Mapping of 2+1-dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang growth onto a driven lattice gas model of dimer

We show that a 2+1 dimensional discrete surface growth model exhibiting Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) class scaling can be mapped onto a two dimensional conserved lattice gas model of directed dimers. In case of KPZ height anisotropy the dimers follow driven diffusive motion. We confirm by numerical simulations that the scaling exponents of the dimer model are in agreement with those of the 2+1 dimensional KPZ class. This opens up the possibility of analyzing growth models via reaction-diffusion models, which allow much more efficient computer simulations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, final form to appear in PR

The effect of high-dose fluticasone propionate and budesonide on lung function and asthma exacerbations in patients with severe asthma

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to investigate the comparative efficacy and safety of equal doses of inhaled fluticasone propionate (FP) and inhaled budesonide (BUD) using their respective dry powder inhalers in a population of severe asthmatics requiring high doses of inhaled corticosteroid. This double-blind double-dummy parallel-group study compared the effects of 24 weeks of treatment with FP (2000 μg daily via a Diskhaler® inhaler; Glaxo Wellcome, Evreux, France) and BUD (2000 μg daily via a Turbuhaler® inhaler; Astra Pharmaceuticals, Rijswijka, Netherlands) on lung function and asthma exacerbations in 395 patients with asthma.FP was statistically significantly superior to BUD with respect to the percentage of symptom-free days (P = 0·02), the incidence of days free from rescue bronchodilator usage (P = 0·02) and the distribution of change in peak expiratory flow (PEF) expressed as a percentage of the predicted PEF (P = 0·04). During the treatment period FP was statistically significantly superior to BUD for change in forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV1) at 8, 16 and 24 weeks, change in the median daytime symptom score during weeks 5–16, for incidence of symptomfree days and incidence of days free from rescue bronchodilator usage during weeks 17–24. There was no significant difference between FP and BUD with respect to the number of patients experiencing one or more asthma exacerbation (33·8 and 28·4% of patients, respectively). There was, however, evidence that the exacerbations were clinically less severe in patients treated with FP, in that the time to resolution was quicker (11·0 vs. 14·7 days; P = 0·035), mean duration of all exacerbations (for an individual patient) tended to be shorter (18·5 vs. 23·6 days; P = 0·12), the time off work was reduced (4·2 vs. 7·6 days; P = 0·012) and the lowest PEF recorded during the exacerbation was higher (301 vs. 263 1 min−1; P = 0·07). There were no clinically relevant differences in the safety (serum cortisol levels, markers of bone turnover, adverse events) of FP and BUD at these microgram equivalent doses.The patients recruited into this study, in retrospect, probably had no need for such high doses of inhaled corticosteroid but, irrespective of this, FP at microgram equivalent doses showed evidence of superior efficacy to BUD with respect to lung function and severity of asthma exacerbations without producing any greater adverse systemic effect

Two-dimensional shear modulus of a Langmuir foam

We deform a two-dimensional (2D) foam, created in a Langmuir monolayer, by applying a mechanical perturbation, and simultaneously image it by Brewster angle microscopy. We determine the foam stress tensor (through a determination of the 2D gas-liquid line tension, 2.35 $\pm$ 0.4 pJ$\cdot$m$^{-1}$) and the statistical strain tensor, by analyzing the images of the deformed structure. We deduce the 2D shear modulus of the foam, $\mu= 38 \pm 3 \mathrm{nN}\cdot \mathrm{m}^{-1}$. The foam effective rigidity is predicted to be $35 \pm 3 \mathrm {nN}\cdot \mathrm {m}^{- 1}$, which agrees with the value $37.5 \pm 0.8 \mathrm {nN}\cdot \mathrm {m}^{-1}$ obtained in an independent mechanical measurement.Comment: submitted May 12, 2003 ; resubmitted Sept 9, 200

Dispersive estimates for Schr\"odinger operators with point interactions in R3\mathbb{R}^3

