928 research outputs found
Surface Polymer Network Model and Effective Membrane Curvature Elasticity
A microscopic model of a surface polymer network - membrane system is
introduced, with contact polymer surface interactions that can be either
repulsive or attractive and sliplinks of functionality four randomly
distributed over the supporting membrane surface anchoring the polymers to it.
For the supporting surface perturbed from a planar configuration and a small
relative number of surface sliplinks, we investigate an expansion of the free
energy in terms of the local curvatures of the surface and the surface density
of sliplinks, obtained through the application of the Balian - Bloch -
Duplantier multiple surface scattering method. As a result, the dependence of
the curvature elastic modulus, the Gaussian modulus as well as of the
spontaneous curvature of the "dressed" membrane, ~{\sl i.e.} polymer network
plus membrane matrix, is obtained on the mean polymer bulk end to end
separation and the surface density of sliplinks.Comment: 15 pages with one included compressed uuencoded figure
A matter of attitude: Focusing on positive and active gradients to boost saliency maps
Saliency maps have become one of the most widely used interpretability
techniques for convolutional neural networks (CNN) due to their simplicity and
the quality of the insights they provide. However, there are still some doubts
about whether these insights are a trustworthy representation of what CNNs use
to come up with their predictions. This paper explores how rescuing the sign of
the gradients from the saliency map can lead to a deeper understanding of
multi-class classification problems. Using both pretrained and trained from
scratch CNNs we unveil that considering the sign and the effect not only of the
correct class, but also the influence of the other classes, allows to better
identify the pixels of the image that the network is really focusing on.
Furthermore, how occluding or altering those pixels is expected to affect the
outcome also becomes clearer
Monotherapy with major antihypertensive drug classes and risk of hospital admissions for mood disorders
Major depressive and bipolar disorders predispose to atherosclerosis, and there is accruing data from animal model, epidemiological, and genomic studies that commonly used antihypertensive drugs may have a role in the pathogenesis or course of mood disorders. In this study, we propose to determine whether antihypertensive drugs have an impact on mood disorders through the analysis of patients on monotherapy with different classes of antihypertensive drugs from a large hospital database of 525 046 patients with follow-up for 5 years. There were 144 066 eligible patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria: age 40 to 80 years old at time of antihypertensive prescription and medication exposure >90 days. The burden of comorbidity assessed by Charlson and Elixhauser scores showed an independent linear association with mood disorder diagnosis. The median time to hospital admission with mood disorder was 847 days for the 299 admissions (641 685 person-years of follow-up). Patients on angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers had the lowest risk for mood disorder admissions, and compared with this group, those on β-blockers (hazard ratio=2.11; [95% confidence interval, 1.12–3.98]; P=0.02) and calcium antagonists (2.28 [95% confidence interval, 1.13–4.58]; P=0.02) showed higher risk, whereas those on no antihypertensives (1.63 [95% confidence interval, 0.94–2.82]; P=0.08) and thiazide diuretics (1.56 [95% confidence interval, 0.65–3.73]; P=0.32) showed no significant difference. Overall, our exploratory findings suggest possible differential effects of antihypertensive medications on mood that merits further study: calcium antagonists and β-blockers may be associated with increased risk, whereas angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers may be associated with a decreased risk of mood disorders
Stochastic Lag Time in Nucleated Linear Self-Assembly
Protein aggregation is of great importance in biology, e.g., in amyloid
fibrillation. The aggregation processes that occur at the cellular scale must
be highly stochastic in nature because of the statistical number fluctuations
that arise on account of the small system size at the cellular scale. We study
the nucleated reversible self-assembly of monomeric building blocks into
polymer-like aggregates using the method of kinetic Monte Carlo. Kinetic Monte
Carlo, being inherently stochastic, allows us to study the impact of
fluctuations on the polymerisation reactions. One of the most important
characteristic features in this kind of problem is the existence of a lag phase
before self-assembly takes off, which is what we focus attention on. We study
the associated lag time as a function of the system size and kinetic pathway.
We find that the leading order stochastic contribution to the lag time before
polymerisation commences is inversely proportional to the system volume for
large-enough system size for all nine reaction pathways tested. Finite-size
corrections to this do depend on the kinetic pathway
INCORPORATION OF QUANTUM STATISTICAL FEATURES IN MOLECULAR DYNAMICS
We formulate a method for incorporating quantum fluctuations into molecular-
dynamics simulations of many-body systems, such as those employed for energetic
nuclear collision processes. Based on Fermi's Golden Rule, we allow spontaneous
transitions to occur between the wave packets which are not energy eigenstates.
The ensuing diffusive evolution in the space of the wave packet parameters
exhibits appealing physical properties, including relaxation towards quantum-
statistical equilibrium.Comment: 8 latex pages + 1 uuencoded ps figur
Lipid membranes with an edge
Consider a lipid membrane with a free exposed edge. The energy describing
this membrane is quadratic in the extrinsic curvature of its geometry; that
describing the edge is proportional to its length. In this note we determine
the boundary conditions satisfied by the equilibria of the membrane on this
edge, exploiting variational principles. The derivation is free of any
assumptions on the symmetry of the membrane geometry. With respect to earlier
work for axially symmetric configurations, we discover the existence of an
additional boundary condition which is identically satisfied in that limit. By
considering the balance of the forces operating at the edge, we provide a
physical interpretation for the boundary conditions. We end with a discussion
of the effect of the addition of a Gaussian rigidity term for the membrane.Comment: 8 page
PillCam COLON 2© in Crohn's disease: A new concept of pan-enteric mucosal healing assessment
AIM
To evaluate mucosal healing in patients with small bowel plus colonic Crohn's disease (CD) with a single non-invasive examination, by using PillCam COLON 2 (PCC2).
