H), m_t=172-175 GeV and m_H=176-188 GeV for D=8, based on the renormalization group for the top Yukawa and Higgs quartic couplings with the compositeness conditions at the scale where the bulk top condenses. The Higgs boson in such a characteristic mass range will be immediately discovered in H -> WW^(*)/ZZ^(*) once the LHC starts.Comment: REVTEX4, 24 pages, 21 figures, to appear in PRD. The title is changed in PRD. One reference added, typos correcte

Shear Viscosity of a Hot Pion Gas

The shear viscosity of an interacting pion gas is studied using the Kubo formalism as a microscopic description of thermal systems close to global equilibrium. We implement the skeleton expansion in order to approximate the retarded correlator of the viscous part of the energy-momentum tensor. After exploring this in $g\phi^4$ theory we show how the skeleton expansion can be consistently applied to pions in chiral perturbation theory. The shear viscosity $\eta$ is determined by the spectral width, or equivalently, the mean free path of pions in the heat bath. We derive a new analytical result for the mean free path which is well-conditioned for numerical evaluation and discuss the temperature and pion-mass dependence of the mean free path and the shear viscosity. The ratio $\eta/s$ of the interacting pion gas exceeds the lower bound $1/4\pi$ from AdS/CFT correspondence.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Revision includes additional Appendix B. Matches published versio