Red cell antibody problems in 1000 liver transplants

Liver transplant patients frequently require large amounts of blood. The frequency and nature of their red cell (RBC) antibody problems were examined. Records were reviewed in 496 adults and 286 children undergoing 1000 consecutive transplants. Twenty‐two percent of adults and 14 percent of children had RBC alloantibodies. Antibodies of potential clinical significance were found before transplant in 6.3 percent of adults and 1.0 percent of children; despite immunosuppression, they appeared 1 to 5 weeks after transplant in an additional 7.5 and 5.2 percent respectively. These antibodies probably represented secondary immune responses. Of 58 transplant patients with prior potentially significant antibodies, 8 required 7 to 110 units of antigen‐untyped blood after 8 to 28 units of antigen‐negative blood; of these patients, one had subsequent hemolysis. Positive direct antiglobulin tests in 24 percent of adults and 10 percent of children were most often thought to be due to nonspecific adsorption of IgG. Anti‐recipient ABO antibodies developed in 22 of 60 (37%) evaluable ABO‐unmatched grafts; 13 cases had associated hemolysis. In all, 36 percent of adults and 20 percent of children had diverse RBC antibody problems. Resolution of these problems is an important part of the laboratory support necessary for a liver transplantation program. 1989 AAB

Nucleation and growth of rolling contact failure of 440C bearing steel

A 'two-body' elasto-plastic finite element model of 2-dimensional rolling and rolling-plus-sliding was developed to treat the effect of surface irregularities. The model consists of a smooth cylinder in contact with a semi-infinite half-space that is either smooth or fitted with one of 0.4 microns deep or 7 microns deep groove, or a 0.4 microns high ridge-like asperity. The model incorporates elastic-linear-kinematic hardening-plastic (ELKP) and non-linear-kinematic hardening-plastic (NLKP) material constitutive relations appropriate for hardened bearing steel and the 440C grade. The calculated contact pressure distribution is Hertzian for smooth body contact, and it displays intense, stationary, pressure spikes superposed on the Hertzian pressure for contact with the grooved and ridged surface. The results obtained for the 0.4 microns deep groove compare well with those reported by Elsharkawy and Hamrock for an EHD lubricated contact. The effect of translating the counterface on the half space as opposed to indenting the half space with the counter face with no translation is studied. The stress and strain values near the surface are found to be similar for the two cases, whereas they are significantly different in the subsurface. It is seen that when tiny shoulders are introduced at the edge of the groove in the finite element model, the incremental plasticity and residual stresses are significantly higher in the vicinity of the right shoulder (rolling direction is from left to right) than at the left shoulder. This may explain the experimental observation that the spall nucleation occurs at the exit end of the artificially planted indents. Pure rolling calculations are compared with rolling + sliding calculations. For a coefficient of friction, mu = 0.1, the effect of friction is found to be small. Efforts were made to identify the material constitutive relations which best describe the deformation characteristics of the bearing steels in the initial few cycles. Elastic-linear-kinematic hardening-plastic (ELKP) material constitutive relations produce less net plastic deformation in the initial stages for a given stress, than seen in experiments. A new set of constitutive relations: non-linear-kinematic hardening-plastic (NLKP) was used. This material model produces more plasticity than the ELKP model and shows promise for treating the net distortions in the early stages. Techniques for performing experimental measurements that can be compared with the finite element calculations were devised. The measurements are being performed on 9mm-diameter, 440C steel cylindrical rolling elements in contact with 12.5 mm-diameter, 52100 steel balls in a 3-ball-rod fatigue test machine operating at 3600 RPM. Artificial, 7 microns deep, indents were inserted on the running track of the cylindrical rolling elements and profilometer measurements of these indents made, before and after the rolling. These preliminary measurements show that the indents are substantially deformed plastically in the process of rolling. The deformations of the groove calculated with the finite element model are comparable to those measured experimentally

Is the Brain Cortex a Fractal?

