2,608 research outputs found
No Elevated Plasma Catecholamine Levels during Sleep in Newly Diagnosed, Untreated Hypertensives
The sympatho-adrenergic system is highly involved in regulating sleep, wake and arousal states, and abnormalities in this system are regarded as a key factor in the development and progression of arterial hypertension. While hypertension is associated with a hyperadrenergic state during wakefulness, the effect of hypertension on plasma-catecholamine levels during sleep is not yet known. Twelve young participants with newly diagnosed, untreated hypertension and twelve healthy controls slept for 7 hours in the sleep laboratory. Before and after sleep, subjects rested in a supine position for 3-h periods of wakefulness. We sampled blood at a fast rate (1/10 min) and monitored blood pressure and heart rate continuously. We show that plasma NE and E levels did not differ between hypertensives and normotensive during sleep as well as before and after sleep. Blood pressure was higher in hypertensives, reaching the largest group difference in the morning after sleep. Unlike in the normotensives, in the hypertensive participants the morning rise in blood pressure did not correlate with the rise in catecholamine levels at awakening. Our results suggest that hypertension in its early stages is not associated with a strong hyperadrenergic state during sleep. In showing a diminished control of blood pressure through sympatho-adrenergic signals in hypertensive participants, our data point towards a possible involvement of dysfunctional sleep-related blood pressure regulation in the development of hypertension
Nonuniform Cardiac Denervation Observed by 11C-meta-Hydroxyephedrine PET in 6-OHDA-Treated Monkeys
Parkinson's disease presents nonmotor complications such as autonomic dysfunction that do not respond to traditional anti-parkinsonian therapies. The lack of established preclinical monkey models of Parkinson's disease with cardiac dysfunction hampers development and testing of new treatments to alleviate or prevent this feature. This study aimed to assess the feasibility of developing a model of cardiac dysautonomia in nonhuman primates and preclinical evaluations tools. Five rhesus monkeys received intravenous injections of 6-hydroxydopamine (total dose: 50 mg/kg). The animals were evaluated before and after with a battery of tests, including positron emission tomography with the norepinephrine analog 11C-meta-hydroxyephedrine. Imaging 1 week after neurotoxin treatment revealed nearly complete loss of specific radioligand uptake. Partial progressive recovery of cardiac uptake found between 1 and 10 weeks remained stable between 10 and 14 weeks. In all five animals, examination of the pattern of uptake (using Logan plot analysis to create distribution volume maps) revealed a persistent region-specific significant loss in the inferior wall of the left ventricle at 10 (P<0.001) and 14 weeks (P<0.01) relative to the anterior wall. Blood levels of dopamine, norepinephrine (P<0.05), epinephrine, and 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (P<0.01) were notably decreased after 6-hydroxydopamine at all time points. These results demonstrate that systemic injection of 6-hydroxydopamine in nonhuman primates creates a nonuniform but reproducible pattern of cardiac denervation as well as a persistent loss of circulating catecholamines, supporting the use of this method to further develop a monkey model of cardiac dysautonomia
Nernst branes from special geometry
We construct new black brane solutions in gauged
supergravity with a general cubic prepotential, which have entropy density
as and thus satisfy the Nernst Law. By using
the real formulation of special geometry, we are able to obtain analytical
solutions in closed form as functions of two parameters, the temperature
and the chemical potential . Our solutions interpolate between
hyperscaling violating Lifshitz geometries with at the
horizon and at infinity. In the zero temperature limit,
where the entropy density goes to zero, we recover the extremal Nernst branes
of Barisch et al, and the parameters of the near horizon geometry change to
.Comment: 37 pages. v2: numerical pre-factors of scalar fields q_A corrected in
Section 3. No changes to conclusions. References adde
Phase transition and hyperscaling violation for scalar Black Branes
We investigate the thermodynamical behavior and the scaling symmetries of the
scalar dressed black brane (BB) solutions of a recently proposed, exactly
integrable Einstein-scalar gravity model [1], which also arises as
compactification of (p-1)-branes with a smeared charge. The extremal, zero
temperature, solution is a scalar soliton interpolating between a conformal
invariant AdS vacuum in the near-horizon region and a scale covariant metric
(generating hyperscaling violation on the boundary field theory)
asymptotically. We show explicitly that for the boundary field theory this
implies the emergence of an UV length scale (related to the size of the brane),
which decouples in the IR, where conformal invariance is restored. We also show
that at high temperatures the system undergoes a phase transition. Whereas at
small temperature the Schwarzschild-AdS BB is stable, above a critical
temperature the scale covariant, scalar-dressed BB solution, becomes
energetically preferred. We calculate the critical exponent z and the
hyperscaling violation parameter of the scalar-dressed phase. In particular we
show that the hyperscaling violation parameter is always negative. We also show
that the above features are not a peculiarity of the exact integrable model of
Ref.[1], but are a quite generic feature of Einstein-scalar and
Einstein-Maxwell-scalar gravity models for which the squared-mass of the scalar
field is positive and the potential vanishes exponentially as the scalar field
goes to minus infinity.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures. In the revised version it has been pointed out
that the Einstein-scalar gravity model considered in the paper also arises as
compactification of black p-branes with smeared charge
Yohimbine bioavailability in humans
Pharmacokinetic profiles were determined in seven healthy young male subjects following single oral and intravenous doses of 10 mg of yohimbine hydrochloride.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46641/1/228_2004_Article_BF00315421.pd
Aspects of holography for theories with hyperscaling violation
We analyze various aspects of the recently proposed holographic theories with
general dynamical critical exponent z and hyperscaling violation exponent
. We first find the basic constraints on from the gravity
side, and compute the stress-energy tensor expectation values and scalar
two-point functions. Massive correlators exhibit a nontrivial exponential
behavior at long distances, controlled by . At short distance, the
two-point functions become power-law, with a universal form for .
