1,363 research outputs found
The clinical assessment study of the foot (CASF): study protocol for a prospective observational study of foot pain and foot osteoarthritis in the general population.
BACKGROUND: Symptomatic osteoarthritis (OA) affects approximately 10% of adults aged over 60 years. The foot joint complex is commonly affected by OA, yet there is relatively little research into OA of the foot, compared with other frequently affected sites such as the knee and hand. Existing epidemiological studies of foot OA have focussed predominantly on the first metatarsophalangeal joint at the expense of other joints. This three-year prospective population-based observational cohort study will describe the prevalence of symptomatic radiographic foot OA, relate its occurrence to symptoms, examination findings and life-style-factors, describe the natural history of foot OA, and examine how it presents to, and is diagnosed and managed in primary care. METHODS: All adults aged 50 years and over registered with four general practices in North Staffordshire, UK, will be invited to participate in a postal Health Survey questionnaire. Respondents to the questionnaire who indicate that they have experienced foot pain in the preceding twelve months will be invited to attend a research clinic for a detailed clinical assessment. This assessment will consist of: clinical interview; physical examination; digital photography of both feet and ankles; plain x-rays of both feet, ankles and hands; ultrasound examination of the plantar fascia; anthropometric measurement; and a further self-complete questionnaire. Follow-up will be undertaken in consenting participants by postal questionnaire at 18 months (clinic attenders only) and three years (clinic attenders and survey participants), and also by review of medical records. DISCUSSION: This three-year prospective epidemiological study will combine survey data, comprehensive clinical, x-ray and ultrasound assessment, and review of primary care records to identify radiographic phenotypes of foot OA in a population of community-dwelling older adults, and describe their impact on symptoms, function and clinical examination findings, and their presentation, diagnosis and management in primary care
Holographic Studies of Entanglement Entropy in Superconductors
We present the results of our studies of the entanglement entropy of a
superconducting system described holographically as a fully back-reacted
gravity system, with a stable ground state. We use the holographic prescription
for the entanglement entropy. We uncover the behavior of the entropy across the
superconducting phase transition, showing the reorganization of the degrees of
freedom of the system. We exhibit the behaviour of the entanglement entropy
from the superconducting transition all the way down to the ground state at
T=0. In some cases, we also observe a novel transition in the entanglement
entropy at intermediate temperatures, resulting from the detection of an
additional length scale.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures. v2:Clarified some remarks concerning stability.
v3: Updated to the version that appears in JHE
Patients’ use of information about medicine side effects in relation to experiences of suspected adverse drug reactions
Background
Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are common, and information about medicines is increasingly widely available to the public. However, relatively little work has explored how people use medicines information to help them assess symptoms that may be suspected ADRs.
Objective
Our objective was to determine how patients use patient information leaflets (PILs) or other medicines information sources and whether information use differs depending on experiences of suspected ADRs.
Method
This was a cross-sectional survey conducted in six National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in North West England involving medical in-patients taking at least two regular medicines prior to admission. The survey was administered via a questionnaire and covered use of the PIL and other medicines information sources, perceived knowledge about medicines risks/ADRs, experiences of suspected ADRs, plus demographic information.
Results
Of the 1,218 respondents to the survey, 18.8 % never read the PIL, whilst 6.5 % only do so if something unexpected happens. Educational level was related to perceived knowledge about medicines risks, but not to reading the PIL or seeking further information about medicines risks. Over half the respondents (56.0 %) never sought more information about possible side effects of medicines. A total of 57.2 % claimed they had experienced a suspected ADR. Of these 85.9 % were either very sure or fairly sure this was a reaction to a medicine. Over half of those experiencing a suspected ADR (53.8 %) had read the PIL, of whom 36.2 % did so before the suspected ADR occurred, the remainder afterwards. Reading the PIL helped 84.8 % of these respondents to decide they had experienced an ADR. Educational level, general knowledge of medicines risks and number of regular medicines used all increased the likelihood of experiencing an ADR.
