3,561 research outputs found
A Note on Asymptotic Freedom at High Temperatures
This short note considers, within the external field approach outlined in
hep-ph/0202026, the role of the lowest lying gluon Landau mode in QCD in the
high temperature limit. Its influence on a temperature- and field-dependent
running coupling constant is examined. The thermal imaginary part of the mode
is temperature-independent in our approach and exactly cancels the well-known
zero temperature imaginary part, thus rendering the Savvidy vacuum stable.
Combining the real part of the mode with the contributions from the higher
lying Landau modes and the vacuum contribution, a field-independent coupling
alpha_s(T) is obtained. It can be interpreted as the ordinary zero temperature
running coupling constant with average thermal momenta \approx 2pi T for
gluons and \approx pi T for quarks.Comment: 4 pages; minor changes, version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Pharmacogenomic-guided clozapine administration based on HLA-DQB1, HLA-B and SLCO1B3-SLCO1B7 variants: an effectiveness and cost-effectiveness analysis.
The identification of pharmacogenetic factors that increase the susceptibility to clozapine-induced agranulocytosis or granulocytopenia (CIAG) has received increasing interest. The SLCO1B3-SCLO1B7 variant (rs149104283) and single amino acid changes in human leukocyte antigen (HLA) HLA-DQB1 (126Q) and HLA-B (158T) were associated with an increased risk of CIAG. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of adding the SLCO1B3-SCLO1B7 to HLA variants as a new pharmacogenomic (PGx) approach and explored the evolution of a cohort of schizophrenic patients taking long-term clozapine as a third-line antipsychotic medication. The decision model included probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses to assess the expected costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). The current monitoring scheme was compared with the PGx-guided strategy, where all patients underwent pre-emptively a genetic test before taking clozapine, over 10 years. By adding the SLCO1B3-SCLO1B7 variant into HLA variants, CIAG sensitivity increased from 36.0% to 43.0%, the specificity decreased from 89.0% to 86.9%, and the probability of cost-effectiveness improved from 74.1% to 87.8%. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was £16,215 per QALY and remained below the conventional decision threshold (£30,000 or US$50,000 per QALY). Therefore, the SLCO1B3-SCLO1B7 variant, as an additional risk allele to HLA variants, increases preemptive test sensitivity and improves the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of PGx-guided clozapine administration
Finite Temperature Quark Confinement
Confinement may be more easily demonstrated at finite temperature using the
Polyakov loop than at zero temperature using the Wilson loop. A natural
mechanism for confinement can arise via the coupling of the adjoint Polyakov
loop to F_{mu nu}^2. We demonstrate this mechanism with a one-loop calculation
of the effective potential for SU(2) gluons in a background field consisting of
a non-zero color magnetic field and a non-trivial Polyakov loop. The color
magnetic field drives the Polyakov loop to non-trivial behavior, and the
Polyakov loop can remove the well-known tachyonic mode associated with the
Saviddy vacuum. Minimizing the real part of the effective potential leads to
confinement, as determined by the Polyakov loop. Unfortunately, we cannot
arrange for simultaneous stability and confinement for this simple class of
field configurations. We show for a large class of abelian background fields
that at one loop tachyonic modes are necessary for confinement.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, RevTe
"Cold Melting" of Invar Alloys
An anomalously strong volume magnetostriction in Invars may lead to a
situation when at low temperatures the dislocation free energy becomes negative
and a multiple generation of dislocations becomes possible. This generation
induces a first order phase transition from the FCC crystalline to an amorphous
state, and may be called "cold melting". The possibility of the cold melting in
Invars is connected with the fact that the exchange energy contribution into
the dislocation self energy in Invars is strongly enhanced, as compared to
conventional ferromagnetics, due to anomalously strong volume magnetostriction.
The possible candidate, where this effect can be observed, is a FePt disordered
Invar alloy in which the volume magnetostriction is especially large
Inhomogeneous Condensates in Planar QED
We study the formation of vacuum condensates in dimensional QED in the
presence of inhomogeneous background magnetic fields. For a large class of
magnetic fields, the condensate is shown to be proportional to the
inhomogeneous magnetic field, in the large flux limit. This may be viewed as a
{\it local} form of the {\it integrated} degeneracy-flux relation of Aharonov
and Casher.Comment: 13 pp, LaTeX, no figures; to appear in Phys. Rev.
- …