Cardiovascular Adjustments to Gravitational Stress

The effects of gravity on the cardiovascular system must be taken into account whenever a hemodynamic assessment is made. All intravascular pressure have a gravity-dependent hydrostatic component. The interaction between the gravitational field, the position of the body, and the functional characteristics of the blood vessels determines the distribution of intravascular volume. In turn this distribution largely determines cardiac pump function. Multiple control mechanisms are activated to preserve optimal tissue perfusion when the magnitude of the gravitational field or its direction relative to the body changes. Humans are particularly sensitive to such changes because of the combination of their normally erect posture and the large body mass and blood volume below the level of the heart. Current aerospace technology also exposes human subjects to extreme variations in the gravitational forces that range from zero during space travel to as much an nine-times normal during operation of high-performance military aircraft. This chapter therefore emphasizes human physiology

Entanglement quantification through local observable correlations

We present a significantly improved scheme of entanglement detection inspired by local uncertainty relations for a system consisting of two qubits. Developing the underlying idea of local uncertainty relations, namely correlations, we demonstrate that it's possible to define a measure which is invariant under local unitary transformations and which is based only on local measurements. It is quite simple to implement experimentally and it allows entanglement quantification in a certain range for mixed states and exactly for pure states, without first obtaining full knowledge (e.g. through tomography) of the state.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, revised version with new proof and replaced figure

Strongly anisotropic roughness in surfaces driven by an oblique particle flux

Using field theoretic renormalization, an MBE-type growth process with an obliquely incident influx of atoms is examined. The projection of the beam on the substrate plane selects a "parallel" direction, with rotational invariance restricted to the transverse directions. Depending on the behavior of an effective anisotropic surface tension, a line of second order transitions is identified, as well as a line of potentially first order transitions, joined by a multicritical point. Near the second order transitions and the multicritical point, the surface roughness is strongly anisotropic. Four different roughness exponents are introduced and computed, describing the surface in different directions, in real or momentum space. The results presented challenge an earlier study of the multicritical point.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, REVTeX

Improved Semileptonic Form Factor Calculations in Lattice QCD

We investigate the computational efficiency of two stochastic based alternatives to the Sequential Propagator Method used in Lattice QCD calculations of heavy-light semileptonic form factors. In the first method, we replace the sequential propagator, which couples the calculation of two of the three propagators required for the calculation, with a stochastic propagator so that the calculations of all three propagators are independent. This method is more flexible than the Sequential Propagator Method but introduces stochastic noise. We study the noise to determine when this method becomes competitive with the Sequential Propagator Method, and find that for any practical calculation it is competitive with or superior to the Sequential Propagator Method. We also examine a second stochastic method, the so-called ``one-end trick", concluding it is relatively inefficient in this context. The investigation is carried out on two gauge field ensembles, using the non-perturbatively improved Wilson-Sheikholeslami-Wohlert action with N_f=2 mass-degenerate sea quarks. The two ensembles have similar lattice spacings but different sea quark masses. We use the first stochastic method to extract ${\mathcal O}(a)$-improved, matched lattice results for the semileptonic form factors on the ensemble with lighter sea quarks, extracting f_+(0)

Quantum Key Distribution using Multilevel Encoding: Security Analysis

We present security proofs for a protocol for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) based on encoding in finite high-dimensional Hilbert spaces. This protocol is an extension of Bennett's and Brassard's basic protocol from two bases, two state encoding to a multi bases, multi state encoding. We analyze the mutual information between the legitimate parties and the eavesdropper, and the error rate, as function of the dimension of the Hilbert space, while considering optimal incoherent and coherent eavesdropping attacks. We obtain the upper limit for the legitimate party error rate to ensure unconditional security when the eavesdropper uses incoherent and coherent eavesdropping strategies. We have also consider realistic noise caused by detector's noise.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, REVTe

Entanglement measure for general pure multipartite quantum states

We propose an explicit formula for an entanglement measure of pure multipartite quantum states, then study a general pure tripartite state in detail, and at end we give some simple but illustrative examples on four-qubits and m-qubits states.Comment: 5 page

