Rituximab in combination with high-dose methylprednisolone for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

We observed that high-dose methylprednisolone (HDMP) and rituximab was well tolerated and had promising activity when used in combination to treat patients with fludarabine-refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). This prompted us to evaluate the use of these agents in frontline therapy. A total of 28 patients with a median age of 65 years enrolled in this study. Patients received HDMP at 1 g/m(2) each day for 3 days during each of the three 4-week cycles together with rituximab and prophylactic antimicrobial therapy. The treatment was well tolerated with few adverse events of grade III or higher. The overall response rate was 96% (N=27). Nine patients (32%) achieved a complete remission (CR), two of which were without detectable minimal residual disease (MRD). Six patients with MRD received consolidation with alemtuzumab; five of these patients achieved an MRD-negative CR. With over 3 years of follow-up median progression-free survival was 30.3 months with only 39% of patients requiring additional therapy, and an overall survival was 96%. This study demonstrates that HDMP and rituximab is an effective nonmyelosuppressive treatment combination for patients with CLL that warrants consideration particularly for patients with limited myeloid reserve that might not tolerate standard treatment regimens

Effects of Combining Feed Grade Urea and a Slow-release Urea Product on Performance, Dietary Energetics and Carcass Characteristics of Feedlot Lambs Fed Finishing Diets with Different Starch to Acid Detergent Fiber Ratios.

Recent findings have shown that microbial nitrogen flow and digestible energy of diets are increased when urea is combined with a slow-release urea (SRU) in diets with a starch to acid detergent fibre ratio (S:F) 4:1. This affect is attributable to enhanced synchrony between ruminal N availability for microbial growth and carbohydrate degradation. To verify the magnitude of this effects on lamb performance, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of combining urea and a SRU in diets containing S:F ratios of 3:1, 4:1, or 5:1 on performance, dietary energetics and carcass characteristics of finishing lambs. For that, 40 Pelibuey×Katahdin lambs (36.65±3 kg) were assigned to one of five weight groupings in 20 pens (5 repetition/treatments). The S:F ratio in the diet was manipulated by partially replacing the corn grain and dried distiller's grain with solubles by forage (wheat straw) and soybean meal to reach S:F ratios of 3:1, 4:1 or 5:1. An additional treatment of 4:1 S:F ratio with 0.8% urea as the sole source of non-protein nitrogen was used as a reference for comparing the effect of urea combination vs. conventional urea at the same S:F ratio. There were no treatment effects on dry matter intake (DMI). Compared the urea combination vs urea at the same S:F ratio, urea combination increased (p<0.01) average daily gain (ADG, 18.3%), gain for feed (G:F, 9.5%), and apparent energy retention per unit DMI (8.2%). Irrespective of the S:F ratio, the urea combination improved the observed-to-expected dietary ratio and apparent retention per unit DMI was maximal (quadratic effect, p≤0.03) at an S:F ratio of 4:1, while the conventional urea treatment did not modify the observed-to-expected net energy ratio nor the apparent retention per unit DMI at 4:1 S:F ratio. Urea combination group tended (3.8%, p = 0.08) to have heavier carcasses with no effects on the rest of carcass characteristics. As S:F ratio increased, ADG, G:F, dietary net energy, carcass weight, dressing percentage and longissimus thoracis (LM) area increased linearly (p≤0.02). Combining urea and a slow-release urea product results in positive effects on growth performance and dietary energetics, but the best responses are apparently observed when there is a certain proportion (S:F ratio = 4:1) of starch to acid detergent fibre in the diet

Near Horizon of 5D Rotating Black Holes from 2D Perspective

We study the CFT dual to five dimensional extremal rotating black holes, by investigating the two dimensional perspective of their near horizon geometry. From two dimensional point of view, we show that both gauge fields, related to the two rotations, appear in the same manner in the asymptotic symmetry and in the associated central charge. We find that, our results are in perfect agreement with the generalization of Kerr/CFT approach to five dimensional extremal rotating black holes.Comment: The last version to appear in the European Physical Journal

Unitarity Bounds in AdS_3 Higher Spin Gravity

We study SL(N,R) Chern-Simons gauge theories in three dimensions. The choice of the embedding of SL(2,R) in SL(N,R), together with asymptotic boundary conditions, defines a theory of higher spin gravity. Each inequivalent embedding leads to a different asymptotic symmetry group, which we map to an OPE structure at the boundary. A simple inspection of these algebras indicates that only the W_N algebra constructed using the principal embedding could admit a unitary representation for large values of the central charge.Comment: 1+23 pages, Version 3 Appendix B revise

