On Poincare and logarithmic Sobolev inequalities for a class of singular Gibbs measures

This note, mostly expository, is devoted to Poincar{\'e} and log-Sobolev inequalities for a class of Boltzmann-Gibbs measures with singular interaction. Such measures allow to model one-dimensional particles with confinement and singular pair interaction. The functional inequalities come from convexity. We prove and characterize optimality in the case of quadratic confinement via a factorization of the measure. This optimality phenomenon holds for all beta Hermite ensembles including the Gaussian unitary ensemble, a famous exactly solvable model of random matrix theory. We further explore exact solvability by reviewing the relation to Dyson-Ornstein-Uhlenbeck diffusion dynamics admitting the Hermite-Lassalle orthogonal polynomials as a complete set of eigenfunctions. We also discuss the consequence of the log-Sobolev inequality in terms of concentration of measure for Lipschitz functions such as maxima and linear statistics.Comment: Minor improvements. To appear in Geometric Aspects of Functional Analysis -- Israel Seminar (GAFA) 2017-2019", Lecture Notes in Mathematics 225

Electrical, morphological and structural properties of RF magnetron sputtered Mo thin films for application in thin film photovoltaic solar cells

Molybdenum (Mo) thin films were deposited using radio frequency magnetron sputtering, for application as a metal back contact material in ‘‘substrate configuration’’ thin film solar cells. The variations of the electrical, morphological, and structural properties of the deposited films with sputtering pressure, sputtering power and post-deposition annealing were determined. The electrical conductivity of the Mo films was found to increase with decreasing sputtering pressure and increasing sputtering power. X-ray diffraction data showed that all the films had a (110) preferred orientation that became less pronounced at higher sputtering power while being relatively insensitive to process pressure. The lattice stress within the films changed from tensile to compressive with increasing sputtering power and the tensile stress increased with increasing sputtering pressure. The surface morphology of the films changed from pyramids to cigar-shaped grains for a sputtering power between 100 and 200 W, remaining largely unchanged at higher power. These grains were also observed to decrease in size with increasing sputtering pressure. Annealing the films was found to affect the resistivity and stress of the films. The resistivity increased due to the presence of residual oxygen and the stress changed from tensile to compressive. The annealing step was not found to affect the crystallisation and grain growth of the Mo films

Chapter 9 Moral Responsibility and the Justification of Policies to Preserve Antimicrobial Effectiveness

Restrictive policies that limit antimicrobial consumption, including therapeutically justified use, might be necessary to tackle the problem of antimicrobial resistance. We argue that such policies would be ethically justified when forgoing antimicrobials constitutes a form of easy rescue for an individual. These are cases of mild and self-limiting infections in otherwise healthy patients whose overall health is not significantly compromised by the infection. In such cases, restrictive policies would be ethically justified because they would coerce individuals into fulfilling a moral obligation they independently have. However, to ensure that such justification is the strongest possible, states also have the responsibility to ensure that forgoing antimicrobials is as easy as possible for patients by implementing adequate compensation measures

