728 research outputs found
Supersymmetric AdS_4 black holes and attractors
Using the general recipe given in arXiv:0804.0009, where all timelike
supersymmetric solutions of N=2, D=4 gauged supergravity coupled to abelian
vector multiplets were classified, we construct the first examples of genuine
supersymmetric black holes in AdS_4 with nonconstant scalar fields. This is
done for various choices of the prepotential, amongst others for the STU model.
These solutions permit to study the BPS attractor flow in AdS. We also
determine the most general supersymmetric static near-horizon geometry and
obtain the attractor equations in gauged supergravity. As a general feature we
find the presence of flat directions in the black hole potential, i.e.,
generically the values of the moduli on the horizon are not completely
specified by the charges. For one of the considered prepotentials, the
resulting moduli space is determined explicitely. Still, in all cases, we find
that the black hole entropy depends only on the charges, in agreement with the
attractor mechanism.Comment: 25 pages, uses JHEP3.cl
Portable light transmission measuring system for preserved corneas
BACKGROUND: The authors have developed a small portable device for the objective measurement of the transparency of corneas stored in preservative medium, for use by eye banks in evaluation prior to transplantation. METHODS: The optical system consists of a white light, lenses, and pinholes that collimate the white light beams and illuminate the cornea in its preservative medium, and an optical filter (400â700 nm) that selects the range of the wavelength of interest. A sensor detects the light that passes through the cornea, and the average corneal transparency is displayed. In order to obtain only the tissue transparency, an electronic circuit was built to detect a baseline input of the preservative medium prior to the measurement of corneal transparency. The operation of the system involves three steps: adjusting the "0 %" transmittance of the instrument, determining the "100 %" transmittance of the system, and finally measuring the transparency of the preserved cornea inside the storage medium. RESULTS: Fifty selected corneas were evaluated. Each cornea was submitted to three evaluation methods: subjective classification of transparency through a slit lamp, quantification of the transmittance of light using a corneal spectrophotometer previously developed, and measurement of transparency with the portable device. CONCLUSION: By comparing the three methods and using the expertise of eye bank trained personnel, a table for quantifying corneal transparency with the new device has been developed. The correlation factor between the corneal spectrophotometer and the new device is 0,99813, leading to a system that is able to standardize transparency measurements of preserved corneas, which is currently done subjectively
Census politics in deeply divided societies
Population censuses in societies that are deeply divided along ethnic, religious or linguistic lines can be sensitive affairs â particularly where political settlements seek to maintain peace through the proportional sharing of power between groups. This brief sets out some key findings from a research project investigating the relationship between census politics and the design of political institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya, Lebanon and Northern Ireland
Admission to hospital following head injury in England: Incidence and socio-economic associations
BACKGROUND:
Head injury in England is common. Evidence suggests that socio-economic factors may cause variation in incidence, and this variation may affect planning for services to meet the needs of those who have sustained a head injury.
METHODS:
Socio-economic data were obtained from the UK Office for National Statistics and merged with Hospital Episodes Statistics obtained from the Department of Health. All patients admitted for head injury with ICD-10 codes S00.0âS09.9 during 2001â2 and 2002â3 were included and collated at the level of the extant Health Authorities (HA) for 2002, and Primary Care Trust (PCT) for 2003. Incidence was determined, and cluster analysis and multiple regression analysis were used to look at patterns and associations.
Results: 112,718 patients were admitted during 2001â2 giving a hospitalised incidence rate for England of 229 per 100,000. This rate varied across the English HA's ranging from 91â419 per 100,000. The rate remained unchanged for 2002â3 with a similar magnitude of variation across PCT's. Three clusters of HA's were identified from the 2001â2 data; those typical of London, those of the Shire counties, and those of Other Urban authorities. Socio-economic factors were found to account for a high proportion of the variance in incidence for 2001â2. The same pattern emerged for 2002â3 at the PCT level. The use of public transport for travel to work is associated with a
decreased incidence and lifestyle indicators, such as the numbers of young unemployed, increase the incidence.
CONCLUSION:
Head injury incidence in England varies by a factor of 4.6 across HA's and PCT's.
Planning head injury related services at the local level thus needs to be based on local incidence
figures rather than regional or national estimates. Socio-economic factors are shown to be
associated with admission, including travel to work patterns and lifestyle indicators, which suggests
that incidence is amenable to policy initiatives at the macro level as well as preventive programmes
targeted at key groups
Can holography reproduce the QCD Wilson line?
Recently a remarkable agreement was found between lattice simulations of long
Wilson lines and behavior of the Nambu Goto string in flat space-time. However,
the latter fails to fit the short distance behavior since it admits a tachyonic
mode for a string shorter than a critical length. In this paper we examine the
question of whether a classical holographic Wilson line can reproduce the
lattice results for Wilson lines of any length. We determine the condition on
the the gravitational background to admit a Coulombic potential at short
distances. We analyze the system using three different renormalization schemes.
