Noncomminuted lateral end clavicle fractures associated with coracoclavicular ligament disruption: technical considerations for optimal anatomic fixation and stability

Distal clavicle fractures associated with coracoclavicular ligament disruption are potentially unstable and necessitate surgical treatment. Current fixation techniques are nonanatomic and do not address relevant aspects of the pathoanatomy. We have developed a technique that uses a unique combination of implants; this permits minimally invasive fixation and stable reduction with a lateral fragment size as small as 5 mm. The surgical technique consists of (1) neutralization of muscular forces on the proximal fragment using a minimally invasive ligament repair device (TightRope™, Arthrex, FL, USA) and (2) internal fixation using a contour-matched locking plate (2.4 mm LCP(®) Distal radius plates, Synthes, USA). Technical tips to optimize this new procedure are discussed. The technique can be extended to an “arthroscopic-assisted” method involving arthroscopic coracoclavicular fixation followed by a mini-open plate fixation of the clavicular fragments

The Incidence and Cost of New Onset Hyperlipidemia Claims Among US Wait-Listed and Transplanted Renal Allograft Recipients

Background: Hyperlipidemia increases mortality and is common with kidney-disease. New-onset hyperlipidemia (NOHL) among patients wait-listed and after transplantation may impact costs and graft-survival of patients with kidney disease. Methods: Using the United States Renal Data System, we compared the costs to Medicare associated with or without NOHL in wait-listed patients in the second and first year pre-transplant and transplanted patients in the first and second year post-transplant. We also examined the impact on graft-survival of NOHL. Results: New onset hyperlipidemia was especially expensive when it occurred well before transplantation. When compared with individuals with no hyperlipidemia, patients with early onset hyperlipidemia cost an extra $15,228 in the two years before transplantation and an extra$14,673 in the two years following transplantation. As has been found in prior studies, patients without any NOHL had the worst graft survival rates. Conclusions: Although NOHL was associated with increased pre- and post-transplant costs, patients diagnosed with NOHL between the second year before and second year after transplantation experienced higher graft-survival rates than those without NOHL by 2-years post-transplantation. Prior studies attribute this relationship to inflammation and malnutrition, which result in lower cholesterol levels and worse outcomes

Formation and Evaporation of Charged Black Holes

We investigate the dynamical formation and evaporation of a spherically symmetric charged black hole. We study the self-consistent one loop order semiclassical back-reaction problem. To this end the mass-evaporation is modeled by an expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of a neutral massless scalar field, while the charge is not radiated away. We observe the formation of an initially non extremal black hole which tends toward the extremal black hole $M=Q$, emitting Hawking radiation. If also the discharge due to the instability of vacuum to pair creation in strong electric fields occurs, then the black hole discharges and evaporates simultaneously and decays regularly until the scale where the semiclassical approximation breaks down. We calculate the rates of the mass and the charge loss and estimate the life-time of the decaying black holes.Comment: 23 pages, 7 eps figures, RevTex, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Asymptotic Dynamics of Breathers in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Chains

We study the asymptotic dynamics of breathers in finite Fermi-Pasta-Ulam chains at zero and non-zero temperatures. While such breathers are essentially stationary and very long-lived at zero temperature, thermal fluctuations tend to lead to breather motion and more rapid decay

Predicting microbial water quality with models: Over-arching questions for managing risk in agricultural catchments

The application of models to predict concentrations of faecal indicator organisms (FIOs) in environmental systems plays an important role for guiding decision-making associated with the management of microbial water quality. In recent years there has been an increasing demand by policy-makers for models to help inform FIO dynamics in order to prioritise efforts for environmental and human-health protection. However, given the limited evidence-base on which FIO models are built relative to other agricultural pollutants (e.g. nutrients) it is imperative that the end-user expectations of FIO models are appropriately managed. In response, this commentary highlights four over-arching questions associated with: (i) model purpose; (ii) modelling approach; (iii) data availability; and (iv) model application, that must be considered as part of good practice prior to the deployment of any modelling approach to predict FIO behaviour in catchment systems. A series of short and longer-term research priorities are proposed in response to these questions in order to promote better model deployment in the field of catchment microbial dynamics

