6,952 research outputs found
Force‐sensing catheters during pediatric radiofrequency ablation: The FEDERATION Study
Background
Based on data from studies of atrial fibrillation ablations, optimal parameters for the TactiCath (TC; St. Jude Medical, Inc) force‐sensing ablation catheter are a contact force of 20 g and a force‐time integral of 400 g·s for the creation of transmural lesions. We aimed to evaluate TC in pediatric and congenital heart disease patients undergoing ablation.
Methods and Results
Comprehensive chart and case reviews were performed from June 2015 to March 2016. Of the 102 patients undergoing electrophysiology study plus ablation, 58 (57%) underwent ablation initially with a force‐sensing catheter. Patients had an average age of 14 (2.4–23) years and weight of 58 (18–195) kg with 15 patients having abnormal cardiac anatomy. Electrophysiology diagnoses for the +
TC
group included 30 accessory pathway–mediated tachycardia, 24 atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia, and 7 other. Baseline generator settings included a power of 20 W, temperature of 40°, and 6 cc/min flow during lesion creation with 11 patients (19%) having alterations to parameters. Seventeen patients (30%) converted to an alternate ablation source. A total of 516 lesions were performed using the
TC
with a median contact force of 6 g, force‐time integral of 149 g·s, and lesion size index of 3.3. Median‐term follow‐up demonstrated 5 (10%) recurrences with no acute or median‐term complications.
Conclusions
TactiCath can be effectively employed in the treatment of pediatric patients with congenital heart disease with lower forces than previously described in the atrial fibrillation literature. Patients with atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia or atrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia may not require transmural lesions and the
TC
may provide surrogate markers for success during slow pathway ablation.
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Role of Large Gluonic Excitation Energy for Narrow Width of Penta-Quark Baryons in QCD String Theory
We study the narrow decay width of low-lying penta-quark baryons in the QCD
string theoryin terms of gluonic excitations. In the QCD string theory, the
penta-quark baryon decays via a gluonic-excited state of a baryon and meson
system, where a pair of Y-shaped junction and anti-junction is created. Since
lattice QCD shows that the lowest gluonic-excitation energy takes a large value
of about 1 GeV, the decay of the penta-quark baryon near the threshold is
considered as a quantum tunneling process via a highly-excited state (a
gluonic-excited state) in the QCD string theory. This mechanism strongly
suppresses the decay and leads to an extremely narrow decay width of the
penta-quark system.Comment: Talk given at International Conference on the Structure of Baryons
(Baryons 04) October 25 - 29, 2004, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, Franc
An analytical study of resonant transport of Bose-Einstein condensates
We study the stationary nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, or Gross-Pitaevskii
equation, for a one--dimensional finite square well potential. By neglecting
the mean--field interaction outside the potential well it is possible to
discuss the transport properties of the system analytically in terms of ingoing
and outgoing waves. Resonances and bound states are obtained analytically. The
transmitted flux shows a bistable behaviour. Novel crossing scenarios of
eigenstates similar to beak--to--beak structures are observed for a repulsive
mean-field interaction. It is proven that resonances transform to bound states
due to an attractive nonlinearity and vice versa for a repulsive nonlinearity,
and the critical nonlinearity for the transformation is calculated
analytically. The bound state wavefunctions of the system satisfy an
oscillation theorem as in the case of linear quantum mechanics. Furthermore,
the implications of the eigenstates on the dymamics of the system are
discussed.Comment: RevTeX4, 16 pages, 19 figure
Casimir-Polder force density between an atom and a conducting wall
In this paper we calculate the Casimir-Polder force density (force per unit
area acting on the elements of the surface) on a metallic plate placed in front
of a neutral atom. To obtain the force density we use the quantum operator
associated to the electromagnetic stress tensor. We explicitly show that the
integral of this force density over the plate reproduces the total force acting
on the plate. This result shows that, although the force is obtained as a sum
of surface element-atom contributions, the stress-tensor method includes also
nonadditive components of Casimir-Polder forces in the evaluation of the force
acting on a macroscopic object.Comment: 5 page
On the vanishing viscosity limit in a disk
We say that the solution u to the Navier-Stokes equations converges to a
solution v to the Euler equations in the vanishing viscosity limit if u
converges to v in the energy norm uniformly over a finite time interval.