Quantizing higher-spin gravity in free-field variables

We study the formulation of massless higher-spin gravity on AdS$_3$ in a gauge in which the fundamental variables satisfy free field Poisson brackets. This gauge choice leaves a small portion of the gauge freedom unfixed, which should be further quotiented out. We show that doing so leads to a bulk version of the Coulomb gas formalism for $W_N$ CFT's: the generators of the residual gauge symmetries are the classical limits of screening charges, while the gauge-invariant observables are classical $W_N$ charges. Quantization in these variables can be carried out using standard techniques and makes manifest a remnant of the triality symmetry of $W_\infty[\lambda]$. This symmetry can be used to argue that the theory should be supplemented with additional matter content which is precisely that of the Prokushkin-Vasiliev theory. As a further application, we use our formulation to quantize a class of conical surplus solutions and confirm the conjecture that these are dual to specific degenerate $W_N$ primaries, to all orders in the large central charge expansion.Comment: 31 pages + appendices. V2: typos corrected, reference adde

Electric Field Effects on Graphene Materials

Understanding the effect of electric fields on the physical and chemical properties of two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures is instrumental in the design of novel electronic and optoelectronic devices. Several of those properties are characterized in terms of the dielectric constant which play an important role on capacitance, conductivity, screening, dielectric losses and refractive index. Here we review our recent theoretical studies using density functional calculations including van der Waals interactions on two types of layered materials of similar two-dimensional molecular geometry but remarkably different electronic structures, that is, graphene and molybdenum disulphide (MoS$_2$). We focus on such two-dimensional crystals because of they complementary physical and chemical properties, and the appealing interest to incorporate them in the next generation of electronic and optoelectronic devices. We predict that the effective dielectric constant ($\varepsilon$) of few-layer graphene and MoS$_2$ is tunable by external electric fields ($E_{\rm ext}$). We show that at low fields ($E_{\rm ext}^{}<0.01$ V/\AA) $\varepsilon$ assumes a nearly constant value $\sim$4 for both materials, but increases at higher fields to values that depend on the layer thickness. The thicker the structure the stronger is the modulation of $\varepsilon$ with the electric field. Increasing of the external field perpendicular to the layer surface above a critical value can drive the systems to an unstable state where the layers are weakly coupled and can be easily separated. The observed dependence of $\varepsilon$ on the external field is due to charge polarization driven by the bias, which show several similar characteristics despite of the layer considered.Comment: Invited book chapter on Exotic Properties of Carbon Nanomatter: Advances in Physics and Chemistry, Springer Series on Carbon Materials. Editors: Mihai V. Putz and Ottorino Ori (11 pages, 4 figures, 30 references

The action for higher spin black holes in three dimensions

In the context of (2+1)--dimensional Chern-Simons SL(N,R)\times SL(N,R) gauge fields and spin N black holes we compute the on-shell action and show that it generates sensible and consistent thermodynamics. In particular, the Chern-Simons action solves the integrability conditions recently considered in the literature.Comment: Paper shortened and generalized. Main results unchanged. 25 pages, Latex, no figure

Hidden Conformal Symmetry of the Reissner-Nordstr{\o}m Black Holes

Motivated by recent progresses in the holographic descriptions of the Kerr and Reissner-Nordstr{\o}m (RN) black holes, we explore the hidden conformal symmetry of nonextremal uplifted 5D RN black hole by studying the near horizon wave equation of a massless scalar field propagating in this background. Similar to the Kerr black hole case, this hidden symmetry is broken by the periodicity of the associated angle coordinate in the background geometry, but the results somehow testify the dual CFT description of the nonextremal RN black holes. The duality is further supported by matching of the entropies and absorption cross sections calculated from both CFT and gravity sides.Comment: 14 pages, no figur

Diverse types of expertise in facial recognition

Facial recognition errors can jeopardize national security, criminal justice, public safety and civil rights. Here, we compare the most accurate humans and facial recognition technology in a detailed lab-based evaluation and international proficiency test for forensic scientists involving 27 forensic departments from 14 countries. We find striking cognitive and perceptual diversity between naturally skilled super-recognizers, trained forensic examiners and deep neural networks, despite them achieving equivalent accuracy. Clear differences emerged in super-recognizers’ and forensic examiners’ perceptual processing, errors, and response patterns: super-recognizers were fast, biased to respond ‘same person’ and misidentified people with extreme confidence, whereas forensic examiners were slow, unbiased and strategically avoided misidentification errors. Further, these human experts and deep neural networks disagreed on the similarity of faces, pointing to differences in their representations of faces. Our findings therefore reveal multiple types of facial recognition expertise, with each type lending itself to particular facial recognition roles in operational settings. Finally, we show that harnessing the diversity between individual experts provides a robust method of maximizing facial recognition accuracy. This can be achieved either via collaboration between experts in forensic laboratories, or most promisingly, by statistical fusion of match scores provided by different types of expert