9,970 research outputs found
Measurement of pressure and assessment of cavitation for a 22.5-kHz intra-arterial angioplasty device
This study was performed to understand better the mechanisms of action of an (22.5 kHz) ultrasonic wire catheter device used to remove atheromatous plaque in diseased blood vessels (ultrasonic angioplasty). During a clinical procedure, the wire acts as an acoustic waveguide to transfer acoustic energy from a generator outside the body to the ball tip of the wire, which is inserted in the blood vessel. The acoustic field radiated by the vibrating ball tip (1.5- to 3.0-mm diameter), was mapped in a relatively large (600 L) water tank and compared to the field from a well-characterized simple source. A dipolelike radiation pattern due to the translating ball tip was observed. At low power settings, standing wave effects in a smaller cylindrical volume (200-mm diameter, 350-mm height), which was used to simulate anthropometric dimensions, increase relative to the larger tank measurements. The standing wave ratio is dependent upon the pc characteristics of the medium and the dimensions of the volume, rather than on the absorption at this frequency. At high power-settings of the device, cavitation at the tip of the wire was measured using a 20-MHz passive cavitation detection scheme
Lay-led and peer support interventions for adolescents with asthma.
BACKGROUND: Adolescents with asthma are at high risk of poor adherence with treatment. This may be compounded by activities that worsen asthma, in particular smoking. Additional support above and beyond routine care has the potential to encourage good self-management. We wanted to find out whether sessions led by their peers or by lay leaders help to reduce these risks and improve asthma outcomes among adolescents. OBJECTIVES: To assess the safety and efficacy of lay-led and peer support interventions for adolescents with asthma. SEARCH METHODS: We identified trials from the Cochrane Airways Trials Register, which contains reports of randomised trials obtained from multiple electronic and handsearched sources, and we searched trial registries and reference lists of primary studies. We conducted the most recent searches on 25 November 2016. SELECTION CRITERIA: Eligible studies randomised adolescents with asthma to an intervention led by lay people or peers or to a control. We included parallel randomised controlled trials with individual or cluster designs. We included studies reported as full text, those published as abstract only and unpublished data. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two review authors screened the searches, extracted numerical data and study characteristics and assessed each included study for risk of bias. Primary outcomes were asthma-related quality of life and exacerbations requiring at least a course of oral steroids. We graded the analyses and presented evidence in a 'Summary of findings' table.We analysed dichotomous data as odds ratios, and continuous data as mean differences (MD) or standardised mean differences, all with a random-effects model. We assessed clinical, methodological and statistical heterogeneity when performing meta-analyses, and we described skewed data narratively. MAIN RESULTS: Five studies including a total of 1146 participants met the inclusion criteria for this review. As ever with systematic reviews of complex interventions, studies varied by design (cluster and individually randomised), duration (2.5 to 9 months), setting (school, day camp, primary care) and intervention content. Most risk of bias concerns were related to blinding and incomplete reporting, which limited the meta-analyses that could be performed. Studies generally controlled well for selection and attrition biases.All participants were between 11 and 17 years of age. Asthma diagnosis and severity varied, as did smoking prevalence. Three studies used the Triple A programme; one of these studies tested the addition of a smoke-free pledge; another delivered peer support group sessions and mp3 messaging to encourage adherence; and the third compared a peer-led asthma day camp with an equivalent camp led by healthcare practitioners.We had low confidence in all findings owing to risk of bias, inconsistency and imprecision. Results from an analysis of asthma-related quality of life based on the prespecified random-effects model were imprecise and showed no differences (MD 0.40, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.02 to 0.81); a sensitivity analysis based on a fixed-effect model and a responder analysis suggested small benefit may be derived for this outcome. Most other results were summarised narratively and did not show an important benefit of the intervention; studies provided no analysable data on asthma exacerbations or unscheduled visits (data were skewed), and one study measuring adherence reported a drop in both groups. Effects on asthma control favoured the intervention but findings were not statistically significant. Results from two studies with high levels of baseline smoking showed some promise for self-efficacy to stop smoking, but overall nicotine dependence and smoking-related knowledge were not significantly better in the intervention group. Investigators did not report adverse events. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Although weak evidence suggests that lay-led and peer support interventions could lead to a small improvement in asthma-related quality of life for adolescents, benefits for asthma control, exacerbations and medication adherence remain unproven. Current evidence is insufficient to reveal whether routine use of lay-led or peer support programmes is beneficial for adolescents receiving asthma care.Ongoing and future research may help to identify target populations for lay-led and peer support interventions, along with attributes that constitute a successful programme
Growth of primordial black holes in a universe containing a massless scalar field
The evolution of primordial black holes in a flat Friedmann universe with a
massless scalar field is investigated in fully general relativistic numerical
relativity. A primordial black hole is expected to form with a scale comparable
to the cosmological apparent horizon, in which case it may go through an
initial phase with significant accretion. However, if it is very close to the
cosmological apparent horizon size, the accretion is suppressed due to general
relativistic effects. In any case, it soon gets smaller than the cosmological
horizon and thereafter it can be approximated as an isolated vacuum solution
with decaying mass accretion. In this situation the dynamical and inhomogeneous
scalar field is typically equivalent to a perfect fluid with a stiff equation
of state . The black hole mass never increases by more than a factor of
two, despite recent claims that primordial black holes might grow substantially
through accreting quintessence. It is found that the gravitational memory
scenario, proposed for primordial black holes in Brans-Dicke and scalar-tensor
theories of gravity, is highly unphysical.Comment: 24 pages, accepted for publication in Physical Review
Accretion with back reaction
We calculate analytically a back reaction of the stationary spherical
accretion flow near the event horizon and near the inner Cauchy horizon of the
charged black hole. It is shown that corresponding back-reaction corrections to
the black hole metric depend only on the fluid accretion rate and diverge in
the case of an extremely charged black hole. In result, the test fluid
approximation for stationary accretion is violated for extreme black holes.
