440 research outputs found
Undirected Graphs of Entanglement Two
Entanglement is a complexity measure of directed graphs that origins in fixed
point theory. This measure has shown its use in designing efficient algorithms
to verify logical properties of transition systems. We are interested in the
problem of deciding whether a graph has entanglement at most k. As this measure
is defined by means of games, game theoretic ideas naturally lead to design
polynomial algorithms that, for fixed k, decide the problem. Known
characterizations of directed graphs of entanglement at most 1 lead, for k = 1,
to design even faster algorithms. In this paper we present an explicit
characterization of undirected graphs of entanglement at most 2. With such a
characterization at hand, we devise a linear time algorithm to decide whether
an undirected graph has this property
Changes in antibiotic use in Dutch hospitals over a six-year period: 1997 to 2002
OBJECTIVE: To analyse trends in antibiotic use in Dutch hospitals over the
period 1997 to 2002. METHODS: Data on the use of antibiotics and hospital
resource indicators were obtained by distributing a questionnaire to all
Dutch hospital pharmacies. Antibiotic use was expressed as the number of
defined daily doses (DDD) per 100 patient-days and as DDD per 100
admissions. RESULTS: Between 1997 and 2002, the mean length of stay
decreased by 18%. The mean number of admissions remained almost constant.
Total antibiotic use significantly increased by 24%, from 47.2 in 1997 to
58.5 DDD per 100 patient-days in 2002 (p<0.01), whereas expressed as DDD
per admissions it remained constant. Antibiotic use varied greatly between
the hospitals. Moreover, the mean number of DDD per hospital of
amoxicillin with clavulanic acid, clarithromycin, cefazolin, clindamycin
and ciprofloxacin increased by 16, 38, 39, 50 and 52%, respectively. Total
antibiotic use was higher in university hospitals than in general
hospitals. CONCLUSIONS: Between 1997 and 2002, patients hospitalised in
the Netherlands did not receive more antibiotics but, since they remained
in the hospital for fewer days, the number of DDD per 100 patient-days
increased. For macrolides, lincosamides and fluoroquinolones increases in
both DDD per 100 patient-days and in DDD per 100 admissions were observed.
It is arguable whether these trends result in an increase in selection
pressure towards resistance in the hospitals. Continuous surveillance of
antibiotic use and resistance is warranted to maintain efficacy and safety
of antibiotic treatment
Microthyriaceae sp., an endophytic fungus
In screening for natural products with antiparasitic activity, an endophytic fungus, strain F2611, isolated from above-ground tissue of the tropical grass Paspalum conjugatum (Poaceae) in Panama, was chosen for bioactive principle elucidation. Cultivation on malt extract agar (MEA) followed by bioassayguided chromatographic fractionation of the extract led to the isolation of the new polyketide integrasone B (1) and two known mycotoxins, sterigmatocystin (2) and secosterigmatocystin (3). Sterigmatocystin (2) was found to be the main antiparasitic compound in the fermentation extract of this fungus, possessing potent and selective antiparasitic activity against Trypanosoma cruzi, the cause of Chagas disease, with an IC50 value of 0 13 lmol l 1. Compounds 2 and 3 showed high cytotoxicity against Vero cells (IC50 of 0 06 and 0 97 lmol l 1, respectively). The new natural product integrasone B (1), which was co-purified from the active fractions, constitutes the second report of a natural product possessing an epoxyquinone with a lactone ring and exhibited no significant biological activity. Strain F2611 represents a previously undescribed taxon within the Microthyriaceae (Dothideomycetes, AscomycotaIn screening for natural products with antiparasitic activity, an endophytic fungus, strain F2611, isolated from above-ground tissue of the tropical grass Paspalum conjugatum (Poaceae) in Panama, was chosen for bioactive principle elucidation. Cultivation on malt extract agar (MEA) followed by bioassayguided chromatographic fractionation of the extract led to the isolation of the new polyketide integrasone B (1) and two known mycotoxins, sterigmatocystin (2) and secosterigmatocystin (3). Sterigmatocystin (2) was found to be the main antiparasitic compound in the fermentation extract of this fungus, possessing potent and selective antiparasitic activity against Trypanosoma cruzi, the cause of Chagas disease, with an IC50 value of 0 13 lmol l 1. Compounds 2 and 3 showed high cytotoxicity against Vero cells (IC50 of 0 06 and 0 97 lmol l 1, respectively). The new natural product integrasone B (1), which was co-purified from the active fractions, constitutes the second report of a natural product possessing an epoxyquinone with a lactone ring and exhibited no significant biological activity. Strain F2611 represents a previously undescribed taxon within the Microthyriaceae (Dothideomycetes, AscomycotaLaboratory of Tropical Bioorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Natural Exact Sciences and Technology, University of Panama, Panama City, Republic of Panama
