Semi-Leptonic B Meson Decays to Excited D Mesons in the Covariant Oscillator Quark Model

The spectra and branching ratios of the weak semi-leptonic B meson decays to the first excited D mesons are predicted, taking into account the confined effects of quarks using the covariant oscillator quark model (COQM). In the COQM the same relation between general weak transition form factors as that in HQET is derived, and the concrete form of the Isgur-Wise function is given with no free parameters. Our results are somewhat different from those of other models. The present experimental data are not sufficient for comparison.Comment: 13 pages, 2 Postscript figure, uses ptptex.st

Acute and Prolonged Effects of Dermal Suction on Joint Range of Motion and Passive Muscle Stiffness: A Preliminary Study

This study aimed to investigate the acute and prolonged effects of dermal suction on joint range of motion (ROM) and passive muscle stiffness. Eight-minute dermal suction was prescribed for the quadriceps femoris in 15 participants. Hip extension ROM, knee flexion ROM, and passive muscle stiffness of the rectus femoris (RF) and vastus lateralis (VL) were measured before and immediately, 30 min, 60 min, 120 min, 24 h, and 48 h after dermal suction. Passive muscle stiffness was measured using shear wave elastography. Hip extension ROM significantly increased immediately (p = 0.032), 60 min (p = 0.029), and 120 min (p = 0.031) after dermal suction compared with before dermal suction; however, it was not significantly different at 30 min, 24 h, and 48 h after dermal suction (p > 0.05). Passive muscle stiffness of the RF and VL and knee flexion ROM did not significantly change at any measurement time compared with before dermal suction (p > 0.05). Our preliminary results suggest that dermal suction improves hip extension ROM immediately after dermal suction of the quadriceps femoris, followed by a return to the pre-prescription level 30 min after. However, the effect was prolonged for 120 min and disappeared before 24 h

Vonoprazan prevents ulcer recurrence during long-term NSAID therapy: randomised, lansoprazole-controlled non-inferiority and single-blind extension study

Objective To assess the non-inferiority of vonoprazan to lansoprazole for secondary prevention of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-induced peptic ulcer (PU) and the safety of vonoprazan during extended use.Design A phase 3, 24-week, multicenter, randomised, double-blind (DB), active-controlled study, followed by a phase 3, ≥28 week, multicenter, single-blind, parallel-group extension study (EXT) in outpatients (n=642) receiving long-term NSAID therapy who are at risk of PU recurrence. The patients received vonoprazan (10 mg or 20 mg) or lansoprazole 15 mg once daily. For DB, non-inferiority of the proportion of patients with recurrent PU within 24 weeks was analysed by Farrington and Manning test (significance level 2.5%, non-inferiority margin 8.3%; primary endpoint), recurrent PU within 12 weeks, bleeding and time-to-event of PU (secondary endpoint) and treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs). For EXT, TEAEs (primary endpoint), recurrent PU and safety (secondary) were assessed up to 104 weeks for patients in the extension study.Results The non-inferiority of vonoprazan 10 mg and 20 mg to lansoprazole 15 mg was verified (percentage difference –2.2%,95% CI –6.2% to 1.8%, p<0.001; –2.1%,95% CI –6.1% to 2.0%, p<0.001, respectively). The proportion of patients with endoscopically confirmed recurrent PU within 24 weeks was 3.3%, 3.4% and 5.5%, for vonoprazan 10 mg, 20 mg and lansoprazole 15 mg, respectively. No significant safety concerns were identified.Conclusion The non-inferiority of vonoprazan (10 and 20 mg) was verified in patients receiving long-term NSAIDs in DB; it was effective and well tolerated in EXT for longer than 1 year, with a safety profile similar to lansoprazole (15 mg)

Performance analysis of WMN-GA simulation system for different WMN architectures considering OLSR