METHODS
Patients with non-stricturing nonpenetrating small bowel plus colonic CD in sustained corticosteroid-free remission were included. At diagnosis, patients had undergone ileocolonoscopy to identify active CD lesions, such as ulcers and erosions, and small bowel capsule endoscopy to assess the Lewis Score (LS). After = 1 year of follow-up, patients underwent entire gastrointestinal tract evaluation with PCC2. The primary endpoint was assessment of CD mucosal healing, defined as no active colonic CD lesions and LS < 135.
RESULTS
Twelve patients were included (7 male; mean age: 32 years), and mean follow-up was 38 mo. The majority of patients (83.3%) received immunosuppressive therapy. Three patients (25%) achieved mucosal healing in both the small bowel and the colon, while disease activity was limited to either the small bowel or the colon in 5 patients (42%). It was possible to observe the entire gastrointestinal tract in 10 of the 12 patients (83%) who underwent PCC2.
CONCLUSION
Only three patients in sustained corticosteroid-free clinical remission achieved mucosal healing in both the small bowel and the colon, highlighting the limitations of clinical assessment when stratifying disease activity, and the need for pan-enteric endoscopy to guide therapeutic modification
A Monte Carlo approach to study neutron and fragment emission in heavy-ion reactions
Quantum Molecular Dynamics models (QMD) are Monte Carlo approaches targeted
at the description of nucleon-ion and ion-ion collisions. We have developed a
QMD code, which has been used for the simulation of the fast stage of ion-ion
collisions, considering a wide range of system masses and system mass
asymmetries. The slow stage of the collisions has been described by statistical
methods. The combination of both stages leads to final distributions of
particles and fragments, which have been compared to experimental data
available in literature. A few results of these comparisons, concerning neutron
double-differential production cross-sections for C, Ne and Ar ions impinging
on C, Cu and Pb targets at 290 - 400 MeV/A bombarding energies and fragment
isotopic distributions from Xe + Al at 790 MeV/A, are shown in this paper.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, submitted for publication in Adv. Space Re
Elastic energy of polyhedral bilayer vesicles
In recent experiments [M. Dubois, B. Dem\'e, T. Gulik-Krzywicki, J.-C.
Dedieu, C. Vautrin, S. D\'esert, E. Perez, and T. Zemb, Nature (London) Vol.
411, 672 (2001)] the spontaneous formation of hollow bilayer vesicles with
polyhedral symmetry has been observed. On the basis of the experimental
phenomenology it was suggested [M. Dubois, V. Lizunov, A. Meister, T.
Gulik-Krzywicki, J. M. Verbavatz, E. Perez, J. Zimmerberg, and T. Zemb, Proc.
Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. Vol. 101, 15082 (2004)] that the mechanism for the
formation of bilayer polyhedra is minimization of elastic bending energy.
Motivated by these experiments, we study the elastic bending energy of
polyhedral bilayer vesicles. In agreement with experiments, and provided that
excess amphiphiles exhibiting spontaneous curvature are present in sufficient
quantity, we find that polyhedral bilayer vesicles can indeed be energetically
favorable compared to spherical bilayer vesicles. Consistent with experimental
observations we also find that the bending energy associated with the vertices
of bilayer polyhedra can be locally reduced through the formation of pores.
However, the stabilization of polyhedral bilayer vesicles over spherical
bilayer vesicles relies crucially on molecular segregation of excess
amphiphiles along the ridges rather than the vertices of bilayer polyhedra.
Furthermore, our analysis implies that, contrary to what has been suggested on
the basis of experiments, the icosahedron does not minimize elastic bending
energy among arbitrary polyhedral shapes and sizes. Instead, we find that, for
large polyhedron sizes, the snub dodecahedron and the snub cube both have lower
total bending energies than the icosahedron
Hanbury-Brown--Twiss Analysis in a Solvable Model
The analysis of meson correlations by Hanbury-Brown--Twiss interferometry is
tested with a simple model of meson production by resonance decay. We derive
conditions which should be satisfied in order to relate the measured momentum
correlation to the classical source size. The Bose correlation effects are
apparent in both the ratio of meson pairs to singles and in the ratio of like
to unlike pairs. With our parameter values, we find that the single particle
distribution is too distorted by the correlation to allow a straightforward
analysis using pair correlation normalized by the singles rates. An analysis
comparing symmetrized to unsymmetrized pairs is more robust, but nonclassical
off-shell effects are important at realistic temperatures.Comment: 21 pages + 9 figures (tarred etc. using uufiles, submitted
separately), REVTeX 3.0, preprint number: DOE/ER/40561-112/INT93-00-3
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