1,830 research outputs found
De Sitter ground state of scalar-tensor gravity and its primordial perturbation
Scalar-tensor gravity is one of the most competitive gravity theory to
Einstein's relativity. We reconstruct the exact de Sitter solution in
scalar-tensor gravity, in which the non-minimal coupling scalar is rolling
along the potential. This solution may have some relation to the early
inflation and present acceleration of the universe. We investigated its
primordial quantum perturbation around the adiabatic vacuum. We put forward for
the first time that exact de Sitter generates non-exactly scale invariant
perturbations. In the conformal coupling case, this model predicts that the
tensor mode of the perturbation (gravity wave) is strongly depressed.Comment: 9 page
Robust Matrix Completion
This paper considers the problem of recovery of a low-rank matrix in the
situation when most of its entries are not observed and a fraction of observed
entries are corrupted. The observations are noisy realizations of the sum of a
low rank matrix, which we wish to recover, with a second matrix having a
complementary sparse structure such as element-wise or column-wise sparsity. We
analyze a class of estimators obtained by solving a constrained convex
optimization problem that combines the nuclear norm and a convex relaxation for
a sparse constraint. Our results are obtained for the simultaneous presence of
random and deterministic patterns in the sampling scheme. We provide guarantees
for recovery of low-rank and sparse components from partial and corrupted
observations in the presence of noise and show that the obtained rates of
convergence are minimax optimal
Use of ER/PR/HER2 subtypes in conjunction with the 2007 St Gallen Consensus Statement for early breast cancer
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The 2007 St Gallen international expert consensus statement describes three risk categories and provides recommendations for treatment of early breast cancer. The set of recommendations on how to best treat primary breast cancer is recognized and used by clinicians worldwide. We now examine the variability of five-year survival of the 2007 St Gallen Risk Classifications utilizing the ER/PR/HER2 subtypes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using the population-based California Cancer Registry, 114,786 incident cases of Stages 1-3 invasive breast cancer diagnosed between 2000 and 2006 were identified. Cases were assigned to Low, Intermediate, or High Risk categories. Five-year-relative survival was computed for the three St Gallen risk categories and for the ER/PR/HER2 subtypes for further differentiation.</p> <p>Results and Discussion</p> <p>There were 9,124 (13%) cases classified as Low Risk, 44,234 (65%) cases as Intermediate Risk, and 14,340 (21%) as High Risk. Within the Intermediate Risk group, 33,735 (76%) were node-negative (Intermediate Risk 2) and 10,499 (24%) were node-positive (Intermediate Risk 3). For the High Risk group, 6,149 (43%) had 1 to 3 positive axillary lymph nodes (High Risk 4) and 8,191 (57%) had four or more positive lymph nodes (High Risk 5).</p> <p>Using five-year relative survival as the principal criterion, we found the following: a) There was very little difference between the Low Risk and Intermediate Risk categories; b) Use of the ER/PR/HER2 subtypes within the Intermediate and High Risk categories separated each into a group with better five-year survival (ER-positive) and a group with worse survival (ER-negative), irrespective of HER2-status; c) The heterogeneity of the High Risk category was most evident when one examined the ER/PR/HER2 subtypes with four or more positive axillary lymph nodes; (d) HER2-positivity did not always translate to worse survival, as noted when one compared the triple positive subtype (ER+/PR+/HER2+) to the triple negative subtype (ER-/PR-/HER2-); and (e) ER-negativity appeared to be a stronger predictor of poor survival than HER2-positivity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The use of ER/PR/HER2 subtype highlights the marked heterogeneity of the Intermediate and High Risk categories of the 2007 St Gallen statements. The use of ER/PR/HER2 subtypes and correlation with molecular classification of breast cancer is recommended.</p
Academic Performance and Behavioral Patterns
Identifying the factors that influence academic performance is an essential
part of educational research. Previous studies have documented the importance
of personality traits, class attendance, and social network structure. Because
most of these analyses were based on a single behavioral aspect and/or small
sample sizes, there is currently no quantification of the interplay of these
factors. Here, we study the academic performance among a cohort of 538
undergraduate students forming a single, densely connected social network. Our
work is based on data collected using smartphones, which the students used as
their primary phones for two years. The availability of multi-channel data from
a single population allows us to directly compare the explanatory power of
individual and social characteristics. We find that the most informative
indicators of performance are based on social ties and that network indicators
result in better model performance than individual characteristics (including
both personality and class attendance). We confirm earlier findings that class
attendance is the most important predictor among individual characteristics.
Finally, our results suggest the presence of strong homophily and/or peer
effects among university students
Presence of factors that activate platelet aggregation in mitral stenotic patients' plasma
BACKGROUND: Although the association between mitral stenosis (MS) and increased coagulation activity is well recognized, it is unclear whether enhanced coagulation remains localized in the left atrium or whether this represents a systemic problem. To assess systemic coagulation parameters and changes in platelet aggregation, we measured fibrinogen levels and performed in vitro platelet function tests in plasma obtained from mitral stenotic patients' and from healthy control subjects' peripheral venous blood. METHODS: Sixteen newly diagnosed patients with rheumatic MS (Group P) and 16 healthy subjects (Group N) were enrolled in the study. Platelet-equalized plasma samples were evaluated to determine in vitro platelet function, using adenosine diphosphate (ADP), collagen and epinephrine in an automated aggregometer. In vitro platelet function tests in group N were performed twice, with and without plasma obtained from group P. RESULTS: There were no significant differences between the groups with respect to demographic variables. Peripheral venous fibrinogen levels in Group P were not significantly different from those in Group N. Adenosine diphosphate, epinephrine and collagen-induced platelet aggregation ratios were significantly higher in Group P than in Group N. When plasma obtained from Group P was added to Group N subjects' platelets, ADP and collagen-induced, but not epinephrine-induced, aggregation ratios were significantly increased compared to baseline levels in Group N. CONCLUSION: Platelet aggregation is increased in patients with MS, while fibrinogen levels remain similar to controls. We conclude that mitral stenotic patients exhibit increased systemic coagulation activity and that plasma extracted from these patients may contain some transferable factors that activate platelet aggregation
Limit on the Radiative Neutrinoless Double Electron Capture of Ar from GERDA Phase I
Neutrinoless double electron capture is a process that, if detected, would
give evidence of lepton number violation and the Majorana nature of neutrinos.