(c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are attracting a lot of attention from wireless network researchers. Node placement problems have been investigated for a long time in the optimization field due to numerous applications in location science. In our previous work, we evaluated WMN-GA system which is based on Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to find an optimal location assignment for mesh routers. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of two different distributions of mesh clients for two WMN architectures considering throughput, delay and energy metrics. For simulations, we used ns-3 and Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR). We compare the performance for normal and uniform distributions of mesh clients by sending multiple Constant Bit Rate (CBR) flows in the network. The simulation results show that for both distributions, the throughput of Hybrid WMN is higher than I/B WMN architecture. The delay of Hybrid WMN is a lower compared with I/B WMN. The delay for Hybrid WMN is almost the same for both distributions. However for I/B WMN, the delay is lower for Uniform distribution. For Normal distribution, the energy decreases sharply, because of the high density of nodes. For Uniform distribution, the remaining energy is higher compared with Normal distribution.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Effects of Bulk Mass in Gauge-Higgs Unification

We study effects of bulk mass on electroweak symmetry breaking and Higgs mass in the scenario of five dimensional SU(3) gauge-Higgs unification defined on M^4\times S^1/Z_2. The asymptotic form of effective potential for the Higgs field is obtained, from which a transparent and useful expression for the Higgs mass is found. The small vacuum expectation values (VEV) for Higgs field can be realized by choosing bulk mass parameters approriately for a fixed set of matter content. The bulk mass for periodic fermion field, in general, has effects to make the Higgs mass less heavy. On the other hand, the bulk mass for antiperiodic field does not directly affect the Higgs mass, but it contributes to increase or decrease the Higgs mass, depending on how small the VEV is induced due to the antiperiodic field. We give numerical examples to confirm these effects, in which the role of the bulk mass is also definitely clear.Comment: 14 pages, no figures, (v2)typos and errors corrected, (v3)the final version to appear in PL

Dynamical Gauge-Higgs Unification in the Electroweak Theory

$SU(2)_L$ doublet Higgs fields are unified with gauge fields in the $U(3)_s \times U(3)_w$ model of Antoniadis, Benakli and Quir\'{o}s' on the orbifold $M^4 \times (T^2/Z_2)$. The effective potential for the Higgs fields (the Wilson line phases) is evaluated. The electroweak symmetry is dynamically broken to $U(1)_{EM}$ by the Hosotani mechanism. There appear light Higgs particles. There is a phase transition as the moduli parameter of the complex structure of $T^2$ is varied.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, v.

Increased tissue levels of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids prevents pathological preterm birth

Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) have anti-inflammatory effects. Preterm birth is an important problem in modern obstetrics and one of the main causes is an inflammation. We here showed that abundance of omega-3 fatty acids reduced the incidence of preterm birth induced by LPS with fat-1 mice, capable of converting omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. We also indicated that the gene expression of IL-6 and IL-1β in uteruses and the number of cervical infiltrating macrophages were reduced in fat-1 mice. The analyses of lipid metabolomics showed the high level of 18-hydroxyeicosapentaenoate in fat-1 mice, which was derived from EPA and was metabolized to anti-inflammatory product named resolvin E3 (RvE3). We finally showed that the administration of RvE3 to LPS-exposed pregnant wild type mice lowered the incidence of preterm birth. Our data suggest that RvE3 could be a potential new therapeutic for the prevention of preterm birth

Development of a cluster of LXC containers

The consensus algorithms were designed to reach agreements in distributed systems trying to maintain a certain tolerance to failures. An application derived from these algorithms is ETCD, a type of key-value storage that provides a safe and reliable way to save data shared in a network of servers, allowing the preser- vation of the information in spite of the possible fall of the involved nodes . My thesis shows the design and operation of these algorithms, and addresses the question of how to man- age the ETCD database and which features involves, as well as recommendations of configuration settings to achieve the best performance of the system. Finally, an academic practice is presented, aimed to network students that would want to have a deeper knowledge about consensus algorithms applications in a distributed system