2,847 research outputs found
Diagnosis of cancer as an emergency: a critical review of current evidence
Many patients with cancer are diagnosed through an emergency presentation, which is associated with inferior clinical and patient-reported outcomes compared with those of patients who are diagnosed electively or through screening. Reducing the proportion of patients with cancer who are diagnosed as emergencies is, therefore, desirable; however, the optimal means of achieving this aim are uncertain owing to the involvement of different tumour, patient and health-care factors, often in combination. Most relevant evidence relates to patients with colorectal or lung cancer in a few economically developed countries, and defines emergency presentations contextually (that is, whether patients presented to emergency health-care services and/or received emergency treatment shortly before their diagnosis) as opposed to clinically (whether patients presented with life-threatening manifestations of their cancer). Consistent inequalities in the risk of emergency presentations by patient characteristics and cancer type have been described, but limited evidence is available on whether, and how, such presentations can be prevented. Evidence on patients' symptoms and health-care use before presentation as an emergency is sparse. In this Review, we describe the extent, causes and implications of a diagnosis of cancer following an emergency presentation, and provide recommendations for public health and health-care interventions, and research efforts aimed at addressing this under-researched aspect of cancer diagnosis
An adolescent with both Wegener's Granulomatosis and chronic blastomycosis
We report a case of Wegener's Granulomatosis (WG) associated with blastomycosis. This appears to be the first case report of WG co-existing with a tissue proven blastomycosis infection. The temporal correlation of the two conditions suggests that blastomycosis infection (and therefore possibly other fungal infections), may trigger the systemic granulomatous vasculitis in a predisposed individual; a provocative supposition warranting further study
Theory of dynamic crack branching in brittle materials
The problem of dynamic symmetric branching of an initial single brittle crack
propagating at a given speed under plane loading conditions is studied within a
continuum mechanics approach. Griffith's energy criterion and the principle of
local symmetry are used to determine the cracks paths. The bifurcation is
predicted at a given critical speed and at a specific branching angle: both
correlated very well with experiments. The curvature of the subsequent branches
is also studied: the sign of , with being the non singular stress at the
initial crack tip, separates branches paths that diverge from or converge to
the initial path, a feature that may be tested in future experiments. The model
rests on a scenario of crack branching with some reasonable assumptions based
on general considerations and in exact dynamic results for anti-plane
branching. It is argued that it is possible to use a static analysis of the
crack bifurcation for plane loading as a good approximation to the dynamical
case. The results are interesting since they explain within a continuum
mechanics approach the main features of the branching instabilities of fast
cracks in brittle materials, i.e. critical speeds, branching angle and the
geometry of subsequent branches paths.Comment: 41 pages, 15 figures. Accepted to International Journal of Fractur
Quantum gravitational contributions to quantum electrodynamics
Quantum electrodynamics describes the interactions of electrons and photons.
Electric charge (the gauge coupling constant) is energy dependent, and there is
a previous claim that charge is affected by gravity (described by general
relativity) with the implication that the charge is reduced at high energies.
But that claim has been very controversial with the situation inconclusive.
Here I report an analysis (free from earlier controversies) demonstrating that
that quantum gravity corrections to quantum electrodynamics have a quadratic
energy dependence that result in the reduction of the electric charge at high
energies, a result known as asymptotic freedom.Comment: To be published in Nature. 19 pages LaTeX, no figure
Holographic Wilsonian flows and emergent fermions in extremal charged black holes
We study holographic Wilsonian RG in a general class of asymptotically AdS
backgrounds with a U(1) gauge field. We consider free charged Dirac fermions in
such a background, and integrate them up to an intermediate radial distance,
yielding an equivalent low energy dual field theory. The new ingredient,
compared to scalars, involves a `generalized' basis of coherent states which
labels a particular half of the fermion components as coordinates or momenta,
depending on the choice of quantization (standard or alternative). We apply
this technology to explicitly compute RG flows of charged fermionic operators
and their composites (double trace operators) in field theories dual to (a)
pure AdS and (b) extremal charged black hole geometries. The flow diagrams and
fixed points are determined explicitly. In the case of the extremal black hole,
the RG flows connect two fixed points at the UV AdS boundary to two fixed
points at the IR AdS_2 region. The double trace flow is shown, both numerically
and analytically, to develop a pole singularity in the AdS_2 region at low
frequency and near the Fermi momentum, which can be traced to the appearance of
massless fermion modes on the low energy cut-off surface. The low energy field
theory action we derive exactly agrees with the semi-holographic action
proposed by Faulkner and Polchinski in arXiv:1001.5049 [hep-th]. In terms of
field theory, the holographic version of Wilsonian RG leads to a quantum theory
with random sources. In the extremal black hole background the random sources
become `light' in the AdS_2 region near the Fermi surface and emerge as new
dynamical degrees of freedom.Comment: 37 pages (including 8 pages of appendix), 10 figures and 2 table
Synchronous Symmetry Breaking in Neurons with Different Neurite Counts
As neurons develop, several immature processes (i.e., neurites) grow out of the cell body. Over time, each neuron breaks symmetry when only one of its neurites grows much longer than the rest, becoming an axon. This symmetry breaking is an important step in neurodevelopment, and aberrant symmetry breaking is associated with several neuropsychiatric diseases, including schizophrenia and autism. However, the effects of neurite count in neuronal symmetry breaking have never been studied. Existing models for neuronal polarization disagree: some predict that neurons with more neurites polarize up to several days later than neurons with fewer neurites, while others predict that neurons with different neurite counts polarize synchronously. We experimentally find that neurons with different neurite counts polarize synchronously. We also show that despite the significant differences among the previously proposed models, they all agree with our experimental findings when the expression levels of the proteins responsible for symmetry breaking increase with neurite count. Consistent with these results, we observe that the expression levels of two of these proteins, HRas and shootin1, significantly correlate with neurite count. This coordinated symmetry breaking we observed among neurons with different neurite counts may be important for synchronized polarization of neurons in developing organisms
Affect in mathematics education
There are two different uses for the word “affect” in behavioral sciences. Often it is used as an overarching umbrella concept that covers attitudes, beliefs, motivation, emotions, and all other noncognitive aspects of human mind. In this article, however, the word affect is used in a more narrow sense, referring to emotional states and traits. A more technical definition of emotions, states, and traits will follow later.Peer reviewe
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