Deposition of general ellipsoidal particles

We present a systematic overview of granular deposits composed of ellipsoidal particles with different particle shapes and size polydispersities. We study the density and anisotropy of such deposits as functions of size polydispersity and two shape parameters that fully describe the shape of a general ellipsoid. Our results show that, while shape influences significantly the macroscopic properties of the deposits, polydispersity plays apparently a secondary role. The density attains a maximum for a particular family of non-symmetrical ellipsoids, larger than the density observed for prolate or oblate ellipsoids. As for anisotropy measures, the contact forces show are increasingly preferred along the vertical direction as the shape of the particles deviates for a sphere. The deposits are constructed by means of an efficient molecular dynamics method, where the contact forces are efficiently and accurately computed. The main results are discussed in the light of applications for porous media models and sedimentation processes.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

Quality of life considerations in head and neck cancer: United Kingdom National Multidisciplinary Guidelines

This is the official guideline endorsed by the specialty associations involved in the care of head and neck cancer patients in the UK. It identifies the current evidence base and role of health-related quality of life assessment for this group of patients.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Global Burden of Air Pollution on Mortality: The Need to Include Exposure to Household Biomass Fuel–Derived Particulates

First paragraph: Anenberg et al. (2010) demonstrated that global mortality associated with outdoor ozone and particulate matter (PM) exposure has been underestimated and that anthropogenic atmospheric PM rather than ozone is the main contributor to death. Although we acknowledge that their investigation was concerned with outdoor air pollution alone, we feel that attention should be drawn to the burden of disease from household air pollution

A Note on Encodings of Phylogenetic Networks of Bounded Level

Driven by the need for better models that allow one to shed light into the question how life's diversity has evolved, phylogenetic networks have now joined phylogenetic trees in the center of phylogenetics research. Like phylogenetic trees, such networks canonically induce collections of phylogenetic trees, clusters, and triplets, respectively. Thus it is not surprising that many network approaches aim to reconstruct a phylogenetic network from such collections. Related to the well-studied perfect phylogeny problem, the following question is of fundamental importance in this context: When does one of the above collections encode (i.e. uniquely describe) the network that induces it? In this note, we present a complete answer to this question for the special case of a level-1 (phylogenetic) network by characterizing those level-1 networks for which an encoding in terms of one (or equivalently all) of the above collections exists. Given that this type of network forms the first layer of the rich hierarchy of level-k networks, k a non-negative integer, it is natural to wonder whether our arguments could be extended to members of that hierarchy for higher values for k. By giving examples, we show that this is not the case

Equivalent birational embeddings II: divisors

Two divisors in $\P^n$ are said to be Cremona equivalent if there is a Cremona modification sending one to the other. We produce infinitely many non equivalent divisorial embeddings of any variety of dimension at most 14. Then we study the special case of plane curves and rational hypersurfaces. For the latter we characterise surfaces Cremona equivalent to a plane.Comment: v2 Exposition improved, thanks to referee, unconditional characterization of surfaces Cremona equivalent to a plan

The comparative clinical course of pregnant and non-pregnant women hospitalised with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection

Introduction: The Influenza Clinical Information Network (FLU-CIN) was established to gather detailed clinical and epidemiological information about patients with laboratory confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection in UK hospitals. This report focuses on the clinical course and outcomes of infection in pregnancy.Methods: A standardised data extraction form was used to obtain detailed clinical information from hospital case notes and electronic records, for patients with PCR-confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 infection admitted to 13 sentinel hospitals in five clinical 'hubs' and a further 62 non-sentinel hospitals, between 11th May 2009 and 31st January 2010.Outcomes were compared for pregnant and non-pregnant women aged 15-44 years, using univariate and multivariable techniques.Results: Of the 395 women aged 15-44 years, 82 (21%) were pregnant; 73 (89%) in the second or third trimester. Pregnant women were significantly less likely to exhibit severe respiratory distress at initial assessment (OR?=?0.49 (95% CI: 0.30-0.82)), require supplemental oxygen on admission (OR?=?0.40 (95% CI: 0.20-0.80)), or have underlying co-morbidities (p-trend <0.001). However, they were equally likely to be admitted to high dependency (Level 2) or intensive care (Level 3) and/or to die, after adjustment for potential confounders (adj. OR?=?0.93 (95% CI: 0.46-1.92). Of 11 pregnant women needing Level 2/3 care, 10 required mechanical ventilation and three died.Conclusions: Since the expected prevalence of pregnancy in the source population was 6%, our data suggest that pregnancy greatly increased the likelihood of hospital admission with A(H1N1)pdm09. Pregnant women were less likely than non-pregnant women to have respiratory distress on admission, but severe outcomes were equally likely in both groups

Lassoing and corraling rooted phylogenetic trees

The construction of a dendogram on a set of individuals is a key component of a genomewide association study. However even with modern sequencing technologies the distances on the individuals required for the construction of such a structure may not always be reliable making it tempting to exclude them from an analysis. This, in turn, results in an input set for dendogram construction that consists of only partial distance information which raises the following fundamental question. For what subset of its leaf set can we reconstruct uniquely the dendogram from the distances that it induces on that subset. By formalizing a dendogram in terms of an edge-weighted, rooted phylogenetic tree on a pre-given finite set X with |X|>2 whose edge-weighting is equidistant and a set of partial distances on X in terms of a set L of 2-subsets of X, we investigate this problem in terms of when such a tree is lassoed, that is, uniquely determined by the elements in L. For this we consider four different formalizations of the idea of "uniquely determining" giving rise to four distinct types of lassos. We present characterizations for all of them in terms of the child-edge graphs of the interior vertices of such a tree. Our characterizations imply in particular that in case the tree in question is binary then all four types of lasso must coincide

Analysis of the superdefomed rotational bands

All available experimental data for the $\Delta I=2$ transition energies in superdeformed bands are analyzed by using a new one-point formula. The existence of deviations from the smooth behavior is confirmed in many bands. However, we stress that one cannot necessarily speak about staggering patterns as they are mostly irregular. Simulations of the experimental data suggest that the irregularities may stem from the presence of irregular kinks in the rotational spectra. This could be a clue but, at the moment, where such kinks come from is an open question.Comment: 6 pages, RevTex, 7 p.s. figures, submitted to P.R.

Folding and unfolding phylogenetic trees and networks

Phylogenetic networks are rooted, labelled directed acyclic graphs which are commonly used to represent reticulate evolution. There is a close relationship between phylogenetic networks and multi-labelled trees (MUL-trees). Indeed, any phylogenetic network $N$ can be "unfolded" to obtain a MUL-tree $U(N)$ and, conversely, a MUL-tree $T$ can in certain circumstances be "folded" to obtain a phylogenetic network $F(T)$ that exhibits $T$. In this paper, we study properties of the operations $U$ and $F$ in more detail. In particular, we introduce the class of stable networks, phylogenetic networks $N$ for which $F(U(N))$ is isomorphic to $N$, characterise such networks, and show that they are related to the well-known class of tree-sibling networks.We also explore how the concept of displaying a tree in a network $N$ can be related to displaying the tree in the MUL-tree $U(N)$. To do this, we develop a phylogenetic analogue of graph fibrations. This allows us to view $U(N)$ as the analogue of the universal cover of a digraph, and to establish a close connection between displaying trees in $U(N)$ and reconcilingphylogenetic trees with networks