This behavior of the accreting black hole is in accordance with the third law
of black hole thermodynamics, forbidding the practical attainability of the
extreme state.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; new figure and references adde
Semi-Static Hedging Based on a Generalized Reflection Principle on a Multi Dimensional Brownian Motion
On a multi-assets Black-Scholes economy, we introduce a class of barrier
options. In this model we apply a generalized reflection principle in a context
of the finite reflection group acting on a Euclidean space to give a valuation
formula and the semi-static hedge.Comment: Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, online firs
Doppler cooling of gallium atoms: 2. Simulation in complex multilevel systems
This paper derives a general procedure for the numerical solution of the
Lindblad equations that govern the coherences arising from multicoloured light
interacting with a multilevel system. A systematic approach to finding the
conservative and dissipative terms is derived and applied to the laser cooling
of gallium. An improved numerical method is developed to solve the
time-dependent master equation and results are presented for transient cooling
processes. The method is significantly more robust, efficient and accurate than
the standard method and can be applied to a broad range of atomic and molecular
systems. Radiation pressure forces and the formation of dynamic dark-states are
studied in the gallium isotope 66Ga.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
A complete classification of spherically symmetric perfect fluid similarity solutions
We classify all spherically symmetric perfect fluid solutions of Einstein's
equations with equation of state p/mu=a which are self-similar in the sense
that all dimensionless variables depend only upon z=r/t. For a given value of
a, such solutions are described by two parameters and they can be classified in
terms of their behaviour at large and small distances from the origin; this
usually corresponds to large and small values of z but (due to a coordinate
anomaly) it may also correspond to finite z. We base our analysis on the
demonstration that all similarity solutions must be asymptotic to solutions
which depend on either powers of z or powers of lnz. We show that there are
only three similarity solutions which have an exact power-law dependence on z:
the flat Friedmann solution, a static solution and a Kantowski-Sachs solution
(although the latter is probably only physical for a1/5, there are
also two families of solutions which are asymptotically (but not exactly)
Minkowski: the first is asymptotically Minkowski as z tends to infinity and is
described by one parameter; the second is asymptotically Minkowski at a finite
value of z and is described by two parameters. A complete analysis of the dust
solutions is given, since these can be written down explicitly and elucidate
the link between the z>0 and z<0 solutions. Solutions with pressure are then
discussed in detail; these share many of the characteristics of the dust
solutions but they also exhibit new features.Comment: 63 pages. To appear in Physical Review
A Causal Entropy Bound
The identification of a causal-connection scale motivates us to propose a new
covariant bound on entropy within a generic space-like region. This "causal
entropy bound", scaling as the square root of EV, and thus lying around the
geometric mean of Bekenstein's S/ER and holographic S/A bounds, is checked in
various "critical" situations. In the case of limited gravity, Bekenstein's
bound is the strongest while naive holography is the weakest. In the case of
strong gravity, our bound and Bousso's holographic bound are stronger than
Bekenstein's, while naive holography is too tight, and hence typically wrong.Comment: 12 pages, no figures, a reference added and minor typos correcte
Cosmological Constraints on a Dynamical Electron Mass
Motivated by recent astrophysical observations of quasar absorption systems,
we formulate a simple theory where the electron to proton mass ratio is allowed to vary in space-time. In such a minimal theory only
the electron mass varies, with and kept constant. We find
that changes in will be driven by the electronic energy density after
the electron mass threshold is crossed. Particle production in this scenario is
negligible. The cosmological constraints imposed by recent astronomical
observations are very weak, due to the low mass density in electrons. Unlike in
similar theories for spacetime variation of the fine structure constant, the
observational constraints on variations in imposed by the weak
equivalence principle are much more stringent constraints than those from
quasar spectra. Any time-variation in the electron-proton mass ratio must be
less than one part in since redshifts This is more than
one thousand times smaller than current spectroscopic sensitivities can
achieve. Astronomically observable variations in the electron-proton must
therefore arise directly from effects induced by varying fine structure
'constant' or by processes associated with internal proton structure. We also
place a new upper bound of on any large-scale spatial
variation of that is compatible with the isotropy of the microwave
background radiation.Comment: New bounds from weak equivalence principle experiments added,
conclusions modifie
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