2,954 research outputs found
Adsorption and two-body recombination of atomic hydrogen on He-He mixture films
We present the first systematic measurement of the binding energy of
hydrogen atoms to the surface of saturated He-He mixture films.
is found to decrease almost linearly from 1.14(1) K down to 0.39(1) K, when the
population of the ground surface state of He grows from zero to
cm, yielding the value K cm
for the mean-field parameter of H-He interaction in 2D. The experiments
were carried out with overall He concentrations ranging from 0.1 ppm to 5 %
as well as with commercial and isotopically purified He at temperatures
70...400 mK. Measuring by ESR the rate constants and for
second-order recombination of hydrogen atoms in hyperfine states and we
find the ratio to be independent of the He content and to
grow with temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, all zipped in a sigle file. Submitted to Phys.
Rev. Let
Synthetic DNA immunotherapy in biochemically relapsed prostate cancer
Background: INO-5150 (PSA and PSMA) +/- INO-9012 (IL-12), a synthetic DNA immunotherapy, was assessed for safety, immunogenicity and efficacy in biochemically recurrent prostate cancer patients (pts).
Methods: Phase I, open-label, multi-center study in the US included pts with rising PSA after surgery and/or RT, PSA doubling time (PSADT) \u3e3 months (mos), testosterone \u3e150 ng/dL and no concurrent ADT. Safety, immunogenicity and efficacy (PSA kinetics, PFS) were evaluated in 4 treatment arms of 15 pts each. Arms A: 2mg INO-5150, B: 8.5 mg INO-5150, C: 2mg INO-5150 + 1mg INO-9012 and D: 8.5mg INO-5150 + 1mg INO-9012. Pts received 4 IM doses of vaccine followed by electroporation on day 0, wks 3, 12 and 24 and were followed for 72 wks.
Results: 50/61 (82%) pts completed all visits and treatments were well tolerated with no safety concerns. Median PFS for overall population [N = 61, baseline (D0) PSADT range (mos) 1.5-217.1, median 9.8] and for a subset of pts with D0 PSADT ≤12mos (N = 36) has not yet been reached (FU 3-19 mos). 86% of pts with D0 PSADT ≤12 mos were progression free through 19mos FU. 27 out of 36 (75%) pts with D0 PSADT≤ 12 mos had disease stabilization at wks 27 evidenced by significant improvement in log2PSA change over time (slope) and PSADT from D0 (Slope=0.19 declined to 0.1, PSADT=5.3 improved to 10.1 mos, p = \u3c0.0001). This effect was maintained at wk 72 (Slope=0.09, PSADT=10.6, p = \u3c0.0001). Immunogenicity was observed in 77% (47/61) of pts by multiple immunologic assessments. Patient immunogenicity to INO-5150 as determined by CD38 and Perforin + CD8 T cell immune reactivity correlated with attenuated % PSA rise compared to pts without reactivity (p = 0.05, n = 50).
Conclusions: INO-5150 +/- INO-9012 was safe, well tolerated and immunogenic. Clinical efficacy was observed in the patients with D0 PSADT≤ 12 mos as evidenced by a significant dampening of log2PSA change over time and increased PSADT up to 72 weeks FU. Additional genomic analyses are ongoing to further elucidate the correlation of immunologic efficacy and clinical benefit. (NCT02514213)
Ordering ambiguity revisited via position dependent mass pseudo-momentum operators
Ordering ambiguity associated with the von Roos position dependent mass (PDM)
Hamiltonian is considered. An affine locally scaled first order differential
introduced, in Eq.(9), as a PDM-pseudo-momentum operator. Upon intertwining our
Hamiltonian, which is the sum of the square of this operator and the potential
function, with the von Roos d-dimensional PDM-Hamiltonian, we observed that the
so-called von Roos ambiguity parameters are strictly determined, but not
necessarily unique. Our new ambiguity parameters' setting is subjected to
Dutra's and Almeida's [11] reliability test and classified as good ordering.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, revised/expanded, mathematical presentations in
section 2 (Especially, the typological Errors in Eqs.(9)-(12))are now
corrected. To appear in the Int. J. Theor. Phy
Heme metabolism genes Downregulated in COPD Cachexia.