We perform an explicit best fit comparison of the lattice results with the
holographic models based on near extremal D3 and D4 branes, non-critical near
extremal AdS6 model and the Klebanov Strassler model. We find that all the
holographic models examined admit after renormalization a constant term in the
potential. We argue that the curves of the lattice simulation also have such a
constant term and we discuss its physical interpretation
Loop Quantum Gravity a la Aharonov-Bohm
The state space of Loop Quantum Gravity admits a decomposition into
orthogonal subspaces associated to diffeomorphism equivalence classes of
spin-network graphs. In this paper I investigate the possibility of obtaining
this state space from the quantization of a topological field theory with many
degrees of freedom. The starting point is a 3-manifold with a network of
defect-lines. A locally-flat connection on this manifold can have non-trivial
holonomy around non-contractible loops. This is in fact the mathematical origin
of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. I quantize this theory using standard field
theoretical methods. The functional integral defining the scalar product is
shown to reduce to a finite dimensional integral over moduli space. A
non-trivial measure given by the Faddeev-Popov determinant is derived. I argue
that the scalar product obtained coincides with the one used in Loop Quantum
Gravity. I provide an explicit derivation in the case of a single defect-line,
corresponding to a single loop in Loop Quantum Gravity. Moreover, I discuss the
relation with spin-networks as used in the context of spin foam models.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure; v2: corrected typos, section 4 expanded
Consumption experience, choice experience and the endowment effect
We report experiments investigating how experience influences the endowment effect. Our experiments feature endowments which are bundles of unfamiliar consumption goods. We examine how a subjectâs willingness to swap items from their endowment is influenced by prior experiences of tasting the goods in question and by prior experiences of choosing between them. We do not find a statistically significant endowment effect in our baseline treatment and, because of this, we are unable to test for an effect of consumption experience. We do find an endowment effect when the endowment is acquired in two instalments and, in this setting, we find some evidence that choice experience increases trading. In a follow up experiment, we find evidence that the absence of an endowment effect in our baseline treatment is due to subjects being more willing to swap when they do not have to give up the last unit of their endowment
Stochastic Gravity: Theory and Applications
Whereas semiclassical gravity is based on the semiclassical Einstein equation
with sources given by the expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of
quantum fields, stochastic semiclassical gravity is based on the
Einstein-Langevin equation, which has in addition sources due to the noise
kernel.In the first part, we describe the fundamentals of this new theory via
two approaches: the axiomatic and the functional. In the second part, we
describe three applications of stochastic gravity theory. First, we consider
metric perturbations in a Minkowski spacetime: we compute the two-point
correlation functions for the linearized Einstein tensor and for the metric
perturbations. Second, we discuss structure formation from the stochastic
gravity viewpoint. Third, we discuss the backreaction of Hawking radiation in
the gravitational background of a quasi-static black hole.Comment: 75 pages, no figures, submitted to Living Reviews in Relativit
Body composition and body fat distribution are related to cardiac autonomic control in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease patients
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Heart rate recovery (HRR), a cardiac autonomic control marker, was shown to be related to body composition (BC), yet this was not tested in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients. The aim of this study was to determine if, and to what extent, markers of BC and body fat (BF) distribution are related to cardiac autonomic control in NAFLD patients. SUBJECTS/METHODS: BC was assessed with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry in 28 NAFLD patients (19 men, 51±13 years, and 9 women, 47±13 years). BF depots ratios were calculated to assess BF distribution. Subjectsâ HRR was recorded 1 (HRR1) and 2 min (HRR2) immediately after a maximum graded exercise test.
RESULTS: BC and BF distribution were related to HRR; particularly weight, trunk BF and trunk BF-to-appendicular BF ratio showed a negative relation with HRR1 (r 1â4 0.613, r 1â4 0.597 and r 1â4 0.547, respectively, Po0.01) and HRR2 (r 1â4 0.484, r 1â4 0.446, Po0.05, and r 1â4 0.590, Po0.01, respectively). Age seems to be related to both HRR1 and HRR2 except when controlled for BF distribution. The preferred model in multiple regression should include trunk BF-to-appendicular BF ratio and BF to predict HRR1 (r2 1â4 0.549; Po0.05), and trunk BF-to-appendicular BF ratio alone to predict HRR2 (r2 1â4 0.430; Po0.001).
CONCLUSIONS: BC and BF distribution were related to HRR in NAFLD patients. Trunk BF-to-appendicular BF ratio was the best independent predictor of HRR and therefore may be best related to cardiovascular increased risk, and possibly act as a mediator in age-related cardiac autonomic control variation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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