Clozapine as add-on medication in the maintenance treatment of bipolar and schizoaffective disorders - A case series

Atypical neuroleptics are increasingly used in the treatment of bipolar and schizoaffective disorders. Currently, numerous controlled short-term studies are available for clozapine, olanzapine, risperidone or quetiapine, but long-term data are still missing. Three patients (2 with bipolar disorder, 1 with schizoaffective disorder) are described who showed a marked reduction of affective symptomatology after clozapine had been added to mood stabilizer pretreatment. The patients were seen once a month before and after the introduction of clozapine for at least 6 months. Treatment response was evaluated using different rating scales (IDS, YMRS; GAF; CGIBP) and the NIMH Life Chart Methodology. All patients showed a marked improvement after the add-on treatment with clozapine had been initiated. Clozapine was tolerated well with only transient and moderate weight gain and fatigue as only side effects. This case series underlines the safety and efficacy of clozapine as add-on medication in the treatment of bipolar and schizoaffective disorders. Copyright (C) 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel

Yano-Koonin-Podgoretskii Parametrisation of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss Correlator

The Yano-Koonin-Podgoretskii (YKP) parametrisation of Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) two-particle correlation functions opens new strategies for extracting the emission duration and testing the longitudinal expansion in heavy-ion collisions. Based on the recently derived model-independent expressions, we present a detailed parameter study of the YKP parameters for a finite, hydrodynamically expanding source model of heavy-ion collisions. For the class of models studied here, we show that the three YKP radius parameters have an interpretation as longitudinal extension, transverse extension and emission duration of the source in the YKP frame. This frame is specified by the fourth fit parameter, the Yano-Koonin velocity which describes to a good approximation the velocity of the fluid element with highest emissivity and allows to test for the longitudinal expansion of the source. Deviations from this interpretation of the YKP parameters are discussed quantitatively.Comment: 38 pages, REVTeX, 11 PS-figures, to be published in Z.Phys.

Space-time Characteristics of the Fireball from HBT Interferometry

We present the Yano-Koonin-Podgoretskii parametrisation of the correlation function. Compared to the conventionally used Cartesian parametrisation, this one provides more straightforward measurement of the duration of the emission process in the fireball and a clearer signal of the longitudinal expansion, which is expected in ulrarelativistic heavy ion collisions.Comment: 13 pages LaTeX,3 figures incl. with epsf-style. Proceedings of "Heavy Ion Workshop on Particle Physics", Sept. 2.-6., 1996, Bratislava, Slovakia, misprint in Eq.(27) correcte

Hydrodynamic emission of strange and non-strange particles at RHIC and LHC

The hydrodynamic model is used to describe the single-particle spectra and elliptic flow of hadrons at RHIC and to predict the emission angle dependence of HBT correlations at RHIC and LHC energies.Comment: 6 pages LaTeX, 3 postscript figures. Proceedings for the conference "Strange Quark Matter 2003", Atlantic Beach, NC, March 12-17, 2003, to appear in J. Phys.

Fragmentation of spherical radioactive heavy nuclei as a novel probe of transient effects in fission

Peripheral collisions with radioactive heavy-ion beams at relativistic energies are discussed as an innovative approach for probing the transient regime experienced by fissile systems evolving towards quasi-equilibrium. A dedicated experiment using the advanced technical installations of GSI, Darmstadt, permitted to realize ideal conditions for the investigation of relaxation effects in the meta-stable well. Combined with a highly sensitive experimental signature, it provides a measure of the transient effects with respect to the flux over the fission barrier. Within a two-step reaction process, 45 proton-rich unstable spherical isotopes produced by projectile-fragmentation of a stable 238U beam have been used as secondary projectiles. The fragmentation of the radioactive projectiles on lead results in nearly spherical compound nuclei which span a wide range in excitation energy and fissility. The decay of these excited systems by fission is studied with a dedicated set-up which permits the detection of both fission products in coincidence and the determination of their atomic numbers with high resolution. The width of the fission-fragment nuclear charge distribution is shown to be specifically sensitive to pre-saddle transient effects and is used to establish a clock for the passage of the saddle point. The comparison of the experimental results with model calculations points to a fission delay of (3.3+/-0.7).10-21s for initially spherical compound nuclei, independent of excitation energy and fissility. This value suggests a nuclear dissipation strength at small deformation of (4.5+/-0.5).1021s-1. The very specific combination of the physics and technical equipment exploited in this work sheds light on previous controversial conclusions.Comment: 38 pages, 15 figure

