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Genes and Pathways Regulating Decline in Lung Function and Airway Remodeling in Asthma.
Asthma is a common disorder of the airways characterized by airway inflammation and by decline in lung function and airway remodeling in a subset of asthmatics. Airway remodeling is characterized by structural changes which include airway smooth muscle hypertrophy/hyperplasia, subepithelial fibrosis due to thickening of the reticular basement membrane, mucus metaplasia of the epithelium, and angiogenesis. Epidemiologic studies suggest that both genetic and environmental factors may contribute to decline in lung function and airway remodeling in a subset of asthmatics. Environmental factors include respiratory viral infection-triggered asthma exacerbations, and tobacco smoke. There is also evidence that several asthma candidate genes may contribute to decline in lung function, including ADAM33, PLAUR, VEGF, IL13, CHI3L1, TSLP, GSDMB, TGFB1, POSTN, ESR1 and ARG2. In addition, mediators or cytokines, including cysteinyl leukotrienes, matrix metallopeptidase-9, interleukin-33 and eosinophil expression of transforming growth factor-β, may contribute to airway remodeling in asthma. Although increased airway smooth muscle is associated with reduced lung function (i.e. forced expiratory volume in 1 second) in asthma, there have been few long-term studies to determine how individual pathologic features of airway remodeling contribute to decline in lung function in asthma. Clinical studies with inhibitors of individual gene products, cytokines or mediators are needed in asthmatic patients to identify their individual role in decline in lung function and/or airway remodeling
On probabilistic analog automata
We consider probabilistic automata on a general state space and study their
computational power. The model is based on the concept of language recognition
by probabilistic automata due to Rabin and models of analog computation in a
noisy environment suggested by Maass and Orponen, and Maass and Sontag. Our
main result is a generalization of Rabin's reduction theorem that implies that
under very mild conditions, the computational power of the automaton is limited
to regular languages
Circulating Biologically Active Adrenomedullin Predicts Organ Failure and Mortality in Sepsis
BACKGROUND: Sepsis is a life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. Biologically active adrenomedullin (bio-ADM) is an emerging biomarker for sepsis. We explored whether bio-ADM concentration could predict severity, organ failure, and 30-day mortality in septic patients. METHODS: In 215 septic patients (109 patients with sepsis; 106 patients with septic shock), bio-ADM concentration was measured at diagnosis of sepsis, using sphingotest bio-ADM (Sphingotec GmbH, Hennigsdorf, Germany) and analyzed in terms of sepsis severity, vasopressor use, and 30-day mortality. The number of organ failures, sequential (sepsis-related) organ failure assessment (SOFA) score, and 30-day mortality were compared according to bio-ADM quartiles. RESULTS: Bio-ADM concentration was significantly higher in patients with septic shock, vasopressor use, and non-survivors than in patients with solitary sepsis, no vasopressor use, and survivors, respectively (all P<0.0001). Bio-ADM quartiles were associated with the number of organ failures (P<0.0001), as well as SOFA cardiovascular, renal, coagulation, and liver subscores (all P<0.05). The 30-day mortality rate showed a stepwise increase in each bio-ADM quartile (all P<0.0001). Bio-ADM concentration and SOFA score equally predicted the 30-day mortality (area under the curve: 0.827 vs 0.830). CONCLUSIONS: Bio-ADM could serve as a useful and objective biomarker to predict severity, organ failure, and 30-day mortality in septic patients
Detecting Quantum Critical Points using Bipartite Fluctuations
We show that the concept of bipartite fluctuations F provides a very
efficient tool to detect quantum phase transitions in strongly correlated
systems. Using state of the art numerical techniques complemented with
analytical arguments, we investigate paradigmatic examples for both quantum
spins and bosons. As compared to the von Neumann entanglement entropy, we
observe that F allows to find quantum critical points with a much better
accuracy in one dimension. We further demonstrate that F can be successfully
applied to the detection of quantum criticality in higher dimensions with no
prior knowledge of the universality class of the transition. Promising
approaches to experimentally access fluctuations are discussed for quantum
antiferromagnets and cold gases.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures + suppl. material; final version, Phys. Rev. Lett.
(in press
General Relation between Entanglement and Fluctuations in One Dimension
In one dimension very general results from conformal field theory and exact
calculations for certain quantum spin systems have established universal
scaling properties of the entanglement entropy between two parts of a critical
system. Using both analytical and numerical methods, we show that if particle
number or spin is conserved, fluctuations in a subsystem obey identical scaling
as a function of subsystem size, suggesting that fluctuations are a useful
quantity for determining the scaling of entanglement, especially in higher
dimensions. We investigate the effects of boundaries and subleading corrections
for critical spin and bosonic chains.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Minor changes, references added
Chaotic quantum ratchets and filters with cold atoms in optical lattices: properties of Floquet states
Recently, cesium atoms in optical lattices subjected to cycles of
unequally-spaced pulses have been found to show interesting behavior: they
represent the first experimental demonstration of a Hamiltonian ratchet
mechanism, and they show strong variability of the Dynamical Localization
lengths as a function of initial momentum. The behavior differs qualitatively
from corresponding atomic systems pulsed with equal periods, which are a
textbook implementation of a well-studied quantum chaos paradigm, the quantum
delta-kicked particle (delta-QKP). We investigate here the properties of the
corresponding eigenstates (Floquet states) in the parameter regime of the new
experiments and compare them with those of the eigenstates of the delta-QKP at
similar kicking strengths. We show that, with the properties of the Floquet
states, we can shed light on the form of the observed ratchet current as well
as variations in the Dynamical Localization length.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure
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