3,043 research outputs found
Heterogeneity of diabetes outcomes among asians and pacific islanders in the US: the diabetes study of northern california (DISTANCE).
ObjectiveEthnic minorities with diabetes typically have lower rates of cardiovascular outcomes and higher rates of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) compared with whites. Diabetes outcomes among Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups have not been disaggregated.Research design and methodsWe performed a prospective cohort study (1996-2006) of patients enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Diabetes Registry. There were 64,211 diabetic patients, including whites (n = 40,286), blacks (n = 8,668), Latinos (n = 7,763), Filipinos (n = 3,572), Chinese (n = 1,823), Japanese (n = 951), Pacific Islanders (n = 593), and South Asians (n = 555), enrolled in the registry. We calculated incidence rates (means ± SD; 7.2 ± 3.3 years follow-up) and created Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for age, educational attainment, English proficiency, neighborhood deprivation, BMI, smoking, alcohol use, exercise, medication adherence, type and duration of diabetes, HbA(1c), hypertension, estimated glomerular filtration rate, albuminuria, and LDL cholesterol. Incidence of myocardial infarction (MI), congestive heart failure, stroke, ESRD, and lower-extremity amputation (LEA) were age and sex adjusted.ResultsPacific Islander women had the highest incidence of MI, whereas other ethnicities had significantly lower rates of MI than whites. Most nonwhite groups had higher rates of ESRD than whites. Asians had ~60% lower incidence of LEA compared with whites, African Americans, or Pacific Islanders. Incidence rates in Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos were similar for most complications. For the three macrovascular complications, Pacific Islanders and South Asians had rates similar to whites.ConclusionsIncidence of complications varied dramatically among the Asian subgroups and highlights the value of a more nuanced ethnic stratification for public health surveillance and etiologic research
Electron-beam-induced shift in the apparent position of a pinned vortex in a thin superconducting film
When an electron beam strikes a superconducting thin film near a pinned
vortex, it locally increases the temperature-dependent London penetration depth
and perturbs the circulating supercurrent, thereby distorting the vortex's
magnetic field toward the heated spot. This phenomenon has been used to
visualize vortices pinned in SQUIDs using low-temperature scanning electron
microscopy. In this paper I develop a quantitative theory to calculate the
displacement of the vortex-generated magnetic-flux distribution as a function
of the distance of the beam spot from the vortex core. The results are
calculated using four different models for the spatial distribution of the
thermal power deposited by the electron beam.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, resubmitted to PRB with referee-suggested
revisions, includes new paragraph on numerical evaluatio
Revealing common artifacts due to ferromagnetic inclusions in highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite
We report on an extensive investigation to figure out the origin of
room-temperature ferromagnetism that is commonly observed by SQUID magnetometry
in highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). Electron backscattering and X-ray
microanalysis revealed the presence of micron-size magnetic clusters
(predominantly Fe) that are rare and would be difficult to detect without
careful search in a scanning electron microscope in the backscattering mode.
The clusters pin to crystal boundaries and their quantities match the amplitude
of typical ferromagnetic signals. No ferromagnetic response is detected in
samples where we could not find such magnetic inclusions. Our experiments show
that the frequently reported ferromagnetism in pristine HOPG is most likely to
originate from contamination with Fe-rich inclusions introduced presumably
during crystal growth.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
Non-perturbative determination of anisotropy coefficients in lattice gauge theories
We propose a new non-perturbative method to compute derivatives of gauge
coupling constants with respect to anisotropic lattice spacings (anisotropy
coefficients), which are required in an evaluation of thermodynamic quantities
from numerical simulations on the lattice. Our method is based on a precise
measurement of the finite temperature deconfining transition curve in the
lattice coupling parameter space extended to anisotropic lattices by applying
the spectral density method. We test the method for the cases of SU(2) and
SU(3) gauge theories at the deconfining transition point on lattices with the
lattice size in the time direction -- 6. In both cases, there is a
clear discrepancy between our results and perturbative values. A longstanding
problem, when one uses the perturbative anisotropy coefficients, is a
non-vanishing pressure gap at the deconfining transition point in the SU(3)
gauge theory. Using our non-perturbative anisotropy coefficients, we find that
this problem is completely resolved: we obtain and
on and 6 lattices, respectively.Comment: 24pages,7figures,5table
Effect of physical aging on the low-frequency vibrational density of states of a glassy polymer
The effects of the physical aging on the vibrational density of states (VDOS)
of a polymeric glass is studied. The VDOS of a poly(methyl methacrylate) glass
at low-energy (<15 meV), was determined from inelastic neutron scattering at
low-temperature for two different physical thermodynamical states. One sample
was annealed during a long time at temperature lower than Tg, and another was
quenched from a temperature higher than Tg. It was found that the VDOS around
the boson peak, relatively to the one at higher energy, decreases with the
annealing at lower temperature than Tg, i.e., with the physical aging.Comment: To be published in Europhys. Let
Renormalization Group Flow Equations and the Phase Transition in O(N)-models
We derive and solve flow equations for a general O(N)-symmetric effective
potential including wavefunction renormalization corrections combined with a
heat-kernel regularization. We investigate the model at finite temperature and
study the nature of the phase transition in detail. Beta functions, fixed
points and critical exponents \beta, \nu, \delta and \eta for various N are
independently calculated which allow for a verification of universal scaling
relations.Comment: 34 pages, 3 tables, 11 postscript figures, LaTe
High density QCD with static quarks
We study lattice QCD in the limit that the quark mass and chemical potential
are simultaneously made large, resulting in a controllable density of quarks
which do not move. This is similar in spirit to the quenched approximation for
zero density QCD. In this approximation we find that the deconfinement
transition seen at zero density becomes a smooth crossover at any nonzero
density, and that at low enough temperature chiral symmetry remains broken at
all densities.Comment: LaTeX, 18 pages, uses epsf.sty, postscript figures include
Pade Improvement of the Free Energy in High Temperature QCD
Pade approximants (PA's) are constructed from the perturbative coefficients
of the free energy through O(g^5) in hot QCD. Pade summation is shown to reduce
the renormalization-scale dependence substantially even at temperature (T) as
low as 250 MeV.
Also, PA's predict that the free energy does not deviate more than 10 % from
the Stefan-Boltzmann limit for T > 250 MeV.Comment: Typos corrected. Minor changes in the text and references. To appear
in Phys. Rev.
Precise determination of critical exponents and equation of state by field theory methods
Renormalization group, and in particular its Quantum Field Theory
implementation has provided us with essential tools for the description of the
phase transitions and critical phenomena beyond mean field theory. We therefore
review the methods, based on renormalized phi^4_3 quantum field theory and
renormalization group, which have led to a precise determination of critical
exponents of the N-vector model (R. Guida and J. Zinn-Justin, J. Phys. A31
(1998) 8103. cond-mat/9803240). and of the equation of state of the 3D Ising
model (R. Guida and J. Zinn-Justin, Nucl. Phys. B489 [FS] (1997) 626,
hep-th/9610223.). These results are among the most precise available probing
field theory in a non-perturbative regime.Comment: 23 pages, tex, private macros, one figur
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