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama City, Republic of Panama
Centro de Biodiversidade, Gen omica Integrativa e Funcional (BioFIG), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ci^encias, Edif ıcio ICAT/TecLabs, Campus da FCUL, Campo Grande, Lisboa, Portugal
Institute for Advanced Scientific Investigation and High Technology Services, National Secretariat of Science, Technology, and Innovation, City of Knowledge, Panama City, Republic of Panama
School of Plant Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, US
Superfluid toroidal currents in atomic condensates
The dynamics of toroidal condensates in the presence of condensate flow and
dipole perturbation have been investigated. The Bogoliubov spectrum of
condensate is calculated for an oblate torus using a discrete-variable
representation and a spectral method to high accuracy. The transition from
spheroidal to toroidal geometry of the trap displaces the energy levels into
narrow bands. The lowest-order acoustic modes are quantized with the dispersion
relation with . A condensate
with toroidal current splits the co-rotating and
counter-rotating pair by the amount: . Radial dipole excitations are the lowest energy dissipation modes.
For highly occupied condensates the nonlinearity creates an asymmetric mix of
dipole circulation and nonlinear shifts in the spectrum of excitations so that
the center of mass circulates around the axis of symmetry of the trap. We
outline an experimental method to study these excitations.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
An integral method for solving nonlinear eigenvalue problems
We propose a numerical method for computing all eigenvalues (and the
corresponding eigenvectors) of a nonlinear holomorphic eigenvalue problem that
lie within a given contour in the complex plane. The method uses complex
integrals of the resolvent operator, applied to at least column vectors,
where is the number of eigenvalues inside the contour. The theorem of
Keldysh is employed to show that the original nonlinear eigenvalue problem
reduces to a linear eigenvalue problem of dimension .
No initial approximations of eigenvalues and eigenvectors are needed. The
method is particularly suitable for moderately large eigenvalue problems where
is much smaller than the matrix dimension. We also give an extension of the
method to the case where is larger than the matrix dimension. The
quadrature errors caused by the trapezoid sum are discussed for the case of
analytic closed contours. Using well known techniques it is shown that the
error decays exponentially with an exponent given by the product of the number
of quadrature points and the minimal distance of the eigenvalues to the
contour
-Strands
A -strand is a map for a Lie
group that follows from Hamilton's principle for a certain class of
-invariant Lagrangians. The SO(3)-strand is the -strand version of the
rigid body equation and it may be regarded physically as a continuous spin
chain. Here, -strand dynamics for ellipsoidal rotations is derived as
an Euler-Poincar\'e system for a certain class of variations and recast as a
Lie-Poisson system for coadjoint flow with the same Hamiltonian structure as
for a perfect complex fluid. For a special Hamiltonian, the -strand is
mapped into a completely integrable generalization of the classical chiral
model for the SO(3)-strand. Analogous results are obtained for the
-strand. The -strand is the -strand version of the
Bloch-Iserles ordinary differential equation, whose solutions exhibit dynamical
sorting. Numerical solutions show nonlinear interactions of coherent wave-like
solutions in both cases. -strand equations on the
diffeomorphism group are also introduced and shown
to admit solutions with singular support (e.g., peakons).Comment: 35 pages, 5 figures, 3rd version. To appear in J Nonlin Sc
Orbital stability: analysis meets geometry
We present an introduction to the orbital stability of relative equilibria of
Hamiltonian dynamical systems on (finite and infinite dimensional) Banach
