425 research outputs found
Ventricular tachycardia associated with lacosamide co-medication in drug-resistant epilepsy.
We report a case of sustained ventricular tachycardia following the initiation of lacosamide as adjunctive epilepsy treatment. A 49-year-old male with intractable frontal lobe seizures experienced severe ventricular tachycardia following the addition of 400 mg lacosamide to his existing regimen of carbamazepine, lamotrigine, clonazepam, and valproate. The tachycardia occurred during a cardiac stress test; stress tests prior to initiation of lacosamide were normal. Conduction defects, including QRS prolongation, persisted during hospitalization until lacosamide was discontinued. The patient had no prior history of cardiac arrhythmia but did possess cardiac risk factors, including hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and low heart rate variability. This case represents one part of a growing body of literature suggesting a link between arrhythmia and use of lacosamide, which enhances slow inactivation of sodium channels in both the brain and the heart. We believe further study may be necessary to assess the safety of lacosamide in epilepsy patients with cardiac risk factors
Non-Markovian Decay and Lasing Condition in an Optical Microcavity Coupled to a Structured Reservoir
The decay dynamics of the classical electromagnetic field in a leaky optical
resonator supporting a single mode coupled to a structured continuum of modes
(reservoir) is theoretically investigated, and the issue of threshold condition
for lasing in presence of an inverted medium is comprehensively addressed.
Specific analytical results are given for a single-mode microcavity resonantly
coupled to a coupled resonator optical waveguide (CROW), which supports a band
of continuous modes acting as decay channels. For weak coupling, the usual
exponential Weisskopf-Wigner (Markovian) decay of the field in the bare
resonator is found, and the threshold for lasing increases linearly with the
coupling strength. As the coupling between the microcavity and the structured
reservoir increases, the field decay in the passive cavity shows non
exponential features, and correspondingly the threshold for lasing ceases to
increase, reaching a maximum and then starting to decrease as the coupling
strength is further increased. A singular behavior for the "laser phase
transition", which is a clear signature of strong non-Markovian dynamics, is
found at critical values of the coupling between the microcavity and the
reservoir.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev. A (December 2006 issue
Optical extinction, refractive index, and multiple scattering for suspensions of interacting colloidal particles
We provide a general microscopic theory of the scattering cross-section and
of the refractive index for a system of interacting colloidal particles, exact
at second order in the molecular polarizabilities. In particular: a) we show
that the structural features of the suspension are encoded into the forward
scattered field by multiple scattering effects, whose contribution is essential
for the so-called "optical theorem" to hold in the presence of interactions; b)
we investigate the role of radiation reaction on light extinction; c) we
discuss our results in the framework of effective medium theories, presenting a
general result for the effective refractive index valid, whatever the
structural properties of the suspension, in the limit of particles much larger
than the wavelength; d) by discussing strongly-interacting suspensions, we
unravel subtle anomalous dispersion effects for the suspension refractive
index.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Chemical Physics 37 pages, 4 figure
Critical Behavior of Hadronic Fluctuations and the Effect of Final-State Randomization
The critical behaviors of quark-hadron phase transition are explored by use
of the Ising model adapted for hadron production. Various measures involving
the fluctuations of the produced hadrons in bins of various sizes are examined
with the aim of quantifying the clustering properties that are universal
features of all critical phenomena. Some of the measures involve wavelet
analysis. Two of the measures are found to exhibit the canonical power-law
behavior near the critical temperature. The effect of final-state randomization
is studied by requiring the produced particles to take random walks in the
transverse plane. It is demonstrated that for the measures considered the
dependence on the randomization process is weak. Since temperature is not a
directly measurable variable, the average hadronic density of a portion of each
event is used as the control variable that is measurable. The event-to-event
fluctuations are taken into account in the study of the dependence of the
chosen measures on that control variable. Phenomenologically verifiable
critical behaviors are found and are proposed for use as a signature of
quark-hadron phase transition in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.Comment: 17 pages (Latex) + 24 figures (ps file), submitted to Phys. Rev.