Simplicial gauge theory on spacetime

We define a discrete gauge-invariant Yang-Mills-Higgs action on spacetime simplicial meshes. The formulation is a generalization of classical lattice gauge theory, and we prove consistency of the action in the sense of approximation theory. In addition, we perform numerical tests of convergence towards exact continuum results for several choices of gauge fields in pure gauge theory.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure

Return to the workforce following first hospitalization for heart failure: a Danish nationwide cohort study

Background: Return to work is important financially, as a marker of functional status and for self-esteem in patients developing chronic illness. We examined return to work after first heart failure (HF) hospitalization. Methods: By individual-level linkage of nationwide Danish registries, we identified 21455 patients of working age (18-60 years) with a first HF hospitalization in the period of 1997-2012. Of these 11880 (55%) were in the workforce prior to HF hospitalization and comprised the study population. We applied logistic regression to estimate odds ratios (OR) for associations between age, sex, length of hospital stay, level of education, income, comorbidity and return to work. Results: One year after first HF hospitalization, 8040 (67.7%) returned to the workforce, 2981 (25.1%) did not, 805 (6.7%) died and 54 (0.5%) emigrated. Predictors of return to work included younger age (18-30 vs. 51-60 years, OR 3.12; 95% CI 2.42-4.03), male sex (OR 1.22 [1.18-1.34]) and level of education (long-higher vs. basic school OR 2.06 [1.63-2.60]). Conversely, hospital stay >7 days (OR 0.56 [0.51-0.62]) and comorbidity including history of stroke (OR 0.55 [0.45-0.69]), chronic kidney disease (OR 0.46 [0.36-0.59]), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (OR 0.62 [0.52-0.75]), diabetes (OR 0.76 [0.68-0.85]) and cancer (OR 0.49 [0.40-0.61]) were all significantly associated with lower chance of return to work. Conclusions: Patients in the workforce prior to HF hospitalization had low mortality but high risk of detachment from the workforce one year later. Young age, male sex, and higher level of education were predictors of return to work

Two- and three-body color flux tubes in the Chromo Dielectric Model

Using the framework of the Chromo Dielectric Model we perform an analysis of color electric flux tubes in meson-like $q\bar{q}$ and baryon-like $qqq$ quark configurations. We discuss the Abelian color structure of the model and point out a symmetry in color space as a remnant of the SU(3) symmetry of QCD. The generic features of the model are discussed by varying the model parameters. We fix these parameters by reproducing the string tension $\tau=980$MeV/fm and the transverse width $\rho=0.35$fm of the $q\bar{q}$ flux tube obtained in lattice calculations. We use a bag constant $B^{1/4}=(240-260)$MeV, a glueball mass $m_g = (1000-1700)$MeV and a strong coupling constant $C_F \alpha_s = 0.2-0.3$. We show that the asymptotic string profile of an infinitely long flux tube is already reached for $q\bar{q}$ separations $R\ge1.0$fm. A connection to the Dual Color Superconductor is made by extracting a magnetic current from the model equations and a qualitative agreement between the two descriptions of confinement is shown. In the study of the $qqq$ system we observe a $\mathsf{\Delta}$-like geometry for the color electric fields and a \textsf{Y}-like geometry in the scalar fields both in the energy density distribution and in the corresponding potentials. The resulting total $qqq$ potential is described neither by the $\mathsf{\Delta}$-picture nor by the \textsf{Y}-picture alone.Comment: 32 pages, 35 eps-figures, revised version, some references + 1 eps-file added, to be published in Phys.Rev.

An expectation value expansion of Hermitian operators in a discrete Hilbert space

We discuss a real-valued expansion of any Hermitian operator defined in a Hilbert space of finite dimension N, where N is a prime number, or an integer power of a prime. The expansion has a direct interpretation in terms of the operator expectation values for a set of complementary bases. The expansion can be said to be the complement of the discrete Wigner function. We expect the expansion to be of use in quantum information applications since qubits typically are represented by a discrete, and finite-dimensional physical system of dimension N=2^p, where p is the number of qubits involved. As a particular example we use the expansion to prove that an intermediate measurement basis (a Breidbart basis) cannot be found if the Hilbert space dimension is 3 or 4.Comment: A mild update. In particular, I. D. Ivanovic's earlier derivation of the expansion is properly acknowledged. 16 pages, one PS figure, 1 table, written in RevTe