301 research outputs found
Sleep Endoscopy in the Evaluation of Pediatric Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Pediatric obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is not always resolved or improved with adenotonsillectomy. Persistent or complex cases of pediatric OSA may be due to sites of obstruction in the airway other than the tonsils and adenoids. Identifying these areas in the past has been problematic, and therefore, therapy for OSA in children who have failed adenotonsillectomy has often been unsatisfactory. Sleep endoscopy is a technique that can enable the surgeon to determine the level of obstruction in a sleeping child with OSA. With this knowledge, site-specific surgical therapy for persistent and complex pediatric OSA may be possible
Estimating long term behavior of flows without trajectory integration: the infinitesimal generator approach
The long-term distributions of trajectories of a flow are described by
invariant densities, i.e. fixed points of an associated transfer operator. In
addition, global slowly mixing structures, such as almost-invariant sets, which
partition phase space into regions that are almost dynamically disconnected,
can also be identified by certain eigenfunctions of this operator. Indeed,
these structures are often hard to obtain by brute-force trajectory-based
analyses. In a wide variety of applications, transfer operators have proven to
be very efficient tools for an analysis of the global behavior of a dynamical
system.
The computationally most expensive step in the construction of an approximate
transfer operator is the numerical integration of many short term trajectories.
In this paper, we propose to directly work with the infinitesimal generator
instead of the operator, completely avoiding trajectory integration. We propose
two different discretization schemes; a cell based discretization and a
spectral collocation approach. Convergence can be shown in certain
circumstances. We demonstrate numerically that our approach is much more
efficient than the operator approach, sometimes by several orders of magnitude
Fine-tuning the functional properties of carbon nanotubes via the interconversion of encapsulated molecules
Tweaking the properties of carbon nanotubes is a prerequisite for their
practical applications. Here we demonstrate fine-tuning the electronic
properties of single-wall carbon nanotubes via filling with ferrocene
molecules. The evolution of the bonding and charge transfer within the tube is
demonstrated via chemical reaction of the ferrocene filler ending up as
secondary inner tube. The charge transfer nature is interpreted well within
density functional theory. This work gives the first direct observation of a
fine-tuned continuous amphoteric doping of single-wall carbon nanotubes
Electron spin resonance signal of Luttinger liquids and single-wall carbon nanotubes
A comprehensive theory of electron spin resonance (ESR) for a Luttinger
liquid (LL) state of correlated metals is presented. The ESR measurables such
as the signal intensity and the line-width are calculated in the framework of
Luttinger liquid theory with broken spin rotational symmetry as a function of
magnetic field and temperature. We obtain a significant temperature dependent
homogeneous line-broadening which is related to the spin symmetry breaking and
the electron-electron interaction. The result crosses over smoothly to the ESR
of itinerant electrons in the non-interacting limit. These findings explain the
absence of the long-sought ESR signal of itinerant electrons in single-wall
carbon nanotubes when considering realistic experimental conditions.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur
Spectral degeneracy and escape dynamics for intermittent maps with a hole
We study intermittent maps from the point of view of metastability. Small
neighbourhoods of an intermittent fixed point and their complements form pairs
of almost-invariant sets. Treating the small neighbourhood as a hole, we first
show that the absolutely continuous conditional invariant measures (ACCIMs)
converge to the ACIM as the length of the small neighbourhood shrinks to zero.
We then quantify how the escape dynamics from these almost-invariant sets are
connected with the second eigenfunctions of Perron-Frobenius (transfer)
operators when a small perturbation is applied near the intermittent fixed
point. In particular, we describe precisely the scaling of the second
eigenvalue with the perturbation size, provide upper and lower bounds, and
demonstrate convergence of the positive part of the second eigenfunction
to the ACIM as the perturbation goes to zero. This perturbation and associated
eigenvalue scalings and convergence results are all compatible with Ulam's
method and provide a formal explanation for the numerical behaviour of Ulam's
method in this nonuniformly hyperbolic setting. The main results of the paper
are illustrated with numerical computations.Comment: 34 page
Estuary-associated syndrome in North Carolina: an occupational prevalence study.
