4,028 research outputs found
Magnon-induced non-Markovian friction of a domain wall in a ferromagnet
Motivated by the recent study on the quasiparticle-induced friction of
solitons in superfluids, we theoretically study magnon-induced intrinsic
friction of a domain wall in a one-dimensional ferromagnet. To this end, we
start by obtaining the hitherto overlooked dissipative interaction of a domain
wall and its quantum magnon bath to linear order in the domain-wall velocity
and to quadratic order in magnon fields. An exact expression for the pertinent
scattering matrix is obtained with the aid of supersymmetric quantum mechanics.
We then derive the magnon-induced frictional force on a domain wall in two
different frameworks: time-dependent perturbation theory in quantum mechanics
and the Keldysh formalism, which yield identical results. The latter, in
particular, allows us to verify the fluctuation-dissipation theorem explicitly
by providing both the frictional force and the correlator of the associated
stochastic Langevin force. The potential for magnons induced by a domain wall
is reflectionless, and thus the resultant frictional force is non-Markovian
similarly to the case of solitons in superfluids. They share an intriguing
connection to the Abraham-Lorentz force that is well-known for its causality
paradox. The dynamical responses of a domain wall are studied under a few
simple circumstances, where the non-Markovian nature of the frictional force
can be probed experimentally. Our work, in conjunction with the previous study
on solitons in superfluids, shows that the macroscopic frictional force on
solitons can serve as an effective probe of the microscopic degrees of freedom
of the system.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure
Clinical, microbiological, and salivary biomarker profiles of dental implant patients with type 2 diabetes
Objective Regulators of periâimplant bone loss in patients with diabetes appear to involve multiple risk factors that have not been clearly elucidated. This study was conducted to explore putative local etiologic factors on implant bone loss in relation to type 2 diabetes mellitus, including clinical, microbial, salivary biomarker, and psychosocial factors. Materials and methods Thirtyâtwo subjects (divided into type 2 diabetes mellitus and nonâdiabetic controls), having at least one functional implant and six teeth, were enrolled in a 1âyear longitudinal investigation. Analyses of clinical measurements and standardized intraâoral radiographs, saliva and serum biomarkers (via protein arrays for 20 selected markers), and plaque biofilm (via q PCR for eight periodontal pathogens) were performed at baseline and 1Â year. In addition, the subjects were asked to respond to questionnaires to assess behavioral and psychosocial variables. Results There was a significant increase from baseline to 1Â year in the probing depth of implants in the diabetes group (1.95Â mm to 2.35Â mm, P Â =Â 0.015). The average radiographic bone loss during the study period marginally increased at dental implants compared to natural teeth over the study period (0.08Â mm vs. 0.05Â mm; P Â =Â 0.043). The control group harbored higher levels of T reponema denticola at their teeth at baseline ( P Â =Â 0.046), and the levels of the pathogen increased significantly over time around the implants of the same group ( P Â =Â 0.003). Salivary osteoprotegerin ( OPG ) levels were higher in the diabetes group than the control group at baseline only; in addition, the salivary levels of IL â4, IL â10, and OPG associated with host defense were significantly reduced in the diabetes group ( P Â =Â 0.010, P Â =Â 0.019, and P Â =Â 0.024), while controls showed an increase in the salivary OPG levels ( P Â =Â 0.005). For psychosocial factors, there were not many significant changes over the observation period, except for some findings related to coping behaviors at baseline. Conclusions The study suggests that the clinical, microbiological, salivary biomarker, and psychosocial profiles of dental implant patients with type 2 diabetes who are under good metabolic control and regular maintenance care are very similar to those of nonâdiabetic individuals. Future studies are warranted to validate the findings in longerâterm and larger clinical trials ( ClinicalTrials.gov # NCT00933491).Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107497/1/clr12139.pd
Detection of sebaceous gland hyperplasia with dermoscopy and reflectance confocal microscopy
BackgroundSebaceous gland hyperplasia (SGH) is a benign cutaneous proliferation of the sebaceous glands that are mostly present on the face or the neck of older adults. They typically appear as single or multiple soft umbilicated papules; however, in challenging cases, it can be difficult to distinguish them from trichoepitheliomas, base cell carcinomas, or other tumors. Although pathological results have diagnostic value, the significance of non-invasive examinations in diagnosis and differential diagnosis is also worth exploring.ObjectivesThis study aimed to describe the dermoscopic and reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) features of SGH.MethodsA total of 31 patients diagnosed with SGH, according to clinical and histopathological standards, were examined using dermoscopy and RCM between March 2018 and