14,387 research outputs found
All-cause mortality following a cancer diagnosis amongst multiple sclerosis patients: A Swedish population-based cohort study
Background and purpose: A reduced cancer risk amongst patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) has been reported. Theoretically, this could represent a genuine reduction in risk or, alternatively, 'diagnostic neglect', where cancer is undiagnosed when symptoms are misattributed to MS. Objective: Assess all-cause mortality risk following a cancer diagnosis in patients with MS compared with a cohort without MS. Patients: A cohort of MS patients (n = 19 364) and a cohort of the general population (n = 192 519) were extracted from national Swedish registers from 1969 to 2005. All-cause mortality after cancer in MS was compared with the general population. Poisson regression analysis was conducted in the MS and non-MS cohorts separately. The models were adjusted for follow-up duration, year at entry, sex, region and socioeconomic index. The two cohorts were combined and differences in mortality risk were assessed using interaction testing. Results: The adjusted relative risk (and 95 confidence interval) for all-cause mortality following a cancer diagnosis in MS patients (compared with MS patients without cancer) is 3.06 (2.86-3.27; n = 1768) and amongst those without MS 5.73 (5.62-5.85; n = 24 965). This lower magnitude mortality risk in the MS patients was confirmed by multiplicative interaction testing (P < 0.001). Conclusions: A consistent pattern of lower magnitude of all-cause mortality risk following cancer in MS patients for a range of organ-specific cancer types was found. It suggests that cancer diagnoses tend not to be delayed in MS and diagnostic neglect is unlikely to account for the reduced cancer risk associated with MS. The lower magnitude cancer risk in MS may be due to disease-associated characteristics or exposures. © 2015 EAN
Kink-Antikink Unbinding Transition in the Two Dimensional Fully Frustrated XY Model
We carry out the first numerical simulations to directly confirm the
existence of a kink-antikink unbinding transition, T_w, along Ising-like domain
walls in the two dimensional fully frustrated XY model. We comment on the
possible implications of kink-antikink unbinding for the bulk phase transitions
of the model.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures - expanded version of original submission as
accepted by Phys. Rev. B. Some correction to the analysis lead to an increase
in the value of the kink unbinding transition temperatur
Two phase transitions in the fully frustrated model
The fully frustrated model on a square lattice is studied by means of
Monte Carlo simulations. A Kosterlitz-Thouless transition is found at , followed by an ordinary Ising transition at a slightly
higher temperature, . The non-Ising exponents reported by
others, are explained as a failure of finite size scaling due to the screening
length associated with the nearby Kosterlitz-Thouless transition.Comment: REVTEX file, 8 pages, 5 figures in uuencoded postscrip
Duality in Shearing Rheology Near the Athermal Jamming Transition
We consider the rheology of soft-core frictionless disks in two dimensions in
the neighborhood of the athermal jamming transition. From numerical simulations
of bidisperse, overdamped, particles, we argue that the divergence of the
viscosity below jamming is characteristic of the hard-core limit, independent
of the particular soft-core interaction. We develop a mapping from soft-core to
hard-core particles that recovers all the critical behavior found in earlier
scaling analyses. Using this mapping we derive a duality relation that gives
the exponent of the non-linear Herschel-Bulkley rheology above jamming in terms
of the exponent of the diverging viscosity below jamming.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Manuscript revisions: new title, additional text
concerning connections to experiment, revised Fig. 4, other minor changes and
clarifications in text. Conclusions remain essentially unchanged. Accepted
for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
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Mars simulated exposure and the characteristic Raman biosignatures of amino acids and halophilic microbes
Though Raman bands of α-amino acids (AA) are well documented, often only the strongest intensity bands are quoted as identifiers (e.g. Jenkins et al., 2005; De Gelder et al., 2007; Zhu et al., 2011). Unknown regolith mixtures on Mars-sampling missions could obscure these bands. Here the case is made for determining, via a statistical method, sets of characteristic bands to be used as identifiers, independent of band intensity or number of bands (Rolfe et al., 2016). AA have upwards of 25 potentially identifying bands and this method defines sets of 10–19 bands per AA. Examination of AA-doped Mars-like basalt resulted in a maximum of eight bands being identified, as some characteristic bands were obscured by mineral bands, including the strongest intensity band in some cases. This proved the need for characteristic bands to be defined, enabling successful identification of AA. The ESA ExoMars Rover mission will crush and