Weighted Banach spaces of harmonic functions

“The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13398-012-0109-z."We study Banach spaces of harmonic functions on open sets of or endowed with weighted supremum norms. We investigate the harmonic associated weight defined naturally as the analogue of the holomorphic associated weight introduced by Bierstedt, Bonet, and Taskinen and we compare them. We study composition operators with holomorphic symbol between weighted Banach spaces of pluriharmonic functions characterizing the continuity, the compactness and the essential norm of composition operators among these spaces in terms of associated weights.The research of the first author was partially supported by MEC and FEDER Project MTM2010-15200 and by GV project ACOMP/2012/090.Jorda Mora, E.; Zarco García, AM. (2014). Weighted Banach spaces of harmonic functions. Revista de la Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales. Serie A. Matematicas. 108(2):405-418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13398-012-0109-zS4054181082Axler, S., Bourdon, P., Ramey, W.: Harmonic Function Theory, 2nd edn. Springer, Berlin (2001)Bierstedt, K.D., Bonet, J., Galbis, A.: Weighted spaces of holomorphic functions on balanced domains. Mich. Math. J. 40(2), 271–297 (1993)Bierstedt, K.D., Bonet, J., Taskinen, J.: Associated weights and spaces of holomorphic functions. Stud. Math. 127(2), 137–168 (1998)Bierstedt, K.D., Summers, W.H.: Biduals of weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. A 54(1), 70–79 (1993)Bonet, J., Domański, P., Lindström, M.: Essential norm and weak compactness of composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. Can. Math. Bull. 42(2), 139–148 (1999)Bonet, J., Domański, P., Lindström, M.: Weakly compact composition operators on weighted vector-valued Banach spaces of analytic mappings. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. Ser. A I 26, 233–248 (2001)Bonet, J., Domański, P., Lindström, M., Taskinen, J.: Composition operators between weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. A 64, 101–118 (1998)Bonet, J., Friz, M., Jordá, E.: Composition operators between weighted inductive limits of spaces of holomorphic functions. Publ. Math. Debr. Ser. A 67, 333–348 (2005)Boyd, C., Rueda, P.: The v-boundary of weighted spaces of holomorphic functions. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. 30, 337–352 (2005)Boyd, C., Rueda, P.: Complete weights and v-peak points of spaces of weighted holomorphic functions. Isr. J. Math. 155, 57–80 (2006)Boyd, C., Rueda, P.: Isometries of weighted spaces of harmonic functions. Potential Anal. 29(1), 37–48 (2008)Carando, D., Sevilla-Peris, P.: Spectra of weighted algebras of holomorphic functions. Math. Z. 263, 887–902 (2009)Contreras, M.D., Hernández-Díaz, G.: Weighted composition operators in weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. A 69(1), 41–60 (2000)García, D., Maestre, M., Rueda, P.: Weighted spaces of holomorphic functions on Banach spaces. Stud. Math. 138(1), 1–24 (2000)García, D., Maestre, M., Sevilla-Peris, P.: Composition operators between weighted spaces of holomorphic functions on Banach spaces. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. 29, 81–98 (2004)Gunning, R., Rossi, H.: Analytic Functions of Several Complex Variables. AMS Chelsea Publishing, Providence (2009)Hoffman, K.: Banach Spaces of Analytic Functions. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1962)Krantz, S.G.: Function Theory of Several Complex Variables. AMS, Providence (2001)Lusky, W.: On weighted spaces of harmonic and holomorphic functions. J. Lond. Math. Soc. 51, 309–320 (1995)Lusky, W.: On the isomorphism classes of weighted spaces of harmonic and holomorphic functions. Stud. Math. 175(1), 19–45 (2006)Meise, R., Vogt, D.: Introduction to Functional Analysis. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1997)Montes-Rodríguez, A.: Weight composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Lond. Math. Soc. 61(2), 872–884 (2000)Ng, K.F.: On a theorem of Diximier. Math. Scand. 29, 279–280 (1972)Rudin, W.: Real and Complex Analysis. MacGraw-Hill, NY (1970)Rudin, W.: Functional analysis. In: International series in pure and applied mathematics, 2nd edn. McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York (1991)Shields, A.L., Williams, D.L.: Bounded projections, duality and multipliers in spaces of harmonic functions. J. Reine Angew. Math. 299(300), 256–279 (1978)Shields, A.L., Williams, D.L.: Bounded projections and the growth of harmonic conjugates in the unit disc. Mich. Math. J. 29, 3–25 (1982)Zheng, L.: The essential norms and spectra of composition operators on $$H^\infty$$ . Pac. J. Math. 203(2), 503–510 (2002

