128 research outputs found
Evaluation of upper airways depth among patients with skeletal Class I and III
Background: The aim of this study was to determine the value of upper andlower pharyngeal depth among patients with skeletal Class III malocclusion on lateral cephalograms, as well as to examine the relationship between SNA, SNB, and ANB angles, along with Wits appraisal and the cross-sectional value of upper airway space at the level of the soft palate and tongue base among patients withskeletal Class I and III.Materials and methods: The material consisted of lateral cephalograms taken from 80 patients living in the Lubelskie voivodeship. The study group consistedof cephalograms of 50 patients with skeletal Class III malocclusion (17 maleand 33 female), whereas the control group consisted of 30 roentgenograms of patients with Class I malocclusion with proper jaw to mandible relation (14 maleand 16 female). The study and the control group shared no statistically significant differences considering basic sociographic data such as gender (chi = 1.267, p = 0.26)and age (U = 727.5, p = 0.82). The upper and lower pharyngeal depths wereassessed with the use of McNamara’s method. Spearman’s rho test, Mann--Whitney’s U test, and chi test were used for statistical analysis.Results: Among both males and females the pharyngeal depths were greaterconsidering patients with skeletal Class III in comparison to patients with Class Imalocclusion (p < 0.001). Furthermore, it was determined that the lower as wellas the upper pharyngeal width is statistically significantly dependent on ANB and SNB angles and Wits appraisal (p < 0.001).Conclusions: Pharyngeal width at the level of the soft palate and tongue base depends on skeletal class, namely ANB angle and Wits appraisal; it increases with the increase of SNB angle (forward movement of the mandible). The SNA angle (position of the maxilla) does not influence the anterior-posterior nasopharyngeal dimension
Craniofacial structure in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea
Background: Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is characterised by at least five 10-s episodes of apnoea or markedly shallow breathing per 1 h of sleep, which can lead to severe, sometimes life-threatening complications. It is essential to determine the specific features of the affected patients’ craniofacial structure, thus enabling their allocation to risk groups. The aim of the study was to assess the craniofacial structure in OSA patients, comparing the findings with Hasund’s and Segner’s cephalometric normal values. In addition, the sagittal dimensions of the upper airways, measured at two levels, were compared to McNamara’s normal values.
Materials and methods: The study covered 41 patients diagnosed polysomnoÂgraphically with OSA. Lateral cephalograms with cephalometric analysis and the measurements of the upper and lower sagittal dimensions of the upper airways were taken for each patient.
Results: The only feature of the patents’ facial skeleton that significantly diverged from the normal range was the SNB angle (p = 0.004). Other angles, i.e. SNA, ANB, NL/NSL, NL/ML and NSL/ML, were not significantly different from normal. The average upper cross-sectional area of the upper airways was 10.4 mm; in 97.6% patients, this measurement was below McNamara’s normal values. In the majority of patients (75.6%), the average lower sagittal dimension of the upper airways (10.4 mm) was also below the normal.
Conclusions: Mandibular retrognathia, manifested by the reduced SNB angle, and the narrowed upper and lower sagittal dimensions of the upper airways can be considered one of OSA prognostic factors
Spin Dynamics and Spin Transport
Spin-orbit (SO) interaction critically influences electron spin dynamics and
spin transport in bulk semiconductors and semiconductor microstructures. This
interaction couples electron spin to dc and ac electric fields. Spin coupling
to ac electric fields allows efficient spin manipulating by the electric
component of electromagnetic field through the electric dipole spin resonance
(EDSR) mechanism. Usually, it is much more efficient than the magnetic
manipulation due to a larger coupling constant and the easier access to spins
at a nanometer scale. The dependence of the EDSR intensity on the magnetic
field direction allows measuring the relative strengths of the competing SO
coupling mechanisms in quantum wells. Spin coupling to an in-plane electric
field is much stronger than to a perpendicular field. Because electron bands in
microstructures are spin split by SO interaction, electron spin is not
conserved and spin transport in them is controlled by a number of competing
parameters, hence, it is rather nontrivial. The relation between spin
transport, spin currents, and spin populations is critically discussed.
Importance of transients and sharp gradients for generating spin magnetization
by electric fields and for ballistic spin transport is clarified.Comment: Invited talk at the 3rd Intern. Conf. on Physics and Applications of
Spin-Related Phenomena in Semiconductors, Santa Barbara (CA), July 21 - 23.
