834 research outputs found
Gavestinel does not improve outcome after acute intracerebral hemorrhage: an analysis from the GAIN International and GAIN Americas studies
<p><b>Background and Purpose:</b> Glycine Antagonist in Neuroprotection (GAIN) International and GAIN Americas trials were prospectively designed, randomized, placebo-controlled trials of gavestinel, a glycine-site antagonist and putative neuroprotectant drug administered within 6 hours of suspected ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke. Both trials reported that gavestinel was ineffective in ischemic stroke. This analysis reports the results in those with primary intracerebral hemorrhage.</p>
<p><b>Methods:</b> The primary hypothesis was that gavestinel treatment did not alter outcome, measured at 3 months by the Barthel Index (BI), from acute intracerebral hemorrhage, based on pooled results from both trials. The BI scores were divided into 3 groups: 95 to 100 (independent), 60 to 90 (assisted independence), and 0 to 55 (dependent) or dead.</p>
<p><b>Results:</b> In total, 3450 patients were randomized in GAIN International (N=1804) and GAIN Americas (N=1646). Of these, 571 were ultimately identified to have spontaneous intracerebral hematoma on baseline head computerized tomography scan. The difference in distribution of trichotomized BI scores at 3 months between gavestinel and placebo was not statistically significant (P=0.09). Serious adverse events were reported at similar rates in the 2 treatment groups.</p>
<p><b>Conclusions:</b> These observations from the combined GAIN International and GAIN Americas trials suggest that gavestinel is not of substantial benefit or harm to patients with primary intracerebral hemorrhage. These findings are similar to results previously reported in patients with ischemic stroke.</p>
Cutoff for the Ising model on the lattice
Introduced in 1963, Glauber dynamics is one of the most practiced and
extensively studied methods for sampling the Ising model on lattices. It is
well known that at high temperatures, the time it takes this chain to mix in
on a system of size is . Whether in this regime there is
cutoff, i.e. a sharp transition in the -convergence to equilibrium, is a
fundamental open problem: If so, as conjectured by Peres, it would imply that
mixing occurs abruptly at for some fixed , thus providing
a rigorous stopping rule for this MCMC sampler. However, obtaining the precise
asymptotics of the mixing and proving cutoff can be extremely challenging even
for fairly simple Markov chains. Already for the one-dimensional Ising model,
showing cutoff is a longstanding open problem.
We settle the above by establishing cutoff and its location at the high
temperature regime of the Ising model on the lattice with periodic boundary
conditions. Our results hold for any dimension and at any temperature where
there is strong spatial mixing: For this carries all the way to the
critical temperature. Specifically, for fixed , the continuous-time
Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on with periodic boundary
conditions has cutoff at , where is
the spectral gap of the dynamics on the infinite-volume lattice. To our
knowledge, this is the first time where cutoff is shown for a Markov chain
where even understanding its stationary distribution is limited.
The proof hinges on a new technique for translating to mixing
which enables the application of log-Sobolev inequalities. The technique is
general and carries to other monotone and anti-monotone spin-systems.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figure
Assessment of pollen rewards by foraging bees
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.The removal of pollen by flower-visiting insects is costly to plants, not only in
terms of production, but also via lost reproductive potential. Modern
angiosperms have evolved various reward strategies to limit these costs, yet
many plant species still offer pollen as a sole or major reward for pollinating
insects.
2. The benefits plants gain by offering pollen as a reward for pollinating are
defined by the behaviour of their pollinators, some of which feed on the pollen
at the flower, while others collect pollen to provision offspring.
3. We explore how pollen impacts on the behaviour and foraging decisions of
pollen-collecting bees, drawing comparisons with what is known for nectar
rewards. This question is of particular interest since foraging bees typically do
not ingest pollen during collection, meaning the sensory pathways involved in
evaluating this resource are not immediately obvious.
4. Previous research focussed on whether foraging bees can determine the quality
of pollen sources offered by different plant species, and attempted to infer the
mechanisms underpinning such evaluations, mainly through observations of
collection preferences in the field
5. More recent experimental research has started to focus on if pollen itself can
mediate the detection of, and learning about, pollen sources and associated
floral cues.
6. We review advancements in the understanding of how bees forage for pollen
and respond to variation in pollen quality, and discuss future directions for
studying how this ancestral floral food reward shapes the behaviour of
pollinating insects
Signal and System Approximation from General Measurements
In this paper we analyze the behavior of system approximation processes for
stable linear time-invariant (LTI) systems and signals in the Paley-Wiener
space PW_\pi^1. We consider approximation processes, where the input signal is
not directly used to generate the system output, but instead a sequence of
numbers is used that is generated from the input signal by measurement
functionals. We consider classical sampling which corresponds to a pointwise
evaluation of the signal, as well as several more general measurement
functionals. We show that a stable system approximation is not possible for
pointwise sampling, because there exist signals and systems such that the
approximation process diverges. This remains true even with oversampling.
