Patients with Essential thrombocythaemia have an increased prevalence of antiphospholipid antibodies which may be associated with thrombosis

A significant proportion of patients with Essential Thrombocythaemia (ET) have thrombotic complications which have an important impact upon the quality, and duration of their life. We performed a retrospective cross sectional study of the prevalence of antiphospholipid antibodies (APA) in 68 ET patients. Compared to 200 elderly controls (> 50 years) there was a significant increase in anticardiolipin IgM (p < 0.0001) and anti β2 glycoprotein I (anti-β2GPI) IgM (p < 0.0001) antibodies in ET. Thrombosis occurred in 10/20 with APA and 12/48 without, p = 0.04, relative risk 2.0 (95% confidence intervals 1.03-3.86); these patients did not differ in terms of other clinical features. The prevalence of thrombosis in patients with dual APA (6/7) was significant when compared to those with single APA (p = 0.02) and the remaining patients (p < 0.0002). Also anti-β2GPI IgM antibodies either alone, or in combination with another APA, were associated with thrombosis (p = 0.02). These results suggest that the prevalence of APA in ET and their influence upon thrombotic risk merit investigation in a larger study

Influence of implant diameter on surrounding bone

Objectives : Implant osseointegration is dependent upon various factors, such as bone quality and type of implant surface. It is also subject to adaptation in response to changes in bone metabolism or transmission of masticatory forces. Understanding of long-term physiologic adjustment is critical to prevention of potential loss of osseointegration, especially because excessive occlusal forces lead to failure. To address this issue, wide-diameter implants were introduced in part with the hope that greater total implant surface would offer mechanical resistance. Yet, there is little evidence that variation in diameter translates into a different bone response in the implant vicinity. Therefore, this study aimed at comparing the impact of implant diameter on surrounding bone. Material and methods : Twenty standard (3.75 mm) and 20 wide (5 mm) implants were placed using an animal model. Histomorphometry was performed to establish initial bone density (IBD), bone to implant contact (BIC) and adjacent bone density (ABD). Results : BIC was 71% and 73%, whereas ABD was 65% and 52%, for standard and wide implants, respectively. These differences were not statistically different ( P >0.05). Correlation with IBD was then investigated. BIC was not correlated with IBD. ABD was not correlated to IBD for standard implants ( r 2 =0.126), but it was correlated with wide implants ( r 2 =0.82). In addition, a 1 : 1 ratio between IBD and ABD was found for wide implants. It can be concluded, within the limits of this study, that ABD may be influenced by implant diameter, perhaps due to differences in force dissipation. To cite this article: Brink J, Meraw SJ, Sarment DP. Influence of implant diameter on surrounding bone. Clin. Oral Impl. Res. 18 , 2007; 563–568 doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0501.2007.01283.xPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75089/1/j.1600-0501.2007.01283.x.pd

Search for Primordial Black Holes with SGARFACE

The Short GAmma Ray Front Air Cherenkov Experiment (SGARFACE) uses the Whipple 10 m telescope to search for bursts of $\gamma$ rays. SGARFACE is sensitive to bursts with duration from a few ns to $\sim$20 $\mu$s and with $\gamma$-ray energy above 100 MeV. SGARFACE began operating in March 2003 and has collected 2.2 million events during an exposure time of 2267 hours. A search for bursts of $\gamma$ rays from explosions of primordial black holes (PBH) was carried out. A Hagedorn-type PBH explosion is predicted to be visible within 60 pc of Earth. Background events were caused by cosmic rays and by atmospheric phenomena and their rejection was accomplished to a large extent using the time-resolved images. No unambiguous detection of bursts of $\gamma$ rays could be made as the remaining background events mimic the expected shape and time development of bursts. Upper limits on the PBH explosion rate were derived from the SGARFACE data and are compared to previous and future experiments. We note that a future array of large wide-field air-Cherenkov telescopes equipped with a SGARFACE-like trigger would be able to operate background-free with a 20 to 30 times higher sensitivity for PBH explosions.Comment: 18 pages, 30 figures, accepted by Astroparticle Physics, corrected author list and Section 2.

Stochastic background of gravitational waves

A continuous stochastic background of gravitational waves (GWs) for burst sources is produced if the mean time interval between the occurrence of bursts is smaller than the average time duration of a single burst at the emission, i.e., the so called duty cycle must be greater than one. To evaluate the background of GWs produced by an ensemble of sources, during their formation, for example, one needs to know the average energy flux emitted during the formation of a single object and the formation rate of such objects as well. In many cases the energy flux emitted during an event of production of GWs is not known in detail, only characteristic values for the dimensionless amplitude and frequencies are known. Here we present a shortcut to calculate stochastic backgrounds of GWs produced from cosmological sources. For this approach it is not necessary to know in detail the energy flux emitted at each frequency. Knowing the characteristic values for the ``lumped'' dimensionless amplitude and frequency we show that it is possible to calculate the stochastic background of GWs produced by an ensemble of sources.Comment: 6 pages, 4 eps figures, (Revtex) Latex. Physical Review D (in press

Basal topographic controls on rapid retreat of Humboldt Glacier, northern Greenland

