727 research outputs found
Finite-temperature properties of frustrated classical spins coupled to the lattice
We present extensive Monte Carlo simulations for a classical
antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model with both nearest () and next-nearest
() exchange couplings on the square lattice coupled to the lattice degrees
of freedom. The Ising-like phase transition, that appears for in
the pure spin model, is strengthened by the spin-lattice coupling, and is
accompanied by a lattice deformation from a tetragonal symmetry to an
orthorhombic one. Evidences that the universality class of the transition does
not change with the inclusion of the spin-lattice coupling are reported.
Implications for , the prototype for a layered
model in the collinear regime, are also discussed.Comment: 6 pages and 8 figure
Ising transition driven by frustration in a 2D classical model with SU(2) symmetry
We study the thermal properties of the classical antiferromagnetic Heisenberg
model with both nearest () and next-nearest () exchange couplings on
the square lattice by extensive Monte Carlo simulations. We show that, for
, thermal fluctuations give rise to an effective symmetry
leading to a {\it finite-temperature} phase transition. We provide strong
numerical evidence that this transition is in the 2D Ising universality class,
and that with an infinite slope when .Comment: 4 pages with 4 figure
Efficacy and safety of dasatinib vs. Imatinib in Latin american subpopulation from the dasision trial in patients with newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in chronic phase (CP)
sem informação100120th Congress of European-Hematology-Associationsem informaçã
Predominant factors of institutionalization in the elderly: a comparative study between home nursing and community dwelling
Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to detect the most significant factors associated with each living alternative to improve socialization and mental health of the elderly. The measurements included affective evaluation, cognitive assessment, anxiety level, physical functionality, quality of life and social relationships. Individuals in home nursing residences were older and had worse affective status, functionality, cognitive state and quality of life. Social relationships in community people were better than in the institutionalized condition, particularly for less aged people. Design/methodology/approach: Comparative descriptive study realized in 200 people older than 70 years in home nursing placement versus community dwelling conditions. Findings: Multivariate analysis and logistic regression indicated that greater disability and poorer quality of social relationships were the main factors influencing the institutionalization process. Specifically, the Sociotype Questionnaire appeared as an efficient tool concerning the detection of social isolation effects as well as an acceptable integrator of prosocial information about home nursing placement. Originality/value: The Geriatric Sociotype survey has shown usefulness in the evaluation of the social network of elderly people, both from the point of view of assessment and prognosis. In this sense it is considered that one of the main contributions of this study is to have included the qualitative evaluation of social relations, and to observe the differences according to the place of residence
Identification of a non-host semiochemical from tick-resistant donkeys (Equus asinus) against Amblyomma sculptum ticks
Amblyomma sculptum is a tick affecting animal and human health across Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. Donkeys, Equus asinus, are known to be resistant to A. sculptum, suggesting that they can produce non-host tick semiochemicals (allomones), as already demonstrated for some other vertebrate host/pest interactions, whereas horses, Equus caballus, are considered as susceptible hosts. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that donkeys produce natural repellents against A. sculptum, by collecting sebum from donkeys and horses, collecting the odour from sebum extracts, and identifying donkey-specific volatile compounds by gas chromatography (GC) and coupled GC-mass spectrometry (GC–MS). From the complex collected blends, five main compounds were identified in both species. Hexanal, heptanal and (E)-2-decenal were found predominantly in donkey extracts, whilst ethyl octanoate and ethyl decanoate were found predominantly in horse extracts. One compound, (E)-2-octenal, was detected exclusively in donkey extracts. In Y-tube olfactometer bioassays 36 different A. sculptum nymphs were tested for each extract, compound and concentration. The dry sebum extracts and the compounds identified in both species induced neither attraction nor repellency. Only (E)-2-octenal, the donkey-specific compound, displayed repellency, with more nymphs preferring the arm containing the solvent control when the compound was presented in the test arm across four concentrations tested (p < 0.05, Chi-square test). A combination of a tick attractant (ammonia) and (E)-2-octenal at 0.25M also resulted in preference for the control arm (p < 0.05, Chi-square test). The use of semiochemicals (allomones) identified from less-preferred hosts in tick management has been successful for repelling brown dog ticks, Rhipicephalus sanguineus sensu lato from dog hosts. These results indicate that (E)-2-octenal could be used similarly to interfere in tick host location and be developed for use in reducing A. sculptum numbers on animal and human hosts
A Secure Cloud-based Platform to Host Healthcare Applications
Digital technologies, such as Big Data analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud and high-performance computing are presenting new opportunities to transform healthcare systems, increase connectivity of hospitals and other providers, and therefore potentially and significantly improve patient care. However, such networked computing infrastructures also raise significant cybersecurity risks, especially in the healthcare domain, where protecting sensitive personal information is of paramount importance.