Next, the calculation of the holographic entanglement entropy reveals the
existence of novel phases which violate the area law. The entropy in these
phases has a behavior that interpolates between that of a Fermi surface and
that exhibited by systems with extensive entanglement entropy. Finally, we
describe microscopic embeddings of some metrics into full
string theory models -- these metrics characterize large regions of the
parameter space of Dp-brane metrics for . For instance, the theory of
N D2-branes in IIA supergravity has z=1 and over a wide range
of scales, at large .Comment: 35 pages; v2: new references added; v3: proper reference [14] added;
v4: minor clarification
Coherent spinor dynamics in a spin-1 Bose condensate
Collisions in a thermal gas are perceived as random or incoherent as a
consequence of the large numbers of initial and final quantum states accessible
to the system. In a quantum gas, e.g. a Bose-Einstein condensate or a
degenerate Fermi gas, the phase space accessible to low energy collisions is so
restricted that collisions be-come coherent and reversible. Here, we report the
observation of coherent spin-changing collisions in a gas of spin-1 bosons.
Starting with condensates occupying two spin states, a condensate in the third
spin state is coherently and reversibly created by atomic collisions. The
observed dynamics are analogous to Josephson oscillations in weakly connected
superconductors and represent a type of matter-wave four-wave mixing. The
spin-dependent scattering length is determined from these oscillations to be
-1.45(18) Bohr. Finally, we demonstrate coherent control of the evolution of
the system by applying differential phase shifts to the spin states using
magnetic fields.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure
Spontaneous symmetry breaking in a quenched ferromagnetic spinor Bose condensate
A central goal in condensed matter and modern atomic physics is the
exploration of many-body quantum phases and the universal characteristics of
quantum phase transitions in so far as they differ from those established for
thermal phase transitions. Compared with condensed-matter systems, atomic gases
are more precisely constructed and also provide the unique opportunity to
explore quantum dynamics far from equilibrium. Here we identify a second-order
quantum phase transition in a gaseous spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, a
quantum fluid in which superfluidity and magnetism, both associated with
symmetry breaking, are simultaneously realized. Rb spinor condensates
were rapidly quenched across this transition to a ferromagnetic state and
probed using in-situ magnetization imaging to observe spontaneous symmetry
breaking through the formation of spin textures, ferromagnetic domains and
domain walls. The observation of topological defects produced by this symmetry
breaking, identified as polar-core spin-vortices containing non-zero spin
current but no net mass current, represents the first phase-sensitive in-situ
detection of vortices in a gaseous superfluid.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Early postural blood pressure response and cause-specific mortality among middle-aged adults
Orthostatic hypotension (OH) is associated with increased total mortality but contribution of specific death causes has not been thoroughly explored. In this prospective study, authors followed up 32,068 individuals without baseline history of cancer or cardiovascular disease (69% men; mean age, 46 years; range, 26â61 years) over a period of 24 years. Hazard ratios (HRs) for total and cause-specific mortality associated with presence of OH and by quartiles of postural systolic blood pressure response (âSBP) were assessed using multivariate adjusted Cox regression model. A total of 7,145 deaths (22.3%, 9.4 deaths/1,000 person-years) occurred during follow-up. Those with OH (n = 1,943) had higher risk of death due to injury (HR, 1.88; 1.37â2.57) and neurological disease (HR, 2.21; 1.39â3.51). Analogically, risk of death caused by injury and neurological disease increased across the quartiles of âSBP from hyper- (Q1SBP, +8.5 ± 4.7 mmHg) to hypotensive response (Q4SBP, â13.7 ± 5.7 mmHg; HR, 1.32; 1.00â1.72, and 1.84; 1.20â2.82, respectively) as did also risk of death due to respiratory disease (Q4SBP vs. Q1SBP: HR, 1.53; 1.14â2.04). In contrast, risk curve for cerebrovascular death was U-shaped with nadir in the mildly hypotensive 3rd quartile of âSBP (â5.0 ± 0.1 mmHg, Q3SBP vs. Q1SBP: HR, 0.75; 0.54â1.03; P for linear trend = 0.021). Additionally, cardiovascular mortality was increased among 5,805 rescreened participants (mean age, 53 years; 9.8% OH positive: HR, 1.54; 1.24â1.89, and Q4SBP vs. Q1SBP: 1.27; 1.02â1.57, respectively). In summary, increased mortality predicted by blood pressure fall on standing is associated with injuries, neurodegenerative, and respiratory diseases, as well as with cardiovascular disease in older adults. Moreover, both increase and pronounced decrease of SBP during early orthostasis indicate higher risk of cerebrovascular death
One-sided versus two-sided stochastic descriptions
It is well-known that discrete-time finite-state Markov Chains, which are
described by one-sided conditional probabilities which describe a dependence on
the past as only dependent on the present, can also be described as
one-dimensional Markov Fields, that is, nearest-neighbour Gibbs measures for
finite-spin models, which are described by two-sided conditional probabilities.
In such Markov Fields the time interpretation of past and future is being
replaced by the space interpretation of an interior volume, surrounded by an
exterior to the left and to the right.
If we relax the Markov requirement to weak dependence, that is, continuous
dependence, either on the past (generalising the Markov-Chain description) or
on the external configuration (generalising the Markov-Field description), it
turns out this equivalence breaks down, and neither class contains the other.
In one direction this result has been known for a few years, in the opposite
direction a counterexample was found recently. Our counterexample is based on
the phenomenon of entropic repulsion in long-range Ising (or "Dyson") models.Comment: 13 pages, Contribution for "Statistical Mechanics of Classical and
Disordered Systems
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