Diagnostic accuracy of organ electrodermal diagnostics

Objective. To estimate the diagnostic accuracy as well as the scope of utilisation of a new bio-electronic method of organ diagnostics.Design. Double-blind comparative study of the diagnostic results obtained by means of organ electrodermal diagnostics (OED) and clinical diagnoses, as a criterion standard.Setting. Department of Surgery, Helen Joseph Hospital, Johannesburg.Patients. 70 pre-selected inpatients of mean age 36 (SD =7) years with suspected pathology of one (or more) of the following organs: oesophagus, stomach, duodenum, biliary tract, pancreas, colon, kidneys and urinary tract. In total, 276 of the above mentioned internal organs were selected for statistical consideration. Main outcome measures. The difference between the so-called basic electrical impedance of the skin and the impedance value established for a particular organ projection area (the skin zone corresponding to a particular internal organ).Results. In total 250 true OED results were obtained from the 276 subjects considered: detection rate 90.6% (95% Cl 87.1 - 94.1 %). Established OED sensitivity was 91.8% (95% Cl 88.6 - 95.0%) and OED specificity equalled 89.9% (95% Cl 86.4 - 93.4%). The predictive value for positive OED results was 83.3% (95% Cl 78.9 - 87.7%) and for negative OED results 95.2% (95% Cl 92.0 - 98.4%). The OED results were affected neither by the type nor the aetiology of disease, i.e. OED estimates the actual extent of the pathological process within particular organs but does not explain the cause of pathology directly. No sideeffects of the OED examinations were observed.Conclusions. So-called organ projection areas do exist on the skin surface. The electrical impedance of the projection areas corresponding to diseased organs is increased, relative to that of healthy organ-related skin zones. The difference in impedance is proportional to the intensity of the pathological process. OED, which utilises these electrical phenomena of the skin, may detect diseased organs and estimate the extent of pathological process activity within these organs

Run Scenarios for the Linear Collider

Scenarios are developed for runs at a Linear Collider, in the case that there is a rich program of new physics.Comment: 12 pages, 10 tables, Latex; Snowmass 2001 plenary repor

Anti-GQ1b ganglioside positive Miller Fisher syndrome - evidence of paranodal pathology on nerve biopsy

BACKGROUND: Miller Fisher syndrome is a regional variant of Guillain-Barre syndrome with a characteristic clinical triad of ophthalmoplegia, areflexia and ataxia and occasionally distal limb sensory loss. 90% of patients have associated antibodies to the GQ1b ganglioside. The pathophysiology of antibody-mediated peripheral nerve impairment remains uncertain. This report includes the first description of a peripheral sensory nerve biopsy in Miller Fisher syndrome. RESULTS: A single case report is described of a 46 year old woman who presented with 2 weeks of distal glove and stocking sensory loss to both deep and superficial sensory modalities, areflexia and weight loss. This was followed by rapid onset of ataxia, ophthalmoplegia, and bulbar impairment. Peripheral neurophysiology showed reduced sensory nerve amplitudes with preserved conduction velocities in keeping with an axonal pattern of impairment. Clinical concerns of a systemic inflammatory disorder led to a diagnostic peripheral nerve biopsy from the sensory branch of the radial nerve. However she subsequently made a complete recovery over 5 weeks. Combinatorial glycoarrays confirmed restricted serum binding for GQ1b in acute serum which later resolved in a convalescent sample. The nerve biopsy showed lengthening of nodes of Ranvier, myelin splitting and macrophage internodal axonal invasion without any features of demyelination. CONCLUSIONS: The pathological features were strikingly similar to those found in acute motor axonal neuropathy and indicate the region of the node of Ranvier to be a primary focus of GQ1b induced damage in Miller Fisher syndrome, at least in this particular overlap syndrome with prominent sensory nerve involvement

Dynamics of fully coupled rotators with unimodal and bimodal frequency distribution

