335 research outputs found
Response Time is More Important than Walking Speed for the Ability of Older Adults to Avoid a Fall after a Trip
We previously reported that the probability of an older adult recovering from a forward trip and using a âloweringâ strategy increases with decreased walking velocity and faster response time. To determine the within-subject interaction of these variables we asked three questions: (1) Is the body orientation at the time that the recovery foot is lowered to the ground (âtilt angleâ) critical for successful recovery? (2) Can a simple inverted pendulum model, using subject-specific walking velocity and response time as input variables, predict this body orientation, and thus success of recovery? (3) Is slower walking velocity or faster response time more effective in preventing a fall after a trip? Tilt angle was a perfect predictor of a successful recovery step, indicating that the recovery foot placement must occur before the tilt angle exceeds a critical value of between 23° and 26° from vertical. The inverted pendulum model predicted the tilt angle from walking velocity and response time with an error of 0.4±2.2° and a correlation coefficient of 0.93. The model predicted that faster response time was more important than slower walking velocity for successful recovery. In a typical individual who is at risk for falling, we predicted that a reduction of response time to a normal value allows a 77% increase in safe walking velocity. The mathematical model produced patient-specific recommendations for fall prevention, and suggested the importance of directing therapeutic interventions toward improving the response time of older adults
A Question of Choice
Women's reproductive rights, reproductive health, and constitutional privacy rights in the United States are addressed in light of the contemporary onslaught of the Christian Right. The misuse of State power by fundamentalist social forces in America is critiqued. The article also briefly reviews the question of State control over women's bodies
Cauchy's infinitesimals, his sum theorem, and foundational paradigms
Cauchy's sum theorem is a prototype of what is today a basic result on the
convergence of a series of functions in undergraduate analysis. We seek to
interpret Cauchy's proof, and discuss the related epistemological questions
involved in comparing distinct interpretive paradigms. Cauchy's proof is often
interpreted in the modern framework of a Weierstrassian paradigm. We analyze
Cauchy's proof closely and show that it finds closer proxies in a different
modern framework.
Keywords: Cauchy's infinitesimal; sum theorem; quantifier alternation;
uniform convergence; foundational paradigms.Comment: 42 pages; to appear in Foundations of Scienc
Semi-Static Hedging Based on a Generalized Reflection Principle on a Multi Dimensional Brownian Motion
On a multi-assets Black-Scholes economy, we introduce a class of barrier
options. In this model we apply a generalized reflection principle in a context
of the finite reflection group acting on a Euclidean space to give a valuation
formula and the semi-static hedge.Comment: Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, online firs
Functional central limit theorems for vicious walkers
We consider the diffusion scaling limit of the vicious walker model that is a
system of nonintersecting random walks. We prove a functional central limit
theorem for the model and derive two types of nonintersecting Brownian motions,
in which the nonintersecting condition is imposed in a finite time interval
for the first type and in an infinite time interval for
the second type, respectively. The limit process of the first type is a
temporally inhomogeneous diffusion, and that of the second type is a temporally
homogeneous diffusion that is identified with a Dyson's model of Brownian
motions studied in the random matrix theory. We show that these two types of
processes are related to each other by a multi-dimensional generalization of
Imhof's relation, whose original form relates the Brownian meander and the
three-dimensional Bessel process. We also study the vicious walkers with wall
restriction and prove a functional central limit theorem in the diffusion
scaling limit.Comment: AMS-LaTeX, 20 pages, 2 figures, v6: minor corrections made for
publicatio
Noncolliding Squared Bessel Processes
We consider a particle system of the squared Bessel processes with index conditioned never to collide with each other, in which if
the origin is assumed to be reflecting. When the number of particles is finite,
we prove for any fixed initial configuration that this noncolliding diffusion
process is determinantal in the sense that any multitime correlation function
is given by a determinant with a continuous kernel called the correlation
kernel. When the number of particles is infinite, we give sufficient conditions
for initial configurations so that the system is well defined. There the
process with an infinite number of particles is determinantal and the
correlation kernel is expressed using an entire function represented by the
Weierstrass canonical product, whose zeros on the positive part of the real
axis are given by the particle-positions in the initial configuration. From the
class of infinite-particle initial configurations satisfying our conditions, we
report one example in detail, which is a fixed configuration such that every
point of the square of positive zero of the Bessel function is
occupied by one particle. The process starting from this initial configuration
shows a relaxation phenomenon converging to the stationary process, which is
determinantal with the extended Bessel kernel, in the long-term limit.Comment: v3: LaTeX2e, 26 pages, no figure, corrections made for publication in
J. Stat. Phy
On Poincare and logarithmic Sobolev inequalities for a class of singular Gibbs measures
This note, mostly expository, is devoted to Poincar{\'e} and log-Sobolev
inequalities for a class of Boltzmann-Gibbs measures with singular interaction.
