Typical equilibrium state of an embedded quantum system

We consider an arbitrary quantum system coupled non perturbatively to a large arbitrary and fully quantum environment. In [G. Ithier and F. Benaych-Georges, Phys. Rev. A 96, 012108 (2017)] the typicality of the dynamics of such an embedded quantum system was established for several classes of random interactions. In other words, the time evolution of its quantum state does not depend on the microscopic details of the interaction. Focusing at the long time regime, we use this property to calculate analytically a new partition function characterizing the stationary state and involving the overlaps between eigenvectors of a bare and a dressed Hamiltonian. This partition function provides a new thermodynamical ensemble which includes the microcanonical and canonical ensembles as particular cases. We check our predictions with numerical simulations.Comment: 1 figure, 5 pages. This article supersedes the part on the equilibrium state in arXiv:1510.0435

Increasing Short-Stay Unplanned Hospital Admissions among Children in England; Time Trends Analysis '97-'06

BACKGROUND: Timely care by general practitioners in the community keeps children out of hospital and provides better continuity of care. Yet in the UK, access to primary care has diminished since 2004 when changes in general practitioners' contracts enabled them to 'opt out' of providing out-of-hours care and since then unplanned pediatric hospital admission rates have escalated, particularly through emergency departments. We hypothesised that any increase in isolated short stay admissions for childhood illness might reflect failure to manage these cases in the community over a 10 year period spanning these changes. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a population based time trends study of major causes of hospital admission in children 2 days. By 2006, 67.3% of all unplanned admissions were isolated short stays <2 days. The increases in admission rates were greater for common non-infectious than infectious causes of admissions. CONCLUSIONS: Short stay unplanned hospital admission rates in young children in England have increased substantially in recent years and are not accounted for by reductions in length of in-hospital stay. The majority are isolated short stay admissions for minor illness episodes that could be better managed by primary care in the community and may be evidence of a failure of primary care services

The breadth of primary care: a systematic literature review of its core dimensions

Background: Even though there is general agreement that primary care is the linchpin of effective health care delivery, to date no efforts have been made to systematically review the scientific evidence supporting this supposition. The aim of this study was to examine the breadth of primary care by identifying its core dimensions and to assess the evidence for their interrelations and their relevance to outcomes at (primary) health system level. Methods: A systematic review of the primary care literature was carried out, restricted to English language journals reporting original research or systematic reviews. Studies published between 2003 and July 2008 were searched in MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, King's Fund Database, IDEAS Database, and EconLit. Results: Eighty-five studies were identified. This review was able to provide insight in the complexity of primary care as a multidimensional system, by identifying ten core dimensions that constitute a primary care system. The structure of a primary care system consists of three dimensions: 1. governance; 2. economic conditions; and 3. workforce development. The primary care process is determined by four dimensions: 4. access; 5. continuity of care; 6. coordination of care; and 7. comprehensiveness of care. The outcome of a primary care system includes three dimensions: 8. quality of care; 9. efficiency care; and 10. equity in health. There is a considerable evidence base showing that primary care contributes through its dimensions to overall health system performance and health. Conclusions: A primary care system can be defined and approached as a multidimensional system contributing to overall health system performance and health

Irreversible renal damage after transient renin-angiotensin system stimulation:involvement of an AT1-receptor mediated immune response

Transient activation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) induces irreversible renal damage causing sustained elevation in blood pressure (BP) in Cyp1a1-Ren2 transgenic rats. In our current study we hypothesized that activation of the AT1-receptor (AT1R) leads to a T-cell response causing irreversible impairment of renal function and hypertension. Cyp1a1-Ren2 rats harbor a construct for activation of the RAS by indole-3-carbinol (I3C). Rats were fed a I3C diet between 4-8 weeks of age to induce hypertension. Next, I3C was withdrawn and rats were followed-up for another 12 weeks. Additional groups received losartan (20 mg/kg/day) or hydralazine (100 mg/kg/day) treatment between 4-8 weeks. Rats were placed for 24h in metabolic cages before determining BP at week 8, 12 and 20. At these ages, subsets of animals were sacrificed and the presence of kidney T-cell subpopulations was investigated by immunohistochemistry and molecular marker analysis. The development of sustained hypertension was completely prevented by losartan, whereas hydralazine only caused a partial decrease in BP. Markers of renal damage: KIM-1 and osteopontin were highly expressed in urine and kidney samples of I3C-treated rats, even until 20 weeks of age. Additionally, renal expression of regulatory-T cells (Tregs) was highly increased in I3C-treated rats, whereas the expression of T-helper 1 (Th1) cells demonstrated a strong decrease. Losartan prevented these effects completely, whereas hydralazine was unable to affect these changes. In young Cyp1a1-Ren2 rats AT1R activation leads to induction of an immune response, causing a shift from Th1-cells to Tregs, contributing to the development of irreversible renal damage and hypertension

