Collective microwave scattering diagnostic on the H-1 heliac

A multichannel microwavescatteringdiagnostic has been developed and installed on the H-1 heliac. The purpose of the new diagnostic is to study small-scale plasma fluctuations in H-1, which are believed to be responsible for the loss of particles and energy from the plasma. The diagnostic is a 132 GHz, four-channel superheterodyne system. The transmitter and receiver antennas (consisting of horns and focusing bispherical mirrors) are located inside the vacuum vessel of H-1. A radial resolution of Δr/a∼0.2 is achieved. The scattering volume is positioned in the density gradient region at r/a∼0.6. At present, the system is aligned to measure fluctuations in the poloidal wave number range from approximately 10 to 25 cm⁻¹. The use of the heterodyne detection system allows the fluctuation propagation direction to be determined. The low frequency bandwidth of the system is 1 MHz. The instrument sensitivity is about Ps/Pi∼10⁻⁶

Identifying dynamical systems with bifurcations from noisy partial observation

Dynamical systems are used to model a variety of phenomena in which the bifurcation structure is a fundamental characteristic. Here we propose a statistical machine-learning approach to derive lowdimensional models that automatically integrate information in noisy time-series data from partial observations. The method is tested using artificial data generated from two cell-cycle control system models that exhibit different bifurcations, and the learned systems are shown to robustly inherit the bifurcation structure.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Higher serum levels of periostin and the risk of exacerbations in moderate asthmatics

BACKGROUND: In asthma, exacerbations and poor disease control are linked to airway allergic inflammation. Serum periostin has been proposed as a systemic biomarker of eosinophilic inflammation. This pilot study aims at evaluating whether in patients with moderate asthma, higher baseline levels of serum periostin are associated with a greater risk of exacerbation. METHODS: Fifteen outpatients with moderate allergic asthma were recruited. Serum concentrations of periostin were assessed (ELISA) at baseline, and the frequency of asthma exacerbations was recorded during a one-year follow-up. RESULTS: Patients (M/F: 10/5, mean age of 47.6\u2009\ub1\u200911.0 years) had mean ACQ score of 5.5\u2009\ub1\u20094.2 and FEV1%pred of 81.9\u2009\ub1\u200921.7 %. Baseline serum levels of periostin did not correlate with lung function parameters, nor with the ACQ score (p 650.05 for all analyses). Five subjects (33 % of the study group) reported one or more exacerbations during the following year. Baseline serum levels of periostin were significantly higher in subjects who experienced one or more exacerbations during the one year period of follow-up, compared with subjects with no exacerbations: median serum periostin level was 4047 ng/ml (range: 2231 to 4889 ng/ml) and 222 ng/ml (range 28.2 to 1631 ng/ml) respectively; p\u2009=\u20090.001. CONCLUSION: The findings of the present pilot study could form the basis for the design of larger studies aiming at developing strategies to identify asthmatic patients at risk for exacerbations

Neuroretinal hypoxic signaling in a new preclinical murine model for proliferative diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) affects approximately one-third of diabetic patients and, if left untreated, progresses to proliferative DR (PDR) with associated vitreous hemorrhage, retinal detachment, iris neovascularization, glaucoma and irreversible blindness. In vitreous samples of human patients with PDR, we found elevated levels of hypoxia inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF1α). HIFs are transcription factors that promote hypoxia adaptation and have important functional roles in a wide range of ischemic and inflammatory diseases. To recreate the human PDR phenotype for a preclinical animal model, we generated a mouse with neuroretinal-specific loss of the von Hippel Lindau tumor suppressor protein, a protein that targets HIF1α for ubiquitination. We found that the neuroretinal cells in these mice overexpressed HIF1α and developed severe, irreversible ischemic retinopathy that has features of human PDR. Rapid progression of retinopathy in these mutant mice should facilitate the evaluation of therapeutic agents for ischemic and inflammatory blinding disorders. In addition, this model system can be used to manipulate the modulation of the hypoxia signaling pathways, for the treatment of non-ocular ischemic and inflammatory disorders

Chiral primary one-point functions in the D3-D7 defect conformal field theory

JHEP is an open-access journal funded by SCOAP3 and licensed under CC BY 4.0archiveprefix: arXiv primaryclass: hep-th reportnumber: NORDITA-2012-81 slaccitation: %%CITATION = ARXIV:1210.7015;%%archiveprefix: arXiv primaryclass: hep-th reportnumber: NORDITA-2012-81 slaccitation: %%CITATION = ARXIV:1210.7015;%%C.F.K. and D.Y. were supported in part by FNU through grant number 272-08-0329. G.W.S. is supported by NSERC of Canada and by the Villum foundation through their Velux Visiting Professor program

New improved Moser-Trudinger inequalities and singular Liouville equations on compact surfaces

We consider a singular Liouville equation on a compact surface, arising from the study of Chern-Simons vortices in a self dual regime. Using new improved versions of the Moser-Trudinger inequalities (whose main feature is to be scaling invariant) and a variational scheme, we prove new existence results.Comment: to appear in GAF