Long-term low-dose ketoconazole treatment in bilateral macronodular adrenal hyperplasia

Medical therapy for Cushing's syndrome due to bilateral macronodular adrenal hyperplasia (BMAH) is generally administered for a limited time before surgery. Aberrant receptors antagonists show inconsistent efficacy in the long run to prevent adrenalectomy. We present a patient with BMAH, treated for 10 years with low doses of ketoconazole to control cortisol secretion. A 48-year-old woman presented with headaches and hypertension. Investigations showed the following: no clinical signs of Cushing's syndrome; enlarged lobulated adrenals; normal creatinine, potassium, and aldosterone; normal urinary aldosterone and metanephrines; elevated urinary free cortisol and steroid metabolites; and suppressed plasma renin activity and ACTH. A screening protocol for aberrant adrenal receptors failed to show any illegitimate hormone dependence. Ketoconazole caused rapid normalisation of cortisol and ACTH that persists over 10 years on treatment, while adrenals show no change in shape or size. Ketoconazole decreases cortisol in patients with Cushing's syndrome, and may prevent adrenal overgrowth. Steroid secretion in BMAH is inefficient as compared with normal adrenals or secreting tumours and can be controlled with low, well-tolerated doses of ketoconazole, as an alternative to surgery. LEARNING POINTS: Enlarged, macronodular adrenals are often incidentally found during the investigation of hypertension in patients harboring BMAH. Although laboratory findings include low ACTH and elevated cortisol, the majority of patients do not display cushingoid features.Bilateral adrenalectomy, followed by life-long steroid replacement, is the usual treatment of this benign condition, and alternative medical therapy is sought. Therapy based on aberrant adrenal receptors gives disappointing results, and inhibitors of steroidogenesis are not always well tolerated.However, ketoconazole at low, well-tolerated doses appeared appropriate to control adrenal steroid secretion indefinitely, while preventing adrenal overgrowth. This treatment probably constitutes the most convenient long-term alternative to surgery

Excitonic BCS-BEC crossover at finite temperature: Effects of repulsion and electron-hole mass difference

The BCS to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover of electron-hole (e-h) pairs in optically excited semiconductors is studied using the two-band Hubbard model with both repulsive and attractive interactions. Applying the self-consistent t-matrix approximation combined with a local approximation, we examine the properties of a normal phase and an excitonic instability. The transition temperature from the normal phase to an e-h pair condensed one is studied to clarify the crossover from an e-h BCS-like state to an excitonic Bose-Einstein condensation, which takes place on increasing the e-h attraction strength. To investigate effects of the repulsive interaction and the e-h mass difference, we calculate the transition temperature for various parameters of the interaction strengths, the e-h particle density, and the mass difference. While the transition temperature in the e-h BCS regime is sufficiently suppressed by the repulsive interaction, that of the excitonic BEC is largely insensitive to it. We also show quantitatively that in the whole regime the mass difference leads to large suppression of the transition temperature.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Nonlinear parametric instability in double-well lattices

A possibility of a nonlinear resonant instability of uniform oscillations in dynamical lattices with harmonic intersite coupling and onsite nonlinearity is predicted. Numerical simulations of a lattice with a double-well onsite anharmonic potential confirm the existence of the nonlinear instability with an anomalous value of the corresponding power index, 1.57, which is intermediate between the values 1 and 2 characterizing the linear and nonlinear (quadratic) instabilities. The anomalous power index may be a result of competition between the resonant quadratic instability and nonresonant linear instabilities. The observed instability triggers transition of the lattice into a chaotic dynamical state.Comment: A latex text file and three pdf files with figures. Physical Review E, in pres

Pump Built-in Hamiltonian Method for Pump-Probe Spectroscopy

We propose a new method of calculating nonlinear optical responses of interacting electronic systems. In this method, the total Hamiltonian (system + system-pump interaction) is transformed into a different form that (apparently) does not have a system-pump interaction. The transformed Hamiltonian, which we call the pump built-in Hamiltonian, has parameters that depend on the strength of the pump beam. Using the pump built-in Hamiltonian, we can calculate nonlinear responses (responses to probe beams as a function of the pump beam) by applying the {\em linear} response theory. We demonstrate the basic idea of this new method by applying it to a one-dimensional, two-band model, in the case the pump excitation is virtual (coherent excitation). We find that the exponent of the Fermi edge singularity varies with the pump intensity.Comment: 6 page

The Physical Conditions and Dynamics of the Interstellar Medium in the Nucleus of M83: Observations of CO and CI

This paper presents CI, CO J=4-3, and CO J=3-2 maps of the barred spiral galaxy M83 taken at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Observations indicate a double peaked structure which is consistent with gas inflow along the bar collecting at the inner Lindblad resonance. This structure suggests that nuclear starbursts can occur even in galaxies where this inflow/collection occurs, in contrast to previous studies of barred spiral galaxies. However, the observations also suggest that the double peaked emission may be the result of a rotating molecular ring oriented nearly perpendicular to the main disk of the galaxy. The CO J=4-3 data indicate the presence of warm gas in the nucleus that is not apparent in the lower-J CO observations, which suggests that CO J=1-0 emission may not be a reliable tracer of molecular gas in starburst galaxies. The twelve CI/CO J=4-3 line ratios in the inner 24'' x 24'' are uniform at the 2 sigma level, which indicates that the CO J=4-3 emission is originating in the same hot photon-dominated regions as the CI emission. The CO J=4-3/J=3-2 line ratios vary significantly within the nucleus with the higher line ratios occurring away from peaks of emission along an arc of active star forming regions. These high line ratios (>1) likely indicate optically thin gas created by the high temperatures caused by star forming regions in the nucleus of this starburst galaxy.Comment: 15 pages with 10 figures. To appear in the August 10 1998 issue of The Astrophysical Journa

