48,538 research outputs found
Two gamma quarkonium and positronium decays with Two-Body Dirac equations of constraint dynamics
Two-Body Dirac equations of constraint dynamics provide a covariant framework
to investigate the problem of highly relativistic quarks in meson bound states.
This formalism eliminates automatically the problems of relative time and
energy, leading to a covariant three dimensional formalism with the same number
of degrees of freedom as appears in the corresponding nonrelativistic problem.
It provides bound state wave equations with the simplicity of the
nonrelativistic Schroedinger equation. Unlike other three-dimensional
truncations of the Bethe-Salpeter equation, this covariant formalism has been
thoroughly tested in nonperturbatives contexts in QED, QCD, and nucleon-nucleon
scattering. Here we continue the important studies of this formalism by
extending a method developed earlier for positronium decay into two photons to
tests on the sixteen component quarkonium wave function solutions obtained in
meson spectroscopy. We examine positronium decay and then the two-gamma
quarkonium decays of eta_c, eta'_c, chi_0c, chi_2c, and pi-zero The results for
the pi-zero, although off the experimental rate by 13%, is much closer than the
usual expectations from a potential model.Comment: 4 pages. Presented at Second Meeting of APS Topical Group on Hadron
Physics, Nashville, TN, Oct 22-24. Proceedings to be published by Journal of
Physics (UK), Conference Serie
Association of antihypertensive monotherapy with serum sodium and potassium levels in Chinese patients
<b>Background</b> International guidelines on management of hypertension recommend any major classes of antihypertensive drugs. However, the low prescribing rate of thiazides has been attributed to concerns about electrolyte disturbances and studies between antihypertensive drug classes and hyponatremia/hypokalemia among Chinese patients were scarce. <p></p>
<b>Methods</b> From clinical databases we included 2,759 patients who received their first-ever antihypertensive monotherapy from January 2004 to June 2007 in a large territory of Hong Kong. We studied the plasma sodium and potassium levels 8 weeks after prescriptions and factors associated with hyponatremia and hypokalemia by multivariable regression analyses. <p></p>
<b>Results</b> Among major antihypertensive drug classes, thiazide users had the lowest sodium level (139.6 mEq/l, 95% confidence interval (CI) 139.3, 140.0, P < 0.001) and patients-prescribed calcium channel blockers (CCBs; 3.92 mEq/l, 95% CI 3.89, 3.95) or thiazide diuretics (3.99 mEq/l, 95% CI 3.93, 4.04) had the lowest potassium levels (P < 0.001). Multivariate analysis reported that advanced age (>/=70 years, odds ratio (OR) 7.49, 95% CI 2.84, 19.8, P < 0.001), male gender (OR 2.38, 95% CI 1.45, 3.91, P < 0.001), and thiazide users (OR 2.42, 95% CI 1.29, 4.56, P = 0.006) were significantly associated with hyponatremia, while renin-angiotensin system (RAS) (OR 0.31, 95% CI 0.13, 0.73, P = 0.008) and beta-blockers (BBs) (OR 0.35, 95% CI 0.23, 0.54, P < 0.001) users were less likely to present with hypokalemia. However, the proportions having normonatremic (95.1%) and normokalemic (89.4%) levels were high. <p></p>
<b>Conclusions</b> In view of the low prevalence of hyponatremia and hypokalemia associated with thiazides, physicians should not be deterred from prescribing thiazide diuretics as first-line antihypertensive agents as recommended by most international guidelines
Non-Langevin behaviour of the uncompensated magnetisation in nanoparticles of artificial ferritin
The magnetic behaviour of nanoparticles of antiferromagnetic ferritin has
been investigated by 57Fe Mossbauer absorption spectroscopy and magnetisation
measurements, in the temperature range 2.5K-250K and with magnetic fields up to
7T. Samples containing nanoparticles with an average number of Fe atoms ranging
from 400 to 2500 were studied. The value of the anisotropy energy per unit
volume was determined and found to be in the range 3-6 10**5 ergs/cm3, which is
a value typical for ferric oxides. By comparing the results of the two
experimental methods at large field, we show that, contratry to what is
currently assumed, the uncompensated magnetisation of the feritin cores in the
superparamagnetic regime does not follow a Langevin law. For magnetic fields
below the spin-flop field, we propose an approximate law for the field and
temperature variation of the uncompensated magnetisation which has so far never
been applied in antiferromagnetic systems. This approach should more generally
hold for randomly oriented antiferro- magnetic nanoparticles systems with weak
uncompensated moments.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figure
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