Measuring Luttinger Liquid Correlations from Charge Fluctuations in a Nanoscale Structure

We suggest an experiment to study Luttinger liquid behavior in a one-dimensional nanostructure, avoiding the usual complications associated with transport measurements. The proposed setup consists of a quantum box, biased by a gate voltage, and side-coupled to a quantum wire by a point contact. Close to the degeneracy points of the Coulomb blockaded box, and in the presence of a magnetic field sufficiently strong to spin polarize the electrons, the setup can be described as a Luttinger liquid interacting with an effective Kondo impurity. Using exact nonperturbative techniques we predict that the differential capacitance of the box will exhibit distinctive Luttinger liquid scaling with temperature and gate voltage.Comment: REVTeX, 4 pages, 1 figure included. Final version, two references adde

Ingestion of Diet Soda Before a Glucose Load Augments Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Secretion

OBJECTIVE — The goal of this study was to determine the effect of artificial sweeteners on glucose, insulin, and glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 in humans. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS — For this study, 22 healthy volunteers (mean age 18.5 � 4.2 years) underwent two 75-g oral glucose tolerance tests with frequent measurements of glucose, insulin, and GLP-1 for 180 min. Subjects drank 240 ml of diet soda or carbonated water, in randomized order, 10 min prior to the glucose load. RESULTS — Glucose excursions were similar after ingestion of carbonated water and diet soda. Serum insulin levels tended to be higher after diet soda, without statistical significance. GLP-1 peak and area under the curve (AUC) were significantly higher with diet soda (AUC 24.0 � 15.2 pmol/l per 180 min) versus carbonated water (AUC 16.2 � 9.0 pmol/l per 180 min; P � 0.003). CONCLUSIONS — Artificial sweeteners synergize with glucose to enhance GLP-1 release in humans. This increase in GLP-1 secretion may be mediated via stimulation of sweet-taste receptors on L-cells by artificial sweetener. Consumption of sodas containing artificial sweeteners is common practice in both children and adults. It is generally assumed that glucose metabolism is not altered because these sodas contain no or extremely few calories from carbohydrate. However, recent data obtained from animal studies demonstrate that artificial sweeteners play an active metabolic role within the gastrointestinal tract. Sweet-taste receptors, including the T1R family and �-gustducin, respond not only to caloric sugars such as sucrose but also to artificial sweeteners, including sucralose (Splenda) and acesulfame-K (1,2). In both humans and animals, these receptors have been shown to be present in glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1–secreting L-cells of the gut mucosa as well as in lingual taste buds (3–5) and serve as critical mediators of GLP-1 secretion (5). In Diabetes Care 32:2184–2186, 2009 this study, we examined the effect of artificial sweeteners in a commercially available soft drink on glucose, insulin, and GLP-1 in humans

Field-aligned current associated with low-latitude plasma blobs as observed by the CHAMP satellite

Here we give two examples of low-latitude plasma blobs accompanied by linearly polarized perpendicular magnetic deflections which imply that associated field-aligned currents (FACs) have a 2-D sheet structure located at the blob walls. The estimated FAC density is of the order of 0.1 μA/m<sup>2</sup>. The direction of magnetic deflections points westward of the magnetic meridian and there is a linear correlation between perpendicular and parallel variations. All these properties are similar to those of equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs). According to CHAMP observations from August 2000 to July 2004, blobs show except for these two good examples no clear signatures of 2-D FAC sheets at the walls. Generally, perpendicular magnetic deflections inside blobs are weaker than inside EPBs on average. Our results are consistent with existing theories: if a blob exists, (1) a significant part of EPB FAC will be closed through it, exhibiting similar perpendicular magnetic deflection inside EPBs and blobs, (2) the FAC closure through blobs leads to smaller perpendicular magnetic deflection at its poleward/downward side, and (3) superposition of different FAC elements might result in a complex magnetic signature around blobs

Too Much Glucagon, Too Little Insulin: Time course of pancreatic islet dysfunction in new-onset type 1 diabetes

OBJECTIVE—To determine the time course of changes in glucagon and insulin secretion in children with recently diagnosed type 1 diabetes

Tomonaga-Luttinger model with an impurity for a weak two-body interaction

The Tomonaga-Luttinger model with impurity is studied by means of flow equations for Hamiltonians. The system is formulated within collective density fluctuations but no use of the bosonization formula is made. The truncation scheme includes operators consisting of up to four fermion operators and is valid for small electron-electron interactions. In this regime, the exact expression for the anomalous dimension is recovered. Furthermore, we verify the phase diagram of Kane and Fisher also for intermediate impurity strength. The approach can be extended to more general one-body potentials.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Polymer depletion interaction between two parallel repulsive walls

