993 research outputs found
Towards a novel carbon device for the treatment of sepsis
Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response to infection in which the balance of pro- andanti-inflammatory mediators, which normally isolate and eliminate infection, is disrupted[1]. Gram negative sepsis is initiated by bacterial endotoxin release which activatesmacrophages and circulating monocytes to release TNF and IL-1β followed by IL-6 andother inflammatory cytokines [2]. As the disease progresses, an unregulatedinflammatory response results in, tissue injury, haematological dysfunction and organdysfunction. Severe sepsis, involving organ hypoperfusion may be further complicatedby hypotension that is unresponsive to adequate fluid replacement, resulting in septicshock and finally death [3].Despite improvements in anti-microbial and supportive therapies, sepsis remains asignificant cause of morbidity and mortality in ICUs worldwide [4]. The complexity ofprocesses mediating the progression of sepsis suggests that an extracorporeal devicecombining blood filtration with adsorption of a wide range of toxins, and inflammatorymediators offers the most comprehensive treatment strategy. However, no such deviceexists at present. A novel, uncoated, polymer pyrolysed synthetic carbon device isproposed which combines the superior adsorption properties of uncoated activatedcarbons with the capacity to manipulate porous structure for controlled adsorption oftarget plasma proteins and polypeptides [5]. Preliminary haemocompatibility andadsorptive capacity was assessed using a carbon matrix prototype
The problem with Kappa
It is becoming clear that traditional
evaluation measures used in
Computational Linguistics (including
Error Rates, Accuracy, Recall, Precision
and F-measure) are of limited value for
unbiased evaluation of systems, and are
not meaningful for comparison of
algorithms unless both the dataset and
algorithm parameters are strictly
controlled for skew (Prevalence and
Bias). The use of techniques originally
designed for other purposes, in particular
Receiver Operating Characteristics Area
Under Curve, plus variants of Kappa,
have been proposed to fill the void.
This paper aims to clear up some of the
confusion relating to evaluation, by
demonstrating that the usefulness of each
evaluation method is highly dependent on
the assumptions made about the
distributions of the dataset and the
underlying populations. The behaviour of
a number of evaluation measures is
compared under common assumptions.
Deploying a system in a context which
has the opposite skew from its validation
set can be expected to approximately
negate Fleiss Kappa and halve Cohen
Kappa but leave Powers Kappa
unchanged. For most performance
evaluation purposes, the latter is thus
most appropriate, whilst for comparison
of behaviour, Matthews Correlation is
recommended
Environmental metabarcoding reveals heterogeneous drivers of microbial eukaryote diversity in contrasting estuarine ecosystems
Assessing how natural environmental drivers affect biodiversity underpins our understanding of the relationships between complex biotic and ecological factors in natural ecosystems. Of all ecosystems, anthropogenically important estuaries represent a �melting pot� of environmental stressors, typified by extreme salinity variations and associated biological complexity. Although existing models attempt to predict macroorganismal diversity over estuarine salinity gradients, attempts to model microbial biodiversity are limited for eukaryotes. Although diatoms commonly feature as bioindicator species, additional microbial eukaryotes represent a huge resource for assessing ecosystem health. Of these, meiofaunal communities may represent the optimal compromise between functional diversity that can be assessed using morphology and phenotype�environment interactions as compared with smaller life fractions. Here, using 454 Roche sequencing of the 18S nSSU barcode we investigate which of the local natural drivers are most strongly associated with microbial metazoan and sampled protist diversity across the full salinity gradient of the estuarine ecosystem. In order to investigate potential variation at the ecosystem scale, we compare two geographically proximate estuaries (Thames and Mersey, UK) with contrasting histories of anthropogenic stress. The data show that although community turnover is likely to be predictable, taxa are likely to respond to different environmental drivers and, in particular, hydrodynamics, salinity range and granulometry, according to varied life-history characteristics. At the ecosystem level, communities exhibited patterns of estuary-specific similarity within different salinity range habitats, highlighting the environmental sequencing biomonitoring potential of meiofauna, dispersal effects or both
Transverse Spin at PHENIX: Results and Prospects
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), as the world's first and only
polarized proton collider, offers a unique environment in which to study the
spin structure of the proton. In order to study the proton's transverse spin
structure, the PHENIX experiment at RHIC took data with transversely polarized
beams in 2001-02 and 2005, and it has plans for further running with transverse
polarization in 2006 and beyond. Results from early running as well as
prospective measurements for the future will be discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, presented at Transversity 2005, Como, Ital
Low energy and dynamical properties of a single hole in the t-Jz model
