Tamsulosin Monotherapy versus Combination Therapy with Antibiotics or Anti-Inflammatory Agents in the Treatment of Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome

Purpose Chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS) is treated by use of various protocols. We compared tamsulosin monotherapy with tamsulosin in combination with antibiotics or anti-inflammatory agents and evaluated the efficacy of these treatments in patients with CPPS. Methods Patients (n=107) who were younger than 55 years and diagnosed with CPPS were randomly assigned to treatment with tamsulosin at 0.2 mg (group A), tamsulosin at 0.2 mg plus anti-inflammatory drugs (group B) or tamsulosin at 0.2 mg plus antibiotics (group C) daily. We applied the National Institutes of Health-Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index (NIH-CPSI) and the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) to evaluate 100 patients who were treated for 12 weeks (7 withdrew). Scores of the three groups were compared by analysis of variance and we also evaluated subscores, which included pain, voiding and quality of life (QoL). Results All three groups showed statistically significant decreases in NIH-CPSI score, IPSS and subscore scores (P<0.05). There were no statistically significant differences between the groups except for the QoL domain of the IPSS (group A vs. C; P<0.01). Conclusions Tamsulosin monotherapy for 12 weeks was effective for treating patients with CPPS, compared with combination therapy with antibiotics or anti-inflammatory drugs

Far infrared giant dipole resonances in neutral quantum dots

A resonance behaviour of the far infrared absorption probability at a frequency \sim N^{1/4} is predicted for clusters of N electron-hole pairs (2\le N\le 110) confined in disk-shaped quantum dots. For radially symmetric dots, the absorption is dominated by a Giant Dipole Resonance, which accounts for more than 98 % of the energy-weighted photoabsorption sum rule.Comment: final versio

Does this Feel Empowering? Using Métissage to Explore the Effects of Critical Pedagogy

The extent to which critical pedagogy disrupts the relations of dominance inside postsecondary classrooms, or empowers students to take socially just action beyond the classroom has been debated and challenged for decades. Through the use of métissage, an interpretive inquiry method that affords collaborative interrogation of individual narrative writings, we five participants in the same critical pedagogy course conducted a post-course inquiry project in order to explore what we had learned through the course. Through this inquiry project, we have come to a deeper understanding of critical pedagogy praxis. Ultimately, what we learned through the use of this inquiry method maintains important implications for postsecondary educators

Four-point renormalized coupling constant and Callan-Symanzik beta-function in O(N) models

We investigate some issues concerning the zero-momentum four-point renormalized coupling constant g in the symmetric phase of O(N) models, and the corresponding Callan-Symanzik beta-function. In the framework of the 1/N expansion we show that the Callan- Symanzik beta-function is non-analytic at its zero, i.e. at the fixed-point value g^* of g. This fact calls for a check of the actual accuracy of the determination of g^* from the resummation of the d=3 perturbative g-expansion, which is usually performed assuming analyticity of the beta-function. Two alternative approaches are exploited. We extend the \epsilon-expansion of g^* to O(\epsilon^4). Quite accurate estimates of g^* are then obtained by an analysis exploiting the analytic behavior of g^* as function of d and the known values of g^* for lower-dimensional O(N) models, i.e. for d=2,1,0. Accurate estimates of g^* are also obtained by a reanalysis of the strong-coupling expansion of lattice N-vector models allowing for the leading confluent singularity. The agreement among the g-, \epsilon-, and strong-coupling expansion results is good for all N. However, at N=0,1, \epsilon- and strong-coupling expansion favor values of g^* which are sligthly lower than those obtained by the resummation of the g-expansion assuming analyticity in the Callan-Symanzik beta-function.Comment: 35 pages (3 figs), added Ref. for GRT, some estimates are revised, other minor change

Analysis of the Paired TCR α- and β-chains of Single Human T Cells

Analysis of the paired i.e. matching TCR α- and β-chain rearrangements of single human T cells is required for a precise investigation of clonal diversity, tissue distribution and specificity of protective and pathologic T-cell mediated immune responses. Here we describe a multiplex RT-PCR based technology, which for the first time allows for an unbiased analysis of the complete sequences of both α- and β-chains of TCR from single T cells. We validated our technology by the analysis of the pathologic T-cell infiltrates from tissue lesions of two T-cell mediated autoimmune diseases, psoriasis vulgaris (PV) and multiple sclerosis (MS). In both disorders we could detect various T cell clones as defined by multiple T cells with identical α- and β-chain rearrangements distributed across the tissue lesions. In PV, single cell TCR analysis of lesional T cells identified clonal CD8+ T cell expansions that predominated in the epidermis of psoriatic plaques. An MS brain lesion contained two dominant CD8+ T-cell clones that extended over the white and grey matter and meninges. In both diseases several clonally expanded T cells carried dual TCRs composed of one Vβ and two different Vα-chain rearrangements. These results show that our technology is an efficient instrument to analyse αβ-T cell responses with single cell resolution in man. It should facilitate essential new insights into the mechanisms of protective and pathologic immunity in many human T-cell mediated conditions and allow for resurrecting functional TCRs from any αβ-T cell of choice that can be used for investigating their specificity

Duality symmetry, strong coupling expansion and universal critical amplitudes in two-dimensional \Phi^{4} field models

We show that the exact beta-function \beta(g) in the continuous 2D g\Phi^{4} model possesses the Kramers-Wannier duality symmetry. The duality symmetry transformation \tilde{g}=d(g) such that \beta(d(g))=d'(g)\beta(g) is constructed and the approximate values of g^{*} computed from the duality equation d(g^{*})=g^{*} are shown to agree with the available numerical results. The calculation of the beta-function \beta(g) for the 2D scalar g\Phi^{4} field theory based on the strong coupling expansion is developed and the expansion of \beta(g) in powers of g^{-1} is obtained up to order g^{-8}. The numerical values calculated for the renormalized coupling constant g_{+}^{*} are in reasonable good agreement with the best modern estimates recently obtained from the high-temperature series expansion and with those known from the perturbative four-loop renormalization-group calculations. The application of Cardy's theorem for calculating the renormalized isothermal coupling constant g_{c} of the 2D Ising model and the related universal critical amplitudes is also discussed.Comment: 16 pages, REVTeX, to be published in J.Phys.A:Math.Ge

A (1+1) dimensional example of Quarkyonic matter

We analyze the (1+1) dimensional QCD (QCD_2) at finite density to consider a number of qualitative issues: confinement in dense quark matter, the chiral symmetry breaking near the Fermi surface, the relation between chiral spirals and quark number density, and a possibility of the spontaneous flavor symmetry breaking. We argue that while the free energy is dominated by perturbative quarks, confined excitations at zero density can persist up to high density. So quark matter in QCD$_2$ is an example of Quarkyonic matter. The non-Abelian bosonization and associated charge-flavor-color separation are mainly used in order to clarify basic structures of QCD_2 at finite density.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures, published versio