The study of dispersive properties of Schr\"odinger operators with point interactions is a fundamental tool for understanding the behavior of many body quantum systems interacting with very short range potential, whose dynamics can be approximated by non linear Schr\"odinger equations with singular interactions. In this work we proved that, in the case of one point interaction in $\mathbb{R}^3$, the perturbed Laplacian satisfies the same $L^p-L^q$ estimates of the free Laplacian in the smaller regime $q\in[2,3)$. These estimates are implied by a recent result concerning the $L^p$ boundedness of the wave operators for the perturbed Laplacian. Our approach, however, is more direct and relatively simple, and could potentially be useful to prove optimal weighted estimates also in the regime $q\geq 3$.Comment: To appear on: "Advances in Quantum Mechanics: Contemporary Trends and Open Problems", G. Dell'Antonio and A. Michelangeli eds., Springer-INdAM series 201

The symmetric-Toeplitz linear system problem in parallel

[EN] Many algorithms exist that exploit the special structure of Toeplitz matrices for solving linear systems. Nevertheless, these algorithms are difficult to parallelize due to its lower computational cost and the great dependency of the operations involved that produces a great communication cost. The foundation of the parallel algorithm presented in this paper consists of transforming the Toeplitz matrix into a another structured matrix called Cauchy¿like. The particular properties of Cauchy¿like matrices are exploited in order to obtain two levels of parallelism that makes possible to highly reduce the execution time. The experimental results were obtained in a cluster of PC¿s.Supported by Spanish MCYT and FEDER under Grant TIC 2003-08238-C02-02Alonso-Jordá, P.; Vidal Maciá, AM. (2005). The symmetric-Toeplitz linear system problem in parallel. Computational Science -- ICCS 2005,Pt 1, Proceedings. 3514:220-228. https://doi.org/10.1007/11428831_28S2202283514Sweet, D.R.: The use of linear-time systolic algorithms for the solution of toeplitz problems. k Technical Report JCU-CS-91/1, Department of Computer Science, James Cook University, Tue, 23 April 1996 15, 17, 55 GMT (1991)Evans, D.J., Oka, G.: Parallel solution of symmetric positive definite Toeplitz systems. Parallel Algorithms and Applications 12, 297–303 (1998)Gohberg, I., Koltracht, I., Averbuch, A., Shoham, B.: Timing analysis of a parallel algorithm for Toeplitz matrices on a MIMD parallel machine. Parallel Computing 17, 563–577 (1991)Gallivan, K., Thirumalai, S., Dooren, P.V.: On solving block toeplitz systems using a block schur algorithm. In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Parallel Processing, Boca Raton, FL, USA, vol. 3, pp. 274–281. CRC Press, Boca Raton (1994)Thirumalai, S.: High performance algorithms to solve Toeplitz and block Toeplitz systems. Ph.d. th., Grad. College of the U. of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (1996)Alonso, P., Badía, J.M., Vidal, A.M.: Parallel algorithms for the solution of toeplitz systems of linear equations. In: Wyrzykowski, R., Dongarra, J., Paprzycki, M., Waśniewski, J. (eds.) PPAM 2004. LNCS, vol. 3019, pp. 969–976. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)Anderson, E., et al.: LAPACK Users’ Guide. SIAM, Philadelphia (1995)Blackford, L., et al.: ScaLAPACK Users’ Guide. SIAM, Philadelphia (1997)Alonso, P., Badía, J.M., González, A., Vidal, A.M.: Parallel design of multichannel inverse filters for audio reproduction. In: Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems, IASTED, Marina del Rey, CA, USA, vol. II, pp. 719–724 (2003)Loan, C.V.: Computational Frameworks for the Fast Fourier Transform. SIAM Press, Philadelphia (1992)Heinig, G.: Inversion of generalized Cauchy matrices and other classes of structured matrices. Linear Algebra and Signal Proc., IMA, Math. Appl. 69, 95–114 (1994)Gohberg, I., Kailath, T., Olshevsky, V.: Fast Gaussian elimination with partial pivoting for matrices with displacement structure. Mathematics of Computation 64, 1557–1576 (1995)Alonso, P., Vidal, A.M.: An efficient and stable parallel solution for symmetric toeplitz linear systems. TR DSIC-II/2005, DSIC–Univ. Polit. Valencia (2005)Kailath, T., Sayed, A.H.: Displacement structure: Theory and applications. SIAM Review 37, 297–386 (1995

Comparison of Different Parallel Implementations of the 2+1-Dimensional KPZ Model and the 3-Dimensional KMC Model

We show that efficient simulations of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang interface growth in 2 + 1 dimensions and of the 3-dimensional Kinetic Monte Carlo of thermally activated diffusion can be realized both on GPUs and modern CPUs. In this article we present results of different implementations on GPUs using CUDA and OpenCL and also on CPUs using OpenCL and MPI. We investigate the runtime and scaling behavior on different architectures to find optimal solutions for solving current simulation problems in the field of statistical physics and materials science.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, to be published in a forthcoming EPJST special issue on "Computer simulations on GPU

New insights into the genetic control of gene expression using a Bayesian multi-tissue approach.