Can the Pioneer anomaly be of gravitational origin? A phenomenological answer

In order to satisfy the equivalence principle, any non-conventional mechanism proposed to gravitationally explain the Pioneer anomaly, in the form in which it is presently known from the so-far analyzed Pioneer 10/11 data, cannot leave out of consideration its impact on the motion of the planets of the Solar System as well, especially those orbiting in the regions in which the anomalous behavior of the Pioneer probes manifested itself. In this paper we, first, discuss the residuals of the right ascension \alpha and declination \delta of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto obtained by processing various data sets with different, well established dynamical theories (JPL DE, IAA EPM, VSOP). Second, we use the latest determinations of the perihelion secular advances of some planets in order to put on the test two gravitational mechanisms recently proposed to accommodate the Pioneer anomaly based on two models of modified gravity. Finally, we adopt the ranging data to Voyager 2 when it encountered Uranus and Neptune to perform a further, independent test of the hypothesis that a Pioneer-like acceleration can also affect the motion of the outer planets of the Solar System. The obtained answers are negative.Comment: Latex2e, 26 pages, 6 tables, 2 figure, 47 references. It is the merging of gr-qc/0608127, gr-qc/0608068, gr-qc/0608101 and gr-qc/0611081. Final version to appear in Foundations of Physic

Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)Observations: Beam Maps and Window Functions

Cosmology and other scientific results from the WMAP mission require an accurate knowledge of the beam patterns in flight. While the degree of beam knowledge for the WMAP one-year and three-year results was unprecedented for a CMB experiment, we have significantly improved the beam determination as part of the five-year data release. Physical optics fits are done on both the A and the B sides for the first time. The cutoff scale of the fitted distortions on the primary mirror is reduced by a factor of approximately 2 from previous analyses. These changes enable an improvement in the hybridization of Jupiter data with beam models, which is optimized with respect to error in the main beam solid angle. An increase in main-beam solid angle of approximately 1% is found for the V2 and W1-W4 differencing assemblies. Although the five-year results are statistically consistent with previous ones, the errors in the five-year beam transfer functions are reduced by a factor of approximately 2 as compared to the three-year analysis. We present radiometry of the planet Jupiter as a test of the beam consistency and as a calibration standard; for an individual differencing assembly. errors in the measured disk temperature are approximately 0.5%

The Topological B-model on a Mini-Supertwistor Space and Supersymmetric Bogomolny Monopole Equations

In the recent paper hep-th/0502076, it was argued that the open topological B-model whose target space is a complex (2|4)-dimensional mini-supertwistor space with D3- and D1-branes added corresponds to a super Yang-Mills theory in three dimensions. Without the D1-branes, this topological B-model is equivalent to a dimensionally reduced holomorphic Chern-Simons theory. Identifying the latter with a holomorphic BF-type theory, we describe a twistor correspondence between this theory and a supersymmetric Bogomolny model on R^3. The connecting link in this correspondence is a partially holomorphic Chern-Simons theory on a Cauchy-Riemann supermanifold which is a real one-dimensional fibration over the mini-supertwistor space. Along the way of proving this twistor correspondence, we review the necessary basic geometric notions and construct action functionals for the involved theories. Furthermore, we discuss the geometric aspect of a recently proposed deformation of the mini-supertwistor space, which gives rise to mass terms in the supersymmetric Bogomolny equations. Eventually, we present solution generating techniques based on the developed twistorial description together with some examples and comment briefly on a twistor correspondence for super Yang-Mills theory in three dimensions.Comment: 55 pages; v2: typos fixed, published versio

Bouncing universe from a modified dispersion relation

In this paper we argue that modified Friedmann equations with a bounce solution can be derived from a modified dispersion relation by employing a thermodynamical description of general relativity on the apparent horizon.Comment: 12 pages, no figure; references added, version published in JCA

Energy Relaxation in Nonlinear One-Dimensional Lattices

We study energy relaxation in thermalized one-dimensional nonlinear arrays of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam type. The ends of the thermalized systems are placed in contact with a zero-temperature reservoir via damping forces. Harmonic arrays relax by sequential phonon decay into the cold reservoir, the lower frequency modes relaxing first. The relaxation pathway for purely anharmonic arrays involves the degradation of higher-energy nonlinear modes into lower energy ones. The lowest energy modes are absorbed by the cold reservoir, but a small amount of energy is persistently left behind in the array in the form of almost stationary low-frequency localized modes. Arrays with interactions that contain both a harmonic and an anharmonic contribution exhibit behavior that involves the interplay of phonon modes and breather modes. At long times relaxation is extremely slow due to the spontaneous appearance and persistence of energetic high-frequency stationary breathers. Breather behavior is further ascertained by explicitly injecting a localized excitation into the thermalized array and observing the relaxation behavior