Differential criterion of a bubble collapse in viscous liquids

The present work is devoted to a model of bubble collapse in a Newtonian viscous liquid caused by an initial bubble wall motion. The obtained bubble dynamics described by an analytic solution significantly depends on the liquid and bubble parameters. The theory gives two types of bubble behavior: collapse and viscous damping. This results in a general collapse condition proposed as the sufficient differential criterion. The suggested criterion is discussed and successfully applied to the analysis of the void and gas bubble collapses.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging in dementia with Lewy bodies and Alzheimer's disease.

OBJECTIVE: Changes in the white matter of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been reported using diffusion weighted MRI, though few longitudinal studies have been done. METHODS: We performed diffusion weighted MRI twice, a year apart on 23 AD, 14 DLB, and 32 healthy control subjects. Mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) were calculated. RESULTS: In AD, there were widespread regions where the longitudinal MD increase was greater than in controls, and small areas in the parietal and temporal lobes where it was greater in AD than DLB. In AD, decrease in brain volume correlated with increased MD. There were no significant differences in progression between DLB and controls. CONCLUSIONS: In AD the white matter continues to degenerate during the disease process, whereas in DLB, changes in the white matter structure are a relatively early feature. Different mechanisms are likely to underpin changes in diffusivity.The study was supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Unit in Dementia and the Biomedical Research Centre awarded to Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Cambridge, and the NIHR Biomedical Research Unit in Dementia and the Biomedical Research Centre awarded to Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle University. Elijah Mak was in receipt of a Gates Cambridge PhD studentship.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.parkreldis.2016.01.00

Cytoplasmic chromatin triggers inflammation in senescence and cancer

Chromatin is traditionally viewed as a nuclear entity that regulates gene expression and silencing. However, we recently discovered the presence of cytoplasmic chromatin fragments that pinch off from intact nuclei of primary cells during senescence, a form of terminal cell-cycle arrest associated with pro-inflammatory responses. The functional significance of chromatin in the cytoplasm is unclear. Here we show that cytoplasmic chromatin activates the innate immunity cytosolic DNA-sensing cGAS-STING (cyclic GMP-AMP synthase linked to stimulator of interferon genes) pathway, leading both to short-term inflammation to restrain activated oncogenes and to chronic inflammation that associates with tissue destruction and cancer. The cytoplasmic chromatin-cGAS-STING pathway promotes the senescence-associated secretory phenotype in primary human cells and in mice. Mice deficient in STING show impaired immuno-surveillance of oncogenic RAS and reduced tissue inflammation upon ionizing radiation. Furthermore, this pathway is activated in cancer cells, and correlates with pro-inflammatory gene expression in human cancers. Overall, our findings indicate that genomic DNA serves as a reservoir to initiate a pro-inflammatory pathway in the cytoplasm in senescence and cancer. Targeting the cytoplasmic chromatin-mediated pathway may hold promise in treating inflammation-related disorders

An observational prospective study of topical acidified nitrite for killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in contaminated wounds

Background Endogenous nitric oxide (NO) kills bacteria and other organisms as part of the innate immune response. When nitrite is exposed to low pH, NO is generated and has been used as an NO delivery system to treat skin infections. We demonstrated eradication of MRSA carriage from wounds using a topical formulation of citric acid (4.5%) and sodium nitrite (3%) creams co-applied for 5 days to 15 wounds in an observational prospective pilot study of 8 patients. Findings Following treatment with topical citric acid and sodium nitrite, 9 of 15 wounds (60%) and 3 of 8 patients (37%) were cleared of infection. MRSA isolates from these patients were all sensitive to acidified nitrite in vitro compared to methicillin-sensitive S. aureus and a reference strain of MRSA. Conclusions Nitric oxide and acidified nitrite offer a novel therapy for control of MRSA in wounds. Wounds that were not cleared of infection may have been re-contaminated or the bioavailability of acidified nitrite impaired by local factors in the tissue

Can One Trust Quantum Simulators?