Conclusion
More patients should be encouraged to read the PIL supplied with medicines. The results support the view that most patients feel knowledgeable about medicines risks and suspected ADRs and value information about side effects, but that reading about side effects in PILs or other medicines information sources does not lead to experiences of suspected ADRs
Entanglement Entropy for Singular Surfaces
We study entanglement entropy for regions with a singular boundary in higher
dimensions using the AdS/CFT correspondence and find that various singularities
make new universal contributions. When the boundary CFT has an even spacetime
dimension, we find that the entanglement entropy of a conical surface contains
a term quadratic in the logarithm of the UV cut-off. In four dimensions, the
coefficient of this contribution is proportional to the central charge 'c'. A
conical singularity in an odd number of spacetime dimensions contributes a term
proportional to the logarithm of the UV cut-off. We also study the entanglement
entropy for various boundary surfaces with extended singularities. In these
cases, similar universal terms may appear depending on the dimension and
curvature of the singular locus.Comment: 66 pages,4 figures. Some typos are removed and a reference is adde
Logarithmic Corrections to Schwarzschild and Other Non-extremal Black Hole Entropy in Different Dimensions
Euclidean gravity method has been successful in computing logarithmic
corrections to extremal black hole entropy in terms of low energy data, and
gives results in perfect agreement with the microscopic results in string
theory. Motivated by this success we apply Euclidean gravity to compute
logarithmic corrections to the entropy of various non-extremal black holes in
different dimensions, taking special care of integration over the zero modes
and keeping track of the ensemble in which the computation is done. These
results provide strong constraint on any ultraviolet completion of the theory
if the latter is able to give an independent computation of the entropy of
non-extremal black holes from microscopic description. For Schwarzschild black
holes in four space-time dimensions the macroscopic result seems to disagree
with the existing result in loop quantum gravity.Comment: LaTeX, 40 pages; corrected small typos and added reference
The Constraints of Conformal Symmetry on RG Flows
If the coupling constants in QFT are promoted to functions of space-time, the
dependence of the path integral on these couplings is highly constrained by
conformal symmetry. We begin the present note by showing that this idea leads
to a new proof of Zamolodchikov's theorem. We then review how this simple
observation also leads to a derivation of the a-theorem. We exemplify the
general procedure in some interacting theories in four space-time dimensions.
We concentrate on Banks-Zaks and weakly relevant flows, which can be controlled
by ordinary and conformal perturbation theories, respectively. We compute
explicitly the dependence of the path integral on the coupling constants and
extract the change in the a-anomaly (this agrees with more conventional
computations of the same quantity). We also discuss some general properties of
the sum rule found in arXiv:1107.3987 and study it in several examples.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure
Αlpha 5 subunit-containing GABAA receptors in temporal lobe epilepsy with normal MRI
GABAA receptors containing the α5 subunit mediate tonic inhibition and are widely expressed in the limbic system. In animals, activation of α5-containing receptors impairs hippocampus-dependent memory. Temporal lobe epilepsy is associated with memory impairments related to neuron loss and other changes. The less selective PET ligand [11C]flumazenil has revealed reductions in GABAA receptors. The hypothesis that α5 subunit receptor alterations are present in temporal lobe epilepsy and could contribute to impaired memory is untested. We compared α5 subunit availability between individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy and normal structural MRI (‘MRI-negative’) and healthy controls, and interrogated the relationship between α5 subunit availability and episodic memory performance, in a cross-sectional study. Twenty-three healthy male controls (median ± interquartile age 49 ± 13 years) and 11 individuals with MRI-negative temporal lobe epilepsy (seven males; 40 ± 8) had a 90-min PET scan after bolus injection of [11C]Ro15-4513, with arterial blood sampling and metabolite correction. All those with epilepsy and six controls completed the Adult Memory and Information Processing Battery on the scanning day. ‘Bandpass’ exponential spectral analyses were used to calculate volumes of distribution