spaces. A convenient formulation of the theory of Hamiltonian dynamics with
symmetry and the corresponding momentum maps is proposed that allows us to
highlight the interplay between (symplectic) geometry and (functional) analysis
in the proofs of orbital stability of relative equilibria via the so-called
energy-momentum method. The theory is illustrated with examples from finite
dimensional systems, as well as from Hamiltonian PDE's, such as solitons,
standing and plane waves for the nonlinear Schr{\"o}dinger equation, for the
wave equation, and for the Manakov system
Neutrinoless double-beta decay and seesaw mechanism
From the standard seesaw mechanism of neutrino mass generation, which is
based on the assumption that the lepton number is violated at a large
(~10exp(+15) GeV) scale, follows that the neutrinoless double-beta decay is
ruled by the Majorana neutrino mass mechanism. Within this notion, for the
inverted neutrino-mass hierarchy we derive allowed ranges of half-lives of the
neutrinoless double-beta decay for nuclei of experimental interest with
different sets of nuclear matrix elements. The present-day results of the
calculation of the neutrinoless double-beta decay nuclear matrix elements are
briefly discussed. We argue that if neutrinoless double-beta decay will be
observed in future experiments sensitive to the effective Majorana mass in the
inverted mass hierarchy region, a comparison of the derived ranges with
measured half-lives will allow us to probe the standard seesaw mechanism
assuming that future cosmological data will establish the sum of neutrino
masses to be about 0.2 eV.Comment: Some changes in sections I, II, IV, and V; two new figures;
additional reference
A mathematical framework for critical transitions: normal forms, variance and applications
Critical transitions occur in a wide variety of applications including
mathematical biology, climate change, human physiology and economics. Therefore
it is highly desirable to find early-warning signs. We show that it is possible
to classify critical transitions by using bifurcation theory and normal forms
in the singular limit. Based on this elementary classification, we analyze
stochastic fluctuations and calculate scaling laws of the variance of
stochastic sample paths near critical transitions for fast subsystem
bifurcations up to codimension two. The theory is applied to several models:
the Stommel-Cessi box model for the thermohaline circulation from geoscience,
an epidemic-spreading model on an adaptive network, an activator-inhibitor
switch from systems biology, a predator-prey system from ecology and to the
Euler buckling problem from classical mechanics. For the Stommel-Cessi model we
compare different detrending techniques to calculate early-warning signs. In
the epidemics model we show that link densities could be better variables for
prediction than population densities. The activator-inhibitor switch
demonstrates effects in three time-scale systems and points out that excitable
cells and molecular units have information for subthreshold prediction. In the
predator-prey model explosive population growth near a codimension two
bifurcation is investigated and we show that early-warnings from normal forms
can be misleading in this context. In the biomechanical model we demonstrate
that early-warning signs for buckling depend crucially on the control strategy
near the instability which illustrates the effect of multiplicative noise.Comment: minor corrections to previous versio
Critical exponents and equation of state of the three-dimensional Heisenberg universality class
We improve the theoretical estimates of the critical exponents for the
three-dimensional Heisenberg universality class. We find gamma=1.3960(9),
nu=0.7112(5), eta=0.0375(5), alpha=-0.1336(15), beta=0.3689(3), and
delta=4.783(3). We consider an improved lattice phi^4 Hamiltonian with
suppressed leading scaling corrections. Our results are obtained by combining
Monte Carlo simulations based on finite-size scaling methods and
high-temperature expansions. The critical exponents are computed from
high-temperature expansions specialized to the phi^4 improved model. By the
same technique we determine the coefficients of the small-magnetization
expansion of the equation of state. This expansion is extended analytically by
means of approximate parametric representations, obtaining the equation of
state in the whole critical region. We also determine a number of universal
amplitude ratios.Comment: 40 pages, final version. In publication in Phys. Rev.
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