1,300 research outputs found
Creation of ventricular septal defects on the beating heart in a new pig model
Background/ Aims: So far, surgical and interventional therapies for muscular ventricular septal defects ( mVSDs) beyond the moderator band have had their limitations. Thus, alternative therapeutic strategies should be developed. We present a new animal model for the evaluation of such strategies. Methods: In a pig model ( n = 9), anterolateral thoracotomy was performed for exposure of the left ventricle. mVSDs were created under two- and three- dimensional echocardiography with a 7.5- mm sharp punch instrument, which was forwarded via a left ventricular puncture without extracorporeal circulation. Results: Creation of mVSDs was successful in all animals ( n = 9) confirmed by echocardiography, hemodynamic measurements and autopsy. The defects were located in the midmuscular ( n = 4), apical ( n = 1), inlet ( n = 2) and anterior part ( n = 2) of the muscular septum. All animals were hemodynamically stable for further procedures. The diameter and shunt volume of the mVSDs were 4.8 - 7.3 mm ( mean: 5.9 mm) and 12.9 - 41.3% ( mean: 22.1%), respectively. Autopsy confirmed in all animals the creation of a substantial defect. Conclusion: The described new technique for creation of an mVSD on the beating heart in a pig model is suitable for the evaluation of new therapeutic strategies for mVSD closure. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel
Simulation studies of improved sounding systems
Two instrument designs for indirect satellite sounding of the atmosphere in the infrared are represented by the High Resolution Infra-Red Sounder, Model 2 (HIRS-2) and by the Advanced Meteorological Temperature Sounder (AMTS). The relative capabilities of the two instruments were tested by simulating satellite measurements from a group of temperature soundings, allowing the two participants to retrieve the temperature profiles from the simulated data, and comparing the results with the original temperature profiles. Four data sets were produced from radiosondes data extrapolated to a suitable altitude, representing continents and oceans, between 30S and 30N. From the information available, temperature profiles were retrieved by two different methods, statistical regression and inversion of the radiative transfer equation. Results show the consequence of greater spectral purity, concomitant increase in the number of spectral intervals, and the better spatial resolution in partly clouded areas. At the same time, the limitation of the HIRS-2 without its companion instrument leads to some results which should be ignored in comparing the two instruments. A clear superiority of AMTS results is shown
Shared Information -- New Insights and Problems in Decomposing Information in Complex Systems
How can the information that a set of random variables
contains about another random variable be decomposed? To what extent do
different subgroups provide the same, i.e. shared or redundant, information,
carry unique information or interact for the emergence of synergistic
information?
Recently Williams and Beer proposed such a decomposition based on natural
properties for shared information. While these properties fix the structure of
the decomposition, they do not uniquely specify the values of the different
terms. Therefore, we investigate additional properties such as strong symmetry
and left monotonicity. We find that strong symmetry is incompatible with the
properties proposed by Williams and Beer. Although left monotonicity is a very
natural property for an information measure it is not fulfilled by any of the
proposed measures.
We also study a geometric framework for information decompositions and ask
whether it is possible to represent shared information by a family of posterior
distributions.
Finally, we draw connections to the notions of shared knowledge and common
knowledge in game theory. While many people believe that independent variables
cannot share information, we show that in game theory independent agents can
have shared knowledge, but not common knowledge. We conclude that intuition and
heuristic arguments do not suffice when arguing about information.Comment: 20 page
Fairly Allocating Contiguous Blocks of Indivisible Items
In this paper, we study the classic problem of fairly allocating indivisible
items with the extra feature that the items lie on a line. Our goal is to find
a fair allocation that is contiguous, meaning that the bundle of each agent
forms a contiguous block on the line. While allocations satisfying the
classical fairness notions of proportionality, envy-freeness, and equitability
are not guaranteed to exist even without the contiguity requirement, we show
the existence of contiguous allocations satisfying approximate versions of
these notions that do not degrade as the number of agents or items increases.
We also study the efficiency loss of contiguous allocations due to fairness
constraints.Comment: Appears in the 10th International Symposium on Algorithmic Game
Theory (SAGT), 201
The decay of quadrupole-octupole states in Ca and Ce
Background: Two-phonon excitations originating from the coupling of two
collective one-phonon states are of great interest in nuclear structure
physics. One possibility to generate low-lying excitations is the coupling
of quadrupole and octupole phonons.
Purpose: In this work, the -decay behavior of candidates for the
state in the doubly-magic nucleus Ca and in
the heavier and semi-magic nucleus Ce is investigated.
