1,011 research outputs found
Fanny Copeland and the geographical imagination
Raised in Scotland, married and divorced in the English south, an adopted Slovene, Fanny Copeland (1872 – 1970) occupied the intersection of a number of complex spatial and temporal conjunctures. A Slavophile, she played a part in the formation of what subsequently became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that emerged from the First World War. Living in Ljubljana, she facilitated the first ‘foreign visit’ (in 1932) of the newly formed Le Play Society (a precursor of the Institute of British Geographers) and guided its studies of Solčava (a then ‘remote’ Alpine valley system) which, led by Dudley Stamp and commended by Halford Mackinder, were subsequently hailed as a model for regional studies elsewhere. Arrested by the Gestapo and interned in Italy during the Second World War, she eventually returned to a socialist Yugoslavia, a celebrated figure. An accomplished musician, linguist, and mountaineer, she became an authority on (and populist for) the Julian Alps and was instrumental in the establishment of the Triglav National Park. Copeland’s role as participant observer (and protagonist) enriches our understanding of the particularities of her time and place and illuminates some inter-war relationships within G/geography, inside and outside the academy, suggesting their relative autonomy in the production of geographical knowledge
Ethnicity and Race Variations in Receipt of Surgery among Veterans with and without Depression
To examine equity in one aspect of care provision in the Veterans Health Administration, this study analyzed factors associated with receipt of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), vascular, hip/knee, or digestive system surgeries during FY2006–2009. A random sample of patients (N = 317, 072) included 9% with depression, 17% African-American patients, 5% Hispanics, and 5% women. In the four-year followup, 18,334 patients (6%) experienced surgery: 3,109 hip/knee, 3,755 digestive, 1,899 CABG, and 11,330 vascular operations. Patients with preexisting depression were less likely to have surgery than nondepressed patients (4% versus 6%). In covariate-adjusted analyses, minority patients were slightly less likely to receive vascular operations compared to white patients (Hispanic OR = 0.88, P < .01; African-American OR = 0.93, P < .01) but more likely to undergo digestive system procedures. Some race-/ethnicity-related disparities of care for cardiovascular disease may persist for veterans using the VHA
Kantowski-Sachs String Cosmologies
We present new exact solutions of the low-energy-effective-action string
equations with both dilaton and axion fields non-zero. The
background universe is of Kantowski-Sachs type. We consider the possibility of
a pseudoscalar axion field () that can be either time or
space dependent. The case of time-dependent reduces to that of a stiff
perfect-fluid cosmology. For space-dependent there is just one non-zero
time-space-space component of the axion field , and this corresponds to a
distinguished direction in space which prevents the models from isotropising.
Also, in the latter case, both the axion field and its tensor potential
() are dependent on time and space yet the energy-momentum tensor remains
time-dependent as required by the homogeneity of the cosmological model.Comment: 23 pages, REVTEX, 6 figures available on reques
String Necklaces and Primordial Black Holes from Type IIB Strings
We consider a model of static cosmic string loops in type IIB string theory,
where the strings wrap cycles within the internal space. The strings are not
topologically stabilised, however the presence of a lifting potential traps the
windings giving rise to kinky cycloops. We find that PBH formation occurs at
early times in a small window, whilst at late times we observe the formation of
dark matter relics in the scaling regime. This is in stark contrast to previous
predictions based on field theoretic models. We also consider the PBH
contribution to the mass density of the universe, and use the experimental data
to impose bounds on the string theory parameters.Comment: 45 pages, 9 figures, LaTeX; published versio
Spatially Homogeneous String Cosmologies
We determine the most general form of the antisymmetric -field tensor
derived from a purely time-dependent potential that is admitted by all possible
spatially homogeneous cosmological models in 3+1-dimensional low-energy bosonic
string theory. The maximum number of components of the field that are left
arbitrary is found for each homogeneous cosmology defined by the Bianchi group
classification. The relative generality of these string cosmologies is found by
counting the number of independent pieces of Cauchy data needed to specify the
general solution of Einstein's equations. The hierarchy of generality differs
significantly from that characteristic of vacuum and perfect-fluid cosmologies.
The degree of generality of homogeneous string cosmologies is compared to that
of the generic inhomogenous solutions of the string field equations.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, assumptions clarified, calculations unchanged,
published in Phys. Rev.
Growth of Inflaton Perturbations and the Post-Inflation Era in Supersymmetric Hybrid Inflation Models
It has been shown that hybrid inflation may end with the formation of
non-topological solitons of inflaton field. As a first step towards a fully
realistic picture of the post-inflation era and reheating in supersymmetric
hybrid inflation models, we study the classical scalar field equations of a
supersymmetric hybrid inflation model using a semi-analytical ansatz for the
spatial dependence of the fields. Using the minimal D-term inflation model as
an example, the inflaton field is evolved using the full 1-loop effective
potential from the slow-rolling era to the U(1)_{FI} symmetry-breaking phase
transition. Spatial perturbations of the inflaton corresponding to quantum
fluctuations are introduced for the case where there is spatially coherent
U(1)_{FI} symmetry breaking. The maximal growth of the dominant perturbation is
found to depend only on the ratio of superpotential coupling \lambda to the
gauge coupling g. The inflaton condensate fragments to non-topological solitons
for \lambda/g > 0.09. Possible consequences of non-topological soliton
formation in fully realistic SUSY hybrid inflation models are discussed.Comment: 27 pages LaTeX, 8 figures. Additional references and discussio
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Exploration of PET and MRI radiomic features for decoding breast cancer phenotypes and prognosis.
