Combination of Immunohistochemistry and Ploidy Analysis to Assist Histopathological Diagnosis of Molar Diseases

Background Differential diagnosis between hydropic abortion, partial mole and complete mole is still a challenge for pathologists but really important for patient management. Material and Method In this study, we have evaluated 111 products of conception from the first trimester. Histological analysis was made according to the main diagnostic histopathological features described in the literature and the cases were categorized in hydropic abortus (HA), partial mole (PM) and complete mole (CM). Immunohistochemistry was performed using monoclonal antibody against p57 kip protein a putative paternally imprinted inhibitor gene and DNA ploidy was analysed in all cases by image cytometry. Results All 23 HAs presented a diploid DNA content and were p57 kip2 positive. From the 28 CMs, 12 cases (43%) were diploid and 16 cases (57%) were tetraploid but no expression of p57 kip2 was found with positive internal controls. From the 60 PMs, 58 cases were positive for p57 kip2 expression and 53 cases (88%) were triploid, 6 cases (10%) tetraploid and 1 case (2%) diploid. Conclusion This study on 111 cases of early pregnancies confirms the usefulness of immunohistochemistry and cytometry but demonstrates the importance of the combination of both techniques to assist histology for the best reliable diagnosis

The Cauchy convergence of T and P-approximant templates for test-mass Kerr binary systems

In this work we examine the Cauchy convergence of both post-Newtonian (T-approximant) and re-summed post-Newtonian (P-approximant) templates for the case of a test-mass orbiting a Kerr black hole along a circular equatorial orbit. The Cauchy criterion demands that the inner product between the $n$ and $n+1$ order approximation approaches unity, as we increase the order of approximation. In previous works, it has been shown that we achieve greater fitting factors and better parameter estimation using the P-approximant templates for both Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes. In this work, we show that the P-approximant templates also display a faster Cauchy convergence making them a superior template to the standard post-Newtonian templates.Comment: 5 pages, Replaced with shortened published versio

Sensitivity of a VIRGO pair to stochastic GW backgrounds

The sensitivity of a pair of VIRGO interferometers to gravitational waves backgrounds (GW) of cosmological origin is analyzed for the cases of maximal and minimal overlap of the two detectors. The improvements in the detectability prospects of scale-invariant and non-scale-invariant logarithmic energy spectra of relic GW are discussed.Comment: 25 pages in RevTex style with 6 figure

Thermal Radiation from Au + Au Collisions at \sqrt{s} = 200 GEV/A Energy

The transverse momentum distribution of the direct photons measured by the PHENIX collaboration in $Au + Au$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV/A has been analyzed. It has been shown that the data can be reproduced reasonably well assuming a deconfined state of thermalized quarks and gluons with initial temperature more than the transition temperature for deconfinement inferred from lattice QCD. The value of the initial temperature depends on the equation of state of the evolving matter. The sensitivities of the results on various input parameters have been studied. The effects of the modifications of hadronic properties at non-zero temperature have been discussed.Comment: minor modifications in the text, accepted for publicatio

A note on conductivity and charge diffusion in holographic flavour systems

We analyze the charge diffusion and conductivity in a Dp/Dq holographic setup that is dual to a supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in p+1 dimensions with N_f<< N_c flavour degrees of freedom at finite temperature and nonvanishing U(1) baryon number chemical potential. We provide a new derivation of the results that generalize the membrane paradigm to the present context. We perform a numerical analysis in the particular case of the D3/D7 flavor system. The results obtained support the validity of the Einstein relation at finite chemical potential.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, v2 with minor correction

Adaptive filtering techniques for gravitational wave interferometric data: Removing long-term sinusoidal disturbances and oscillatory transients

It is known by the experience gained from the gravitational wave detector proto-types that the interferometric output signal will be corrupted by a significant amount of non-Gaussian noise, large part of it being essentially composed of long-term sinusoids with slowly varying envelope (such as violin resonances in the suspensions, or main power harmonics) and short-term ringdown noise (which may emanate from servo control systems, electronics in a non-linear state, etc.). Since non-Gaussian noise components make the detection and estimation of the gravitational wave signature more difficult, a denoising algorithm based on adaptive filtering techniques (LMS methods) is proposed to separate and extract them from the stationary and Gaussian background noise. The strength of the method is that it does not require any precise model on the observed data: the signals are distinguished on the basis of their autocorrelation time. We believe that the robustness and simplicity of this method make it useful for data preparation and for the understanding of the first interferometric data. We present the detailed structure of the algorithm and its application to both simulated data and real data from the LIGO 40meter proto-type.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Test of Quantum Action for Inverse Square Potential

We present a numerical study of the quantum action previously introduced as a parametrisation of Q.M. transition amplitudes. We address the questions: Is the quantum action possibly an exact parametrisation in the whole range of transition times ($0 < T < \infty$)? Is the presence of potential terms beyond those occuring in the classical potential required? What is the error of the parametrisation estimated from the numerical fit? How about convergence and stability of the fitting method (dependence on grid points, resolution, initial conditions, internal precision etc.)? Further we compare two methods of numerical determination of the quantum action: (i) global fit of the Q.M. transition amplitudes and (ii) flow equation. As model we consider the inverse square potential, for which the Q.M. transition amplitudes are analytically known. We find that the relative error of the parametrisation starts from zero at T=0 increases to about $10^{-3}$ at $T=1/E_{gr}$ and then decreases to zero when $T \to \infty$. Second, we observe stability of the quantum action under variation of the control parameters. Finally, the flow equation method works well in the regime of large $T$ giving stable results under variation of initial data and consistent with the global fit method.Comment: Text (LaTeX), Figures(ps