The majority of expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) studies have been carried out in single tissues or cell types, using methods that ignore information shared across tissues. Although global analysis of RNA expression in multiple tissues is now feasible, few integrated statistical frameworks for joint analysis of gene expression across tissues combined with simultaneous analysis of multiple genetic variants have been developed to date. Here, we propose Sparse Bayesian Regression models for mapping eQTLs within individual tissues and simultaneously across tissues. Testing these on a set of 2,000 genes in four tissues, we demonstrate that our methods are more powerful than traditional approaches in revealing the true complexity of the eQTL landscape at the systems-level. Highlighting the power of our method, we identified a two-eQTL model (cis/trans) for the Hopx gene that was experimentally validated and was not detected by conventional approaches. We showed common genetic regulation of gene expression across four tissues for ∼27% of transcripts, providing >5 fold increase in eQTLs detection when compared with single tissue analyses at 5% FDR level. These findings provide a new opportunity to uncover complex genetic regulatory mechanisms controlling global gene expression while the generality of our modelling approach makes it adaptable to other model systems and humans, with broad application to analysis of multiple intermediate and whole-body phenotypes

An MRI evaluation of grey matter damage in African Americans with MS

Objective: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is less prevalent in African Americans (AAs) than Caucasians (CAs) but in the former the disease course tends to be more severe. In order to clarify the MRI correlates of disease severity in AAs, we performed a multimodal brain MRI study to comprehensively assess the extent of grey matter (GM) damage and the degree of functional adaptation to structural damage in AAs with MS. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we characterized GM damage in terms of focal lesions and volume loss and functional adaptation during the execution of a simple motor task on a sample of 20 AAs and 20 CAs with MS and 20 healthy controls (CTRLs). Results: In AAs, we observed a wider range of EDSS scores than CAs, with multisystem involvement being more likely in AAs (p < 0.01). While no significant differences were detected in lesion loads and global brain volumes, AAs showed regional atrophy in the posterior lobules of cerebellum, temporo-occipital and frontal regions in comparison with CAs (p < 0.01), with cerebellar atrophy being the best metric in differentiating AAs from CAs (p = 0.007, AUC = 0.96 and p = 0.005, AUC = 0.96, respectively for right and left cerebellar clusters). In AAs, the functional analysis of cortical activations showed an increase in task-related activation of areas involved in high level processing and a decreased activation in the medial prefrontal cortex compared to CAs. Interpretation: In our study, the direct comparison of AAs and CAs points to cerebellar atrophy as the main difference between subgroups

Influence of vortex-vortex interaction on critical currents across low-angle grain boundaries in YBa2Cu3O7-delta thin films

Low-angle grain boundaries with misorientation angles theta < 5 degrees in optimally doped thin films of YBCO are investigated by magnetooptical imaging. By using a numerical inversion scheme of Biot-Savart's law the critical current density across the grain boundary can be determined with a spatial resolution of about 5 micrometers. Detailed investigation of the spatially resolved flux density and current density data shows that the current density across the boundary varies with varying local flux density. Combining the corresponding flux and current pattern it is found that there exists a universal dependency of the grain boundary current on the local flux density. A change in the local flux density means a variation in the flux line-flux line distance. With this knowledge a model is developped that explains the flux-current relation by means of magnetic vortex-vortex interaction.Comment: 7 pages, 14 figure

HIV-1 Drug Resistance Emergence among Breastfeeding Infants Born to HIV-Infected Mothers during a Single-Arm Trial of Triple-Antiretroviral Prophylaxis for Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission: A Secondary Analysis

Analysis of a substudy of the Kisumu breastfeeding trial by Clement Zeh and colleagues reveals the emergence of HIV drug resistance in HIV-positive infants born to HIV-infected mothers treated with antiretroviral drugs