The Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland Channel Capacity for a Class of Qudit Unital Channels

The Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland (HSW) classical (entanglement-unassisted) channel capacity for a class of qudit unital channels is shown to be C = log2(d) - Smin, where d is the dimension of the qudit, and Smin is the minimum possible von Neumann entropy at the channel output. The HSW channel capacity for tensor products of this class of unital qudit channels is shown to obey the same formula.Comment: 21 Pages. No Figure

Tibial Artery Calcification as a Marker of Amputation Risk in Patients With Peripheral Arterial Disease

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between calcification in tibial arteries, the degree of limb ischemia, and the near-term risk of amputation.BackgroundDetermining the amputation risk in patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) remains difficult. Developing new measures to identify patients who are at high risk for amputation would allow for targeted interventions and focused trials aimed at limb preservation.MethodsTwo hundred twenty-nine patients underwent evaluation by history, arterial Doppler, and multislice computed tomography of the lower extremities. We then explored the relationship between a tibial artery calcification (TAC), traditional risk factors for PAD, limb status at presentation, and near-term amputation risk.ResultsIncreased age and traditional atherosclerosis risk factors were associated with higher TAC scores. Patients with critical limb ischemia had the highest TAC scores, and increasing TAC scores were associated with worsening levels of limb ischemia in ordinal regression analysis. Receiver-operator characteristic analysis suggested that the TAC score predicted amputation better than the ankle-brachial index (ABI). Symptomatic patients with a TAC score greater than 400 had a significantly increased risk of amputation. In Cox regression analysis, there was a strong association between the TAC score and the risk of major amputation that remained after adjustment for traditional risk factors and the ABI.ConclusionsIn patients presenting with PAD, the TAC score is associated with the stage of disease and it identifies those who are at high risk for amputation better than traditional risk factors and an abnormal ABI

Feasibility of a mobile and web-based intervention to support self-management in outpatients with cancer pain

Purpose: Cancer pain is a prevalent and distressing symptom. To enhance self-management in outpatients, a multi-component intervention was developed, integrating patient self-management and professional care through healthcare technology. This article describes feasibility of the intervention in everyday practice. Method: Patients with moderate to severe cancer pain (n = 11) and registered nurses specialized in pain and palliative care (n = 3) participated in a four-week study. The intervention involved daily monitoring, graphical feedback, education, and advice by means of a mobile application for patients and a web application for nurses. Learnability, usability and desirability were measured in patients with a 20-item questionnaire (1–5 scale), higher scores indicating better feasibility. Patients' adherence was based on completion rates from server logs. Single semi-structured interviews with patients and a focus group interview with nurses provided insight into experiences. Results: Questionnaire findings confirmed learnability (4.8), usability (4.8) and desirability (4.6) of the application for patients. Average completion rates were 76.8% for pain monitoring, 50.4% for medication monitoring and 100% for education sessions. Interviews revealed that patients were pleased with the simplicity of the mobile application and appreciated different components. Nurses agreed upon the added value and were mostly positive about the possibilities of the web application. Patients and nurses provided ideas for improvements relating to the content and technical performance of the intervention. Conclusions: Study results demonstrate feasibility of the intervention in everyday practice. Provided that content-related and technical adjustments are made, the intervention enables patients with cancer pain to practice self-management and nurses to remotely support these patients

