Simple quantum cosmology: Vacuum energy and initial state

A static non-singular 10-dimensional closed Friedmann universe of Planck size, filled with a perfect fluid with an equation of state with w = -2/3, can arise spontaneously by a quantum fluctuation from nothing in 11-dimensional spacetime. A quantum transition from this state can initiate the inflationary quantum cosmology outlined in Ref. 2 [General Relativity and Gravitation 33, 1415, 2001 - gr-qc/0103021]. With no fine-tuning, that cosmology predicts about 60 e-folds of inflation and a vacuum energy density depending only on the number of extra space dimensions (seven), G, h, c and the ratio between the strength of gravity and the strength of the strong force. The fraction of the total energy in the universe represented by this vacuum energy depends on the Hubble constant. Hubble constant estimates from WMAP, SDSS, the Hubble Key Project and Sunyaev-Zeldovich and X-ray flux measurements range from 60 to 72 km/(Mpc sec). With a mid-range Hubble constant of 65 km/(Mpc sec), the model in Ref. 2 predicts Omega-sub-Lambda = 0.7Comment: To be published in General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 37, May 2005. 5 pages, no figure

Gambaran Kadar Albumin Serum Pada Pasien Penyakit Ginjal Kronik Stadium 5 Non Dialisis

: Chronic kidney disease is a pathophysiology process with diverse etiology, causing a progressive decline on kidney function, and in most cases ends with kidney failure (stage 5). The low level of albumin serum is an important predictor of the morbidity and mortality, as a low albumin level is indicating the weak immunity and vitality in kidney failure patients. This is caused by an increase on inflammation and deficiency of protein intake. The low level of albumin serum is also a major indicator which can be used to show a person\u27s kidney function. Hypoalbuminemia occurred if blood albumin level is less than 3,5 g/dL. Research objective: To find out the description of albumin serum level on non-dialysis chronic kidney disease patients. Research method: Cross sectional descriptive, to obtain the data of albumin serum on non-dialysis chronic kidney disease patients carried out on December 2015 – January 2016 at two hospitals, which are RSUP. Prof. Dr. R. D. Kandou Manado and Rumah Sakit Advent Manado. The research sample were the blood sample from 35 people suffering a stage five non dialysis chronic kidney disease, which determined by consecutive sampling from non-probability sampling model. Result: According to the laboratory result, from the 35 patients diagnosed with a stage five non dialysis chronic kidney disease, 16 patients are having a decrease on albumin serum (45.7%), and 19 patients are having a normal albumin level (54.4%). None of the samples are having an increase on albumin level. Conclusion: From the research it can be concluded that there are more patients with normal albumin level which is 29 people (54.5%) compared to the patients with hypoalbuminemia which is 16 people (45.7%), with male having a higher tendency of prevalence compared to female on each category of albumin serum checkup

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

I briefly review our current understanding of dark matter and dark energy. The first part of this paper focusses on issues pertaining to dark matter including observational evidence for its existence, current constraints and the `abundance of substructure' and `cuspy core' issues which arise in CDM. I also briefly describe MOND. The second part of this review focusses on dark energy. In this part I discuss the significance of the cosmological constant problem which leads to a predicted value of the cosmological constant which is almost $10^{123}$ times larger than the observed value \la/8\pi G \simeq 10^{-47}GeV$^4$. Setting \la to this small value ensures that the acceleration of the universe is a fairly recent phenomenon giving rise to the `cosmic coincidence' conundrum according to which we live during a special epoch when the density in matter and \la are almost equal. Anthropic arguments are briefly discussed but more emphasis is placed upon dynamical dark energy models in which the equation of state is time dependent. These include Quintessence, Braneworld models, Chaplygin gas and Phantom energy. Model independent methods to determine the cosmic equation of state and the Statefinder diagnostic are also discussed. The Statefinder has the attractive property \atridot/a H^3 = 1 for LCDM, which is helpful for differentiating between LCDM and rival dark energy models. The review ends with a brief discussion of the fate of the universe in dark energy models.Comment: 40 pages, 11 figures, Lectures presented at the Second Aegean Summer School on the Early Universe, Syros, Greece, September 2003, New References added Final version to appear in the Proceeding

