ggstThe role of tendon microcirculation in Achilles and patellar tendinopathy

Tendinopathy is of distinct interest as it describes a painful tendon disease with local tenderness, swelling and pain associated with sonographic features such as hypoechogenic texture and diameter enlargement. Recent research elucidated microcirculatory changes in tendinopathy using laser Doppler flowmetry and spectrophotometry such as at the Achilles tendon, the patellar tendon as well as at the elbow and the wrist level. Tendon capillary blood flow is increased at the point of pain. Tendon oxygen saturation as well as tendon postcapillary venous filling pressures, determined non-invasively using combined Laser Doppler flowmetry and spectrophotometry, can quantify, in real-time, how tendon microcirculation changes over with pathology or in response to a given therapy. Tendon oxygen saturation can be increased by repetitive, intermittent short-term ice applications in Achilles tendons; this corresponds to 'ischemic preconditioning', a method used to train tissue to sustain ischemic damage. On the other hand, decreasing tendon oxygenation may reflect local acidosis and deteriorating tendon metabolism. Painful eccentric training, a common therapy for Achilles, patellar, supraspinatus and wrist tendinopathy decreases abnormal capillary tendon flow without compromising local tendon oxygenation. Combining an Achilles pneumatic wrap with eccentric training changes tendon microcirculation in a different way than does eccentric training alone; both approaches reduce pain in Achilles tendinopathy. The microcirculatory effects of measures such as extracorporeal shock wave therapy as well as topical nitroglycerine application are to be studied in tendinopathy as well as the critical question of dosage and maintenance. Interestingly it seems that injection therapy using color Doppler for targeting the area of neovascularisation yields to good clinical results with polidocanol sclerosing therapy, but also with a combination of epinephrine and lidocaine

On the validity of mean-field amplitude equations for counterpropagating wavetrains

We rigorously establish the validity of the equations describing the evolution of one-dimensional long wavelength modulations of counterpropagating wavetrains for a hyperbolic model equation, namely the sine-Gordon equation. We consider both periodic amplitude functions and localized wavepackets. For the localized case, the wavetrains are completely decoupled at leading order, while in the periodic case the amplitude equations take the form of mean-field (nonlocal) Schr\"odinger equations rather than locally coupled partial differential equations. The origin of this weakened coupling is traced to a hidden translation symmetry in the linear problem, which is related to the existence of a characteristic frame traveling at the group velocity of each wavetrain. It is proved that solutions to the amplitude equations dominate the dynamics of the governing equations on asymptotically long time scales. While the details of the discussion are restricted to the class of model equations having a leading cubic nonlinearity, the results strongly indicate that mean-field evolution equations are generic for bimodal disturbances in dispersive systems with \O(1) group velocity.Comment: 16 pages, uuencoded, tar-compressed Postscript fil

Simulations of dynamo action in fully convective stars

We present three-dimensional nonlinear magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the interiors of fully convective M-dwarfs. Our models consider 0.3 solar-mass stars using the Anelastic Spherical Harmonic code, with the spherical computational domain extending from 0.08-0.96 times the overall stellar radius. Like previous authors, we find that fully convective stars can generate kG-strength magnetic fields (in rough equipartition with the convective flows) without the aid of a tachocline of shear. Although our model stars are everywhere unstably stratified, the amplitudes and typical pattern sizes of the convective flows vary strongly with radius, with the outer regions of the stars hosting vigorous convection and field amplification while the deep interiors are more quiescent. Modest differential rotation is established in hydrodynamic calculations, but -- unlike in some prior work --strongly quenched in MHD simulations because of the Maxwell stresses exerted by the dynamo-generated magnetic fields. Despite the lack of strong differential rotation, the magnetic fields realized in the simulations possess significant mean (axisymmetric) components, which we attribute partly to the strong influence of rotation upon the slowly overturning flows.Comment: Accepted to the ApJ. 20 pages (emulateapj), 4 color figures compressed to low-resolution; higher-resolution equivalents are available at http://lcd-www.colorado.edu/~brownim/browning_2007_mstars.pd