We analyze the synchronization transition of a globally coupled network of N phase oscillators with inertia (rotators) whose natural frequencies are unimodally or bimodally distributed. In the unimodal case, the system exhibits a discontinuous hysteretic transition from an incoherent to a partially synchronized (PS) state. For sufficiently large inertia, the system reveals the coexistence of a PS state and of a standing wave (SW) solution. In the bimodal case, the hysteretic synchronization transition involves several states. Namely, the system becomes coherent passing through traveling waves (TWs), SWs and finally arriving to a PS regime. The transition to the PS state from the SW occurs always at the same coupling, independently of the system size, while its value increases linearly with the inertia. On the other hand the critical coupling required to observe TWs and SWs increases with N suggesting that in the thermodynamic limit the transition from incoherence to PS will occur without any intermediate states. Finally a linear stability analysis reveals that the system is hysteretic not only at the level of macroscopic indicators, but also microscopically as verified by measuring the maximal Lyapunov exponent.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, contribution for the book: Control of Self-Organizing Nonlinear Systems, Springer Series in Energetics, eds E. Schoell, S.H.L. Klapp, P. Hoeve

The Heavy Photon Search beamline and its performance

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) is an experiment to search for a hidden sector photon, aka a heavy photon or dark photon, in fixed target electroproduction at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab). The HPS experiment searches for the e$^+$e$^-$ decay of the heavy photon with bump hunt and detached vertex strategies using a compact, large acceptance forward spectrometer, consisting of a silicon microstrip detector (SVT) for tracking and vertexing, and a PbWO$_4$ electromagnetic calorimeter for energy measurement and fast triggering. To achieve large acceptance and good vertexing resolution, the first layer of silicon detectors is placed just 10 cm downstream of the target with the sensor edges only 500 $\mu$m above and below the beam. Placing the SVT in such close proximity to the beam puts stringent requirements on the beam profile and beam position stability. As part of an approved engineering run, HPS took data in 2015 and 2016 at 1.05 GeV and 2.3 GeV beam energies, respectively. This paper describes the beam line and its performance during that data taking

The Heavy Photon Search Beamline and Its Performance

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) is an experiment to search for a hidden sector photon, aka a heavy photon or dark photon, in fixed target electroproduction at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab). The HPS experiment searches for the e+e- decay of the heavy photon with bump hunt and detached vertex strategies using a compact, large acceptance forward spectrometer, consisting of a silicon microstrip detector (SVT) for tracking and vertexing, and a PbWO4 electromagnetic calorimeter for energy measurement and fast triggering. To achieve large acceptance and good vertexing resolution, the first layer of silicon detectors is placed just 10cm downstream of the target with the sensor edges only 500 μm above and below the beam. Placing the SVT in such close proximity to the beam puts stringent requirements on the beam profile and beam position stability. As part of an approved engineering run, HPS took data in 2015 and 2016 at 1.05GeV and 2.3GeV beam energies, respectively. This paper describes the beam line and its performance during that data taking

Quasilocal Thermodynamics of Kerr de Sitter Spacetimes and the dS/CFT Correspondence

We consider the quasilocal thermodynamics of rotating black holes in asymptotic de Sitter spacetimes. Using the minimal number of intrinsic boundary counterterms, we carry out an analysis of the quasilocal thermodynamics of Kerr-de Sitter black holes for virtually all possible values of the mass, rotation parameter and cosmological constant that leave the quasilocal boundary inside the cosmological event horizon. Specifically, we compute the quasilocal energy, the conserved charges, the temperature and the heat capacity for the $(3+1)$-dimensional Kerr-dS black holes. We perform a quasilocal stability analysis and find phase behavior that is commensurate with previous analysis carried out through the use of Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) parameters. Finally, we investigate the non-rotating case analytically.Comment: RevTeX4, 19 pages, 11 figures, a few typos fixed, the version to be published in Phys. Rev. D6

Formula for proton-nucleus reaction cross section at intermediate energies and its application

We construct a formula for proton-nucleus total reaction cross section as a function of the mass and neutron excess of the target nucleus and the proton incident energy. We deduce the dependence of the cross section on the mass number and the proton incident energy from a simple argument involving the proton optical depth within the framework of a black sphere approximation of nuclei, while we describe the neutron excess dependence by introducing the density derivative of the symmetry energy, L, on the basis of a radius formula constructed from macroscopic nuclear models. We find that the cross section formula can reproduce the energy dependence of the cross section measured for stable nuclei without introducing any adjustable energy dependent parameter. We finally discuss whether or not the reaction cross section is affected by an extremely low density tail of the neutron distribution for halo nuclei.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, added reference