1,509 research outputs found
Platelet kinetics in the pulmonary microcirculation in vivo assessed by intravital microscopy
Growing evidence supports the substantial pathophysiological impact of platelets on the development of acute lung injury. Methods for studying these cellular mechanisms in vivo are not present yet. The aim of this study was to develop a model enabling the quantitative analysis of platelet kinetics and platelet-endothelium interaction within consecutive segments of the pulmonary microcirculation in vivo. New Zealand White rabbits were anesthetized and ventilated. Autologous platelets were separated from blood and labeled ex vivo with rhodamine 6G. After implantation of a thoracic window, microhemodynamics and kinetics of platelets were investigated by intravital microscopy. Velocities of red blood cells (RBCs) and platelets were measured in arterioles, capillaries and venules, and the number of platelets adhering to the microvascular endothelium was counted. Kinetics of unstimulated platelets was compared with kinetics of thrombin-activated platelets. Velocity of unstimulated platelets was comparable to RBC velocity in all vessel segments. Unstimulated platelets passed the pulmonary microcirculation without substantial platelet-endothelial interaction. In contrast, velocity of activated platelets was decreased in all vascular segments indicating platelet margination and temporal platelet-endothelium interaction. Thrombin-activated platelets adhered to arteriolar endothelium; in capillaries and venules adherence of platelets was increased 8-fold and 13-fold, respectively. In conclusion, using intravital microscopy platelet kinetics were directly analyzed in the pulmonary microcirculation in vivo for the first time. In contrast to leukocytes, no substantial platelet-endothelium interaction occurs in the pulmonary microcirculation without any further stimulus. In response to platelet activation, molecular mechanisms enable adhesion of platelets in arterioles and venules as well as retention of platelets within capillaries. Copyright (C) 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel
Tort Law—General Release Forms—The Free Ride for Joint Tortfeasors Is Over. Moore v. Missouri Pacific Railroad, 299 Ark. 232, 773 S.W.2d 78 (1989).
High yield fusion in a Staged Z-pinch
We simulate fusion in a Z-pinch; where the load is a xenon-plasma liner
imploding onto a deuterium-tritium plasma target and the driver is a 2 MJ, 17
MA, 95 ns risetime pulser. The implosion system is modeled using the dynamic,
2-1/2 D, radiation-MHD code, MACH2. During implosion a shock forms in the Xe
liner, transporting current and energy radially inward. After collision with
the DT, a secondary shock forms pre-heating the DT to several hundred eV.
Adiabatic compression leads subsequently to a fusion burn, as the target is
surrounded by a flux-compressed, intense, azimuthal-magnetic field. The
intense-magnetic field confines fusion -particles, providing an
additional source of ion heating that leads to target ignition. The target
remains stable up to the time of ignition. Predictions are for a neutron yield
of and a thermonuclear energy of 84 MJ, that is, 42 times
greater than the initial, capacitor-stored energy
Large deviations for a damped telegraph process
In this paper we consider a slight generalization of the damped telegraph
process in Di Crescenzo and Martinucci (2010). We prove a large deviation
principle for this process and an asymptotic result for its level crossing
probabilities (as the level goes to infinity). Finally we compare our results
with the analogous well-known results for the standard telegraph process
Chaos and Universality in a Four-Dimensional Spin Glass
We present a finite size scaling analysis of Monte Carlo simulation results
on a four dimensional Ising spin glass. We study chaos with both coupling and
temperature perturbations, and find the same chaos exponent in each case. Chaos
is investigated both at the critical temperature and below where it seems to be
more efficient (larger exponent). Dimension four seems to be above the critical
dimension where chaos with temperature is no more present in the critical
region. Our results are consistent with the Gaussian and bimodal coupling
distributions being in the same universality class.Comment: 11 pages, including 6 postscript figures. Latex with revtex macro
Study of Chirality in the Two-Dimensional XY Spin Glass
We study the chirality in the Villain form of the XY spin glass in
two--dimensions by Monte Carlo simulations. We calculate the chiral-glass
correlation length exponent and find that
in reasonable agreement with
earlier studies. This indicates that the chiral and phase variables are
decoupled on long length scales and diverge as with {\em different}
exponents, since the spin-glass correlation length exponent was found, in
earlier studies, to be about 1.0.Comment: 4 pages. Latex file and 4 embedded postscript files are included in a
self-unpacking compressed tar file. A postscript version is available at
ftp://chopin.ucsc.edu/pub/xysg.p
All Politics is Local: The Renminbi's Prospects as a Future Global Currency
. In this article we describe methods for improving the RWTH German speech recognizer used within the VERBMOBIL project. In particular, we present acceleration methods for the search based on both within-word and across-word phoneme models. We also study incremental methods to reduce the response time of the online speech recognizer. Finally, we present experimental off-line results for the three VERBMOBIL scenarios. We report on word error rates and real-time factors for both speaker independent and speaker dependent recognition. 1 Introduction The goal of the VERBMOBIL project is to develop a speech-to-speech translation system that performs close to real-time. In this system, speech recognition is followed by subsequent VERBMOBIL modules (like syntactic analysis and translation) which depend on the recognition result. Therefore, in this application it is particularly important to keep the recognition time as short as possible. There are VERBMOBIL modules which are capable to work ..
On chaos in mean field spin glasses
We study the correlations between two equilibrium states of SK spin glasses
at different temperatures or magnetic fields. The question, presiously
investigated by Kondor and Kondor and V\'egs\"o, is approached here
constraining two copies of the same system at different external parameters to
have a fixed overlap. We find that imposing an overlap different from the
minimal one implies an extensive cost in free energy. This confirms by a
different method the Kondor's finding that equilibrium states corresponding to
different values of the external parameters are completely uncorrelated. We
also consider the Generalized Random Energy Model of Derrida as an example of
system with strong correlations among states at different temperatures.Comment: 19 pages, Late
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