then pass the sample to the Raman Laser Spectrometer. We crushed a Mars-like basalt to a similar grain size expected to be created by the rover. Our samples were doped with 1 % (by weight) AA samples, resulting in no detection of AA, because of loss of original spatial context and spaces between the grains. We recommend that Raman spectroscopy on future missions should be conducted before the sample is crushed. Halite-entombed halophilic microbes, known to survive being entombed, were exposed to Mars-like surface (including temperature, pressure, atmospheric composition and UV) and freeze-thaw cycle (plus pressure and atmospheric composition) conditions. This test on the survival of the microbes showed that survival rates quickly deteriorated in surface conditions, but freeze-thaw cycle samples had well preserved Raman biosignatures, indicating that similar signatures could be detectable on Mars if similar life persists in evaporitic material or brines today
Mortality following a brain tumour diagnosis in patients with multiple sclerosis
Objectives: As brain tumours and their treatment may theoretically have a poorer prognosis in inflammatory central nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), all-cause mortality following a brain tumour diagnosis was compared between patients with and without MS. The potential role of age at tumour diagnosis was also examined. Setting: Hospital inpatients in Sweden with assessment of mortality in hospital or following discharge. Participants: Swedish national registers identified 20 543 patients with an MS diagnosis (1969-2005) and they were matched individually to produce a comparison cohort of 204 163 members of the general population without MS. Everyone with a primary brain tumour diagnosis was selected for this study: 111 with MS and 907 without MS. Primary and secondary outcome measures: 5-year mortality risk following brain tumour diagnosis and age at brain tumour diagnosis. Results: A non-statistically significant lower mortality risk among patients with MS (lower for those with tumours of high-grade and uncertain-grade malignancy and no notable difference for low-grade tumours) produced an unadjusted HR (and 95% CI) of 0.75 (0.56 to 1.02). After adjustment for age at diagnosis, grade of malignancy, sex, region of residence and socioeconomic index, the HR is 0.91 (0.67-1.24). The change in estimate was largely due to adjustment for age at brain tumour diagnosis, as patients with MS were on average 4.7 years younger at brain tumour diagnosis than those in the comparison cohort (p<0.001). Conclusions: Younger age at tumour diagnosis may contribute to mortality reduction in those with highgrade and uncertain-grade brain tumours. Survival following a brain tumour is not worse in patients with MS; even after age at brain tumour diagnosis and grade of malignancy are taken into account
From scalar to string confinement
We outline a connection between scalar quark confinement, a
phenomenologically successful concept heretofore lacking fundamental
justification, and QCD. Although scalar confinement does not follow from QCD,
there is an interesting and close relationship between them. We develop a
simple model intermediate between scalar confinement and the QCD string for
illustrative purposes. Finally, we find the bound state masses of scalar,
time-component vector, and string confinement analytically through
semi-classical quantization.Comment: ReVTeX, 9 pages, 5 figure
Current-voltage characteristics of the two-dimensional XY model with Monte Carlo dynamics
Current-voltage characteristics and the linear resistance of the
two-dimensional XY model with and without external uniform current driving are
studied by Monte Carlo simulations. We apply the standard finite-size scaling
analysis to get the dynamic critical exponent at various temperatures. From
the comparison with the resistively-shunted junction dynamics, it is concluded
that is universal in the sense that it does not depend on details of
dynamics. This comparison also leads to the quantification of the time in the
Monte Carlo dynamic simulation.Comment: 5 pages in two columns including 5 figures, to appear in PR
On the validity of the reduced Salpeter equation
We adapt a general method to solve both the full and reduced Salpeter
equations and systematically explore the conditions under which these two
equations give equivalent results in meson dynamics. The effects of constituent
mass, angular momentum state, type of interaction, and the nature of
confinement are all considered in an effort to clearly delineate the range of
validity of the reduced Salpeter approximations. We find that for
the solutions are strikingly similar for all
constituent masses. For zero angular momentum states the full and reduced
Salpeter equations give different results for small quark mass especially with
a large additive constant coordinate space potential. We also show that
corrections to heavy-light energy levels can be accurately
computed with the reduced equation.Comment: Latex (uses epsf macro), 24 pages of text, 12 postscript figures
included. Slightly revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev.
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