The VIPERS Multi-Lambda Survey. I. UV and NIR Observations, multi-color catalogues and photometric redshifts

We present observations collected in the CFHTLS-VIPERS region in the ultraviolet (UV) with the GALEX satellite (far and near UV channels) and the near infrared with the CFHT/WIRCam camera ($K_s$-band) over an area of 22 and 27 deg$^2$, respectively. The depth of the photometry was optimized to measure the physical properties (e.g., SFR, stellar masses) of all the galaxies in the VIPERS spectroscopic survey. The large volume explored by VIPERS will enable a unique investigation of the relationship between the galaxy properties and their environment (density field and cosmic web) at high redshift (0.5 < z < 1.2). In this paper, we present the observations, the data reductions and the build-up of the multi-color catalogues. The CFHTLS-T0007 (gri-{\chi}^2) images are used as reference to detect and measure the $K_s$-band photometry, while the T0007 u-selected sources are used as priors to perform the GALEX photometry based on a dedicated software (EMphot). Our final sample reaches $NUV_{AB}$~25 (at 5{\sigma}) and $K_{AB}$~22 (at 3{\sigma}). The large spectroscopic sample (~51,000 spectroscopic redshifts) allows us to highlight the robustness of our star/galaxy separation, and the reliability of our photometric redshifts with a typical accuracy $\sigma_z \le$ 0.04 and a catastrophic failure rate {\eta} < 2% down to i~23. We present various tests on the $K_s$ band completeness and photometric redshift accuracy by comparing with existing, overlapping deep photometric catalogues. Finally, we discuss the BzK sample of passive and active galaxies at high redshift and the evolution of galaxy morphology in the (NUV-r) vs (r-K_s) diagram at low redshift (z < 0.25) thanks to the high image quality of the CFHTLS. The images, catalogues and photometric redshifts for 1.5 million sources (down to $NUV \le$ 25 or $K_s \le$ 22) are released and available at this URL: http://cesam.lam.fr/vipers-mls/Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A. Version to be publishe

Fluctuations in the Irreversible Decay of Turbulent Energy

A fluctuation law of the energy in freely-decaying, homogeneous and isotropic turbulence is derived within standard closure hypotheses for 3D incompressible flow. In particular, a fluctuation-dissipation relation is derived which relates the strength of a stochastic backscatter term in the energy decay equation to the mean of the energy dissipation rate. The theory is based on the so-called ``effective action'' of the energy history and illustrates a Rayleigh-Ritz method recently developed to evaluate the effective action approximately within probability density-function (PDF) closures. These effective actions generalize the Onsager-Machlup action of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics to turbulent flow. They yield detailed, concrete predictions for fluctuations, such as multi-time correlation functions of arbitrary order, which cannot be obtained by direct PDF methods. They also characterize the mean histories by a variational principle.Comment: 26 pages, Latex Version 2.09, plus seceq.sty, a stylefile for sequential numbering of equations by section. This version includes new discussion of the physical interpretation of the formal Rayleigh-Ritz approximation. The title is also change

The VIPERS Multi-Lambda Survey. II. Diving with massive galaxies in 22 square degrees since z = 1.5

We investigate the evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function (SMF) and stellar mass density from redshift z=0.2 to z=1.5 of a $K_{AB}$<22-selected sample with highly reliable photometric redshifts and over an unprecedentedly large area. Our study is based on NIR observations carried out with WIRCam at CFHT over the footprint of the VIPERS spectroscopic survey and benefits from the high quality optical photometry from the CFHTLS and UV observations with the GALEX satellite. The accuracy of our photometric redshifts is $\sigma_z$ < 0.03 and 0.05 for the bright ($i_{AB}$22.5) samples, respectively. The SMF is measured with ~760,000 galaxies down to $K_s$=22 and over an effective area of ~22.4 deg$^2$, the latter of which drastically reduces the statistical uncertainties (i.e. Poissonian error & cosmic variance). We point out the importance of a careful control of the photometric calibration, whose impact becomes quickly dominant when statistical uncertainties are reduced, which will be a major issue for future generation of cosmological surveys with, e.g. EUCLID or LSST. By exploring the rest-frame (NUV-r) vs (r-$K_s$) color-color diagram separating star-forming and quiescent galaxies, (1) we find that the density of very massive log($M_*/ M_{\odot}$) > 11.5 galaxies is largely dominated by quiescent galaxies and increases by a factor 2 from z~1 to z~0.2, which allows for additional mass assembly via dry mergers, (2) we confirm a scenario where star formation activity is impeded above a stellar mass log($M^*_{SF} / M_{\odot}$) = 10.64$\pm$0.01, a value that is found to be very stable at 0.2 < z < 1.5, (3) we discuss the existence of a main quenching channel that is followed by massive star-forming galaxies, and finally (4) we characterise another quenching mechanism required to explain the clear excess of low-mass quiescent galaxies observed at low redshift.Comment: 22 pages, 20 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A. Version to be publishe

Polarized interacting exciton gas in quantum wells and bulk semiconductors

We develop a theory to calculate exciton binding energies of both two- and three-dimensional spin polarized exciton gases within a mean field approach. Our method allows the analysis of recent experiments showing the importance of the polarization and intensity of the excitation light on the exciton luminescence of GaAs quantum wells. We study the breaking of the spin degeneracy observed at high exciton density $(5 \ \ 10^{10} cm ^2)$. Energy level splitting betwen spin +1 and spin -1 is shown to be due to many-body inter-excitonic exchange while the spin relaxation time is controlled by intra-exciton exchange.Comment: Revtex, 4 figures sent by fax upon request by e-mai