Spinal anaesthesia in a patient with Takayasu's disease

We report the successful anaesthetic management of therapeutic abortion under spinal anaesthesia in a 32-yr-old woman with Takayasu's disease. The pathology and pathophysiology of this syndrome and their impact on anaesthesia are discussed. (Br. J. Anaesth. 1994; 72: 129-132

Gate-defined graphene double quantum dot and excited state spectroscopy

A double quantum dot is formed in a graphene nanoribbon device using three top gates. These gates independently change the number of electrons on each dot and tune the inter-dot coupling. Transport through excited states is observed in the weakly coupled double dot regime. We extract from the measurements all relevant capacitances of the double dot system, as well as the quantized level spacing

Orientifolds, Unoriented Instantons and Localization

We consider world-sheet instanton effects in N=1 string orientifolds of noncompact toric Calabi-Yau threefolds. We show that unoriented closed string topological amplitudes can be exactly computed using localization techniques for holomorphic maps with involution. Our results are in precise agreement with mirror symmetry and large N duality predictions.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures, published version; v4: typos correcte

Intercomparison of two-dimensional wave spectra obtained from microwave instruments, buoys and WAModel simulations during the surface wave dynamics experiment

An intercomparison is made of two dimensional wave spectra obtained from buoys and various remote sensing microwave systems and predicted by the WAModel dur- ing the Surface Wave Dynamics Experiment (SWADE). The overall agreement be- tween the measurements and the model is satifactory, but some differences in detail require further investigation. The buoy data yield reliable mean spectral parame- ters, but the maximum likelihood retrieval algorithm tends to produce directional distributions that are broader than those of other instruments. Various microwave instruments (ROWS, RESSAC, SRA) show good promise for the determination of 2d-wave spectra, but exhibit individual shortcomings (calibration uncertainties, di- rectional ambiguity, impact of aircraft motion) that need to be further studied. The SAR system yields reliable retrievals with respect to the general spectral dis- tribution, but suffers in this experiment from an undetermined calibration factor. Deviations between the WAModel and instrumental data could be largely attributed to wind field errors, but the model also exhibits deficiencies in the development of short-fetch wave systems and in the wave spectral response to rapidly turning wind fields

Prioritising prevention strategies for patients in antiretroviral treatment programmes in resource-limited settings

Expanded access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) offers opportunities to strengthen HIV prevention in resource-limited settings. We invited 27 ART programmes from urban settings in Africa, Asia and South America to participate in a survey, with the aim to examine what preventive services had been integrated in ART programmes. Twenty-two programmes participated; eight (36%) from South Africa, two from Brazil, two from Zambia and one each from Argentina, India, Thailand, Botswana, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Morocco, Uganda and Zimbabwe and one occupational programme of a brewery company included five countries (Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi). Twenty-one sites (96%) provided health education and social support, and 18 (82%) provided HIV testing and counselling. All sites encouraged disclosure of HIV infection to spouses and partners, but only 11 (50%) had a protocol for partner notification. Twenty-one sites (96%) supplied male condoms, seven (32%) female condoms and 20 (91%) provided prophylactic ART for the prevention of mother-to child transmission. Seven sites (33%) regularly screened for sexually transmitted infections (STI). Twelve sites (55%) were involved in activities aimed at women or adolescents, and 10 sites (46%) in activities aimed at serodiscordant couples. Stigma and discrimination, gender roles and funding constraints were perceived as the main obstacles to effective prevention in ART programmes. We conclude that preventive services in ART programmes in lower income countries focus on health education and the provision of social support and male condoms. Strategies that might be equally or more important in this setting, including partner notification, prompt diagnosis and treatment of STI and reduction of stigma in the community, have not been implemented widely

Algebraic varieties with automorphism groups of maximal rank

We confirm, to some extent, the belief that a projective variety X has the largest number (relative to the dimension of X) of independent commuting automorphisms of positive entropy only when X is birational to a complex torus or a quotient of a torus. We also include an addendum to an early paper though it is not used in the present paper.Comment: Mathematische Annalen (to appear

Holomorphic anomaly equations and the Igusa cusp form conjecture

Let $S$ be a K3 surface and let $E$ be an elliptic curve. We solve the reduced Gromov-Witten theory of the Calabi-Yau threefold $S \times E$ for all curve classes which are primitive in the K3 factor. In particular, we deduce the Igusa cusp form conjecture. The proof relies on new results in the Gromov-Witten theory of elliptic curves and K3 surfaces. We show the generating series of Gromov-Witten classes of an elliptic curve are cycle-valued quasimodular forms and satisfy a holomorphic anomaly equation. The quasimodularity generalizes a result by Okounkov and Pandharipande, and the holomorphic anomaly equation proves a conjecture of Milanov, Ruan and Shen. We further conjecture quasimodularity and holomorphic anomaly equations for the cycle-valued Gromov-Witten theory of every elliptic fibration with section. The conjecture generalizes the holomorphic anomaly equations for ellliptic Calabi-Yau threefolds predicted by Bershadsky, Cecotti, Ooguri, and Vafa. We show a modified conjecture holds numerically for the reduced Gromov-Witten theory of K3 surfaces in primitive classes.Comment: 68 page

International Space Station (ISS) Anomalies Trending Study

The NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) set out to utilize data mining and trending techniques to review the anomaly history of the International Space Station (ISS) and provide tools for discipline experts not involved with the ISS Program to search anomaly data to aid in identification of areas that may warrant further investigation. Additionally, the assessment team aimed to develop an approach and skillset for integrating data sets, with the intent of providing an enriched data set for discipline experts to investigate that is easier to navigate, particularly in light of ISS aging and the plan to extend its life into the late 2020s. This document contains the Appendices to the Volume I report

The holomorphic anomaly for open string moduli

We complete the holomorphic anomaly equations for topological strings with their dependence on open moduli. We obtain the complete system by standard path integral arguments generalizing the analysis of BCOV (Commun. Math. Phys. 165 (1994) 311) to strings with boundaries. We study both the anti-holomorphic dependence on open moduli and on closed moduli in presence of Wilson lines. By providing the compactification a' la Deligne-Mumford of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces with boundaries, we show that the open holomorphic anomaly equations are structured on the (real codimension one) boundary components of this space.Comment: 1+14 pages, 6 figures! v2: ref. added v3: section 4 expanded, 1+17 pages, 11 figures!!, to be publ. in JHE

Open Gromov-Witten Invariants of Toric Calabi-Yau 3-Folds

We present a proof of the mirror conjecture of Aganagic-Vafa [arXiv:hep-th/0012041] and Aganagic-Klemm-Vafa [arXiv:hep-th/0105045] on disk enumeration in toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds for all smooth semi-projective toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds. We consider both inner and outer branes, at arbitrary framing. In particular, we recover previous results on the conjecture for (i) an inner brane at zero framing in the total space of the canonical line bundle of the projective plane (Graber-Zaslow [arXiv:hep-th/0109075]), (ii) an outer brane at arbitrary framing in the resolved conifold (Zhou [arXiv:1001.0447]), and (iii) an outer brane at zero framing in the total space of the canonical line bundle of the projective plane (Brini [arXiv:1102.0281, Section 5.3]).Comment: 39 pages, 11 figure