New and Interesting Fungi. 1

This study introduces two new families, one new genus, 22 new species, 10 new combinations, four epitypes, and 16 interesting new host and / or geographical records. Cylindriaceae (based on Cylindrium elongatum) is introduced as new family, with three new combinations.Xyladictyochaetaceae (based on Xyladictyochaetalusitanica) is introduced to accommodate Xyladictyochaeta. Pseudoanungitea gen. nov. (based on P.syzygii)is described on stems of Vaccinium myrtillus(Germany). New species include: Exophiala eucalypticola on Eucalyptus obliqua leaf litter, Phyllosticta hakeicola on leaves of Hakea sp.,Setophaeosphaeriacitricola on leaves of Citrus australasica, and Sirastachyscyperacearum on leaves of Cyperaceae(Australia); Polyscytalum chilense on leaves of Eucalyptus urophylla (Chile); Pseudoanungitea vaccinii on Vaccinium myrtillus (Germany); Teichospora quercus on branch tissue of Quercus sp. (France); Fusiconidiumlycopodiellae on stems of Lycopodiella inundata,Monochaetiajunipericola on twig of Juniperus communis,Myrmecridiumsorbicola on branch tissues of Sorbus aucuparia, Parathyridariaphiladelphi on twigs of Philadelphus coronarius, and Wettsteininaphiladelphi on twigs of Philadelphus coronarius (Germany); Zygosporium pseudogibbum on leaves of Eucalyptus pellita (Malaysia); Pseudoanungiteavariabilis on dead wood (Spain); Alfaria acaciae on leaves of Acacia propinqua, Dictyochaeta mimusopis on leaves of Mimusops caffra,and Pseudocercosporabreonadiae on leaves of Breonadia microcephala (South Africa); Colletotrichumkniphofiae on leaves of Kniphofia uvaria,Subplenodomusiridicola on Iris sp., and Trochila viburnicola on twig cankers on Viburnum sp. (UK); Polyscytalum neofecundissimum on Quercus robur leaf litter, and Roussoellaeuonymi on fallen branches of Euonymus europaeus (Ukraine). New combinations include: Cylindrium algarvense on leaves of Eucalyptus sp. (Portugal), Cylindrium purgamentum on leaf litter (USA), Cylindrium syzygii on leaves of Syzygium sp. (Australia), Microdochium musae on leaves of Musa sp. (Malaysia), Polyscytalum eucalyptigenum on Eucalyptus grandis × pellita (Malaysia), P. eucalyptorum on leaves of Eucalyptus (Australia), P. grevilleae on leaves of Grevillea (Australia), P. nullicananum on leaves of Eucalyptus (Australia), Pseudoanungiteasyzygii on Syzygium cordatum leaf litter (South Africa), and Setophaeosphaeriasidae on leaves of Sida sp. (Brazil). New records include: Sphaerellopsis paraphysata on leaves of Phragmites sp., Vermiculariopsiella dichapetali on leaves of Melaleuca sp. and Eucalyptus regnans, and Xyladictyochaetalusitanica on leaf litter of Eucalyptus sp. (Australia); Camarosporidiella mackenziei on twigs of Caragana sp. (Finland); Cyclothyriella rubronotata on twigs of Ailanthus altissima, Rhinocladiella quercus on Sorbus aucuparia branches (Germany); Cytospora viticola on stems of Vitis vinifera (Hungary); Echinocatena arthrinioides on leaves of Acacia crassicarpa (Malaysia); Varicosporellopsis aquatilis from garden soil (Netherlands); Pestalotiopsis hollandica on needles of Cupressus sempervirens (Spain), Pseudocamarosporiumafricanum on twigs of Erica sp. (South Africa), Pseudocamarosporium brabeji on branch of Platanus sp. (Switzerland); Neocucurbitaria cava on leaves of Quercus ilex (UK); Chaetosphaeriamyriocarpaon decaying wood of Carpinus betulus,Haplograhium delicatum on decaying Carpinus betulus wood (Ukraine). Epitypes are designated for: Elsinoë mimosae on leaves of Mimosa diplotricha (Brazil), Neohendersonia kickxii on Fagus sylvatica twig bark (Italy), Caliciopsis maxima on fronds of Niphidium crassifolium (Brazil), Dictyochaeta septata on leaves of Eucalyptus grandis ×urophylla (Chile), and Microdochium musae on leaves of Musa sp. (Malaysia)

An epitaxial model for heterogeneous nucleation on potent substrates

© The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International 2012In this article, we present an epitaxial model for heterogeneous nucleation on potent substrates. It is proposed that heterogeneous nucleation of the solid phase (S) on a potent substrate (N) occurs by epitaxial growth of a pseudomorphic solid (PS) layer on the substrate surface under a critical undercooling (ΔT ). The PS layer with a coherent PS/N interface mimics the atomic arrangement of the substrate, giving rise to a linear increase of misfit strain energy with layer thickness. At a critical thickness (h ), elastic strain energy reaches a critical level, at which point, misfit dislocations are created to release the elastic strain energy in the PS layer. This converts the strained PS layer to a strainless solid (S), and changes the initial coherent PS/N interface into a semicoherent S/N interface. Beyond this critical thickness, further growth will be strainless, and solidification enters the growth stage. It is shown analytically that the lattice misfit (f) between the solid and the substrate has a strong influence on both h and ΔT ; h decreases; and ΔT increases with increasing lattice misfit. This epitaxial nucleation model will be used to explain qualitatively the generally accepted experimental findings on grain refinement in the literature and to analyze the general approaches to effective grain refinement.EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Liquid Metal Engineerin

