998 research outputs found
Retinal S-antigen Th1 cell epitope mapping in patients with Behcet's disease
Background - Retinal S-antigen (S-Ag) is a most characterized autoantigen of autoimmune uveitis. The recognized immunodominant epitope of human S-Ag in patients with uveitis has not been identified. In this study, we selected certain patients with active uveitis to map the Th1 cell epitope spectrum of human S-Ag in Behcet's disease(BD). Methods - Blood samples were taken from eight active BD patients who showed an immune response to 40 mixed overlapping peptides spanning the entire sequence of human S-Ag. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated and stimulated with single S-Ag peptide at 5 mu g/ml or 20 mu g/ml. Single-cell immune responses were measured by IFN-gamma ELIspot assay. Results - BD patients heterogeneously responded to the S-Ag peptides at two concentrations. In general, the responses to 5 mu g/ml peptides were slightly stronger than those to 20 mu g/ml peptides, while the maximum SFC frequency to single peptide at the two concentrations was similar. Several peptides including P31, P35 and P40 induced a prominent response, with the frequency of S-Ag specific cells being about 0.007%. Significant reactivity pattern shift was noted in patients with different disease courses. Conclusions - Certain active BD patients have S-Ag specific Th1 cells with a low frequency. The S-Ag epitope specificity between patients is highly heterogeneous, and varies with the uveitis cours
Submergence of the Sidebands in the Photon-assisted Tunneling through a Quantum Dot Weakly Coupled to Luttinger Liquid Leads
We study theoretically the photon-assisted tunneling through a quantum dot
weakly coupled to Luttinger liquids (LL) leads, and find that the zero bias dc
conductance is strongly affected by the interactions in the LL leads. In
comparison with the system with Fermi liquid (FL) leads, the sideband peaks of
the dc conductance become blurring for 1/2<g<1, and finally merge into the
central peak for g<1/2, (g is the interaction parameter in the LL leads). The
sidebands are suppressed for LL leads with Coulomb interactions strong enough,
and the conductance always appears as a single peak for any strength and
frequency of the external time-dependent field. Furthermore, the quenching
effect of the central peak for the FL case does not exist for g<1/2.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
A robust braille recognition system
Braille is the most effective means of written communication between
visually-impaired and sighted people. This paper describes a new system
that recognizes Braille characters in scanned Braille document pages. Unlike
most other approaches, an inexpensive flatbed scanner is used and the system
requires minimal interaction with the user. A unique feature of this system is
the use of context at different levels (from the pre-processing of the image
through to the post-processing of the recognition results) to enhance robustness
and, consequently, recognition results. Braille dots composing characters are
identified on both single and double-sided documents of average quality with
over 99% accuracy, while Braille characters are also correctly recognised in
over 99% of documents of average quality (in both single and double-sided
documents)
Analyzing Fixed-Event Forecast Revisions
It is common practice to evaluate fixed-event forecast revisions in macroeconomics by regressing current forecast revisions on one-period lagged forecast revisions. Under weak-form (forecast) efficiency, the correlation between the current and one-period lagged revisions should be zero. The empirical findings in the literature suggest that this null hypothesis of zero correlation is rejected frequently, where the correlation can be either positive (which is widely interpreted in the literature as “smoothing”) or negative (which is widely interpreted as “over-reacting”). We propose a methodology to i
Physical activity level among undergraduate students in Terengganu, Malaysia using pedometer
A cross-sectional study determine physical activity level among 95 undergraduate students at UniSZA using pedometer. Subjects consented and completed socio-demographic details, weight and height were measured. Each subject was supplied with a pedometer and wear it for a week and record steps per day from the pedometer each night before bed. Descriptive statistic and independent T-test coefficient analyze the data using IBM SPSS version 22.0. Results showed that 66.4% of the subjects were classified as sedentary according to pedometer determined physical activity. Males recorded significantly more steps than female per day. Subjects in the age group of 18-20 years old had the highest mean average steps count than the older age group of 21-24 years old and ≥ 25 years old per day. Only 5.2% were classified as active and highly active using pedometer determined physical activity level.Keywords: physical activity; pedometer; steps; body compositio
Stability of condensate in superconductors
According to the BCS theory the superconducting condensate develops in a
single quantum mode and no Cooper pairs out of the condensate are assumed. Here
we discuss a mechanism by which the successful mode inhibits condensation in
neighboring modes and suppresses a creation of noncondensed Cooper pairs. It is
shown that condensed and noncondensed Cooper pairs are separated by an energy
gap which is smaller than the superconducting gap but large enough to prevent
nucleation in all other modes and to eliminate effects of noncondensed Cooper
pairs on properties of superconductors. Our result thus justifies basic
assumptions of the BCS theory and confirms that the BCS condensate is stable
with respect to two-particle excitations
Various spin-polarization states beyond the maximum-density droplet: a quantum Monte Carlo study
Using variational quantum Monte Carlo method, the effect of Landau-level
mixing on the lowest-energy--state diagram of small quantum dots is studied in
the magnetic field range where the density of magnetic flux quanta just exceeds
the density of electrons. An accurate analytical many-body wave function is
constructed for various angular momentum and spin states in the lowest Landau
level, and Landau-level mixing is then introduced using a Jastrow factor. The
effect of higher Landau levels is shown to be significant; the transition lines
are shifted considerably towards higher values of magnetic field and certain
lowest-energy states vanish altogether.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Ginzburg-Landau vortex dynamics with pinning and strong applied currents
We study a mixed heat and Schr\"odinger Ginzburg-Landau evolution equation on
a bounded two-dimensional domain with an electric current applied on the
boundary and a pinning potential term. This is meant to model a superconductor
subjected to an applied electric current and electromagnetic field and
containing impurities. Such a current is expected to set the vortices in
motion, while the pinning term drives them toward minima of the pinning
potential and "pins" them there. We derive the limiting dynamics of a finite
number of vortices in the limit of a large Ginzburg-Landau parameter, or \ep
\to 0, when the intensity of the electric current and applied magnetic field
on the boundary scale like \lep. We show that the limiting velocity of the
vortices is the sum of a Lorentz force, due to the current, and a pinning
force. We state an analogous result for a model Ginzburg-Landau equation
without magnetic field but with forcing terms. Our proof provides a unified
approach to various proofs of dynamics of Ginzburg-Landau vortices.Comment: 48 pages; v2: minor errors and typos correcte
Testing hypotheses in the Birnbaum-Saunders distribution under type-II censored samples
The two-parameter Birnbaum-Saunders distribution has been used succesfully to
model fatigue failure times. Although censoring is typical in reliability and
survival studies, little work has been published on the analysis of censored
data for this distribution. In this paper, we address the issue of performing
testing inference on the two parameters of the Birnbaum-Saunders distribution
under type-II right censored samples. The likelihood ratio statistic and a
recently proposed statistic, the gradient statistic, provide a convenient
framework for statistical inference in such a case, since they do not require
to obtain, estimate or invert an information matrix, which is an advantage in
problems involving censored data. An extensive Monte Carlo simulation study is
carried out in order to investigate and compare the finite sample performance
of the likelihood ratio and the gradient tests. Our numerical results show
evidence that the gradient test should be preferred. Three empirical
applications are presented.Comment: Submitted for publicatio
Chikungunya Outbreak, Singapore, 2008
10.3201/eid1505.081390Emerging Infectious Diseases155836-83
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