Shoulder posture and median nerve sliding

Background: Patients with upper limb pain often have a slumped sitting position and poorshoulder posture. Pain could be due to poor posture causing mechanical changes (stretch; localpressure) that in turn affect the function of major limb nerves (e.g. median nerve). This studyexamines (1) whether the individual components of slumped sitting (forward head position, trunkflexion and shoulder protraction) cause median nerve stretch and (2) whether shoulderprotraction restricts normal nerve movements.Methods: Longitudinal nerve movement was measured using frame-by-frame cross-correlationanalysis from high frequency ultrasound images during individual components of slumped sitting.The effects of protraction on nerve movement through the shoulder region were investigated byexamining nerve movement in the arm in response to contralateral neck side flexion.Results: Neither moving the head forward or trunk flexion caused significant movement of themedian nerve. In contrast, 4.3 mm of movement, adding 0.7% strain, occurred in the forearm duringshoulder protraction. A delay in movement at the start of protraction and straightening of thenerve trunk provided evidence of unloading with the shoulder flexed and elbow extended and thescapulothoracic joint in neutral. There was a 60% reduction in nerve movement in the arm duringcontralateral neck side flexion when the shoulder was protracted compared to scapulothoracicneutral.Conclusion: Slumped sitting is unlikely to increase nerve strain sufficient to cause changes tonerve function. However, shoulder protraction may place the median nerve at risk of injury, sincenerve movement is reduced through the shoulder region when the shoulder is protracted andother joints are moved. Both altered nerve dynamics in response to moving other joints and localchanges to blood supply may adversely affect nerve function and increase the risk of developingupper quadrant pain

QCD Sum Rule Calculation of Twist-3 Contributions to Polarized Nucleon Structure Functions

Using the framework of QCD sum rules we predict the twist-3 contribution to the second moment of the polarized nucleon structure function $g_2(x)$. As the relevant local operator depends explicitely on the gluon field, we employ a recently studied interpolating nucleon current which contains three quark field and one gluon field operator. Despite the fact that our calculation is based on the analysis of a completely different correlation function, our estimates are consitent with those of Balitsky, Braun and Kolesnichenko who used a three-quark current.Comment: 16pp. , 2 figures (uuencoded eps-files), LateX. Some misprints corrected, results unchange

Variations of Hadron Masses and Matter Properties in Dense Nuclear Matter

Using a self-consistent quark model for nuclear matter we investigate variations of the masses of the non-strange vector mesons, the hyperons and the nucleon in dense nuclear matter (up to four times the normal nuclear density). We find that the changes in the hadron masses can be described in terms of the value of the scalar mean-field in matter. The model is then used to calculate the density dependence of the quark condensate in-medium, which turns out to be well approximated by a linear function of the nuclear density. Some relations among the hadron properties and the in-medium quark condensate are discussed.Comment: 22 pages, University of Adelaide preperint ADP-94-20/T160, submitted to Physical Review

Role of heavy-meson exchange in pion production near threshold

Recent calculations of $s$-wave pion production have severely underestimated the accurately known $pp\rightarrow pp\pi^0$\ total cross section near threshold. In these calculations, only the single-nucleon axial-charge operator is considered. We have calculated, in addition to the one-body term, the two-body contributions to this reaction that arise from the exchange of mesons. We find that the inclusion of the scalar $\sigma$-meson exchange current (and lesser contributions from other mesons) increases the cross section by about a factor of five, and leads to excellent agreement with the data. The results are neither very sensitive to changes in the distorting potential that generates the $NN$ wave function, nor to different choices for the meson-nucleon form factors. We argue that $pp\rightarrow pp\pi^0$\ data provide direct experimental evidence for meson-exchange contributions to the axial current.Comment: 28 Pages, IU-NTC #93-0

What does a change in the quark condensate say about restoration of chiral symmetry in matter?

The contribution of nucleons to the quark condensate in nuclear matter includes a piece of first order in $m_\pi$, arising from the contribution of low-momentum virtual pions to the $\pi N$ sigma commutator. Chiral symmetry requires that no term of this order appears in the $NN$ interaction. The mass of a nucleon in matter thus cannot depend in any simple way on the quark condensate alone. More generally, pieces of the quark condensate that arise from low-momentum pions should not be associated with partial restoration of chiral symmetry.Comment: 9 pages (RevTeX). Definition of effective mass changed; numerical value of leading nonanalytic term corrected, along with various misprint

QCD phase transitions from relativistic hadron models

The models of translationally invariant infinite nuclear matter in the relativistic mean field models are very interesting and simple, since the nucleon can connect only to a constant vector and scalar meson field. Can one connect these to the complicated phase transitions of QCD ? For an affirmative answer to this question, one must consider models where the coupling constants to the scalar and vector fields must depend on density in a non-linear way, since as such the models are not explicitly chirally invariant. Once this is ensured, indeed one can derive a quark condensate indirectly from the energy density of nuclear matter which goes to zero at large density and temperature. The change to zero condensate indicates a smooth phase transition.Comment: 12 pages latex file, 1 table, 12 Postscript figures. To appear in Zeit. f. Phys.

QCD Sum Rules for the Isospin-Breaking Axial Correlator with Correct Chiral Behavior

We revisit the QCD sum-rule treatment of the isospin-breaking axial correlator in light of the recent claim that a previous treatment produced results incompatible with known chiral constraints. The source of the error in the previous analysis is identified, and a corrected version of the sum-rule treatment obtained. It is then shown that, using input from chiral perturbation theory, one may use the resulting sum rule to extract information on the leading chiral behavior of isospin-breaking parameters associated with the coupling of excited pseudoscalar resonances to the axial currents. A rather accurate extraction is possible for the case of the eta'. Demanding stability of the sum-rule analysis also allows us to improve the upper bound on the fourth-order low-energy constant, L_7.Comment: 20 pages (RevTeX), 1 figure (epsf

Nucleon-nucleon effective potential in dense matter including rho-meson exchange

We obtain the RPA summed one-meson exchange potential between nucleons in symmetric nuclear matter at zero temperature, from a model which includes rho, sigma, omega and pi mesons. The behavior of rho mesons inside the medium is first discussed using different schemes to extract a finite contribution from the vacuum polarization. These schemes give qualitatively different results for the in-medium rho mass. The results are discussed in connection with the nourenormalizability of the model. We next study the modified potential as density increases. In the intermediate-distance range, it is qualitatively modified by matter and vacuum effects. In the long-distance range (r > 2 fm), one observes the presence of oscillations, which are not present in free space. Features on this distance range arc insensitive to the renormalization scheme