198 research outputs found
Development of a motorized cryovalve for the control of superfluid liquid helium
Recent advances in the technology of infrared detectors have made possible a wide range of scientific measurements and investigations. One of the requirements for the use of sensitive IR detectors is that the entire instrument be cooled to temperatures approaching absolute zero. The cryogenic cooling system for these instruments is commonly designed as a large dewar containing liquid helium which completely surrounds the apparatus. Thus, there is a need for a remotely controlled, motorized cryovalve that is simple, reliable, and compact and can operate over extended periods of time in cryo-vac conditions. The design, development, and test of a motorized cryovalve with application to a variety of cryogenic systems currently under development is described
Cellular automata on regular rooted trees
We study cellular automata on regular rooted trees. This includes the
characterization of sofic tree shifts in terms of unrestricted Rabin automata
and the decidability of the surjectivity problem for cellular automata between
sofic tree shifts
The multiplicative property characterizes and norms
We show that norms are characterized as the unique norms which are
both invariant under coordinate permutation and multiplicative with respect to
tensor products. Similarly, the norms are the unique
rearrangement-invariant norms on a probability space such that for every pair of independent random variables. Our
proof relies on Cram\'er's large deviation theorem.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur
Hastings' additivity counterexample via Dvoretzky's theorem
The goal of this note is to show that Hastings' counterexample to the
additivity of minimal output von Neumann entropy can be readily deduced from a
sharp version of Dvoretzky's theorem on almost spherical sections of convex
bodies.Comment: 12 pages; v.2: added references, Appendix A expanded to make the
paper essentially self-containe
Multicentre, prospective, double-blind, randomised controlled clinical trial comparing different non-opioid analgesic combinations with morphine for postoperative analgesia: the OCTOPUS study
BACKGROUND: Head-to-head comparisons of combinations of more than one non-opioid analgesic (NOA) with morphine alone, for postoperative analgesia, are lacking. The objective of this multicentre, randomised, double-blind controlled trial was to compare the morphine-sparing effects of different combinations of three NOAs-paracetamol (P), nefopam (N), and ketoprofen (K)-for postoperative analgesia.
METHODS: Patients from 10 hospitals were randomised to one of eight groups: control (C) received saline as placebo, P, N, K, PN, PK, NK, and PNK. Treatments were given intravenously four times a day during the first 48 h after surgery, and morphine patient-controlled analgesia was used as rescue analgesia. The outcome measures were morphine consumption, pain scores, and morphine-related side-effects evaluated 24 and 48 h after surgery.
RESULTS: Two hundred and thirty-seven patients undergoing a major surgical procedure were included between July 2013 and November 2016. Despite a failure to reach a calculated sample size, 24 h morphine consumption [median (inter-quartile range)] was significantly reduced in the PNK group [5 (1-11) mg] compared with either the C group [27 (11-42) mg; P<0.05] or the N group [21 (12-29) mg; P<0.05]. Results were similar 48 h after surgery. Patients experienced less pain in the PNK group compared with the C, N, and P groups. No difference was observed in the incidence of morphine-related side-effects.
CONCLUSIONS: Combining three NOAs with morphine allows a significant morphine sparing for 48 h after surgery associated with superior analgesia the first 24 h when compared with morphine alone.
CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: EudraCT: 2012-004219-30; NCT01882530
On the lattice structure of probability spaces in quantum mechanics
Let C be the set of all possible quantum states. We study the convex subsets
of C with attention focused on the lattice theoretical structure of these
convex subsets and, as a result, find a framework capable of unifying several
aspects of quantum mechanics, including entanglement and Jaynes' Max-Ent
principle. We also encounter links with entanglement witnesses, which leads to
a new separability criteria expressed in lattice language. We also provide an
extension of a separability criteria based on convex polytopes to the infinite
dimensional case and show that it reveals interesting facets concerning the
geometrical structure of the convex subsets. It is seen that the above
mentioned framework is also capable of generalization to any statistical theory
via the so-called convex operational models' approach. In particular, we show
how to extend the geometrical structure underlying entanglement to any
statistical model, an extension which may be useful for studying correlations
in different generalizations of quantum mechanics.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1008.416
Generating random quantum channels
Several techniques of generating random quantum channels, which act on the
set of -dimensional quantum states, are investigated. We present three
approaches to the problem of sampling of quantum channels and show under which
conditions they become mathematically equivalent, and lead to the uniform,
Lebesgue measure on the convex set of quantum operations. We compare their
advantages and computational complexity and demonstrate which of them is
particularly suitable for numerical investigations. Additional results focus on
the spectral gap and other spectral properties of random quantum channels and
their invariant states. We compute mean values of several quantities
characterizing a given quantum channel, including its unitarity, the average
output purity and the -norm coherence of a channel, averaged over the entire
set of the quantum channels with respect to the uniform measure. An ensemble of
classical stochastic matrices obtained due to super-decoherence of random
quantum stochastic maps is analyzed and their spectral properties are studied
using the Bloch representation of a classical probability vector.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figure
Comparative effect of intraoperative propacetamol versus placebo on morphine consumption after elective reduction mammoplasty under remifentanil-based anesthesia: a randomized control trial [ISRCTN71723173]
BACKGROUND: Postoperative administration of paracetamol or its prodrug propacetamol has been shown to decrease pain with a morphine sparing effect. However, the effect of propacetamol administered intra-operatively on post-operative pain and early postoperative morphine consumption has not been clearly evaluated. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of analgesic protocols in the management of post-operative pain, a standardized anesthesia protocol without long-acting opioids is crucial. Thus, for ethical reasons, the surgical procedure under general anesthesia with remifentanil as the only intraoperative analgesic must be associated with a moderate predictable postoperative pain. METHODS: We were interested in determining the postoperative effect of propacetamol administered intraoperatively after intraoperative remifentanil. Thirty-six adult women undergoing mammoplasty with remifentanil-based anesthesia were randomly assigned to receive propacetamol 2 g or placebo one hour before the end of surgery. After remifentanil interruption and tracheal extubation in recovery room, pain was assessed and intravenous titrated morphine was given. The primary end-point was the cumulative dose of morphine administered in the recovery room. The secondary end-points were the pain score after tracheal extubation and one hour after, the delay for obtaining a Simplified Numerical Pain Scale (SNPS) less than 4, and the incidence of morphine side effects in the recovery room. For intergroup comparisons, categorical variables were compared using the chi-squared test and continuous variables were compared using the Student t test or Mann-Whitney U test, as appropriate. A p value less than 0.05 was considered as significant. RESULTS: In recovery room, morphine consumption was lower in the propacetamol group than in the placebo group (p = 0.01). Pain scores were similar in both groups after tracheal extubation and lower in the propacetamol group (p = 0.003) one hour after tracheal extubation. The time to reach a SNPS < 4 was significantly shorter in the propacetamol group (p = 0.02). The incidence of morphine related side effects did not differ between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Intraoperative propacetamol administration with remifentanil based-anesthesia improved significantly early postoperative pain by sparing morphine and shortening the delay to achieve pain relief
Circular Law Theorem for Random Markov Matrices
Consider an nxn random matrix X with i.i.d. nonnegative entries with bounded
density, mean m, and finite positive variance sigma^2. Let M be the nxn random
Markov matrix with i.i.d. rows obtained from X by dividing each row of X by its
sum. In particular, when X11 follows an exponential law, then M belongs to the
Dirichlet Markov Ensemble of random stochastic matrices. Our main result states
that with probability one, the counting probability measure of the complex
spectrum of n^(1/2)M converges weakly as n tends to infinity to the uniform law
on the centered disk of radius sigma/m. The bounded density assumption is
purely technical and comes from the way we control the operator norm of the
resolvent.Comment: technical update via http://HAL.archives-ouvertes.f
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