587 research outputs found
The Prognostic Effect of Ethnicity for Gastric and Esophageal Cancer: The Population-Based Experience in British Columbia, Canada
Background: Gastric and esophageal cancers are among the most lethal human malignancies. Their epidemiologyis geographically diverse. This study compares the survival of gastric and esophageal cancer patients amongseveral ethnic groups including Chinese, South Asians, Iranians and Others in British Columbia (BC), Canada.Methods: Data were obtained from the population-based BC Cancer Registry for patients diagnosed with invasiveesophageal and gastric cancer between 1984 and 2006. The ethnicity of patients was estimated according to theirnames and categorized as Chinese, South Asian, Iranian or Other. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis wasused to estimate the effect of ethnicity adjusted for patient sex and age, disease histology, tumor location, diseasestage and treatment.Results: The survival of gastric cancer patients was significantly different among ethnic groups. Chinese patientsshowed better survival compared to others in univariate and multivariate analysis. The survival of esophagealcancer patients was significantly different among ethnic groups when the data was analyzed by a univariate test(p = 0.029), but not in the Cox multivariate model adjusted for other patient and prognostic factors.Conclusions: Ethnicity may represent underlying genetic factors. Such factors could influence host-tumorinteractions by altering the tumor’s etiology and therefore its chance of spreading. Alternatively, genetic factorsmay determine response to treatments. Finally, ethnicity may represent non-genetic factors that affect survival.Differences in survival by ethnicity support the importance of ethnicity as a prognostic factor, and may provideclues for the future identification of genetic or lifestyle factors that underlie these observations
Convergence of resonances on thin branched quantum wave guides
We prove an abstract criterion stating resolvent convergence in the case of
operators acting in different Hilbert spaces. This result is then applied to
the case of Laplacians on a family X_\eps of branched quantum waveguides.
Combining it with an exterior complex scaling we show, in particular, that the
resonances on X_\eps approximate those of the Laplacian with ``free''
boundary conditions on , the skeleton graph of X_\eps.Comment: 48 pages, 1 figur
Spectral Analysis for Matrix Hamiltonian Operators
In this work, we study the spectral properties of matrix Hamiltonians
generated by linearizing the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation about soliton
solutions. By a numerically assisted proof, we show that there are no embedded
eigenvalues for the three dimensional cubic equation. Though we focus on a
proof of the 3d cubic problem, this work presents a new algorithm for verifying
certain spectral properties needed to study soliton stability. Source code for
verification of our comptuations, and for further experimentation, are
available at http://www.math.toronto.edu/simpson/files/spec_prop_code.tgz.Comment: 57 pages, 22 figures, typos fixe
Shapes of leading tunnelling trajectories for single-electron molecular ionization
Based on the geometrical approach to tunnelling by P.D. Hislop and I.M. Sigal
[Memoir. AMS 78, No. 399 (1989)], we introduce the concept of a leading
tunnelling trajectory. It is then proven that leading tunnelling trajectories
for single-active-electron models of molecular tunnelling ionization (i.e.,
theories where a molecular potential is modelled by a single-electron
multi-centre potential) are linear in the case of short range interactions and
"almost" linear in the case of long range interactions. The results are
presented on both the formal and physically intuitive levels. Physical
implications of the obtained results are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Resonances Width in Crossed Electric and Magnetic Fields
We study the spectral properties of a charged particle confined to a
two-dimensional plane and submitted to homogeneous magnetic and electric fields
and an impurity potential. We use the method of complex translations to prove
that the life-times of resonances induced by the presence of electric field are
at least Gaussian long as the electric field tends to zero.Comment: 3 figure
Diamonds's Temperature: Unruh effect for bounded trajectories and thermal time hypothesis
We study the Unruh effect for an observer with a finite lifetime, using the
thermal time hypothesis. The thermal time hypothesis maintains that: (i) time
is the physical quantity determined by the flow defined by a state over an
observable algebra, and (ii) when this flow is proportional to a geometric flow
in spacetime, temperature is the ratio between flow parameter and proper time.
An eternal accelerated Unruh observer has access to the local algebra
associated to a Rindler wedge. The flow defined by the Minkowski vacuum of a
field theory over this algebra is proportional to a flow in spacetime and the
associated temperature is the Unruh temperature. An observer with a finite
lifetime has access to the local observable algebra associated to a finite
spacetime region called a "diamond". The flow defined by the Minkowski vacuum
of a (four dimensional, conformally invariant) quantum field theory over this
algebra is also proportional to a flow in spacetime. The associated temperature
generalizes the Unruh temperature to finite lifetime observers.
Furthermore, this temperature does not vanish even in the limit in which the
acceleration is zero. The temperature associated to an inertial observer with
lifetime T, which we denote as "diamond's temperature", is 2hbar/(pi k_b
T).This temperature is related to the fact that a finite lifetime observer does
not have access to all the degrees of freedom of the quantum field theory.Comment: One reference correcte
Evaluation of effective resistances in pseudo-distance-regular resistor networks
In Refs.[1] and [2], calculation of effective resistances on distance-regular
networks was investigated, where in the first paper, the calculation was based
on the stratification of the network and Stieltjes function associated with the
network, whereas in the latter one a recursive formula for effective
resistances was given based on the Christoffel-Darboux identity. In this paper,
evaluation of effective resistances on more general networks called
pseudo-distance-regular networks [21] or QD type networks \cite{obata} is
investigated, where we use the stratification of these networks and show that
the effective resistances between a given node such as and all of the
nodes belonging to the same stratum with respect to
(, belonging to the -th stratum with respect
to the ) are the same. Then, based on the spectral techniques, an
analytical formula for effective resistances such that
(those nodes , of
the network such that the network is symmetric with respect to them) is given
in terms of the first and second orthogonal polynomials associated with the
network, where is the pseudo-inverse of the Laplacian of the network.
From the fact that in distance-regular networks,
is satisfied for all nodes
of the network, the effective resistances
for ( is diameter of the network which
is the same as the number of strata) are calculated directly, by using the
given formula.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figure
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