Pulmonary arterial hypertension: a new era in management

The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included.Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a heterogeneous condition with a wide range of causes. The diagnosis is often delayed or missed. PAH is covert in its early stages, when its detection and treatment should have the most impact. Access in Australia to effective PAH therapies has lagged behind that in other affluent countries. New agents for PAH, now becoming available, improve symptoms and reduce pulmonary resistance, with some demonstrating an ability to reverse remodelling of the right ventricle. Best management of PAH is comprehensive and multidisciplinary. Centres of excellence are needed in geographically strategic areas. Aggressive efforts must be made to diagnose PAH and to facilitate access to effective therapies.Anne M Keogh, Keith D McNeil, Trevor Williams, Eli Gabbay and Leslie G Clelan

Development of a technology adoption and usage prediction tool for assistive technology for people with dementia

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ The Authors 2013.In the current work, data gleaned from an assistive technology (reminding technology), which has been evaluated with people with Dementia over a period of several years was retrospectively studied to extract the factors that contributed to successful adoption. The aim was to develop a prediction model with the capability of prospectively assessing whether the assistive technology would be suitable for persons with Dementia (and their carer), based on user characteristics, needs and perceptions. Such a prediction tool has the ability to empower a formal carer to assess, through a very limited amount of questions, whether the technology will be adopted and used.EPSR

Dynamics of a suspended nanowire driven by an ac Josephson current in an inhomogeneous magnetic field

We consider a voltage-biased nanoelectromechanical Josephson junction, where a suspended nanowire forms a superconducting weak-link, in an inhomogeneous magnetic field. We show that a nonlinear coupling between the Josephson current and the magnetic field generates a Laplace force that induces a whirling motion of the nanowire. By performing an analytical and a numerical analysis, we demonstrate that at resonance, the amplitude-phase dynamics of the whirling movement present different regimes depending on the degree of inhomogeneity of the magnetic field: time independent, periodic and chaotic. Transitions between these regimes are also discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Quantum Effects in the Mechanical Properties of Suspended Nanomechanical Systems

We explore the quantum aspects of an elastic bar supported at both ends and subject to compression. If strain rather than stress is held fixed, the system remains stable beyond the buckling instability, supporting two potential minima. The classical equilibrium transverse displacement is analogous to a Ginsburg-Landau order parameter, with strain playing the role of temperature. We calculate the quantum fluctuations about the classical value as a function of strain. Excitation energies and quantum fluctuation amplitudes are compared for silicon beams and carbon nanotubes.Comment: RevTeX4. 5 pages, 3 eps figures. Submitted to Physical Review Letter

Nonlinear response of a driven vibrating nanobeam in the quantum regime

We analytically investigate the nonlinear response of a damped doubly clamped nanomechanical beam under static longitudinal compression which is excited to transverse vibrations. Starting from a continuous elasticity model for the beam, we consider the dynamics of the beam close to the Euler buckling instability. There, the fundamental transverse mode dominates and a quantum mechanical time-dependent effective single particle Hamiltonian for its amplitude can be derived. In addition, we include the influence of a dissipative Ohmic or super-Ohmic environment. In the rotating frame, a Markovian master equation is derived which includes also the effect of the time-dependent driving in a non-trivial way. The quasienergies of the pure system show multiple avoided level crossings corresponding to multiphonon transitions in the resonator. Around the resonances, the master equation is solved analytically using Van Vleck perturbation theory. Their lineshapes are calculated resulting in simple expressions. We find the general solution for the multiple multiphonon resonances and, most interestingly, a bath-induced transition from a resonant to an antiresonant behavior of the nonlinear response.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures, submitted to NJ

Synchronization by Nonlinear Frequency Pulling

We analyze a model for the synchronization of nonlinear oscillators due to reactive coupling and nonlinear frequency pulling motivated by the physics of arrays of nanoscale oscillators. We study the model for the mean field case of all-to-all coupling, deriving results for the onset of synchronization as the coupling or nonlinearity increase, and the fully locked state when all the oscillators evolve with the same frequency

Mesoscopic Electron and Phonon Transport through a Curved Wire

There is great interest in the development of novel nanomachines that use charge, spin, or energy transport, to enable new sensors with unprecedented measurement capabilities. Electrical and thermal transport in these mesoscopic systems typically involves wave propagation through a nanoscale geometry such as a quantum wire. In this paper we present a general theoretical technique to describe wave propagation through a curved wire of uniform cross-section and lying in a plane, but of otherwise arbitrary shape. The method consists of (i) introducing a local orthogonal coordinate system, the arclength and two locally perpendicular coordinate axes, dictated by the shape of the wire; (ii) rewriting the wave equation of interest in this system; (iii) identifying an effective scattering potential caused by the local curvature; and (iv), solving the associated Lippmann-Schwinger equation for the scattering matrix. We carry out this procedure in detail for the scalar Helmholtz equation with both hard-wall and stress-free boundary conditions, appropriate for the mesoscopic transport of electrons and (scalar) phonons. A novel aspect of the phonon case is that the reflection probability always vanishes in the long-wavelength limit, allowing a simple perturbative (Born approximation) treatment at low energies. Our results show that, in contrast to charge transport, curvature only barely suppresses thermal transport, even for sharply bent wires, at least within the two-dimensional scalar phonon model considered. Applications to experiments are also discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures, RevTe

Control of Dephasing and Phonon Emission in Coupled Quantum Dots

We predict that phonon subband quantization can be detected in the non-linear electron current through double quantum dot qubits embedded into nano-size semiconductor slabs, acting as phonon cavities. For particular values of the dot level splitting $\Delta$, piezo-electric or deformation potential scattering is either drastically reduced as compared to the bulk case, or strongly enhanced due to phonon van Hove singularities. By tuning $\Delta$ via gate voltages, one can either control dephasing, or strongly increase emission into phonon modes with characteristic angular distributions.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication as Rapid Comm. in Phys. Rev.

Elastic Wave Transmission at an Abrupt Junction in a Thin Plate, with Application to Heat Transport and Vibrations in Mesoscopic Systems

The transmission coefficient for vibrational waves crossing an abrupt junction between two thin elastic plates of different widths is calculated. These calculations are relevant to ballistic phonon thermal transport at low temperatures in mesoscopic systems and the Q for vibrations in mesoscopic oscillators. Complete results are calculated in a simple scalar model of the elastic waves, and results for long wavelength modes are calculated using the full elasticity theory calculation. We suggest that thin plate elasticty theory provide a useful and tractable approximation to the full three dimensional geometry.Comment: 35 pages, including 12 figure