IntroductionCachexia contributes to increased mortality and reduced quality of life in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and may be associated with underlying gene expression changes. Our goal was to identify differential gene expression signatures associated with COPD cachexia in current and former smokers.MethodsWe analyzed whole-blood gene expression data from participants with COPD in a discovery cohort (COPDGene, N = 400) and assessed replication (ECLIPSE, N = 114). To approximate the consensus definition using available criteria, cachexia was defined as weight-loss > 5% in the past 12 months or low body mass index (BMI) (< 20 kg/m2) and 1/3 criteria: decreased muscle strength (six-minute walk distance < 350 m), anemia (hemoglobin < 12 g/dl), and low fat-free mass index (FFMI) (< 15 kg/m2 among women and < 17 kg/m2 among men) in COPDGene. In ECLIPSE, cachexia was defined as weight-loss > 5% in the past 12 months or low BMI and 3/5 criteria: decreased muscle strength, anorexia, abnormal biochemistry (anemia or high c-reactive protein (> 5 mg/l)), fatigue, and low FFMI. Differential gene expression was assessed between cachectic and non-cachectic subjects, adjusting for age, sex, white blood cell counts, and technical covariates. Gene set enrichment analysis was performed using MSigDB.ResultsThe prevalence of COPD cachexia was 13.7% in COPDGene and 7.9% in ECLIPSE. Fourteen genes were differentially downregulated in cachectic versus non-cachectic COPD patients in COPDGene (FDR < 0.05) and ECLIPSE (FDR < 0.05).DiscussionSeveral replicated genes regulating heme metabolism were downregulated among participants with COPD cachexia. Impaired heme biosynthesis may contribute to cachexia development through free-iron buildup and oxidative tissue damage
Interface electronic states and boundary conditions for envelope functions
The envelope-function method with generalized boundary conditions is applied
to the description of localized and resonant interface states. A complete set
of phenomenological conditions which restrict the form of connection rules for
envelope functions is derived using the Hermiticity and symmetry requirements.
Empirical coefficients in the connection rules play role of material parameters
which characterize an internal structure of every particular heterointerface.
As an illustration we present the derivation of the most general connection
rules for the one-band effective mass and 4-band Kane models. The conditions
for the existence of Tamm-like localized interface states are established. It
is shown that a nontrivial form of the connection rules can also result in the
formation of resonant states. The most transparent manifestation of such states
is the resonant tunneling through a single-barrier heterostructure.Comment: RevTeX4, 11 pages, 5 eps figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.
Classical and quantum chaos in a circular billiard with a straight cut
We study classical and quantum dynamics of a particle in a circular billiard
with a straight cut. This system can be integrable, nonintegrable with soft
chaos, or nonintegrable with hard chaos, as we vary the size of the cut. We use
a quantum web to show differences in the quantum manifestations of classical
chaos for these three different regimes.Comment: LaTeX2e, 8 pages including 3 Postscript figures and 4 GIF figures,
submitted to Phys. Rev.
Phase Transitions on Nonamenable Graphs
We survey known results about phase transitions in various models of
statistical physics when the underlying space is a nonamenable graph. Most
attention is devoted to transitive graphs and trees
Antonio Gramsci’s impact on critical pedagogy
This paper provides an account of Antonio Gramsci’s impact on the area of critical pedagogy. It indicates the Gramscian influence on the thinking of major exponents of the field. It foregrounds Gramsci's ideas and then indicates how they have been taken up by a selection of critical pedagogy exponents who were chosen on the strength of their identification and engagement with Gramsci's ideas, some of them even having written entire essays on Gramsci. The essay concludes with a discussion concerning an aspect of Gramsci's concerns, the question of powerful knowledge, which, in the present author's view, provides a formidable challenge to critical pedagogues.peer-reviewe
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