The question is analysed if the human cerebral cortex is self similar in a statistical sense, a property which is usually referred to as being a fractal. The presented analysis includes all spatial scales from the brain size to the ultimate image resolution. Results obtained in two healthy volunteers show that the self similarity does take place down to the spatial scale of 2.5 mm. The obtained fractal dimensions read D=2.73±.05 and D=2.67±.05 correspondingly, which is in good agreement with previously reported results. The new calculational method is volumetric and is based on the fast Fourier Transform of segmented three dimensional high resolved magnetic resonance images. Engagement of FFT enables a simple interpretation of the results and achieves a high performance, which is necessary to analyse the entire cortex

Fast Evaluation of Feynman Diagrams

We develop a new representation for the integrals associated with Feynman diagrams. This leads directly to a novel method for the numerical evaluation of these integrals, which avoids the use of Monte Carlo techniques. Our approach is based on based on the theory of generalized sinc ($\sin(x)/x$) functions, from which we derive an approximation to the propagator that is expressed as an infinite sum. When the propagators in the Feynman integrals are replaced with the approximate form all integrals over internal momenta and vertices are converted into Gaussians, which can be evaluated analytically. Performing the Gaussians yields a multi-dimensional infinite sum which approximates the corresponding Feynman integral. The difference between the exact result and this approximation is set by an adjustable parameter, and can be made arbitrarily small. We discuss the extraction of regularization independent quantities and demonstrate, both in theory and practice, that these sums can be evaluated quickly, even for third or fourth order diagrams. Lastly, we survey strategies for numerically evaluating the multi-dimensional sums. We illustrate the method with specific examples, including the the second order sunset diagram from quartic scalar field theory, and several higher-order diagrams. In this initial paper we focus upon scalar field theories in Euclidean spacetime, but expect that this approach can be generalized to fields with spin.Comment: uses feynmp macros; v2 contains improved description of renormalization, plus other minor change

Two-loop SUSY QCD corrections to the chargino masses in the MSSM

We have calculated the two-loop strong interaction corrections to the chargino pole masses in the DRbar'-scheme in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with complex parameters. We have performed a detailed numerical analysis for a particular point in the parameter space and found corrections of a few tenths of a percent. We provide a computer program which calculates chargino and neutralino masses with complex parameters including the one-loop corrections and all two-loop SQCD effects.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, references modified, clarifications adde

Project {\tt SANC} (former {\tt CalcPHEP}): Support of Analytic and Numeric calculations for experiments at Colliders

The project, aimed at the theoretical support of experiments at modern and future accelerators -- TEVATRON, LHC, electron Linear Colliders (TESLA, NLC, CLIC) and muon factories, is presented. Within this project a four-level computer system is being created, which must automatically calculate, at the one-loop precision level the pseudo- and realistic observables (decay rates and event distributions) for more and more complicated processes of elementary particle interaction, using the principle of knowledge storing. It was already used for a recalculation of the EW radiative corrections for Atomic Parity Violation [1] and complete one-loop corrections for the process $e^+ e^-\to t\bar{t}$ [2-4]; for the latter an, agreement up to 11 digits with FeynArts and the other results is found. The version of {\tt SANC} that we describe here is capable of automatically computing the decay rates and the distributions for the decays $Z(H,W)\to f\bar{f}$ in the one-loop approximation.Comment: 3 Latex, Presented at ICHEP2002, Amsterdam, July 24-30, 2000; Submitted to Proceeding

Slepton pair production in the POWHEG BOX

We present an implementation for slepton pair production at hadron colliders in the POWHEG BOX, a framework for combining next-to-leading order QCD calculations with parton-shower Monte-Carlo programs. Our code provides a SUSY Les Houches Accord interface for setting the supersymmetric input parameters. Decays of the sleptons and parton-shower effects are simulated with PYTHIA. Focussing on a representative point in the supersymmetric parameter space we show results for kinematic distributions that can be observed experimentally. While next-to-leading order QCD corrections are sizable for all distributions, the parton shower affects the color-neutral particles only marginally. Pronounced parton-shower effects are found for jet distributions.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Loopedia, a Database for Loop Integrals

Loopedia is a new database at loopedia.org for information on Feynman integrals, intended to provide both bibliographic information as well as results made available by the community. Its bibliometry is complementary to that of SPIRES or arXiv in the sense that it admits searching for integrals by graph-theoretical objects, e.g. its topology.Comment: 16 pages, lots of screenshot