The smectic order of wrinkles

A thin elastic sheet lying on a soft substrate develops wrinkled patterns when subject to an external forcing or as a result of geometric incompatibility. Thin sheet elasticity and substrate response equip such wrinkles with a global preferred wrinkle spacing length and with resistance to wrinkle curvature. These features are responsible for the liquid crystalline smectic-like behaviour of such systems at intermediate length scales. This insight allows better understanding of the wrinkling patterns seen in such systems, with which we explain pattern breaking into domains, the properties of domain walls and wrinkle undulation. We compare our predictions with numerical simulations and with experimental observations

Topological expansion in the complex cubic log-gas model. One-cut case

We prove the topological expansion for the cubic log-gas partition function, with a complex parameter and defined on an unbounded contour on the complex plane. The complex cubic log-gas model exhibits two phase regions on the complex t-plane, with one cut and two cuts, separated by analytic critical arcs of the two types of phase transition: split of a cut and birth of a cut. The common point of the critical arcs is a tricritical point of the Painleve I type. In the present paper we prove the topological expansion for the partition function in the one-cut phase region. The proof is based on the Riemann-Hilbert approach to semiclassical asymptotic expansions for the associated orthogonal polynomials and the theory of S-curves and quadratic differentials

Evaluation of appendicitis risk prediction models in adults with suspected appendicitis

Background Appendicitis is the most common general surgical emergency worldwide, but its diagnosis remains challenging. The aim of this study was to determine whether existing risk prediction models can reliably identify patients presenting to hospital in the UK with acute right iliac fossa (RIF) pain who are at low risk of appendicitis. Methods A systematic search was completed to identify all existing appendicitis risk prediction models. Models were validated using UK data from an international prospective cohort study that captured consecutive patients aged 16–45 years presenting to hospital with acute RIF in March to June 2017. The main outcome was best achievable model specificity (proportion of patients who did not have appendicitis correctly classified as low risk) whilst maintaining a failure rate below 5 per cent (proportion of patients identified as low risk who actually had appendicitis). Results Some 5345 patients across 154 UK hospitals were identified, of which two‐thirds (3613 of 5345, 67·6 per cent) were women. Women were more than twice as likely to undergo surgery with removal of a histologically normal appendix (272 of 964, 28·2 per cent) than men (120 of 993, 12·1 per cent) (relative risk 2·33, 95 per cent c.i. 1·92 to 2·84; P < 0·001). Of 15 validated risk prediction models, the Adult Appendicitis Score performed best (cut‐off score 8 or less, specificity 63·1 per cent, failure rate 3·7 per cent). The Appendicitis Inflammatory Response Score performed best for men (cut‐off score 2 or less, specificity 24·7 per cent, failure rate 2·4 per cent). Conclusion Women in the UK had a disproportionate risk of admission without surgical intervention and had high rates of normal appendicectomy. Risk prediction models to support shared decision‐making by identifying adults in the UK at low risk of appendicitis were identified

Generating series for GUE correlators

We extend to the Toda lattice hierarchy the approach of [3, 4] to computation of logarithmic derivatives of tau-functions in terms of the so-called matrix resolvents of the corresponding differ- ence Lax operator. As a particular application we obtain explicit generating series for connected GUE correlators. On this basis an efficient recursive procedure for computing the correlators in full genera is developed