However, if more general measurement functionals are considered, a stable
approximation is possible if oversampling is used. Further, we show that
without oversampling we have divergence for a large class of practically
relevant measurement procedures.Comment: This paper will be published as part of the book "New Perspectives on
Approximation and Sampling Theory - Festschrift in honor of Paul Butzer's
85th birthday" in the Applied and Numerical Harmonic Analysis Series,
Birkhauser (Springer-Verlag). Parts of this work have been presented at the
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing
2014 (ICASSP 2014
Fulminant hepatitis: a clinical review of 11 years
24 cases of fulminant hepatitis (FH) hospitalized in the ClĂnica de Doenças Infecciosas e ParasitĂĄrias do Hospital das ClĂnicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de SĂŁo Paulo during the period from January 1976 to December 1986 were reviewed from their clinical, epidemiological and laboratorial aspects. 88% of the patients died; 20 patients (83%) presented hemorrhages and, of these, 19 died. Bacterial infections occurred in 14 patients (58%) all of whom died. Ascitis was noted in 3 cases; cerebral edema was present in 16 cases. Maximal ALT levels for each patient during hospitalization ranged widely from 81 to 4,460 UI/l. Thirteen patients presented high creatinine levels (54%). Prothrombin time activity ranged from 2.1% to 67%. Fever was present in 20 cases (83%). Encephalopathy occurred within the first 2 weeks of illness in 72% of the cases. In 7 cases other illnesses were present. The etiology could not be determined in 13 cases. In 3 cases it was due to yellow fever and 6 cases were caused by viruses other than yellow fever. In one case the cause was drug usage and in another case, possibly alcohol. The authors believe that the clinical definition of FH requires further discussion before it is established. In this study FH is a young person's disease. The mortality found was similar to that by other authors. Factors that contributed to death were: hemorrhages and bacterial infection. Factors that worsened the prognosis of hepatitis were: associated illnesses and surgical procedure. The levels of ALT during hospitalization did not correlate well with the severity of the hepatitis. The authors believe that yellow fever should be considered a cause of FH where the clinical picture meets the criteria for such, although its mechanisms of encephalopathy remain obscure. The clinical details of the 3 cases of yellow fever are presented
Measuring Parton Densities in the Pomeron
We present a program to measure the parton densities in the pomeron using
diffractive deep inelastic scattering and diffractive photoproduction, and to
test the resulting parton densities by applying them to other processes such as
the diffractive production of jets in hadron-hadron collisions. Since QCD
factorization has been predicted NOT to apply to hard diffractive scattering,
this program of fitting and using parton densities might be expected to fail.
Its success or failure will provide useful information on the space-time
structure of the pomeron.Comment: Contains revisions based on Phys. Rev. D referee comments. RevTeX
version 3, epsf, 31 pages. Uuencoded compressed postscript figures appended.
Uncompressed postscript files available at
ftp://ftp.phys.psu.edu/pub/preprint/psuth136
The liquid-vapor interface of an ionic fluid
We investigate the liquid-vapor interface of the restricted primitive model
(RPM) for an ionic fluid using a density-functional approximation based on
correlation functions of the homogeneous fluid as obtained from the
mean-spherical approximation (MSA). In the limit of a homogeneous fluid our
approach yields the well-known MSA (energy) equation of state. The ionic
interfacial density profiles, which for the RPM are identical for both species,
have a shape similar to those of simple atomic fluids in that the decay towards
the bulk values is more rapid on the vapor side than on the liquid side. This
is the opposite asymmetry of the decay to that found in earlier calculations
for the RPM based on a square-gradient theory. The width of the interface is,
for a wide range of temperatures, approximately four times the second moment
correlation length of the liquid phase. We discuss the magnitude and
temperature dependence of the surface tension, and argue that for temperatures
near the triple point the ratio of the dimensionless surface tension and
critical temperature is much smaller for the RPM than for simple atomic fluids.Comment: 6 postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?
Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance
Detector Description and Performance for the First Coincidence Observations between LIGO and GEO
For 17 days in August and September 2002, the LIGO and GEO interferometer
gravitational wave detectors were operated in coincidence to produce their
first data for scientific analysis. Although the detectors were still far from
their design sensitivity levels, the data can be used to place better upper
limits on the flux of gravitational waves incident on the earth than previous
direct measurements. This paper describes the instruments and the data in some
detail, as a companion to analysis papers based on the first data.Comment: 41 pages, 9 figures 17 Sept 03: author list amended, minor editorial
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Consequences of various landscape-scale ecosystem management strategies and fire cycles on age-class structure and harvest in boreal forests
At the landscape scale, one of the key indicators of sustainable forest management is the age-class distribution of stands, since it provides a coarse synopsis of habitat potential, structural complexity, and stand volume, and it is directly modified by timber extraction and wildfire. To explore the consequences of several landscape-scale boreal forest management strategies on age-class structure in the Mauricie region of Quebec, we used spatially explicit simulation modelling. Our study investigated three different harvesting strategies (the one currently practiced and two different strategies to maintain late seral stands) and interactions between fire and harvesting on stand age-class distribution. We found that the legacy of initial forested age structure and its spatial configuration can pose short- (<50 years) to medium-term (150-300 years) challenges to balancing wood supply and ecological objectives. Also, ongoing disturbance by fire, even at relatively long cycles in relation to historic levels, can further constrain the achievement of both timber and biodiversity goals. For example, when fire was combined with management, harvest shortfalls occurred in all scenarios with a fire cycle of 100 years and most scenarios with a fire cycle of 150 years. Even a fire cycle of 500 years led to a reduction in older forest when its maintenance was not a primary constraint. Our results highlight the need to consider the broad-scale effects of natural disturbance when developing ecosystem management policies and the importance of prioritizing objectives when planning for multiple resource use
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