Methods: experiments have been carried out at the
High Intensity -ray Source (HIS) facility in combination with
the high-efficiency -ray spectroscopy setup consisting of
HPGe and LaBr detectors. The setup enables the acquisition of
- coincidence data and, hence, the detection of direct decay
paths.
Results: In addition to the known ground-state decays, for Ca the
decay into the state was observed, while for Ce the direct
decays into the and the state were detected. The experimentally
deduced transition strengths and excitation energies are compared to
theoretical calculations in the framework of EDF theory plus QPM approach and
systematically analyzed for isotones. In addition, negative parities for
two states in Ca were deduced simultaneously.
Conclusions: The experimental findings together with the theoretical
calculations support the two-phonon character of the excitation in the
light-to-medium-mass nucleus Ca as well as in the stable even-even
nuclei.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, as accepted in Phys. Rev.
On the optimality of gluing over scales
We show that for every , there exist -point metric spaces
(X,d) where every "scale" admits a Euclidean embedding with distortion at most
, but the whole space requires distortion at least . This shows that the scale-gluing lemma [Lee, SODA 2005] is tight,
and disproves a conjecture stated there. This matching upper bound was known to
be tight at both endpoints, i.e. when and , but nowhere in between.
More specifically, we exhibit -point spaces with doubling constant
requiring Euclidean distortion ,
which also shows that the technique of "measured descent" [Krauthgamer, et.
al., Geometric and Functional Analysis] is optimal. We extend this to obtain a
similar tight result for spaces with .Comment: minor revision
Soft Dipole Modes in Neutron-rich Ni-isotopes in QRRPA
The soft dipole modes in neutron rich even-even Ni-isotopes are investigated
in the quasiparticle relativistic random phase approximation. We study the
evolution of strengths distribution, centroid energies of dipole excitation in
low-lying and normal GDR regions with the increase of the neutron excess. It is
found in the present study that the centroid energies of the soft dipole
strengths strongly depend on the thickness of neutron skin along with the
neutron rich even-even Ni-isotopes.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure
The existence of an inverse limit of inverse system of measure spaces - a purely measurable case
The existence of an inverse limit of an inverse system of (probability) measure spaces has been investigated since the very beginning of the birth of the modern probability theory. Results from Kolmogorov
[10], Bochner [2], Choksi [5], Metivier [14], Bourbaki [3] among others have paved the way of the deep understanding of the problem under consideration. All the above results, however, call for some topological concepts, or at least ones which are closely related topological ones. In this paper we investigate purely measurable inverse systems of (probability) measure spaces, and give a sucient condition for the existence of a unique inverse limit. An example for the considered purely measurable inverse systems of (probability) measure spaces is also given
Topographical and seasonal trends in transpiration by two co-occurring Eucalyptus species during two contrasting years in a low rainfall environment
Understanding the strategies that confer resilience on natural woodlands in drought prone environments is important for the conservation of these and similar ecosystems. Our main aim in this 2-year study was to assess traits (sapwood area, sapwood density and leaf area index) that control transpiration in Eucalyptus camaldulensis and E. microcarpa in a natural forest in which topographical variation created surface soils of sandy clay in a depression (clay-zone) and of loamy sand underlain by a dense profile on the terraces (sand-zone). The clay-zone had a wetter profile due to extra water supply through subsurface lateral flow from the adjoining, topographically higher, sand-zone. In the clay-zone, the differences between the two tree species in their hydraulic attributes were large and rates of water use were widely divergent. Rates of transpiration per unit land area (Ec) and canopy conductance of E. camaldulensis that was dominant in the clay-zone were about 50% lower than those for E. microcarpa in the same zone. This was in marked contrast to the behavior of trees growing in the sand-zone where water availability was persistently low and variations in sapwood density, sapwood area and canopy conductance were narrow. This resulted in almost identical rates of water use for the two species in the sand-zone, despite E. microcarpa dominating the stand. Contrary to many previous studies, sapwood density was positively correlated with Ec in these eucalypt species, while the proportion of trunk area assigned to sapwood declined with sapwood density. Consequently in this low rainfall environment, with prolonged dry seasons, dense sapwood safeguards against turgor loss, and possibly xylem embolism, thereby allowing Ec to be sustained under extremely low soil-water availability. We concluded that variation in hydraulic traits is less likely where trees are under persistent water-stress than where the stress is short and relatively mild. We developed single functions for predicting Ec for the two species by integrating their responses to micrometeorological and soil-water conditions. © 2010
A New Method for Measuring Neutron-skin Thickness by Exciting the Anti-analog Giant Dipole Resonance
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