Various fundamental phenomena of strongly-correlated quantum systems such as high-$T_c$ superconductivity, the fractional quantum-Hall effect, and quark confinement are still awaiting a universally accepted explanation. The main obstacle is the computational complexity of solving even the most simplified theoretical models that are designed to capture the relevant quantum correlations of the many-body system of interest. In his seminal 1982 paper [Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 467], Richard Feynman suggested that such models might be solved by "simulation" with a new type of computer whose constituent parts are effectively governed by a desired quantum many-body dynamics. Measurements on this engineered machine, now known as a "quantum simulator," would reveal some unknown or difficult to compute properties of a model of interest. We argue that a useful quantum simulator must satisfy four conditions: relevance, controllability, reliability, and efficiency. We review the current state of the art of digital and analog quantum simulators. Whereas so far the majority of the focus, both theoretically and experimentally, has been on controllability of relevant models, we emphasize here the need for a careful analysis of reliability and efficiency in the presence of imperfections. We discuss how disorder and noise can impact these conditions, and illustrate our concerns with novel numerical simulations of a paradigmatic example: a disordered quantum spin chain governed by the Ising model in a transverse magnetic field. We find that disorder can decrease the reliability of an analog quantum simulator of this model, although large errors in local observables are introduced only for strong levels of disorder. We conclude that the answer to the question "Can we trust quantum simulators?" is... to some extent.Comment: 20 pages. Minor changes with respect to version 2 (some additional explanations, added references...

Lifestyle gambling, indebtedness and anxiety: A deviant leisure perspective

While once subject to wide-ranging state control, gambling has successfully culturally embedded itself within the normalised and legitimised forms of leisure such as the night-time economy, sports fandom and online forums of socialisation. Consequently, this article argues that existing research which conceptualises gambling as separate from everyday life is largely obsolete in the contemporary context. We argue here that gambling has become an integral feature of the wider masculine weekend leisure experience, intimately connected to an infantilised consumer identity that is peculiar to late-capitalism. This article, drawing upon ongoing ethnographic research among what we term ‘lifestyle gamblers’, utilises a deviant leisure perspective to problematise the myriad harms that emerge from this relationship, situated within a broader critique of consumerism and global capitalism. While social gambling is defended fiercely by the industry, this article argues that an identity-based culture of sports-betting that attaches fragile social and cultural capital to the allure of the gambling win encourages the chasing of losses and impulsive betting. Underscored by a culture of readily available and high-interest credit, we explore how gamblers in a technologically accelerated culture develop a pathological relationship to money as it becomes desublimated and loses its symbolic value. Such processes, exacerbated by the promise of consumer culture, have the potential to cast these young adults into a paralysing reality of indebtedness that is fraught with depression, stress, domestic instability and destructive behaviours of consumption

Wound-up phase turbulence in the Complex Ginzburg-Landau equation

We consider phase turbulent regimes with nonzero winding number in the one-dimensional Complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. We find that phase turbulent states with winding number larger than a critical one are only transients and decay to states within a range of allowed winding numbers. The analogy with the Eckhaus instability for non-turbulent waves is stressed. The transition from phase to defect turbulence is interpreted as an ergodicity breaking transition which occurs when the range of allowed winding numbers vanishes. We explain the states reached at long times in terms of three basic states, namely quasiperiodic states, frozen turbulence states, and riding turbulence states. Justification and some insight into them is obtained from an analysis of a phase equation for nonzero winding number: rigidly moving solutions of this equation, which correspond to quasiperiodic and frozen turbulence states, are understood in terms of periodic and chaotic solutions of an associated system of ordinary differential equations. A short report of some of our results has been published in [Montagne et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 267 (1996)].Comment: 22 pages, 15 figures included. Uses subfigure.sty (included) and epsf.tex (not included). Related research in http://www.imedea.uib.es/Nonlinea

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011