Invariant classification of the rotationally symmetric R-separable webs for the Laplace equation in Euclidean space

An invariant characterization of the rotationally symmetric R-separable webs for the Laplace equation in Euclidean space is given in terms of invariants and covariants of a real binary quartic canonically associated to the characteristic conformal Killing tensor which defines the webs.Comment: 25 pages, recently submitted to the Journal of Mathematical Physic

Prevalence, underlying causes, and preventability of sepsis-associated mortality in US acute care hospitals

Importance: Sepsis is present in many hospitalizations that culminate in death. The contribution of sepsis to these deaths, and the extent to which they are preventable, is unknown. Objective: To estimate the prevalence, underlying causes, and preventability of sepsis-associated mortality in acute care hospitals. Design, Setting, and Participants: Cohort study in which a retrospective medical record review was conducted of 568 randomly selected adults admitted to 6 US academic and community hospitals from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2015, who died in the hospital or were discharged to hospice and not readmitted. Medical records were reviewed from January 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018. Main Outcomes and Measures: Clinicians reviewed cases for sepsis during hospitalization using Sepsis-3 criteria, hospice-qualifying criteria on admission, immediate and underlying causes of death, and suboptimal sepsis-related care such as inappropriate or delayed antibiotics, inadequate source control, or other medical errors. The preventability of each sepsis-associated death was rated on a 6-point Likert scale. Results: The study cohort included 568 patients (289 [50.9%] men; mean [SD] age, 70.5 [16.1] years) who died in the hospital or were discharged to hospice. Sepsis was present in 300 hospitalizations (52.8%; 95% CI, 48.6%-57.0%) and was the immediate cause of death in 198 cases (34.9%; 95% CI, 30.9%-38.9%). The next most common immediate causes of death were progressive cancer (92 [16.2%]) and heart failure (39 [6.9%]). The most common underlying causes of death in patients with sepsis were solid cancer (63 of 300 [21.0%]), chronic heart disease (46 of 300 [15.3%]), hematologic cancer (31 of 300 [10.3%]), dementia (29 of 300 [9.7%]), and chronic lung disease (27 of 300 [9.0%]). Hospice-qualifying conditions were present on admission in 121 of 300 sepsis-associated deaths (40.3%; 95% CI 34.7%-46.1%), most commonly end-stage cancer. Suboptimal care, most commonly delays in antibiotics, was identified in 68 of 300 sepsis-associated deaths (22.7%). However, only 11 sepsis-associated deaths (3.7%) were judged definitely or moderately likely preventable; another 25 sepsis-associated deaths (8.3%) were considered possibly preventable. Conclusions and Relevance: In this cohort from 6 US hospitals, sepsis was the most common immediate cause of death. However, most underlying causes of death were related to severe chronic comorbidities and most sepsis-associated deaths were unlikely to be preventable through better hospital-based care. Further innovations in the prevention and care of underlying conditions may be necessary before a major reduction in sepsis-associated deaths can be achieved

Identifying the orbital angular momentum of light based on atomic ensembles

We propose a scheme to distinguish the orbital angular momentum state of the Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam based on the electromagnetically induced transparency modulated by a microwave field in atomic ensembles. We show that the transverse phase variation of a probe beam with the LG mode can be mapped into the spatial intensity distribution due to the change of atomic coherence caused by the microwave. The proposal may provide a useful tool for studying higher-dimensional quantum information based on atomic ensembles.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Reusable Multi-Stage Multi-Secret Sharing Schemes Based on CRT

Three secret sharing schemes that use the Mignotte’ssequence and two secret sharing schemes that use the Asmuth-Bloom sequence are proposed in this paper. All these five secret sharing schemes are based on Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) [8]. The first scheme that uses the Mignotte’s sequence is a single secret scheme; the second one is an extension of the first one to Multi-secret sharing scheme. The third scheme is again for the case of multi-secrets but it is an improvement over the second scheme in the sense that it reduces the number of publicvalues. The first scheme that uses the Asmuth-Bloom sequence is designed for the case of a single secret and the second one is an extension of the first scheme to the case of multi-secrets. Novelty of the proposed schemes is that the shares of the participants are reusable i.e. same shares are applicable even with a new secret. Also only one share needs to be kept by each participant even for the muslti-secret sharing scheme. Further, the schemes are capable of verifying the honesty of the participants including the dealer. Correctness of the proposed schemes is discussed and show that the proposed schemes are computationally secure

Characteristics of Deterministic and Stochastic Sandpile Models in a Rotational Sandpile Model

Rotational constraint representing a local external bias generally has non-trivial effect on the critical behavior of lattice statistical models in equilibrium critical phenomena. In order to study the effect of rotational bias in a out of equilibrium situation like self-organized criticality, a new two state ``quasi-deterministic'' rotational sandpile model is developed here imposing rotational constraint on the flow of sand grains. An extended set of new critical exponents are found to characterize the avalanche properties at the non-equilibrium steady state of the model. The probability distribution functions are found to obey usual finite size scaling supported by negative time autocorrelation between the toppling waves. The model exhibits characteristics of both deterministic and stochastic sandpile models.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figure

Directing cell therapy to anatomic target sites in vivo with magnetic resonance targeting

Cell-based therapy exploits modified human cells to treat diseases but its targeted application in specific tissues, particularly those lying deep in the body where direct injection is not possible, has been problematic. Here we use a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system to direct macrophages carrying an oncolytic virus, Seprehvir, into primary and metastatic tumour sites in mice. To achieve this, we magnetically label macrophages with super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles and apply pulsed magnetic field gradients in the direction of the tumour sites. Magnetic resonance targeting guides macrophages from the bloodstream into tumours, resulting in increased tumour macrophage infiltration and reduction in tumour burden and metastasis. Our study indicates that clinical MRI scanners can not only track the location of magnetically labelled cells but also have the potential to steer them into one or more target tissues

Structure results for higher order symmetry algebras of 2D classical superintegrable systems

Recently the authors and J.M. Kress presented a special function recurrence relation method to prove quantum superintegrability of an integrable 2D system that included explicit constructions of higher order symmetries and the structure relations for the closed algebra generated by these symmetries. We applied the method to 5 families of systems, each depending on a rational parameter k, including most notably the caged anisotropic oscillator, the Tremblay, Turbiner and Winternitz system and a deformed Kepler-Coulomb system. Here we work out the analogs of these constructions for all of the associated classical Hamiltonian systems, as well as for a family including the generic potential on the 2-sphere. We do not have a proof in every case that the generating symmetries are of lowest possible order, but we believe this to be so via an extension of our method.Comment: 23 page