Effect of anakinra on arthropathy in CINCA/NOMID syndrome

CINCA/NOMID is an autoinflammatory disorder characterized by the triad of neonatal onset of cutaneous symptoms, chronic meningitis, and recurrent fever and it presents with distinctive osteoarthropathy, synovitis mainly of the large joints and overgrowth of epimetaphyseal cartilage, particularly of the long bones. The cartilage overgrowth eventually causes osseous overgrowth and deformity that persists beyond skeletal maturity and leads to limb length discrepancy, joint contracture, and early degenerative arthropathy. Autoinflammation in CAPS/NOMID has been proven to derive from excessive release of interleukin-1 (IL-1). It has been well documented that the IL-1 receptor antagonist anakinra (Kineret(R)) helps mitigate systemic inflammation in the disorder. However, a general consensus has not been reached on its beneficial effect on osteoarthropathy. The case of a girl with CINCA/NOMID syndrome who showed dramatic improvement of osteoarthropathy after anakinra treatment is reported. A 4-year-old girl suffered at the age of 10 months from a generalized urticarial skin lesion with recurrent episodes of fever and growth disorder. Blood examination revealed persistent massive neutrophilia, anemia and intense acute phase response. She manifested knee joint swelling with limited ROM when she was 20 months old and was diagnosed as being CINCA/NOMID based on characteristic findings of radiograph despite negative CIAS1 mutation. Radiological examination demonstrated metaphyseal fraying and cupping and widening of the growth plate in the distal femur. MR imaging showed mottled gadolinium enhancement at the chondrosseous junction. Neither significant joint effusion nor synovitis was identified. At 2 years and 7 months of age, anakinra, 2 mg/kg/day given by regular daily subcutaneous injections, was started. A few days after the initiation of the treatment, her clinical symptoms and laboratory findings of active inflammation were promptly alleviated. She was not able to walk unaided prior to the treatment, but she walked independently 1 month after the treatment. Follow-up radiographs and MR imaging showed that growth plate widening and gadolinium enhancement at the chondrosseous junction were less conspicuous. Furthermore, longitudinal growth of the femur and tibia was identified during 20 months of observation

Validating the Johns Hopkins ACG Case-Mix System of the elderly in Swedish primary health care

BACKGROUND: Individualbased measures for comorbidity are of increasing importance for planning and funding health care services. No measurement for individualbased healthcare costs exist in Sweden. The aim of this study was to validate the Johns Hopkins ACG Case-Mix System's predictive value of polypharmacy (regular use of 4 or more prescription medicines) used as a proxy for health care costs in an elderly population and to study if the prediction could be improved by adding variables from a population based study i.e. level of education, functional status indicators and health perception. METHODS: The Johns Hopkins ACG Case-Mix System was applied to primary health care diagnoses of 1402 participants (60–96 years) in a cross-sectional community based study in Karlskrona, Sweden (the Swedish National study on Ageing and Care) during a period of two years before they took part in the study. The predictive value of the Johns Hopkins ACG Case-Mix System was modeled against the regular use of 4 or more prescription medicines, also using age, sex, level of education, instrumental activity of daily living- and measures of health perception as covariates. RESULTS: In an exploratory biplot analysis the Johns Hopkins ACG Case-Mix System, was shown to explain a large part of the variance for regular use of 4 or more prescription medicines. The sensitivity of the prediction was 31.9%, whereas the specificity was 88.5%, when the Johns Hopkins ACG Case-Mix System was adjusted for age. By adding covariates to the model the sensitivity was increased to 46.3%, with a specificity of 90.1%. This increased the number of correctly classified by 5.6% and the area under the curve by 11.1%. CONCLUSION: The Johns Hopkins ACG Case-Mix System is an important factor in measuring comorbidity, however it does not reflect an individual's capability to function despite a disease burden, which has importance for prediction of comorbidity. In this study we have shown that information on such factors, which can be obtained from short questionnaires increases the probability to correctly predict an individual's use of resources, such as medications

Optimizing Optical Flow Cytometry for Cell Volume-Based Sorting and Analysis

Cell size is a defining characteristic central to cell function and ultimately to tissue architecture. The ability to sort cell subpopulations of different sizes would facilitate investigation at genomic and proteomic levels of mechanisms by which cells attain and maintain their size. Currently available cell sorters, however, cannot directly measure cell volume electronically, and it would therefore be desirable to know which of the optical measurements that can be made in such instruments provide the best estimate of volume. We investigated several different light scattering and fluorescence measurements in several different cell lines, sorting cell fractions from the high and low end of distributions, and measuring volume electronically to determine which sorting strategy yielded the best separated volume distributions. Since we found that different optical measurements were optimal for different cell lines, we suggest that following this procedure will enable other investigators to optimize their own cell sorters for volume-based separation of the cell types with which they work

The Role of Friends’ Disruptive Behavior in the Development of Children’s Tobacco Experimentation: Results from a Preventive Intervention Study