We review in details a recently proposed technique to extract information
about dynamical correlation functions of many-body hamiltonians with a few
Lanczos iterations and without the limitation of finite size. We apply this
technique to understand the low energy properties and the dynamical spectral
weight of a simple model describing the motion of a single hole in a quantum
antiferromagnet: the model in two spatial dimension and for a double
chain lattice. The simplicity of the model allows us a well controlled
numerical solution, especially for the two chain case. Contrary to previous
approximations we have found that the single hole ground state in the infinite
system is continuously connected with the Nagaoka fully polarized state for
. Analogously we have obtained an accurate determination of the
dynamical spectral weight relevant for photoemission experiments. For
an argument is given that the spectral weight vanishes at the Nagaoka energy
faster than any power law, as supported also by a clear numerical evidence. It
is also shown that spin charge decoupling is an exact property for a single
hole in the Bethe lattice but does not apply to the more realistic lattices
where the hole can describe closed loop paths.Comment: RevTex 3.0, 40 pages + 16 Figures in one file self-extracting, to
appear in Phys. Rev
Resonant transmission through an open quantum dot
We have measured the low-temperature transport properties of a quantum dot
formed in a one-dimensional channel. In zero magnetic field this device shows
quantized ballistic conductance plateaus with resonant tunneling peaks in each
transition region between plateaus. Studies of this structure as a function of
applied perpendicular magnetic field and source-drain bias indicate that
resonant structure deriving from tightly bound states is split by Coulomb
charging at zero magnetic field.Comment: To be published in Phys. Rev. B (1997). 8 LaTex pages with 5 figure
Single-hole properties in the - and strong-coupling models
We report numerical results for the single-hole properties in the -
model and the strong-coupling approximation to the Hubbard model in two
dimensions. Using the hopping basis with over states we discuss (for an
infinite system) the bandwidth, the leading Fourier coefficients in the
dispersion, the band masses, and the spin-spin correlations near the hole. We
compare our results with those obtained by other methods. The band minimum is
found to be at () for the - model for , and for the strong-coupling model for . The bandwidth
in both models is approximately at large , in rough agreement with
loop-expansion results but in disagreement with other results. The
strong-coupling bandwidth for t/J\agt6 can be obtained from the - model
by treating the three-site terms in first-order perturbation theory. The
dispersion along the magnetic zone face is flat, giving a large
parallel/perpendicular band mass ratio.Comment: 1 RevTeX file with epsf directives to include 8 .eps figures 8 figure
files encoded using uufile
On the Application of the Non Linear Sigma Model to Spin Chains and Spin Ladders
We review the non linear sigma model approach (NLSM) to spin chains and spin
ladders, presenting new results. The generalization of the Haldane's map to
ladders in the Hamiltonian approach, give rise to different values of the
parameter depending on the spin S, the number of legs and
the choice of blocks needed to built up the NLSM fields. For rectangular blocks
we obtain or depending on wether , is even or
odd, while for diagonal blocks we obtain . Both
results agree modulo , and yield the same prediction, namely that even (
resp. odd) ladders are gapped (resp. gapless). For even legged ladders we show
that the spin gap collapses exponentially with and we propose a
finite size correction to the gap formula recently derived by Chakravarty using
the 2+1 NSLM, which gives a good fit of numerical results. We show the
existence of a Haldane phase in the two legged ladder using diagonal blocks and
finally we consider the phase diagram of dimerized ladders.Comment: 25 pages, Latex, 7 figures in postscript files, Proc. of the 1996 El
Escorial Summer School on "Strongly Correlated Magnetic and Superconducting
Systems". Some more references are adde
Extending Torelli map to toroidal compactifications of Siegel space
It has been known since the 1970s that the Torelli map ,
associating to a smooth curve its jacobian, extends to a regular map from the
Deligne-Mumford compactification to the 2nd Voronoi
compactification .
We prove that the extended Torelli map to the perfect cone (1st Voronoi)
compactification is also regular, and moreover
and share a common Zariski open
neighborhood of the image of . We also show that the map to the
Igusa monoidal transform (central cone compactification) is NOT regular for
; this disproves a 1973 conjecture of Namikawa.Comment: To appear in Inventiones Mathematica
T-Duality and Penrose limits of spatially homogeneous and inhomogeneous cosmologies
Penrose limits of inhomogeneous cosmologies admitting two abelian Killing
vectors and their abelian T-duals are found in general. The wave profiles of
the resulting plane waves are given for particular solutions. Abelian and
non-abelian T-duality are used as solution generating techniques. Furthermore,
it is found that unlike in the case of abelian T-duality, non-abelian T-duality
and taking the Penrose limit are not commutative procedures.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. Discussion on non-abelian T-duality expande
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