Stretching of polymers around the Kolmogorov scale in a turbulent shear flow

We present numerical studies of stretching of Hookean dumbbells in a turbulent Navier-Stokes flow with a linear mean profile, =Sy. In addition to the turbulence features beyond the viscous Kolmogorov scale \eta, the dynamics at the equilibrium extension of the dumbbells significantly below eta is well resolved. The variation of the constant shear rate S causes a change of the turbulent velocity fluctuations on all scales and thus of the intensity of local stretching rate of the advecting flow. The latter is measured by the maximum Lyapunov exponent lambda_1 which is found to increase as \lambda_1 ~ S^{3/2}, in agreement with a dimensional argument. The ensemble of up to 2 times 10^6 passively advected dumbbells is advanced by Brownian dynamics simulations in combination with a pseudospectral integration for the turbulent shear flow. Anisotropy of stretching is quantified by the statistics of the azimuthal angle $\phi$ which measures the alignment with the mean flow axis in the x-y shear plane, and the polar angle theta which determines the orientation with respect to the shear plane. The asymmetry of the probability density function (PDF) of phi increases with growing shear rate S. Furthermore, the PDF becomes increasingly peaked around mean flow direction (phi= 0). In contrast, the PDF of the polar angle theta is symmetric and less sensitive to changes of S.Comment: 16 pages, 14 Postscript figures (2 with reduced quality

Bistability of Slow and Fast Traveling Waves in Fluid Mixtures

The appearence of a new type of fast nonlinear traveling wave states in binary fluid convection with increasing Soret effect is elucidated and the parameter range of their bistability with the common slower ones is evaluated numerically. The bifurcation behavior and the significantly different spatiotemporal properties of the different wave states - e.g. frequency, flow structure, and concentration distribution - are determined and related to each other and to a convenient measure of their nonlinearity. This allows to derive a limit for the applicability of small amplitude expansions. Additionally an universal scaling behavior of frequencies and mixing properties is found. PACS: 47.20.-k, 47.10.+g, 47.20.KyComment: 4 pages including 5 Postscript figure

Model for initiation of quality factor degradation at high accelerating fields in superconducting radio-frequency cavities

A model for the onset of the reduction in SRF cavity quality factor, the so-called Q-drop, at high accelerating electric fields is presented. Breakdown of the surface barrier against magnetic flux penetration at the cavity equator is considered to be the critical event that determines the onset of Q-drop. The worst case of triangular grooves with low field of first flux penetration Hp, as analyzed previously by Buzdin and Daumens, [1998 Physica C 294: 257], was adapted. This approach incorporates both the geometry of the groove and local contamination via the Ginzburg-Landau parameter kappa, so the proposed model allows new comparisons of one effect in relation to the other. The model predicts equivalent reduction of Hp when either roughness or contamination were varied alone, so smooth but dirty surfaces limit cavity performance about as much as rough but clean surfaces do. When in combination, contamination exacerbates the negative effects of roughness and vice-versa. To test the model with actual data, coupons were prepared by buffered chemical polishing and electropolishing, and stylus profilometry was used to obtain distributions of angles. From these data, curves for surface resistance generated by simple flux flow as a function of magnetic field were generated by integrating over the distribution of angles for reasonable values of kappa. This showed that combined effects of roughness and contamination indeed reduce the Q-drop onset field by ~30%, and that that contamination contributes to Q-drop as much as roughness. The latter point may be overlooked by SRF cavity research, since access to the cavity interior by spectroscopy tools is very difficult, whereas optical images have become commonplace. The model was extended to fit cavity test data, which indicated that reduction of the superconducting gap by contaminants may also play a role in Q-drop.Comment: 15 pages with 7 figure