The depletion interaction between two parallel repulsive walls confining a dilute solution of long and flexible polymer chains is studied by field-theoretic methods. Special attention is paid to self-avoidance between chain monomers relevant for polymers in a good solvent. Our direct approach avoids the mapping of the actual polymer chains on effective hard or soft spheres. We compare our results with recent Monte Carlo simulations [A. Milchev and K. Binder, Eur. Phys. J. B 3, 477 (1998)] and with experimental results for the depletion interaction between a spherical colloidal particle and a planar wall in a dilute solution of nonionic polymers [D. Rudhardt, C. Bechinger, and P. Leiderer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1330 (1998)].Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Final version as publishe

Rashba precession in quantum wires with interaction

Rashba precession of spins moving along a one-dimensional quantum channel is calculated, accounting for Coulomb interactions. The Tomonaga--Luttinger model is formulated in the presence of spin-orbit scattering and solved by Bosonization. Increasing interaction strength at decreasing carrier density is found to {\sl enhance} spin precession and the nominal Rashba parameter due to the decreasing spin velocity compared with the Fermi velocity. This result can elucidate the observed pronounced changes of the spin splitting on applied gate voltages which are estimated to influence the interface electric field in heterostructures only little.Comment: now replaced by published versio

Quality of medication use in primary care - mapping the problem, working to a solution: a systematic review of the literature

Background: The UK, USA and the World Health Organization have identified improved patient safety in healthcare as a priority. Medication error has been identified as one of the most frequent forms of medical error and is associated with significant medical harm. Errors are the result of the systems that produce them. In industrial settings, a range of systematic techniques have been designed to reduce error and waste. The first stage of these processes is to map out the whole system and its reliability at each stage. However, to date, studies of medication error and solutions have concentrated on individual parts of the whole system. In this paper we wished to conduct a systematic review of the literature, in order to map out the medication system with its associated errors and failures in quality, to assess the strength of the evidence and to use approaches from quality management to identify ways in which the system could be made safer. Methods: We mapped out the medicines management system in primary care in the UK. We conducted a systematic literature review in order to refine our map of the system and to establish the quality of the research and reliability of the system. Results: The map demonstrated that the proportion of errors in the management system for medicines in primary care is very high. Several stages of the process had error rates of 50% or more: repeat prescribing reviews, interface prescribing and communication and patient adherence. When including the efficacy of the medicine in the system, the available evidence suggested that only between 4% and 21% of patients achieved the optimum benefit from their medication. Whilst there were some limitations in the evidence base, including the error rate measurement and the sampling strategies employed, there was sufficient information to indicate the ways in which the system could be improved, using management approaches. The first step to improving the overall quality would be routine monitoring of adherence, clinical effectiveness and hospital admissions. Conclusion: By adopting the whole system approach from a management perspective we have found where failures in quality occur in medication use in primary care in the UK, and where weaknesses occur in the associated evidence base. Quality management approaches have allowed us to develop a coherent change and research agenda in order to tackle these, so far, fairly intractable problems

Understanding the UK hospital supply chain in an era of patient choice

Author Posting © Westburn Publishers Ltd, 2011. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy-edit version of an article which has been published in its definitive form in the Journal of Marketing Management, and has been posted by permission of Westburn Publishers Ltd for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in Journal of Marketing Management, 27(3-4), 401 - 423, doi:10.1080/0267257X.2011.547084 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2011.547084The purpose of this paper is to investigate the UK hospital supply chain in light of recent government policy reform where patients will have, inter alia, greater choice of hospital for elective surgery. Subsequently, the hospital system should become far more competitive with supply chains having to react to these changes as patient demand becomes less predictable. Using a qualitative case study methodology, hospital managers are interviewed on a range of issues. Views on the development of the hospital supply chain in different phases are derived, and are used to develop a map of the current hospital chain. The findings show hospital managers anticipating some significant changes to the hospital supply chain and its workings as Patient Choice expands. The research also maps the various aspects of the hospital supply chain as it moves through different operational phases and highlights underlying challenges and complexities. The hospital supply chain, as discussed and mapped in this research, is original work given there are no examples in the literature that provide holistic representations of hospital activity. At the end, specific recommendations are provided that will be of interest to service to managers, researchers, and policymakers