Atlantic coast estuaries recently have experienced fish kills and fish with lesions attributed to Pfiesteria piscicida and related dinoflagellates. Human health effects have been reported from laboratory exposure and from a 1997 Maryland fish kill. North Carolina has recorded Pfiesteria-related fish kill events over the past decade, but human health effects from environmental exposure have not been systematically investigated or documented here. At the request of the state health agency, comprehensive examinations were conducted in a cross-sectional prevalence study of watermen working where Pfiesteria exposure may occur: waters where diseased or stressed fish were reported from June to September 1997, and where Pfiesteria had been identified in the past. Controls worked on unaffected waterways. The study was conducted 3 months after the last documented Pfiesteria-related fish kill. The goal was to document any persistent health effects from recent or remote contact with fish kills, fish with lesions, or affected waterways, using the 1997 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case description for estuary-associated syndrome (EAS). Examinations included comprehensive medical, occupational, and environmental history, general medical, dermatologic, and neurologic examinations, vision testing, and neuropsychologic evaluations. Seventeen of 22 watermen working in affected waters and 11 of 21 in unaffected waters reported exposure to a fish kill or to fish with lesions. We found no pattern of abnormalities on medical, neurologic, neuropsychologic, or NES-2 evaluation. By history, one subject in each group met the EAS criteria, neither of whom had significant neuropsychological impairment when examined. Watermen from affected waterways had a significant reduction in visual contrast sensitivity (VCS) at the midspatial frequencies, but we did not identify a specific factor or exposure associated with this reduction. The cohorts did not differ in reported occupational exposure to solvents (qualitative) or to other neurotoxicants; however, exposure history was not sufficiently detailed to measure or control for solvent exposure. This small prevalence study in watermen, conducted 3 months after the last documented fish kill related to Pfiesteria, did not identify an increased risk of estuary-associated syndrome in those working on affected waterways. A significant difference between the estuary and ocean watermen was found on VCS, which could not be attributed to any specific factor or exposure. VCS may be affected by chemicals, drugs, alcohol, and several developmental and degenerative conditions; it has not been validated as being affected by known exposure to dinoflagellate secretions. VCS should be considered for inclusion in further studies, together with documentation or quantification of its potential confounders, to assess whether it has utility in relationship to dinoflagellate exposure
Singular Value Decomposition of Operators on Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces
Reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs) play an important role in many
statistics and machine learning applications ranging from support vector
machines to Gaussian processes and kernel embeddings of distributions.
Operators acting on such spaces are, for instance, required to embed
conditional probability distributions in order to implement the kernel Bayes
rule and build sequential data models. It was recently shown that transfer
operators such as the Perron-Frobenius or Koopman operator can also be
approximated in a similar fashion using covariance and cross-covariance
operators and that eigenfunctions of these operators can be obtained by solving
associated matrix eigenvalue problems. The goal of this paper is to provide a
solid functional analytic foundation for the eigenvalue decomposition of RKHS
operators and to extend the approach to the singular value decomposition. The
results are illustrated with simple guiding examples
Specific Compositions of Cannabis sativa Compounds Have Cytotoxic Activity and Inhibit Motility and Colony Formation of Human Glioblastoma Cells In Vitro
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most lethal subtype of glioma. Cannabis sativa is used for the treatment of various medical conditions. Around 150 phytocannabinoids have been identified in C. sativa, among them Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) that trigger GBM cell death. However, the optimal combinations of cannabis molecules for anti-GBM activity are unknown. Chemical composition was determined using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Cytotoxic activity was determined by XTT and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) assays and apoptosis and cell cycle by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). F-actin structures were observed by confocal microscopy, gene expression by quantitative PCR, and cell migration and invasion by scratch and transwell assays, respectively. Fractions of a high-THC cannabis strain extract had significant cytotoxic activity against GBM cell lines and glioma stem cells derived from tumor specimens. A standard mix (SM) of the active fractions F4 and F5 induced apoptosis and expression of endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-stress associated-genes. F4 and F5 inhibited cell migration and invasion, altered cell cytoskeletons, and inhibited colony formation in 2 and 3-dimensional models. Combinations of cannabis compounds exert cytotoxic, anti-proliferative, and anti-migratory effects and should be examined for efficacy on GBM in pre-clinical studies and clinical trials
Negative length orbits in normal-superconductor billiard systems
The Path-Length Spectra of mesoscopic systems including diffractive
scatterers and connected to superconductor is studied theoretically. We show
that the spectra differs fundamentally from that of normal systems due to the
presence of Andreev reflection. It is shown that negative path-lengths should
arise in the spectra as opposed to normal system. To highlight this effect we
carried out both quantum mechanical and semiclassical calculations for the
simplest possible diffractive scatterer. The most pronounced peaks in the
Path-Length Spectra of the reflection amplitude are identified by the routes
that the electron and/or hole travels.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures include
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