To be published in the Journal of Superconductivity. 7 pages, 2 figure
Observation of oscillatory relaxation in the Sn-terminated surface of epitaxial rock-salt SnSe topological crystalline insulator
Topological crystalline insulators have been recently predicted and observed
in rock-salt structure SnSe thin films. Previous studies have
suggested that the Se-terminated surface of this thin film with hydrogen
passivation, has a reduced surface energy and is thus a preferred
configuration. In this paper, synchrotron-based angle-resolved photoemission
spectroscopy, along with density functional theory calculations, are used to
demonstrate conclusively that a rock-salt SnSe thin film
epitaxially-grown on \ce{Bi2Se3} has a stable Sn-terminated surface. These
observations are supported by low energy electron diffraction (LEED)
intensity-voltage measurements and dynamical LEED calculations, which further
show that the Sn-terminated SnSe thin film has undergone a surface
structural relaxation of the interlayer spacing between the Sn and Se atomic
planes. In sharp contrast to the Se-terminated counterpart, the observed Dirac
surface state in the Sn-terminated SnSe thin film is shown to yield a
high Fermi velocity, m/s, which suggests a potential mechanism
of engineering the Dirac surface state of topological materials by tuning the
surface configuration.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, supplementary materials include
Growth and properties of ferromagnetic In(1-x)Mn(x)Sb alloys
We discuss a new narrow-gap ferromagnetic (FM) semiconductor alloy,
In(1-x)Mn(x)Sb, and its growth by low-temperature molecular-beam epitaxy. The
magnetic properties were investigated by direct magnetization measurements,
electrical transport, magnetic circular dichroism, and the magneto-optical Kerr
effect. These data clearly indicate that In(1-x)Mn(x)Sb possesses all the
attributes of a system with carrier-mediated FM interactions, including
well-defined hysteresis loops, a cusp in the temperature dependence of the
resistivity, strong negative magnetoresistance, and a large anomalous Hall
effect. The Curie temperatures in samples investigated thus far range up to 8.5
K, which are consistent with a mean-field-theory simulation of the
carrier-induced ferromagnetism based on the 8-band effective band-orbital
method.Comment: Invited talk at 11th International Conference on Narrow Gap
Semiconductors, Buffalo, New York, U.S.A., June 16 - 20, 200
Electron spin operation by electric fields: spin dynamics and spin injection
Spin-orbit interaction couples electron spins to electric fields and allows
electrical monitoring of electron spins and electrical detection of spin
dynamics. Competing mechanisms of spin-orbit interaction are compared, and
optimal conditions for the electric operation of electrons spins in a quantum
well by a gate voltage are established. Electric spin injection into
semiconductors is discussed with a special emphasis on the injection into
ballistic microstructures. Dramatic effect of a long range Coulomb interaction
on transport phenomena in space-quantized low-dimensional conductors is
discussed in conclusion.Comment: A plenary paper at the 11th Intern. Conf. on Narrow Gap
Semiconductors (Buffalo, NY, June 2003). To be published in Physica
Two-step model versus one-step model of the inter-polarization conversion and statistics of CdSe/ZnSe quantum dot elongations
The magneto-optical inter-polarization conversions by a layer of quantum dots
have been investigated. Various types of polarization response of the sample
were observed as a function of external magnetic field and of the orientation
of the sample. The full set of experimental dependences is analyzed in terms of
a one-step and a two-step model of spin evolution. The angular distribution of
the quantum dots over the directions of elongation in the plane of the sample
is taken into account in terms of the two models, and the model predictions are
compared with experimental observations
Ultrafast manipulation of topologically enhanced surface transport driven by mid-infrared and terahertz pulses in Bi2Se3
Topology-protected surface transport of ultimate thinness in three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) is breaking new ground in quantum science and technology. Yet a challenge remains on how to disentangle and selectively control surface helical spin transport from the bulk contribution. Here we use the mid-infrared and terahertz (THz) photoexcitation of exclusive intraband transitions to enable ultrafast manipulation of surface THz conductivity in Bi2Se3. The unique, transient electronic state is characterized by frequency-dependent carrier relaxations that directly distinguish the faster surface channel than the bulk with no complication from interband excitations or need for reduced bulk doping. We determine the topological enhancement ratio between bulk and surface scattering rates, i.e., γBS/γSS ~3.80 in equilibrium. The ultra-broadband, wavelength-selective pumping may be applied to emerging topological semimetals for separation and control of the protected transport connected with the Weyl nodes from other bulk bands
External control of the direction of magnetization in ferromagnetic InMnAs/GaSb heterostructures
In this paper, we demonstrate external control over the magnetization
direction in ferromagnetic (FM) In_{1-x}Mn_{x}As/GaSb heterostructures. FM
ordering with T_C as high as 50 K is confirmed by SQUID magnetization,
anomalous Hall effect (AHE), and magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE)
measurements. Even though tensile strain is known to favor an easy axis normal
to the layer plane, at low temperatures we observe that the magnetization
direction in several samples is intermediate between the normal and in-plane
axes. As the temperature increases, however, the easy axis rotates to the
direction normal to the plane. We further demonstrate that the easy
magnetization axis can be controlled by incident light through a bolometric
effect, which induces a pronounced increase in the amplitude of the AHE. A
mean-field-theory model for the carrier-mediated ferromagnetism reproduces the
tendency for dramatic reorientations of the magnetization axis, but not the
specific sensitivity to small temperature variations.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, submitted to NGS-1
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