Nonequilibrium candidate Monte Carlo: A new tool for efficient equilibrium simulation

Metropolis Monte Carlo simulation is a powerful tool for studying the equilibrium properties of matter. In complex condensed-phase systems, however, it is difficult to design Monte Carlo moves with high acceptance probabilities that also rapidly sample uncorrelated configurations. Here, we introduce a new class of moves based on nonequilibrium dynamics: candidate configurations are generated through a finite-time process in which a system is actively driven out of equilibrium, and accepted with criteria that preserve the equilibrium distribution. The acceptance rule is similar to the Metropolis acceptance probability, but related to the nonequilibrium work rather than the instantaneous energy difference. Our method is applicable to sampling from both a single thermodynamic state or a mixture of thermodynamic states, and allows both coordinates and thermodynamic parameters to be driven in nonequilibrium proposals. While generating finite-time switching trajectories incurs an additional cost, driving some degrees of freedom while allowing others to evolve naturally can lead to large enhancements in acceptance probabilities, greatly reducing structural correlation times. Using nonequilibrium driven processes vastly expands the repertoire of useful Monte Carlo proposals in simulations of dense solvated systems

Energy composition of the Universe: time-independent internal symmetry

The energy composition of the Universe, as emerged from the Type Ia supernova observations and the WMAP data, looks preposterously complex, -- but only at the first glance. In fact, its structure proves to be simple and regular. An analysis in terms of the Friedmann integral enables to recognize a remarkably simple time-independent covariant robust recipe of the cosmic mix: the numerical values of the Friedmann integral for vacuum, dark matter, baryons and radiation are approximately identical. The identity may be treated as a symmetry relation that unifies cosmic energies into a regular set, a quartet, with the Friedmann integral as its common genuine time-independent physical parameter. Such cosmic internal (non-geometrical) symmetry exists whenever cosmic energies themselves exist in nature. It is most natural for a finite Universe suggested by the WMAP data. A link to fundamental theory may be found under the assumption about a special significance of the electroweak energy scale in both particle physics and cosmology. A freeze-out model developed on this basis demonstrates that the physical nature of new symmetry might be due to the interplay between electroweak physics and gravity at the cosmic age of a few picoseconds. The big `hierarchy number' of particle physics represents the interplay in the model. This number quantifies the Friedmann integral and gives also a measure to some other basic cosmological figures and phenomena associated with new symmetry. In this way, cosmic internal symmetry provides a common ground for better understanding of old and recent problems that otherwise seem unrelated; the coincidence of the observed cosmic densities, the flatness of the co-moving space, the initial perturbations and their amplitude, the cosmic entropy are among them.Comment: 32 page

Perbandingan Jumlah Trombosit Pada Pasien Diabetes Melitus Tipe 2 Yang Menggunakan Aspirin Dan Tidak Menggunakan Aspirin

: Patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus are characterized by an acceleration thrombopoiesis, an increased platelet turnover and a decreased platelet survival time which affect platelet count, that cause the increasing of proportion of large and reactive platelets, and hence more thrombogenic. People with diabetes have a two- to fourfold increase in the risk of dying from the complications of cardiovascular disease. Aspirin therapy is recommended for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular events in most people with diabetes. This study was an descriptive analytic method with cross sectional study design. The subjects in this study involve 112 people, 56 people treated with aspirin, and the 56 others were not who signed in endocrine metabolic department of RSUP Prof. Dr. R. D Kandou Manado. Data were taken from medical record. The Mann-Whitney test showed that there was no significant difference between the platelet count in patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus treated with aspirin and patients who were not. Conclusion: There was no significant difference between the platelet count in patients with type-2 diabetes mellitustreated with aspirin and patients who were not

