147 research outputs found
Effect of ultrasonic sufrace treatment on the structure and properties of polycrystalline and nanostructured titanium
The effects of ultrasonic surface treatment on the structural and phase-state of subsurface layers of polycrystalline and ultrafine-grained titanium are investigated. The changes in microhardness, mechanical properties, and regularities of microplastic deformation buildup are studied under static and cyclic loading. It is found that the characteristics of polycrystalline titanium suffer most from the ultrasonic treatment, while its influence on ultrafinegrained titanium is considerably weake
From Low-Distortion Norm Embeddings to Explicit Uncertainty Relations and Efficient Information Locking
The existence of quantum uncertainty relations is the essential reason that
some classically impossible cryptographic primitives become possible when
quantum communication is allowed. One direct operational manifestation of these
uncertainty relations is a purely quantum effect referred to as information
locking. A locking scheme can be viewed as a cryptographic protocol in which a
uniformly random n-bit message is encoded in a quantum system using a classical
key of size much smaller than n. Without the key, no measurement of this
quantum state can extract more than a negligible amount of information about
the message, in which case the message is said to be "locked". Furthermore,
knowing the key, it is possible to recover, that is "unlock", the message. In
this paper, we make the following contributions by exploiting a connection
between uncertainty relations and low-distortion embeddings of L2 into L1. We
introduce the notion of metric uncertainty relations and connect it to
low-distortion embeddings of L2 into L1. A metric uncertainty relation also
implies an entropic uncertainty relation. We prove that random bases satisfy
uncertainty relations with a stronger definition and better parameters than
previously known. Our proof is also considerably simpler than earlier proofs.
We apply this result to show the existence of locking schemes with key size
independent of the message length. We give efficient constructions of metric
uncertainty relations. The bases defining these metric uncertainty relations
are computable by quantum circuits of almost linear size. This leads to the
first explicit construction of a strong information locking scheme. Moreover,
we present a locking scheme that is close to being implementable with current
technology. We apply our metric uncertainty relations to exhibit communication
protocols that perform quantum equality testing.Comment: 60 pages, 5 figures. v4: published versio
Microstructure and properties of a silicon coating deposited on a titanium nickelide substrate using molecular-beam epitaxy equipment
The microstructure and properties of a silicon coating on a titanium nickelide substrate were studied to assess the possibility of using such a coating to improve the biocompatibility of medical implants. The silicon coating with thickness of 4.0±0.5 microns was applied to the TiNi substrate on a molecular beam epitaxy unit. The coating had a submicrocrystalline structure with a crystallite size of 0.1...0.2 microns, a developed surface, and high crack resistance
Correlation effects in insulating surface nanostructures
We study the role of static and dynamical Coulomb correlation effects on the
electronic and magnetic properties of individual Mn, Fe and Co adatoms
deposited on the CuN surface. For these purposes, we construct a realistic
Anderson model, solve it by using finite-temperature exact diagonalization
method and compare the calculated one-particle spectral functions with the
LDA+ densities of states. In contrast to Mn/CuN and Fe/CuN, the cobalt
system tends to form the electronic excitations at the Fermi level. Based on
the calculated magnetic response functions, the relative relaxation times for
the magnetic moments of impurity orbitals are estimated. To study the effect of
the dynamical correlations on the exchange interaction in nanoclusters, we
solve the two-impurity Anderson model for the Mn dimer on the CuN surface. It
is found that the experimental exchange interaction can be well reproduced by
employing =3 eV, which is two times smaller than the value used in static
mean-field LDA+ calculations. This suggests on important role of dynamical
correlations in the interaction between adatoms on a surface.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
Lowering the Light Speed Isotropy Limit: European Synchrotron Radiation Facility Measurements
The measurement of the Compton edge of the scattered electrons in GRAAL
facility in European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble with
respect to the Cosmic Microwave Background dipole reveals up to 10 sigma
variations larger than the statistical errors. We now show that the variations
are not due to the frequency variations of the accelerator. The nature of
Compton edge variations remains unclear, thus outlining the imperative of
dedicated studies of light speed anisotropy
A clinically interpretable convolutional neural network for the real time prediction of early squamous cell cancer of the esophagus; comparing diagnostic performance with a panel of expert European and Asian endoscopists
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Intrapapillary capillary loops (IPCLs) are microvascular structures that correlate with invasion depth of early squamous cell neoplasia (ESCN) and allow accurate prediction of histology. Artificial intelligence may improve human recognition of IPCL patterns and prediction of histology to allow prompt access to endoscopic therapy of ESCN where appropriate METHODS: One hundred fifteen patients were recruited at 2 academic Taiwanese hospitals. ME-NBI videos of squamous mucosa were labeled as dysplastic or normal according to their histology and IPCL patterns classified by consensus of 3 experienced clinicians. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained to classify IPCLs, using 67742 high quality ME-NBI by 5-fold cross validation. Performance measures were calculated to give an average F1 score, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. A panel of 5 Asian and 4 European experts predicted the histology of a random selection of 158 images using the JES IPCL classification; accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were calculated. RESULTS: Expert European Union (EU) and Asian endoscopists attained F1 scores (a measure of binary classification accuracy) of 97.0% and 98%, respectively. Sensitivity and accuracy of the EU and Asian clinicians were 97%, 98% and 96.9%, 97.1% respectively. The CNN average F1 score was 94%, sensitivity 93.7% and accuracy 91.7%. Our CNN operates at video rate and generates class activation maps that can be used to visually validate CNN predictions. CONCLUSIONS: We report a clinically interpretable CNN developed to predict histology based on IPCL patterns, in real-time, using the largest reported dataset of images for this purpose. Our CNN achieved diagnostic performance comparable to an expert panel of endoscopists
CMB as a possible new tool to study the dark baryons in galaxies
Baryons constitute about 4% of our universe, but most of them are missing and
we do not know where and in what form they are hidden. This constitute the
so-called missing baryon problem. A possibility is that part of these baryons
are hidden in galactic halos. We show how the 7-year data obtained by the WMAP
satellite may be used to trace the halo of the nearby giant spiral galaxy M31.