January 2022.ResultsDermoscopically, lesions revealed a yellowish-red background and a faint-yellow background in 25 (80.65%) and six cases (19.35%), respectively. White-yellowish lobulated structures in the center of the lesion were present in 31 patients (100%) and umbilications in 19 patients (61.29%). Crown vessels at the periphery of the lesions were observed in 11 patients (35.48%), whereas irregular linear vessels were observed on the surface of the lesions in 18 patients (58.06%). Under RCM, all lesions presented a honeycomb pattern in the epidermis and the typical morulae-shaped sebaceous lobules in the dermis. A dilated follicular infundibulum was observed in 15 patients (48.39%) and dilated vessels in 26 patients (83.87%).ConclusionDermoscopy and RCM enabled us to describe the imaging features of SGH. Combining these two useful tools provides a non-invasive basis for accurate clinical diagnosis
Correction to: Circulating Tumor Cell Transcriptomics as Biopsy Surrogates in Metastatic Breast Cancer
Spin-wave scattering at low temperatures in manganite films
The temperature and magnetic field dependence of the resistivity
has been measured for LaSrMnO (y=0 and 0.128)
films grown on (100) SrTiO substrates. The low-temperature in the
ferromagnetic metallic region follows well with being the residual resistivity. We attribute the second and third term to
small-polaron and spin-wave scattering, respectively. Our analysis based on
these scattering mechanisms also gives the observed difference between the
metal-insulator transition temperatures of the films studied. Transport
measurements in applied magnetic field further indicate that spin-wave
scattering is a key transport mechanism at low temperatures.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. to appear in Phys. Rev.
Circulating Tumor Cell Transcriptomics as Biopsy Surrogates in Metastatic Breast Cancer
BACKGROUND
Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) and the circulating tumor cells (CTCs) leading to macrometastases are inherently different than primary breast cancer. We evaluated whether whole transcriptome RNA-Seq of CTCs isolated via an epitope-independent approach may serve as a surrogate for biopsies of macrometastases.
METHODS
We performed RNA-Seq on fresh metastatic tumor biopsies, CTCs, and peripheral blood (PB) from 19 newly diagnosed MBC patients. CTCs were harvested using the ANGLE Parsortix microfluidics system to isolate cells based on size and deformability, independent of a priori knowledge of cell surface marker expression.
RESULTS
Gene expression separated CTCs, metastatic biopsies, and PB into distinct groups despite heterogeneity between patients and sample types. CTCs showed higher expression of immune oncology targets compared with corresponding metastases and PB. Predictive biomarker (n = 64) expression was highly concordant for CTCs and metastases. Repeat observation data post-treatment demonstrated changes in the activation of different biological pathways. Somatic single nucleotide variant analysis showed increasing mutational complexity over time.
CONCLUSION
We demonstrate that RNA-Seq of CTCs could serve as a surrogate biomarker for breast cancer macrometastasis and yield clinically relevant insights into disease biology and clinically actionable targets
Selective embolization of the internal iliac arteries for the treatment of intractable hemorrhage in children with malignancies
PurposeAcute internal hemorrhage is an occasionally life-threatening complication in pediatric cancer patients. Many therapeutic approaches have been used to control bleeding with various degrees of success. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of selective internal iliac artery embolization for controlling acute intractable bleeding in children with malignancies.MethodsWe retrospectively evaluated the cases of 6 children with various malignancies (acute lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myelogenous leukemia, chronic myelogenous leukemia, T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia, Langerhans cell histiocytosis, and rhabdomyosarcoma), who had undergone selective arterial embolization (SAE) of the internal iliac artery at the Chonnam National University Hwasun Hospital between January 2004 and December 2009. SAE was performed by an interventional radiologist using GelfoamÂź and/or TornadoÂź coils.ResultsThe patients were 5 boys and 1 girl with median age of 6.9 years (range, 0.7-14.8 years) at the time of SAE. SAE was performed once in 4 patients and twice in 2, and the procedure was unilateral in 2 and bilateral in 4. The causes of hemorrhage were as follows: hemorrhagic cystitis (HC) in 3 patients, procedure-related internal iliac artery injuries in 2 patients, and tumor rupture in 1 patient. Initial attempt at conservative management was unsuccessful. Of the 6 patients, 5 (83.3%) showed improvement after SAE without complications.ConclusionSAE may be a safe and effective procedure for controlling acute intractable hemorrhage in pediatric malignancy patients. This procedure may obviate the need for surgery, which carries an attendant risk of morbidity and mortality in cancer patients with critical conditions
Electric Field-Tuned Topological Phase Transition in Ultra-Thin Na3Bi - Towards a Topological Transistor