Femtosecond x-ray diffraction reveals a liquid–liquid phase transition in phase-change materials

6 pags., 5 figs.In phase-change memory devices, a material is cycled between glassy and crystalline states. The highly temperature-dependent kinetics of its crystallization process enables application in memory technology, but the transition has not been resolved on an atomic scale. Using femtosecond x-ray diffraction and ab initio computer simulations, we determined the time-dependent pair-correlation function of phase-change materials throughout the melt-quenching and crystallization process. We found a liquid–liquid phase transition in the phase-change materials AgInSbTe and GeSb at 660 and 610 kelvin, respectively. The transition is predominantly caused by the onset of Peierls distortions, the amplitude of which correlates with an increase of the apparent activation energy of diffusivity. This reveals a relationship between atomic structure and kinetics, enabling a systematic optimization of the memory-switching kinetics.F.Q., A.K., M.N., and K.S.T. gratefully acknowledge financial support from the German Research Council through the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1242 project 278162697 (“Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Condensed Matter in the Time Domain”), project C01 (“Structural Dynamics in Impulsively Excited Nanostructures”), and individual grant So408/9-1, as well as the European Union (7th Framework Programme, grant no. 280555 GO FAST). M.J.S., R.M., and M.W. acknowledge financial support from the German Research Council through the Collaborative Research Center SFB 917 (“Nanoswitches”) and individual grant Ma-5339/2-1. M.J.S., I.R., and R.M. also acknowledge the computational resources granted by JARA-HPC from RWTH Aachen University under project nos. JARA0150 and JARA0183. M.T., A.M.L., and D.A.R. were supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, through the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under contract no. DE-AC02-76SF00515. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. J.L. acknowledges support from the Swedish Research Council. J.S. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through research grant UDiSON (TEC2017-82464-R). P.Z. gratefully acknowledges funding by the Humboldt Foundatio

Why do people fitted with hearing aids not wear them?

Objective: Age-related hearing loss is an increasingly important public health problem affecting approximately 40% of 55–74 year olds. The primary clinical management intervention for people with hearing loss is hearing aids, however, the majority (80%) of adults aged 55–74 years who would benefit from a hearing aid, do not use them. Furthermore, many people given a hearing aid do not wear it. The aim was to collate the available evidence as to the potential reasons for non-use of hearing aids among people who have been fitted with at least one. Design: Data were gathered via the use of a scoping study. Study sample: A comprehensive search strategy identified 10 articles reporting reasons for non-use of hearing aids. Results: A number of reasons were given, including hearing aid value, fit and comfort and maintenance of the hearing aid, attitude, device factors, financial reasons, psycho-social/situational factors, healthcare professionals attitudes, ear problems, and appearance. Conclusions: The most important issues were around hearing aid value, i.e. the hearing aid not providing enough benefit, and comfort related to wearing the hearing aid. Identifying factors that affect hearing aid usage are necessary for devising appropriate rehabilitation strategies to ensure greater use of hearing aids

FGF receptor genes and breast cancer susceptibility: results from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium

Background:Breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies in women. Genome-wide association studies have identified FGFR2 as a breast cancer susceptibility gene. Common variation in other fibroblast growth factor (FGF) receptors might also modify risk. We tested this hypothesis by studying genotyped single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and imputed SNPs in FGFR1, FGFR3, FGFR4 and FGFRL1 in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. Methods:Data were combined from 49 studies, including 53 835 cases and 50 156 controls, of which 89 050 (46 450 cases and 42 600 controls) were of European ancestry, 12 893 (6269 cases and 6624 controls) of Asian and 2048 (1116 cases and 932 controls) of African ancestry. Associations with risk of breast cancer, overall and by disease sub-type, were assessed using unconditional logistic regression. Results:Little evidence of association with breast cancer risk was observed for SNPs in the FGF receptor genes. The strongest evidence in European women was for rs743682 in FGFR3; the estimated per-allele odds ratio was 1.05 (95 confidence interval=1.02-1.09, P=0.0020), which is substantially lower than that observed for SNPs in FGFR2. Conclusion:Our results suggest that common variants in the other FGF receptors are not associated with risk of breast cancer to the degree observed for FGFR2. © 2014 Cancer Research UK