Such measures allow to model one-dimensional particles with confinement and
singular pair interaction. The functional inequalities come from convexity. We
prove and characterize optimality in the case of quadratic confinement via a
factorization of the measure. This optimality phenomenon holds for all beta
Hermite ensembles including the Gaussian unitary ensemble, a famous exactly
solvable model of random matrix theory. We further explore exact solvability by
reviewing the relation to Dyson-Ornstein-Uhlenbeck diffusion dynamics admitting
the Hermite-Lassalle orthogonal polynomials as a complete set of
eigenfunctions. We also discuss the consequence of the log-Sobolev inequality
in terms of concentration of measure for Lipschitz functions such as maxima and
linear statistics.Comment: Minor improvements. To appear in Geometric Aspects of Functional
Analysis -- Israel Seminar (GAFA) 2017-2019", Lecture Notes in Mathematics
225
Germinal Center Selection and Affinity Maturation Require Dynamic Regulation of mTORC1 Kinase
During antibody affinity maturation, germinal center (GC) B cells cycle between affinity-driven selection in the light zone (LZ) and proliferation and somatic hypermutation in the dark zone (DZ). Although selection of GC B cells is triggered by antigen-dependent signals delivered in the LZ, DZ proliferation occurs in the absence of such signals. We show that positive selection triggered by T cell help activates the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1), which promotes the anabolic program that supports DZ proliferation. Blocking mTORC1 prior to growth prevented clonal expansion, whereas blockade after cells reached peak size had little to no effect. Conversely, constitutively active mTORC1 led to DZ enrichment but loss of competitiveness and impaired affinity maturation. Thus, mTORC1 activation is required for fueling B cells prior to DZ proliferation rather than for allowing cell-cycle progression itself and must be regulated dynamically during cyclic re-entry to ensure efficient affinity-based selection
Symmetry of matrix-valued stochastic processes and noncolliding diffusion particle systems
As an extension of the theory of Dyson's Brownian motion models for the
standard Gaussian random-matrix ensembles, we report a systematic study of
hermitian matrix-valued processes and their eigenvalue processes associated
with the chiral and nonstandard random-matrix ensembles. In addition to the
noncolliding Brownian motions, we introduce a one-parameter family of
temporally homogeneous noncolliding systems of the Bessel processes and a
two-parameter family of temporally inhomogeneous noncolliding systems of Yor's
generalized meanders and show that all of the ten classes of eigenvalue
statistics in the Altland-Zirnbauer classification are realized as particle
distributions in the special cases of these diffusion particle systems. As a
corollary of each equivalence in distribution of a temporally inhomogeneous
eigenvalue process and a noncolliding diffusion process, a stochastic-calculus
proof of a version of the Harish-Chandra (Itzykson-Zuber) formula of integral
over unitary group is established.Comment: LaTeX, 27 pages, 4 figures, v3: Minor corrections made for
publication in J. Math. Phy
Infinite systems of non-colliding generalized meanders and Riemann-Liouville differintegrals
Yor's generalized meander is a temporally inhomogeneous modification of the
-dimensional Bessel process with , in which the
inhomogeneity is indexed by . We introduce the
non-colliding particle systems of the generalized meanders and prove that they
are the Pfaffian processes, in the sense that any multitime correlation
function is given by a Pfaffian. In the infinite particle limit, we show that
the elements of matrix kernels of the obtained infinite Pfaffian processes are
generally expressed by the Riemann-Liouville differintegrals of functions
comprising the Bessel functions used in the fractional calculus,
where orders of differintegration are determined by . As special
cases of the two parameters , the present infinite systems
include the quaternion determinantal processes studied by Forrester, Nagao and
Honner and by Nagao, which exhibit the temporal transitions between the
universality classes of random matrix theory.Comment: LaTeX, 35 pages, v3: The argument given in Section 3.2 was
simplified. Minor corrections were mad
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