Quantum computation with linear optics
We present a constructive method to translate small quantum circuits into
their optical analogues, using linear components of present-day quantum optics
technology only. These optical circuits perform precisely the computation that
the quantum circuits are designed for, and can thus be used to test the
performance of quantum algorithms. The method relies on the representation of
several quantum bits by a single photon, and on the implementation of universal
quantum gates using simple optical components (beam splitters, phase shifters,
etc.). The optical implementation of Brassard et al.'s teleportation circuit, a
non-trivial 3-bit quantum computation, is presented as an illustration.Comment: LaTeX with llncs.cls, 11 pages with 5 postscript figures, Proc. of
1st NASA Workshop on Quantum Computation and Quantum Communication (QCQC 98
Self-diffusion coefficients of charged particles: Prediction of Nonlinear volume fraction dependence
We report on calculations of the translational and rotational short-time
self-diffusion coefficients and for suspensions of
charge-stabilized colloidal spheres. These diffusion coefficients are affected
by electrostatic forces and many-body hydrodynamic interactions (HI). Our
computations account for both two-body and three-body HI. For strongly charged
particles, we predict interesting nonlinear scaling relations and depending on volume fraction
, with essentially charge-independent parameters and . These
scaling relations are strikingly different from the corresponding results for
hard spheres. Our numerical results can be explained using a model of effective
hard spheres. Moreover, we perceptibly improve the known result for of
hard sphere suspensions.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, 3 Postscript figures included using eps
Generation of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells as disease modelling of NLSDM
Neutral Lipid Storage Disease with Myopathy (NLSDM) is a rare defect of triacylglycerol metabolism, characterized by the abnormal storage of neutral lipid in organelles known as lipid droplets (LDs). The main clinical features are progressive myopathy and cardiomyopathy. The onset of NLSDM is caused by autosomal recessive mutations in the PNPLA2 gene, which encodes adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL). Despite its name, this enzyme is present in a wide variety of cell types and catalyzes the first step in triacylglycerol lipolysis and the release of fatty acids. Here, we report the derivation of NLSDM-induced pluripotent stem cells (NLSDM-iPSCs) from fibroblasts of two patients carrying different PNPLA2 mutations. The first patient was homozygous for the c.541delAC, while the second was homozygous for the c.662G>C mutation in the PNPLA2 gene. We verified that the two types of NLSDM-iPSCs possessed properties of embryonic-like stem cells and could differentiate into the three germ layers in vitro. Immunofluorescence analysis revealed that iPSCs had an abnormal accumulation of triglycerides in LDs, the hallmark of NLSDM. Furthermore, NLSDM-iPSCs were deficient in long chain fatty acid lipolysis, when subjected to a pulse chase experiment with oleic acid. Collectively, these results demonstrate that NLSDM-iPSCs are a promising in vitro model to investigate disease mechanisms and screen drug compounds for NLSDM, a rare disease with few therapeutic options
Identifying the favored mutation in a positive selective sweep.
Most approaches that capture signatures of selective sweeps in population genomics data do not identify the specific mutation favored by selection. We present iSAFE (for "integrated selection of allele favored by evolution"), a method that enables researchers to accurately pinpoint the favored mutation in a large region (∼5 Mbp) by using a statistic derived solely from population genetics signals. iSAFE does not require knowledge of demography, the phenotype under selection, or functional annotations of mutations
Ancient and modern genomics of the Ohlone Indigenous population of California
Traditional knowledge, along with archaeological and linguistic evidence, documents that California supports cultural and linguistically diverse Indigenous populations. Studies that have included ancient genomes in this region, however, have focused primarily on broad-scale migration history of the North American continent, with relatively little attention to local population dynamics. Here, in a partnership involving researchers and the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, we analyze genomic data from ancient and present-day individuals from the San Francisco Bay Area in California: 12 ancient individuals dated to 1905 to 1826 and 601 to 184 calibrated years before the present (cal BP) from two archaeological sites and eight present-day members of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, whose ancestral lands include these two sites. We find that when compared to other ancient and modern individuals throughout the Americas, the 12 ancient individuals from the San Francisco Bay Area cluster with ancient individuals from Southern California. At a finer scale of analysis, we find that the 12 ancient individuals from the San Francisco Bay Area have distinct ancestry from the other groups and that this ancestry has a component of continuity over time with the eight present-day Muwekma Ohlone individuals. These results add to our understanding of Indigenous population history in the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, and in western North America more broadly
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