Self-compassion and compassion towards one’s partner mediate the negative association between insecure attachment and relationship quality.

The quality of intimate relationships has been found to be a strong negative predictor for individuals’ mental and physical health problems. A significant predictor of relationship quality is adult attachment insecurity, but the mechanism by which attachment insecurity affects relationship quality needs further investigation. This study investigated whether self-compassion and compassion for one’s partner mediated this association. Three-hundred-forty-two individuals participated in an online survey assessing attachment anxiety and avoidance, compassionate and uncompassionate attitude towards self and one’s partner, as well as relationship quality and relationship satisfaction. The results showed that low self-compassionate attitude mediated the association between attachment anxiety and poor relationship quality. Further, low compassionate and high uncompassionate attitude towards one’s partner mediated the association between attachment avoidance and poor relationship quality. No mediating effect was found for relationship satisfaction. Implications for interventions are discussed

Kondo effect in a one dimensional d-wave superconductor

We derive a solvable resonant-level type model, to describe an impurity spin coupled to zero-energy bound states localized at the edge of a one dimensional d-wave superconductor. This results in a two-channel Kondo effect with a quite unusual low-temperature thermodynamics. For instance, the local impurity susceptibility yields a finite maximum at zero temperature (but no logarithmic-divergence) due to the splitting of the impurity in two Majorana fermions. Moreover, we make comparisons with the Kondo effect occurring in a two dimensional d-wave superconductor.Comment: 9 pages, final version; To be published in Europhysics Letter

The kink Casimir energy in a lattice sine-Gordon model

The Casimir energy of quantum fluctuations about the classical kink configuration is computed numerically for a recently proposed lattice sine-Gordon model. This energy depends periodically on the kink position and is found to be approximately sinusoidal.Comment: 10 pages, 4 postscript figure

Charge carrier transfer in the gas electron multiplier at low gas gains

Connected to the Linear Collider project TESLA at DESY, studies on the readout of TPCs based on the GEM-technology are ongoing. For particle identication via dE/dx - measurement, a good energy resolution is indispensable, and therefore losses of primary electrons have to be avoided. It turned out, that in the GEM transverse diffusion inside or close to the holes is a not negligible reason for these losses. For Ar-CH4 90:10 and TPC-like field configurations it was found, that when operated in normal amplification mode, the Standard Geometry GEM should not lose primaries, whereas for low gains, also when operated in magnetic fields up to 5T, a GEM with larger pitch and hole diameter would be necessary

Weighted complex projective 2-designs from bases: optimal state determination by orthogonal measurements

We introduce the problem of constructing weighted complex projective 2-designs from the union of a family of orthonormal bases. If the weight remains constant across elements of the same basis, then such designs can be interpreted as generalizations of complete sets of mutually unbiased bases, being equivalent whenever the design is composed of d+1 bases in dimension d. We show that, for the purpose of quantum state determination, these designs specify an optimal collection of orthogonal measurements. Using highly nonlinear functions on abelian groups, we construct explicit examples from d+2 orthonormal bases whenever d+1 is a prime power, covering dimensions d=6, 10, and 12, for example, where no complete sets of mutually unbiased bases have thus far been found.Comment: 28 pages, to appear in J. Math. Phy

ESMO management and treatment adapted recommendations in the COVID-19 era: gynaecological malignancies

The rapid spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection and its related disease (COVID-19) has required an immediate and coordinate healthcare response to face the worldwide emergency and define strategies to maintain the continuum of care for the non-COVID-19 diseases while protecting patients and healthcare providers. The dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented risk especially for the more vulnerable populations. To manage patients with cancer adequately, maintaining the highest quality of care, a definition of value-based priorities is necessary to define which interventions can be safely postponed without affecting patients' outcome. The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has endorsed a tiered approach across three different levels of priority (high, medium, low) incorporating information on the value-based prioritisation and clinical cogency of the interventions that can be applied for different disease sites. Patients with gynaecological cancer are at particular risk of COVID-19 complications because of their age and prevalence of comorbidities. The definition of priority level should be based on tumour stage and histology, cancer-related symptoms or complications, aim (curative vs palliative) and magnitude of benefit of the oncological intervention, patients' general condition and preferences. The decision-making process always needs to consider the disease-specific national and international guidelines and the local healthcare system and social resources, and a changing situation in relation to COVID-19 infection. These recommendations aim to provide guidance for the definition of deferrable and undeferrable interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic for ovarian, endometrial and cervical cancers within the context of the ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines

Switching from standard to dose-dense chemotherapy in front-line treatment of advanced ovarian cancer: a retrospective study of feasibility and efficacy