Chemical and kinetic equilibrations via radiative parton transport

A hot and dense partonic system can be produced in the early stage of a relativistic heavy ion collision. How it equilibrates is important for the extraction of Quark-Gluon Plasma properties. We study the chemical and kinetic equilibrations of the Quark-Gluon Plasma using a radiative transport model. Thermal and Color-Glass-Condensate motivated initial conditions are used. We observe that screened parton interactions always lead to partial pressure isotropization. Different initial pressure anisotropies result in the same asymptotic evolution. Comparison of evolutions with and without radiative processes shows that chemical equilibration interacts with kinetic equilibration and radiative processes can contribute significantly to pressure isotropization.Comment: Presented at 24th International Nuclear Physics Conference (INPC2010), Vancouver, Canada, 4-9 July 201

Global existence and exponential decay for hyperbolic dissipative relativistic fluid theories

We consider dissipative relativistic fluid theories on a fixed flat, compact, globally hyperbolic, Lorentzian manifold. We prove that for all initial data in a small enough neighborhood of the equilibrium states (in an appropriate Sobolev norm), the solutions evolve smoothly in time forever and decay exponentially to some, in general undetermined, equilibrium state. To prove this, three conditions are imposed on these theories. The first condition requires the system of equations to be symmetric hyperbolic, a fundamental requisite to have a well posed and physically consistent initial value formulation. The second condition is a generic consequence of the entropy law, and is imposed on the non principal part of the equations. The third condition is imposed on the principal part of the equations and it implies that the dissipation affects all the fields of the theory. With these requirements we prove that all the eigenvalues of the symbol associated to the system of equations of the fluid theory have strictly negative real parts, which in fact, is an alternative characterization for the theory to be totally dissipative. Once this result has been obtained, a straight forward application of a general stability theorem due to Kreiss, Ortiz, and Reula, implies the results above mentioned.Comment: 10 pages, Late

The history of paediatric trauma care in Cape Town

Trauma is a leading cause of morbidity, mortality and disability in childhood. In most developed countries where 18% of the population are in the age group 0 - 15 years, injury exceeds all other causes of childhood mortality. In the developing countries of Africa, however, children aged 0 - 15 years constitute 43% of the population and trauma has an even bigger impact on child health.There is an erroneous perception that trauma is not a major health problem in Africa, derived from undue emphasis on mortality statistics alone. Yet, the impact of trauma ought to be measured not only in terms of death, but also the tremendous morbidity and disability caused by injuries, and their socioeconomic consequences

High-j single-particle neutron states outside the N=82 core

The behaviour of the i13/2 and h9/2 single-neutron strength was studied with the (4He,3He) reaction on 138Ba, 140Ce, 142Nd and 144Sm targets at a beam energy of 51 MeV. The separation between the single-neutron states i13/2 and h9/2 was measured in N =83 nuclei with changing proton number. To this end spectroscopic factors for states populated in high-l transfer were extracted from the data. Some mixing of l=5 and 6 strength was observed with states that are formed by coupling the f7/2 state to the 2+ and 3- vibrational states and the mixing matrix elements were found to be remarkably constant. The centroids of the strength indicate a systematic change in the energies of the i13/2 and h9/2 single-neutron states with increasing proton number that is in quantitative agreement with the effects expected from the tensor interaction.Comment: 12 pages of text, 3 diagram