Project ASCLEPIOS aims at strengthening the trust of users in cloud-based healthcare services by utilizing trusted execution environment and several modern cryptographic approaches such as attribute based encryption, searchable encryption, functional encryption to build a cloud-based e-health framework that protects users’ privacy, prevents both internal and external attacks, verifies the integrity of medical devices before application, and runs privacy-preserving data analytics on encrypted data. The project investigates modern encryption techniques and their combination in order to provide increased security of e-health applications that are then presented towards end-users utilizing a cloud-based platform. Although some topics such as security and privacy are already investigated through block-chain related technologies, it has been decided that the selected approaches would be more suitable for these particular challenges. In order to prototype its security services, ASCLEPIOS develops and deploys three large-scale healthcare demonstrators, provided by three leading hospitals from Europe. These demonstrators are rooted in the practice-based problems and applications provided by the project’s healthcare partners. The Amsterdam University Centers, University of Amsterdam, plans to improve stroke hyper-acute care through secure information sharing on a cloud computing platform to improve patient management. Additionally, they are also building prediction models to enable earlier discharge of patients from hospitals with lower risk factors. Charité Berlin plans to improve inpatient and outpatient sleep medication by remotely controlling the quality of the collected data and transferring it on-line for further analysis. Finally, the Norwegian Centre for e-health Research, University Hospital of North Norway is developing a system for privacy-preserving monitoring and benchmarking of antibiotics prescription of general practitioners. The common characteristics of these three scenarios are the increased demand for high levels of security in data transfer, storage and privacy preserving analytics on cloud infrastructures. In order deploy, operate and further develop these applications to increase their security with the ASCLEPIOS framework, a cloud computing testbed is being setup. The testbed uses state-of-the-art technologies for cloud application deployment and run-time orchestration in order to ensure the optimized deployment and execution of the demonstrator applications. As the data sources do not require the local execution (albeit in one case data may remain on the data source) of processing, there is no need for fog or edge computing, but the testbed is based on private OpenStack cloud computing infrastructures and utilizes the MiCADO framework which is compatible with different containers such as Docker and Kubernetes. The project started only recently, and currently it is in the early stages of systems design and specification. This presentation will provide a short introduction to the ASCLEPIOS project and its demonstrators and will present early results of the currently ongoing requirements specification and platform design processes
Frustration - how it can be measured
A misfit parameter is used to characterize the degree of frustration of
ordered and disordered systems. It measures the increase of the ground-state
energy due to frustration in comparison with that of a relevant reference
state. The misfit parameter is calculated for various spin-glass models. It
allows one to compare these models with each other. The extension of this
concept to other combinatorial optimization problems with frustration, e.g.
p-state Potts glasses, graph-partitioning problems and coloring problems is
given.Comment: 10 pages, 1 table, no figures, uses revtex.st
Dynamical decoupling of unbounded Hamiltonians
We investigate the possibility to suppress interactions between a finite
dimensional system and an infinite dimensional environment through a fast
sequence of unitary kicks on the finite dimensional system. This method, called
dynamical decoupling, is known to work for bounded interactions, but physical
environments such as bosonic heat baths are usually modelled with unbounded
interactions, whence here we initiate a systematic study of dynamical
decoupling for unbounded operators. We develop a sufficient decoupling
criterion for arbitrary Hamiltonians and a necessary decoupling criterion for
semibounded Hamiltonians. We give examples for unbounded Hamiltonians where
decoupling works and the limiting evolution as well as the convergence speed
can be explicitly computed. We show that decoupling does not always work for
unbounded interactions and provide both physically and mathematically motivated
examples.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure
Polyfunctional T cell responses in children in early stages of chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection contrast with monofunctional responses of long-term infected adults
Background: Adults with chronic Trypanosoma cruzi exhibit a poorly functional T cell compartment, characterized by monofunctional (IFN-γ-only secreting) parasite-specific T cells and increased levels of terminally differentiated T cells. It is possible that persistent infection and/or sustained exposure to parasites antigens may lead to a progressive loss of function of the immune T cells. Methodology/Principal Findings: To test this hypothesis, the quality and magnitude of T. cruzi-specific T cell responses were evaluated in T. cruzi-infected children and compared with long-term T. cruzi-infected adults with no evidence of heart failure. The phenotype of CD4+ T cells was also assessed in T. cruzi-infected children and uninfected controls. Simultaneous secretion of IFN-γ and IL-2 measured by ELISPOT assays in response to T. cruzi antigens was prevalent among T. cruzi-infected children. Flow cytometric analysis of co-expression profiles of CD4+ T cells with the ability to produce IFN-γ, TNF-α, or to express the co-stimulatory molecule CD154 in response to T. cruzi showed polyfunctional T cell responses in most T. cruzi-infected children. Monofunctional T cell responses and an absence of CD4+TNF-α+-secreting T cells were observed in T. cruzi-infected adults. A relatively high degree of activation and differentiation of CD4+ T cells was evident in T. cruzi-infected children. Conclusions/Significance: Our observations are compatible with our initial hypothesis that persistent T. cruzi infection promotes eventual exhaustion of immune system, which might contribute to disease progression in long-term infected subjects.Fil: Albareda, MarÃa Cecilia. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de ParasitologÃa; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientÃficas y Técnicas; Argentina. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: de Rissio, Ana MarÃa. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de ParasitologÃa; ArgentinaFil: Tomas, Gonzalo. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de ParasitologÃa; ArgentinaFil: Serjan, Alicia. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital General de Agudos "Juan A. Fernández"; ArgentinaFil: Alvarez, MarÃa Gabriela. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: Viotti, Rodolfo Jorge. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: Fichera, Laura Edith. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de ParasitologÃa; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientÃficas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Esteva, Mónica Inés. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de ParasitologÃa; ArgentinaFil: Potente, Daniel Fernando. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: Armenti, Alejandro. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Ministerio de Salud. Hospital Interzonal de Agudos "Eva Perón"; ArgentinaFil: Tarleton, Rick L.. University of Georgia; Estados UnidosFil: Laucella, Susana Adriana. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud. Instituto Nacional de ParasitologÃa; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientÃficas y Técnicas; Argentin
Rendimiento del MOET aplicado al programa de selección de la Rasa Aragonesa de UPRA-Grupo Pastores
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