We detect a temperature asymmetry in the M31 halo along the rotation direction
up to about 120 kpc. This could be the first detection of a galactic halo in
microwaves and may open a new way to probe hidden baryons in these relatively
less studied galactic objects using high accuracy CMB measurements.Comment: 8 pages, presented at the III Italian-Pakistani Workshop on
Relativistic Astrophysics, Lecce, June 20-22, 2011; to be published in
Journal of Physics: Conference Serie
Quality of colonoscopy in an emerging country: A prospective, multicentre study in Russia
Background: The quality of colonoscopy has been related to a higher risk of interval cancer, and this issue has been addressed extensively in developed countries. The aim of our study was to explore the main quality indicators of colonoscopy in a large emerging country. Methods: Consecutive patients referred for colonoscopy in 14 centres were prospectively included between July and October 2014. Before colonoscopy, several clinical and demographic variables were collected. Main quality indicators (i.e. caecal intubation rate, (advanced) adenoma detection rate, rate of adequate cleansing and sedation) were collected. Data were analysed at per patient and per centre level (only for those with at least 100 cases). Factors associated with caecal intubation rate and adenoma detection rate were explored at multivariate analysis. Results: A total of 8829 (males: 35%; mean age: 57 + 14 years) patients were included, with 11 centres enrolling at least 100 patients. Screening (including non-alarm symptoms) accounted for 59% (5188/8829) of the indications. Sedation and split preparation were used in 26% (2294/8829) and 25% (2187/8829) of the patients. Caecal intubation was achieved in 7616 patients (86%), and it was ≥85% in 8/11 (73%) centres. Adenoma detection rate was 18% (1550/8829), and it was higher than 20% in five (45%) centres, whilst it was lower than 10% in four (33%) centres. At multivariate analysis, age (OR: 1.020, 95% CI: 1.015–1.024), male sex (OR: 1.2, 95% CI: 1.1–1.3), alarm symptoms (OR: 1.8, 95% CI: 1.7–2), split preparation (OR: 1.4, 95% CI: 1.2–1.6), caecal intubation rate (OR: 1.6, 95% CI: 1.3–1.9) and withdrawal time measurement (OR: 1.2, 95% CI: 1.6–2.1) were predictors of a higher adenoma detection rate, while adequate preparation (OR: 3.4: 95% CI: 2.9–3.9) and sedation (OR: 1.3; 95% CI: 1.1–1.6) were the strongest predictors of caecal intubation rate. Conclusions: According to our study, there is a substantial intercentre variability in the main quality indicators. Overall, the caecal intubation rate appears to be acceptable in most centres, whilst the overall level of adenoma detection appears low, with less than half of the centres being higher than 20%. Educational and quality assurance programs, including higher rates of sedation and split regimen of preparation, may be necessary to increase the key quality indicators
ОСНОВНЫЕ НАПРАВЛЕНИЯ МОДИФИКАЦИИ ПОВЕРХНОСТИ МЕТАЛЛИЧЕСКИХ ЭНДОВАСКУЛЯРНЫХ СТЕНТОВ В РЕШЕНИИ ПРОБЛЕМЫ РЕСТЕНОЗОВ (ОБЗОР 1 ЧАСТЬ
The therapeutic e[cacy of bare-metal stents is signiVcantly limited due to frequent restenosis. Here we review the approaches for surface modiVcation to prevent restenosis, presented the advantages and disadvantages of each method. In the Vrst part of the review, we consider antithrombotic and antiproliferative stents coating. The review presents the most signiVcant and interesting research aimed forming endothelial layer on the stents surface in vitro.Рестенозы металлических стентов, возникающие после имплантации, остаются нерешенной проблемой и существенно ограничивают их терапевтическую эффективность. В обзоре освещены наиболее перспективные с точки зрения физиологии и клеточной биологии варианты модификации металлических поверхностей, представлены преимущества и недостатки каждого из методов. В первую часть обзора включены направления, касающиеся разработки стентов с антитромботическим и антипролиферативным покрытием, так же представлены наиболее значимые и интересные исследования, направленные на формирование на поверхности стентов эндотелиального слоя in vitro
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