Discharge from marine-terminating outlet glaciers accounts for up to half the recent mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet, yet the causal factors are not fully understood. Here we assess the factors controlling the behaviour of Humboldt Glacier (HG), allowing us to evaluate the influence of basal topography on outlet glacier response to external forcing since part of HG’s terminus occupies a large overdeepening. HG’s retreat accelerated dramatically after 1999, coinciding with summer atmospheric warming of up to 0.19°C a–1 and sea-ice decline. Retreat was an order of magnitude greater in the northern section of the terminus, underlain by a major basal trough, than in the southern section, where the bedrock is comparatively shallow. Velocity change following retreat was spatially non-uniform, potentially due to a pinning point near HG’s northern lateral margin. Consistent with observations, numerical modelling demonstrates an order-of-magnitude greater sensitivity to sea-ice buttressing and crevasse depth (used as a proxy for atmospheric warming) in the northern section. The trough extends up to 72 km inland, so it is likely to facilitate sustained retreat and ice loss from HG during the 21st century

Superfield T-duality rules

A geometric treatment of T-duality as an operation which acts on differential forms in superspace allows us to derive the complete set of T-duality transformation rules which relate the superfield potentials of D=10 type IIA supergravity with those of type IIB supergravity including Ramond-Ramond superfield potentials and fermionic supervielbeins. We show that these rules are consistent with the superspace supergravity constraints.Comment: 24 pages, latex, no figures. V2 misprints corrected. V3. One reference ([30]) and a comment on it ('Notice added') on p. 19 adde

Observational diagnostics of gas in protoplanetary disks

Protoplanetary disks are composed primarily of gas (99% of the mass). Nevertheless, relatively few observational constraints exist for the gas in disks. In this review, I discuss several observational diagnostics in the UV, optical, near-IR, mid-IR, and (sub)-mm wavelengths that have been employed to study the gas in the disks of young stellar objects. I concentrate in diagnostics that probe the inner 20 AU of the disk, the region where planets are expected to form. I discuss the potential and limitations of each gas tracer and present prospects for future research.Comment: Review written for the proceedings of the conference "Origin and Evolution of Planets 2008", Ascona, Switzerland, June 29 - July 4, 2008. Date manuscript: October 2008. 17 Pages, 6 graphics, 134 reference

Immersed boundary-finite element model of fluid-structure interaction in the aortic root

It has long been recognized that aortic root elasticity helps to ensure efficient aortic valve closure, but our understanding of the functional importance of the elasticity and geometry of the aortic root continues to evolve as increasingly detailed in vivo imaging data become available. Herein, we describe fluid-structure interaction models of the aortic root, including the aortic valve leaflets, the sinuses of Valsalva, the aortic annulus, and the sinotubular junction, that employ a version of Peskin's immersed boundary (IB) method with a finite element (FE) description of the structural elasticity. We develop both an idealized model of the root with three-fold symmetry of the aortic sinuses and valve leaflets, and a more realistic model that accounts for the differences in the sizes of the left, right, and noncoronary sinuses and corresponding valve cusps. As in earlier work, we use fiber-based models of the valve leaflets, but this study extends earlier IB models of the aortic root by employing incompressible hyperelastic models of the mechanics of the sinuses and ascending aorta using a constitutive law fit to experimental data from human aortic root tissue. In vivo pressure loading is accounted for by a backwards displacement method that determines the unloaded configurations of the root models. Our models yield realistic cardiac output at physiological pressures, with low transvalvular pressure differences during forward flow, minimal regurgitation during valve closure, and realistic pressure loads when the valve is closed during diastole. Further, results from high-resolution computations demonstrate that IB models of the aortic valve are able to produce essentially grid-converged dynamics at practical grid spacings for the high-Reynolds number flows of the aortic root

Fabrication of electron beam generated, chirped, phase mask (1070 . 11 – 1070 . 66 nm) for fiber Bragg grating dispersion compensator

We report on the fabrication of a chirped, phase mask that was used to create a fiber Bragg grating(FBG)device for the compensation of chromatic dispersion in longhaul optical transmission networks.Electron beamlithography was used to expose the grating onto a resist-coated quartz plate. After etching, this phase mask was used to holographically expose an index grating into the fiber core [K. O. Hill, F. Bilodeau, D. C. Johnson, and J. Albert, Appl. Phys. Lett.62, 1035 (1993)]. The linear increase in the grating period, “chirp,” is only 0.55 nm over the 10 cm grating. This is too small to be defined by computer aided design and a digital deflection system. Instead, the chirp was incorporated by repeatedly rescaling the analog electronics used for field size calibration. Special attention must be paid to minimize any field stitching and exposure artifacts. This was done by using overlapping fields in a “voting” method. As a result, each grating line is exposed by the accumulation of three overlapping exposures at 1/3 dose. This translates any abrupt stitching error into a small but uniform change in the line-to-space ratio of the grating. The phase mask was used with the double-exposure photoprinting technique [K. O. Hill, F. Bilodeau, B. Malo, T. Kitagawa, S. Thériault, D. C. Johnson, J. Albert, and K. Takiguchi, Opt. Lett. 19, 1314 (1994)]: a KrF excimer laser holograp