Working specifically in the unit disk, we show that a necessary and sufficient
condition for the vanishing viscosity limit to hold is the vanishing with the
viscosity of the time-space average of the energy of u in a boundary layer of
width proportional to the viscosity due to modes (eigenfunctions of the Stokes
operator) whose frequencies in the radial or the tangential direction lie
between L and M. Here, L must be of order less than 1/(viscosity) and M must be
of order greater than 1/(viscosity)
Effective health care for older people resident in care homes: the optimal study protocol for realist review
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Care homes in the UK rely on general practice for access to specialist medical and nursing care as well as referral to therapists and secondary care. Service delivery to care homes is highly variable in both quantity and quality. This variability is also evident in the commissioning and organisation of care home-specific services that range from the payment of incentives to general practitioners (GPs) to visit care homes, to the creation of care home specialist teams and outreach services run by geriatricians. No primary studies or systematic reviews have robustly evaluated the impact of these different approaches on organisation and resident-level outcomes. Our aim is to identify factors which may explain the perceived or demonstrated effectiveness of programmes to improve health-related outcomes in older people living in care homes. Methods/Design: A realist review approach will be used to develop a theoretical understanding of what works when, why and in what circumstances. Elements of service models of interest include those that focus on assessment and management of residents’ health, those that use strategies to encourage closer working between visiting health care providers and care home staff, and those that address system-wide issues about access to assessment and treatment. These will include studies on continence, dignity, and speech and language assessment as well as interventions to promote person centred dementia care, improve strength and mobility, and nutrition. The impact of these interventions and their different mechanisms will be considered in relation to five key outcomes: residents’ medication use, use of out of hours’ services, hospital admissions (including use of Accident and Emergency) and length of hospital stay, costs and user satisfaction. An iterative three-stage approach will be undertaken that is stakeholder-driven and optimises the knowledge and networks of the research team. Discussion: This realist review will explore why and for whom different approaches to providing health care to residents in care homes improves access to health care in the five areas of interest. It will inform commissioning decisions and be the basis for further research. This systematic review protocol is registered on the PROSPERO database reference number: CRD42014009112NIHR Health Services & Delivery Research Programme. Project number 11/1021/0
Associations involving delays (particularly long delays) between certain weather parameters and geomagnetic activity
Four sunspot-minimum periods (1963-1966, 1971-1977, 1983-1987 and 1992-1997) have been examined for the results which are presented. Using several different weather parameters, tropospheric gravity waves, enhanced cold fronts and two rainfall data sets in Eastern Australia, associations at reasonably high levels of significance have been found with enhanced geomagnetic activity (EGA). Statistically this EGA involved either short delays of several days or long delays of about 20 days. The geomagnetic parameters used were (a) the AE index (b) the hourly H component for a number of stations and (c) the daily K-P-sum value. The K-P-sum analyses have shown that the EGA associated with the delays form part of four or five cycles of recurrent geomagnetic activity for 27-day periodicities. Furthermore statistically two recurrent cycles are found to exist concurrently, one apparently related to the short delays and the other to the long delays. Periodicities of 13.5 days are created because the two sets are displaced from each other by approximately this interval. A brief reference is made to the 13.5 periodicity known to exist for geomagnetic activity and the evidence in the literature for active regions on the sun to be displaced by 180 degrees of solar longitude
Nonlinear Scattering of a Bose-Einstein Condensate on a Rectangular Barrier
We consider the nonlinear scattering and transmission of an atom laser, or
Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) on a finite rectangular potential barrier. The
nonlinearity inherent in this problem leads to several new physical features
beyond the well-known picture from single-particle quantum mechanics. We find
numerical evidence for a denumerably infinite string of bifurcations in the
transmission resonances as a function of nonlinearity and chemical potential,
when the potential barrier is wide compared to the wavelength of oscillations
in the condensate. Near the bifurcations, we observe extended regions of
near-perfect resonance, in which the barrier is effectively invisible to the
BEC. Unlike in the linear case, it is mainly the barrier width, not the height,
that controls the transmission behavior. We show that the potential barrier can
be used to create and localize a dark soliton or dark soliton train from a
phonon-like standing wave.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures, new version includes clarification of
definition of transmission coefficient in general nonlinear vs. linear cas
An Exactly Conservative Integrator for the n-Body Problem
The two-dimensional n-body problem of classical mechanics is a non-integrable
Hamiltonian system for n > 2. Traditional numerical integration algorithms,
which are polynomials in the time step, typically lead to systematic drifts in
the computed value of the total energy and angular momentum. Even symplectic
integration schemes exactly conserve only an approximate Hamiltonian. We
present an algorithm that conserves the true Hamiltonian and the total angular
momentum to machine precision. It is derived by applying conventional
discretizations in a new space obtained by transformation of the dependent
variables. We develop the method first for the restricted circular three-body
problem, then for the general two-dimensional three-body problem, and finally
for the planar n-body problem. Jacobi coordinates are used to reduce the
two-dimensional n-body problem to an (n-1)-body problem that incorporates the
constant linear momentum and center of mass constraints. For a four-body
choreography, we find that a larger time step can be used with our conservative
algorithm than with symplectic and conventional integrators.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures; to appear in J. Phys. A.: Math. Ge
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