Radiomics is an emerging technology for imaging biomarker discovery and disease-specific personalized treatment management. This paper aims to determine the benefit of using multi-modality radiomics data from PET and MR images in the characterization breast cancer phenotype and prognosis. Eighty-four features were extracted from PET and MR images of 113 breast cancer patients. Unsupervised clustering based on PET and MRI radiomic features created three subgroups. These derived subgroups were statistically significantly associated with tumor grade (p = 2.0 × 10-6), tumor overall stage (p = 0.037), breast cancer subtypes (p = 0.0085), and disease recurrence status (p = 0.0053). The PET-derived first-order statistics and gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) textural features were discriminative of breast cancer tumor grade, which was confirmed by the results of L2-regularization logistic regression (with repeated nested cross-validation) with an estimated area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.76 (95% confidence interval (CI) = [0.62, 0.83]). The results of ElasticNet logistic regression indicated that PET and MR radiomics distinguished recurrence-free survival, with a mean AUC of 0.75 (95% CI = [0.62, 0.88]) and 0.68 (95% CI = [0.58, 0.81]) for 1 and 2 years, respectively. The MRI-derived GLCM inverse difference moment normalized (IDMN) and the PET-derived GLCM cluster prominence were among the key features in the predictive models for recurrence-free survival. In conclusion, radiomic features from PET and MR images could be helpful in deciphering breast cancer phenotypes and may have potential as imaging biomarkers for prediction of breast cancer recurrence-free survival
D-terms and D-strings in open string models
We study the Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) D-terms on D-branes in type II Calabi-Yau
backgrounds. We provide a simple worldsheet proof of the fact that, at tree
level, these terms only couple to scalars in closed string hypermultiplets. At
the one-loop level, the D-terms get corrections only if the gauge group has an
anomalous spectrum, with the anomaly cancelled by a Green-Schwarz mechanism. We
study the local type IIA model of D6-branes at SU(3) angles and show that, as
in field theory, the one-loop correction suffers from a quadratic divergence in
the open string channel. By studying the closed string channel, we show that
this divergence is related to a closed string tadpole, and is cancelled when
the tadpole is cancelled. Next, we study the cosmic strings that arise in the
supersymmetric phases of these systems in light of recent work of Dvali et. al.
In the type IIA intersecting D6-brane examples, we identify the D-term strings
as D4-branes ending on the D6-branes. Finally, we use N=1 dualities to relate
these results to previous work on the FI D-term of heterotic strings.Comment: 29 pages, 5 figures; v2: improved referencin
Patterns of primary care and mortality among patients with schizophrenia or diabetes: a cluster analysis approach to the retrospective study of healthcare utilization
Abstract Background Patients with schizophrenia have difficulty managing their medical healthcare needs, possibly resulting in delayed treatment and poor outcomes. We analyzed whether patients reduced primary care use over time, differentially by diagnosis with schizophrenia, diabetes, or both schizophrenia and diabetes. We also assessed whether such patterns of primary care use were a significant predictor of mortality over a 4-year period. Methods The Veterans Healthcare Administration (VA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States. Administrative extracts of the VA's all-electronic medical records were studied. Patients over age 50 and diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2002 were age-matched 1:4 to diabetes patients. All patients were followed through 2005. Cluster analysis explored trajectories of primary care use. Proportional hazards regression modelled the impact of these primary care utilization trajectories on survival, controlling for demographic and clinical covariates. Results Patients comprised three diagnostic groups: diabetes only (n = 188,332), schizophrenia only (n = 40,109), and schizophrenia with diabetes (Scz-DM, n = 13,025). Cluster analysis revealed four distinct trajectories of primary care use: consistent over time, increasing over time, high and decreasing, low and decreasing. Patients with schizophrenia only were likely to have low-decreasing use (73% schizophrenia-only vs 54% Scz-DM vs 52% diabetes). Increasing use was least common among schizophrenia patients (4% vs 8% Scz-DM vs 7% diabetes) and was associated with improved survival. Low-decreasing primary care, compared to consistent use, was associated with shorter survival controlling for demographics and case-mix. The observational study was limited by reliance on administrative data. Conclusion Regular primary care and high levels of primary care were associated with better survival for patients with chronic illness, whether psychiatric or medical. For schizophrenia patients, with or without comorbid diabetes, primary care offers a survival benefit, suggesting that innovations in treatment retention targeting at-risk groups can offer significant promise of improving outcomes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78274/1/1472-6963-9-127.xmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78274/2/1472-6963-9-127.pdfPeer Reviewe
WMAP constraint on the P-term inflationary model
In light of WMAP results, we examine the observational constraint on the
P-term inflation. With the tunable parameter , P-term inflation contains
richer physics than D-term and F-term inflationary models. We find the
logarithmic derivative spectral index with on large scales and on
small scales in agreement to observation. We obtained a reasonable range for
the choice of the gauge coupling constant in order to meet the requirements
of WMAP observation and the expected number of the e-foldings. Although tuning
and we can have larger values for the logarithmic derivative of the
spectral index, it is not possible to satisfy all observational requirements
for both, the spectral index and its logarithmic derivative at the same time.Comment: 6 pages, double column, 13 figures included. Version appearing in the
Physical Review
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