Having friends who engage in disruptive behavior in childhood may be a risk factor for childhood tobacco experimentation. This study tested the role of friends’ disruptive behavior as a mediator of the effects of a classroom based intervention on children’s tobacco experimentation. 433 Children (52% males) were randomly assigned to the Good Behavior Game (GBG) intervention, a universal preventive intervention targeting disruptive behavior, and facilitating positive prosocial peer interactions. Friends’ disruptive behavior was assessed from age 7–10 years. Participants’ experimentation with tobacco was assessed annually from age 10–13. Reduced rates in tobacco experimentation and friends’ disruptive behavior were found among GBG children, as compared to controls. Support for friends’ disruptive behavior as a mediator in the link between intervention status and tobacco experimentation was found. These results remained after controlling for friends’ and parental smoking status, and child ADHD symptoms. The results support the role of friends’ disruptive behavior in preadolescents’ tobacco experimentation

PomBase – the scientific resource for fission yeast

The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe has become well established as a model species for studying conserved cell-level biological processes, especially the mechanics and regulation of cell division. PomBase integrates the S. pombe genome sequence with traditional genetic, molecular and cell biological experimental data as well as the growing body of large datasets generated by emerging high-throughput methods. This chapter provides insight into the curation philosophy and data organization at PomBase, and provides a guide to using PomBase for infrequent visitors and anyone considering exploring S. pombe in their research

A selective cyclic integrin antagonist blocks the integrin receptors α(v)β(3 )and α(v)β(5 )and inhibits retinal pigment epithelium cell attachment, migration and invasion

BACKGROUND: Proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) is a leading cause of blindness after failed retinal reattachment surgery. PVR is characterized by the proliferation, migration and contraction of retinal pigmented epithelial cells (RPE), and these cellular responses are influenced by the expression and function of integrin receptors. The effect of a cyclic integrin antagonist containing the amino acid sequence Arg-Gly-Asp-D-Phe-Val (RGDfV), specific for the integrin receptors α(v)β(3 )and α(v)β(5), was investigated on basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), platelet derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB), and serum induced human RPE proliferation, migration, invasion and attachment to the extracellular matrix. Furthermore, the effects of bFGF and PDGF-BB regulated expression of integrins α(v)β(3 )and α(v)β(5 )on RPE cells was examined. METHODS: The effect of a cyclic integrin antagonist and a control peptide (0.01 μg/ml to 300 μg/ml) was investigated on serum or cytokine (bFGF or PDGF-BB pretreatment) induced human fetal RPE cell proliferation by H(3)-thymidine uptake. The effect of the cyclic integrin antagonist on RPE cell attachment onto different extracellular matrices (laminin, collagen IV, fibronectin), RPE cell invasion stimulated by PDGF-BB or serum, and migration stimulated by PDGF-BB, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) or serum was explored. PDGF-BB and bFGF modulation of the integrin receptors α(v)β(3 )and α(v)β(5 )was evaluated by flow cytometry. RESULTS: The integrin antagonist did not inhibit DNA synthesis stimulated by serum, bFGF, or PDGF-BB treatment. RPE attachment onto fibronectin was inhibited in a concentration range of 1–10 μg/ml (p < 0.05). Attachment of the RPE cells onto collagen IV and laminin was inhibited in a range of 3–10 μg/ml (p < 0.05). Serum and PDGF-BB stimulated migration was inhibited by the cyclic integrin antagonist in a concentration range of 1–10 μg/ml (p < 0.05). Furthermore, the cyclic integrin antagonist inhibited PDGF-BB stimulated RPE cell invasion through fibronectin (3μg/ml: 66% inhibition, p < 0.001). In each of these experiments, the control peptides had no significant effects. PDGF-BB and bFGF pretreatment of RPE cells increased the expression of integrin receptors α(v)β(3 )(bFGF: 1.9 fold, PDGF-BB: 2.3 fold) and α(v)β(5 )(bFGF: 2.9 fold, PDGF-BB: 1.5 fold). CONCLUSION: A selective inhibition of the integrin receptors α(v)β(3 )and α(v)β(5 )through a cyclic integrin antagonist is able to inhibit RPE cell attachment, migration and invasion. Since these steps are of importance for the progression of PVR, a cyclic integrin antagonist should be further evaluated for the treatment of this disease