Annular electroconvection with shear

We report experiments on convection driven by a radial electrical force in suspended annular smectic A liquid crystal films. In the absence of an externally imposed azimuthal shear, a stationary one-dimensional (1D) pattern consisting of symmetric vortex pairs is formed via a supercritical transition at the onset of convection. Shearing reduces the symmetries of the base state and produces a traveling 1D pattern whose basic periodic unit is a pair of asymmetric vortices. For a sufficiently large shear, the primary bifurcation changes from supercritical to subcritical. We describe measurements of the resulting hysteresis as a function of the shear at radius ratio $\eta \sim 0.8$. This simple pattern forming system has an unusual combination of symmetries and control parameters and should be amenable to quantitative theoretical analysis.Comment: 12 preprint pages, 3 figures in 2 parts each. For more info, see http://mobydick.physics.utoronto.c

The Transcription Factor SpoVG Is of Major Importance for Biofilm Formation of Staphylococcus epidermidis under In Vitro Conditions, but Dispensable for In Vivo Biofilm Formation

Staphylococcus epidermidis is a common cause of device related infections on which pathogens form biofilms (i.e., multilayered cell populations embedded in an extracellular matrix). Here, we report that the transcription factor SpoVG is essential for the capacity of S. epidermidis to form such biofilms on artificial surfaces under in vitro conditions. Inactivation of spoVG in the polysaccharide intercellular adhesin (PIA) producing S. epidermidis strain 1457 yielded a mutant that, unlike its parental strain, failed to produce a clear biofilm in a microtiter plate-based static biofilm assay. A decreased biofilm formation capacity was also observed when 1457 ∆spoVG cells were co-cultured with polyurethane-based peripheral venous catheter fragments under dynamic conditions, while the cis-complemented 1457 ∆spoVG::spoVG derivative formed biofilms comparable to the levels seen with the wild-type. Transcriptional studies demonstrated that the deletion of spoVG significantly altered the expression of the intercellular adhesion (ica) locus by upregulating the transcription of the ica operon repressor icaR and down-regulating the transcription of icaADBC. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA) revealed an interaction between SpoVG and the icaA-icaR intergenic region, suggesting SpoVG to promote biofilm formation of S. epidermidis by modulating ica expression. However, when mice were challenged with the 1457 ∆spoVG mutant in a foreign body infection model, only marginal differences in biomasses produced on the infected catheter fragments between the mutant and the parental strain were observed. These findings suggest that SpoVG is critical for the PIA-dependent biofilm formation of S. epidermis under in vitro conditions, but is largely dispensable for biofilm formation of this skin commensal under in vivo conditions

Theoretical Models of Sunspot Structure and Dynamics

Recent progress in theoretical modeling of a sunspot is reviewed. The observed properties of umbral dots are well reproduced by realistic simulations of magnetoconvection in a vertical, monolithic magnetic field. To understand the penumbra, it is useful to distinguish between the inner penumbra, dominated by bright filaments containing slender dark cores, and the outer penumbra, made up of dark and bright filaments of comparable width with corresponding magnetic fields differing in inclination by some 30 degrees and strong Evershed flows in the dark filaments along nearly horizontal or downward-plunging magnetic fields. The role of magnetic flux pumping in submerging magnetic flux in the outer penumbra is examined through numerical experiments, and different geometric models of the penumbral magnetic field are discussed in the light of high-resolution observations. Recent, realistic numerical MHD simulations of an entire sunspot have succeeded in reproducing the salient features of the convective pattern in the umbra and the inner penumbra. The siphon-flow mechanism still provides the best explanation of the Evershed flow, particularly in the outer penumbra where it often consists of cool, supersonic downflows.Comment: To appear in "Magnetic Coupling between the Interior and the Atmosphere of the Sun", eds. S.S. Hasan and R.J. Rutten, Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Berlin, 200

Three-dimensional streaming flows driven by oscillatory boundary layers

Three-dimensional (3D) oscillatory boundary layers attached to deformable solid walls and free boundaries of general form are analyzed via matched asymptotic expansions, to obtain the time-averaged tangential velocities and tangential stresses, respectively, at the edge of the layers. These provide the appropriate boundary conditions that are to be used to calculate the streaming flow in the bulk, outside the boundary layers. The resulting formulae generalize to 3D the well-known expressions due to Schlichting (Phys. Z. 33 (1932) 327) and Longuet-Higgins (Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A 245 (1953) 535)