Multiple genetic associations with Irish wolfhound dilated cardiomyopathy

Cardiac disease is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in dogs and humans, with dilated cardiomyopathy being a large contributor to this. The Irish Wolfhound (IWH) is one of the most commonly affected breeds and one of the few breeds with genetic loci associated with the disease. Mutations in more than 50 genes are associated with human dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), yet very few are also associated with canine DCM. Furthermore, none of the identified canine loci explain many cases of the disease and previous work has indicated that genotypes at multiple loci may act together to influence disease development. In this study, loci previously associated with DCM in IWH were tested for associations in a new cohort both individually and in combination. We have identified loci significantly associated with the disease individually, but no genotypes individually or in pairs conferred a significantly greater risk of developing DCM than the population risk. However combining three loci together did result in the identification of a genotype which conferred a greater risk of disease than the overall population risk. This study suggests multiple rather than individual genetic factors, cooperating to influence DCM risk in IWH

The dog as an animal model for bladder and urethral urothelial carcinoma: comparative epidemiology and histology

Despite the recent approval of several novel agents for patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma (UC), survival in this setting remains poor. As such, continued investigation into novel therapeutic options remains warranted. Pre clinical development of novel treatments requires an animal model that accurately simulates the disease in humans. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the dog as an animal model for human UC. A total of 260 cases of spontaneous, untreated canine primary urethral and urinary bladder UC, were epide¬miologically and histologically assessed and classified based on the current 2016 World Health Organization (WHO) tumor classification system. Canine data was compared with human data available from scientific literature. The mean age of dogs diagnosed with UC was 10.22 years (range, 4 15 years), which is equivalent to 60 70 human years. The results revealed a high association between UC diagnosis with the female sex [odds ratio (OR) 3.51; 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.57 4.79; P<0.001], surgical neutering (OR 4.57; 95% CI 1.87 11.12; P<0.001) and breed (OR 15.11 for Scottish terriers; 95% CI 8.99 25.41; P<0.001). Based on the 2016 WHO tumor (T), node and metastasis staging system, the primary tumors were characterized as T1 (38%), T2a (28%), T2b (13%) and T3 (22%). Non papillary, flat subgross tumor growth was strongly associated with muscle invasion (OR 31.00; P<0.001). Irrespective of subgross growth pattern, all assessable tumors were invading beyond the basement membrane compatible with infiltrating UC. Conventional, not further classifiable infiltrating UC was the most common type of tumor (90%), followed by UC with divergent, squamous and/or glandular differentiation (6%). Seven out of the 260 (2.8%) cases were classified as non urothelial based on their histological morphology. These cases included 5 (2%) squamous cell carci¬nomas, 1 (0.4%) adenocarcinoma and 1 (0.4%) neuroendocrine tumor. The 2 most striking common features of canine and human UC included high sex predilection and histological tumor appearance. The results support the suitability of the dog as an animal model for UC and confirm that dogs also spontaneously develop rare UC subtypes and bladder tumors, including plasmacytoid UC and neuroendocrine tumor, which are herein described for the first time in a non experimental animal species

Period-doubling bifurcation in strongly anisotropic Bianchi I quantum cosmology

We solve the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for the minisuperspace of a cosmological model of Bianchi type I with a minimally coupled massive scalar field $\phi$ as source by generalizing the calculation of Lukash and Schmidt [1]. Contrarily to other approaches we allow strong anisotropy. Combining analytical and numerical methods, we apply an adiabatic approximation for $\phi$, and as new feature we find a period-doubling bifurcation. This bifurcation takes place near the cosmological quantum boundary, i.e., the boundary of the quasiclassical region with oscillating $\psi$-function where the WKB-approximation is good. The numerical calculations suggest that such a notion of a ``cosmological quantum boundary'' is well-defined, because sharply beyond that boundary, the WKB-approximation is no more applicable at all. This result confirms the adequateness of the introduction of a cosmological quantum boundary in quantum cosmology.Comment: Latest update of the paper at http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~mbach/publics.html#