The electric field induced quantum phase transition from topological to
conventional insulator has been proposed as the basis of a topological field
effect transistor [1-4]. In this scheme an electric field can switch 'on' the
ballistic flow of charge and spin along dissipationless edges of the
two-dimensional (2D) quantum spin Hall insulator [5-9], and when 'off' is a
conventional insulator with no conductive channels. Such as topological
transistor is promising for low-energy logic circuits [4], which would
necessitate electric field-switched materials with conventional and topological
bandgaps much greater than room temperature, significantly greater than
proposed to date [6-8]. Topological Dirac semimetals(TDS) are promising systems
in which to look for topological field-effect switching, as they lie at the
boundary between conventional and topological phases [3,10-16]. Here we use
scanning probe microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) and angle-resolved
photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES) to show that mono- and bilayer films of TDS
Na3Bi [3,17] are 2D topological insulators with bulk bandgaps >400 meV in the
absence of electric field. Upon application of electric field by doping with
potassium or by close approach of the STM tip, the bandgap can be completely
closed then re-opened with conventional gap greater than 100 meV. The large
bandgaps in both the conventional and quantum spin Hall phases, much greater
than the thermal energy kT = 25 meV at room temperature, suggest that ultrathin
Na3Bi is suitable for room temperature topological transistor operation
Computational Prediction of O-linked Glycosylation Sites That Preferentially Map on Intrinsically Disordered Regions of Extracellular Proteins
O-glycosylation of mammalian proteins is one of the important posttranslational modifications. We applied a support vector machine (SVM) to predict whether Ser or Thr is glycosylated, in order to elucidate the O-glycosylation mechanism. O-glycosylated sites were often found clustered along the sequence, whereas other sites were located sporadically. Therefore, we developed two types of SVMs for predicting clustered and isolated sites separately. We found that the amino acid composition was effective for predicting the clustered type, whereas the site-specific algorithm was effective for the isolated type. The highest prediction accuracy for the clustered type was 74%, while that for the isolated type was 79%. The existence frequency of amino acids around the O-glycosylation sites was different in the two types: namely, Pro, Val and Ala had high existence probabilities at each specific position relative to a glycosylation site, especially for the isolated type. Independent component analyses for the amino acid sequences around O-glycosylation sites showed the position-specific existences of the identified amino acids as independent components. The O-glycosylation sites were preferentially located within intrinsically disordered regions of extracellular proteins: particularly, more than 90% of the clustered O-GalNAc glycosylation sites were observed in intrinsically disordered regions. This feature could be the key for understanding the non-conservation property of O-glycosylation, and its role in functional diversity and structural stability
Vision-Based Finger Detection, Tracking, and Event Identification Techniques for Multi-Touch Sensing and Display Systems
This study presents efficient vision-based finger detection, tracking, and event identification techniques and a low-cost hardware framework for multi-touch sensing and display applications. The proposed approach uses a fast bright-blob segmentation process based on automatic multilevel histogram thresholding to extract the pixels of touch blobs obtained from scattered infrared lights captured by a video camera. The advantage of this automatic multilevel thresholding approach is its robustness and adaptability when dealing with various ambient lighting conditions and spurious infrared noises. To extract the connected components of these touch blobs, a connected-component analysis procedure is applied to the bright pixels acquired by the previous stage. After extracting the touch blobs from each of the captured image frames, a blob tracking and event recognition process analyzes the spatial and temporal information of these touch blobs from consecutive frames to determine the possible touch events and actions performed by users. This process also refines the detection results and corrects for errors and occlusions caused by noise and errors during the blob extraction process. The proposed blob tracking and touch event recognition process includes two phases. First, the phase of blob tracking associates the motion correspondence of blobs in succeeding frames by analyzing their spatial and temporal features. The touch event recognition process can identify meaningful touch events based on the motion information of touch blobs, such as finger moving, rotating, pressing, hovering, and clicking actions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed vision-based finger detection, tracking, and event identification system is feasible and effective for multi-touch sensing applications in various operational environments and conditions
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