BACKGROUND: Current standard neoadjuvant treatment for advanced ovarian cancer is 3-weekly platinum-based chemotherapy (CP3w). Patients unable to have interval debulking surgery (IDS) or with significant residual disease have a poor outcome to CP3w treatment. We investigated the outcome in patients who were switched to dose-dense chemotherapy. METHODS: We retrospectively analysed 30 patients treated at UCLH in 2009–2013, who switched to dose-dense chemotherapy after neoadjuvant CP3w, having achieved a poor response/progressed and unable to proceed to IDS (n=21), or had >1 cm residual disease after IDS (n=9). Treatment was 3-weekly carboplatin and weekly paclitaxel (n=23), or both drugs weekly (n=7). For comparison, we included 30 matched patients treated with CP3w followed by IDS (n=24, without or ≤1 cm residual disease; n=6, with >1 cm residual disease). Time to progression (TTP) and overall survival (OS) were measured from the date of diagnosis until progression (CT scan or CA-125) and death from any cause, respectively. RESULTS: Baseline characteristics were similar in both groups. The response rate to dose-dense chemotherapy was 70% (Gynecological Cancer Intergroup criteria). In the dose-dense group, 24 patients had tumour progression and 16 died; the corresponding numbers in the control group were 24 and 11. Median TTP was 15.8 months with dose-dense therapy, higher than expected for this patient group, and the same as in the control group (15.7 months) undergoing IDS, p=0.27. Median TTP in patients with residual disease postsurgery was 16.5 months (dose-dense) and 10.8 months (controls), p=0.02. TTP in dose-dense patients who did not have surgery was 10.4 months. Median OS was 31.3 (dose-dense) and 59.6 months (controls), p=0.06. Dose-dense chemotherapy was well tolerated: only three patients interrupted treatment due to toxicity. CONCLUSION: Switching to dose-dense chemotherapy in patients who failed to respond to CT3w neoadjuvant chemotherapy appears to be an effective strategy and requires further investigation

Successive opening of the Fermi surface in doped N-leg Hubbard ladders

We study the effect of doping away from half-filling in weakly (but finitely) interacting N-leg Hubbard ladders using renormalization group and bosonization techniques. For a small on-site repulsion U, the N-leg Hubbard ladders are equivalent to a N-band model, where at half-filling the Fermi velocities are v_{1}=v_{N}<v_{2}=v_{N-1}<... We then obtain a hierarchy of energy-scales, where the band pairs (j,N+1-j) are successively frozen out. The low-energy Hamiltonian is then the sum of N/2 (or (N-1)/2 for N odd) two-leg ladder Hamiltonians without gapless excitations (plus a single chain for N odd with one gapless spin mode), similar to the N-leg Heisenberg spin-ladders. The energy-scales lead to a hierarchy of gaps. Upon doping away from half-filling, the holes enter first the band(s) with the smallest gap: For odd N, the holes enter first the nonbonding band (N+1)/2 and the phase is a Luttinger liquid, while for even N, the holes enter first the band pair (N/2,N/2+1) and the phase is a Luther-Emery liquid, similar to numerical treatments of the t-J model, i.e., at and close to half-filling, the phases of the Hubbard ladders for small and large U are the same. For increasing doping, hole-pairs subsequently enter at critical dopings the other band pairs (j,N+1-j) (accompanied by a diverging compressibility): The Fermi surface is successively opened by doping, starting near the wave vector (pi/2,pi/2). Explicit calculations are given for the cases N=3,4.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Interaction-induced Fermi surface deformations in quasi one-dimensional electronic systems

We consider serious conceptual problems with the application of standard perturbation theory, in its zero temperature version, to the computation of the dressed Fermi surface for an interacting electronic system. In order to overcome these difficulties, we set up a variational approach which is shown to be equivalent to the renormalized perturbation theory where the dressed Fermi surface is fixed by recursively computed counterterms. The physical picture that emerges is that couplings that are irrelevant tend to deform the Fermi surface in order to become more relevant (irrelevant couplings being those that do not exist at vanishing excitation energy because of kinematical constraints attached to the Fermi surface). These insights are incorporated in a renormalization group approach, which allows for a simple approximate computation of Fermi surface deformation in quasi one-dimensional electronic conductors. We also analyze flow equations for the effective couplings and quasiparticle weights. For systems away from half-filling, the flows show three regimes corresponding to a Luttinger liquid at high energies, a Fermi liquid, and a low-energy incommensurate spin-density wave. At half-filling Umklapp processes allow for a Mott insulator regime where the dressed Fermi surface is flat, implying a confined phase with vanishing effective transverse single-particle coherence. The boundary between the confined and Fermi liquid phases is found to occur for a bare transverse hopping amplitude of the order of the Mott charge gap of a single chain.Comment: 38 pages, 39 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.