A search for neutrinoless double electron capture of Ar has been
performed with germanium detectors installed in liquid argon using data from
Phase I of the GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment at the Gran Sasso
Laboratory of INFN, Italy. No signal was observed and an experimental lower
limit on the half-life of the radiative neutrinoless double electron capture of
Ar was established: 3.6 10 yr at 90 % C.I.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Cooling and heating with electron spins: Observation of the spin Peltier effect
The Peltier coefficient describes the amount of heat that is carried by an
electrical current when it passes through a material. Connecting two materials
with different Peltier coefficients causes a net heat flow towards or away from
the interface, resulting in cooling or heating at the interface - the Peltier
effect. Spintronics describes the transport of charge and angular momentum by
making use of separate spin-up and spin-down channels. Recently, the merger of
thermoelectricity with spintronics has given rise to a novel and rich research
field named spin caloritronics. Here, we report the first direct experimental
observation of refrigeration/heating driven by a spin current, a new spin
thermoelectric effect which we call the spin Peltier effect. The heat flow is
generated by the spin dependency of the Peltier coefficient inside the
ferromagnetic material. We explored the effect in a specifically designed spin
valve pillar structure by measuring the temperature using an electrically
isolated thermocouple. The difference in heat flow between the two magnetic
configurations leads to a change in temperature. With the help of 3-D finite
element modeling, we extracted permalloy spin Peltier coefficients in the range
of -0.9 to -1.3 mV. These results enable magnetic control of heat flow and
provide new functionality for future spintronic devices
Crisis discharges and readmission risk in acute psychiatric male inpatients
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Severe pressures on beds in psychiatric services have led to the implementation of an early ("crisis") discharge policy in the Western Cape, South Africa. The study examined the effect of this policy and length of hospital stay (LOS) on readmission rates in one psychiatric hospital in South Africa.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Discharge summaries of adult male patients (<it>n </it>= 438) admitted to Stikland Psychiatric Hospital during 2004 were retrospectively examined. Each patient's clinical course was then analysed for the period between January 1<sup>st</sup>, 2004, and August 31<sup>st</sup>, 2006.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Although shorter LOS was associated with decreased readmission rates, the effect of crisis discharges was far more powerful. Patients discharged as usual had a far lower risk of readmission than those discharged due to bed pressures (i.e. crisis discharge).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Increased risks associated with the early discharge policy necessitate the urgent review of the current management of bed shortages in this inpatient facility. The strengthening of community initiatives, particularly assertive outreach could be a way forward.</p
Unpacking the relationships between impulsivity, neighborhood disadvantage, and adolescent violence : an application of a neighborhood-based group decomposition
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects); and from the Marie Curie programme under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/Career Integration Grant no. PCIG10-GA-2011-303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting, and neighbourhood effects).Scholars have become increasingly interested in how social environments condition the relationships between individual risk-factors and adolescent behavior. An appreciable portion of this literature is concerned with the relationship between impulsivity and delinquency across neighborhood settings. The present article builds upon this growing body of research by considering the more nuanced pathways through which neighborhood disadvantage shapes the development of impulsivity and provides a situational context for impulsive tendencies to manifest in violent and aggressive behaviors. Using a sample of 12,935 adolescent from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) (mean age = 15.3, 51% female; 20% Black, 17% Hispanic), we demonstrate the extent to which variation in the association between impulsivity and delinquency across neighborhoods can be attributed to (1) differences in mean-levels of impulsivity and violence and (2) differences in coefficients across neighborhoods. The results of a series of multivariate regression models indicate that impulsivity is positively associated with self-reported violence, and that this relationship is strongest among youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The moderating effect of neighborhood disadvantage can be attributed primarily to the stronger effect of impulsivity on violence in these areas, while differences in average levels of violence and impulsivity account for a smaller, yet nontrivial portion of the observed relationship. These results indicate that the differential effect of impulsivity on violence can be attributed to both developmental processes that lead to the greater concentration of violent and impulsive adolescents in economically deprived neighborhoods as well as the greater likelihood of impulsive adolescents engaging in violence when they reside in economically disadvantaged communities.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Search for rare quark-annihilation decays, B --> Ds(*) Phi
We report on searches for B- --> Ds- Phi and B- --> Ds*- Phi. In the context
of the Standard Model, these decays are expected to be highly suppressed since
they proceed through annihilation of the b and u-bar quarks in the B- meson.
Our results are based on 234 million Upsilon(4S) --> B Bbar decays collected
with the BABAR detector at SLAC. We find no evidence for these decays, and we
set Bayesian 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions BF(B-
--> Ds- Phi) Ds*- Phi)<1.2x10^(-5). These results
are consistent with Standard Model expectations.Comment: 8 pages, 3 postscript figues, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid
Communications
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