A simple and fast heuristic for protein structure comparison

Background Protein structure comparison is a key problem in bioinformatics. There exist several methods for doing protein comparison, being the solution of the Maximum Contact Map Overlap problem (MAX-CMO) one of the alternatives available. Although this problem may be solved using exact algorithms, researchers require approximate algorithms that obtain good quality solutions using less computational resources than the formers. Results We propose a variable neighborhood search metaheuristic for solving MAX-CMO. We analyze this strategy in two aspects: 1) from an optimization point of view the strategy is tested on two different datasets, obtaining an error of 3.5%(over 2702 pairs) and 1.7% (over 161 pairs) with respect to optimal values; thus leading to high accurate solutions in a simpler and less expensive way than exact algorithms; 2) in terms of protein structure classification, we conduct experiments on three datasets and show that is feasible to detect structural similarities at SCOP's family and CATH's architecture levels using normalized overlap values. Some limitations and the role of normalization are outlined for doing classification at SCOP's fold level. Conclusion We designed, implemented and tested.a new tool for solving MAX-CMO, based on a well-known metaheuristic technique. The good balance between solution's quality and computational effort makes it a valuable tool. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the MAX-CMO measure is tested at SCOP's fold and CATH's architecture levels with encouraging results. Software is available for download at http://modo.ugr.es/jrgonzalez/msvns4maxcmo webcite.This work is supported by Projects HeuriCosc TIN2005-08404-C04-01, HeuriCode TIN2005-08404-C04-03, both from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. JRG acknowledges financial support from Project TIC2002-04242-C03-02. Authors thank N. Krasnogor and ProCKSi project (BB/C511764/1) for their support

Warping and precession in galactic and extragalactic accretion disks

The Bardeen-Petterson general relativistic effect has been suggested as the mechanism responsible for precession in some accretion disk systems. Here we examine separately four mechanisms (tidally-induced, irradiation-induced, magnetically-induced and Bardeen-Petterson-induced) that can lead to warping and precession. We use a sample of eight X-ray binaries and four Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) that present signatures of warping and/or precession in their accretion disks to explore the viability of the different mechanisms. For the X-ray binaries SMC X-1 and 4U 1907+09 all four mechanisms provide precession periods compatible with those observed, while for Cyg X-1 and the active galaxies Arp 102B and NGC 1068, only two mechanisms are in agreement with the observations. The irradiation-driven instability seems incapable of producing the inferred precession of the active galaxies in our sample, and the tidally-induced precession can probably be ruled out in the case of Arp 102B. Perhaps the best case for a Bardeen-Petterson precession can be achieved for NGC 1068. Our results show that given the many observational uncertainties that still exist, it is extremely difficult to confirm unambiguously that the Bardeen-Petterson effect has been observed in any of the other sources of our sample.Comment: 35 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Perceptual judgment and saccadic behavior in a spatial distortion with briefly presented stimuli.

When observers are asked to localize the peripheral position of a small probe with respect to the mid-position of a spatially extended comparison stimulus, they tend to judge the probe as being more peripheral than the mid-position of the comparison stimulus. This relative mislocalization seems to emerge from differences in absolute localization, that is the comparison stimulus is localized more towards the fovea than the probe. The present study compared saccadic behaviour and relative localization judgements in three experiments and determined the quantitative relationship between both measures. The results showed corresponding effects in localization errors and saccadic behaviour. Moreover, it was possible to estimate the amount of the relative mislocalization by means of the saccadic amplitude