separately for the fast component [VF; dominated by signal from α1 (α2, α3)-containing receptors] and the slow component (VS; dominated by signal from α5-containing receptors). We made voxel-by-voxel comparisons between: the epilepsy and control groups; each individual case versus the controls. We obtained parametric maps of VF and VS measures from a single bolus injection of [11C]Ro15-4513. The epilepsy group had higher VS in anterior medial and lateral aspects of the temporal lobes, the anterior cingulate gyri, the presumed area tempestas (piriform cortex) and the insulae, in addition to increases of ∼24% and ∼26% in the ipsilateral and contralateral hippocampal areas (P < 0.004). This was associated with reduced VF:VS ratios within the same areas (P < 0.009). Comparisons of VS for each individual with epilepsy versus controls did not consistently lateralize the epileptogenic lobe. Memory scores were significantly lower in the epilepsy group than in controls (mean ± standard deviation −0.4 ± 1.0 versus 0.7 ± 0.3; P = 0.02). In individuals with epilepsy, hippocampal VS did not correlate with memory performance on the Adult Memory and Information Processing Battery. They had reduced VF in the hippocampal area, which was significant ipsilaterally (P = 0.03), as expected from [11C]flumazenil studies. We found increased tonic inhibitory neurotransmission in our cohort of MRI-negative temporal lobe epilepsy who also had co-morbid memory impairments. Our findings are consistent with a subunit shift from α1/2/3 to α5 in MRI-negative temporal lobe epilepsy
Positivity, entanglement entropy, and minimal surfaces
The path integral representation for the Renyi entanglement entropies of
integer index n implies these information measures define operator correlation
functions in QFT. We analyze whether the limit , corresponding
to the entanglement entropy, can also be represented in terms of a path
integral with insertions on the region's boundary, at first order in .
This conjecture has been used in the literature in several occasions, and
specially in an attempt to prove the Ryu-Takayanagi holographic entanglement
entropy formula. We show it leads to conditional positivity of the entropy
correlation matrices, which is equivalent to an infinite series of polynomial
inequalities for the entropies in QFT or the areas of minimal surfaces
representing the entanglement entropy in the AdS-CFT context. We check these
inequalities in several examples. No counterexample is found in the few known
exact results for the entanglement entropy in QFT. The inequalities are also
remarkable satisfied for several classes of minimal surfaces but we find
counterexamples corresponding to more complicated geometries. We develop some
analytic tools to test the inequalities, and as a byproduct, we show that
positivity for the correlation functions is a local property when supplemented
with analyticity. We also review general aspects of positivity for large N
theories and Wilson loops in AdS-CFT.Comment: 36 pages, 10 figures. Changes in presentation and discussion of
Wilson loops. Conclusions regarding entanglement entropy unchange
Entropy from AdS(3)/CFT(2)
We parametrize the (2+1)-dimensional AdS space and the BTZ black hole with
Fefferman-Graham coordinates starting from the AdS boundary. We consider
various boundary metrics: Rindler, static de Sitter and FRW. In each case, we
compute the holographic stress-energy tensor of the dual CFT and confirm that
it has the correct form, including the effects of the conformal anomaly. We
find that the Fefferman-Graham parametrization also spans a second copy of the
AdS space, including a second boundary. For the boundary metrics we consider,
the Fefferman-Graham coordinates do not cover the whole AdS space. We propose
that the length of the line delimiting the excluded region at a given time can
be identified with the entropy of the dual CFT on a background determined by
the boundary metric. For Rindler and de Sitter backgrounds our proposal
reproduces the expected entropy. For a FRW background it produces a
generalization of the Cardy formula that takes into account the vacuum energy
related to the expansion.Comment: major revision with several clarifications and corrections, 22 page
Holographic c-theorems in arbitrary dimensions
We re-examine holographic versions of the c-theorem and entanglement entropy
in the context of higher curvature gravity and the AdS/CFT correspondence. We
select the gravity theories by tuning the gravitational couplings to eliminate
non-unitary operators in the boundary theory and demonstrate that all of these
theories obey a holographic c-theorem. In cases where the dual CFT is
even-dimensional, we show that the quantity that flows is the central charge
associated with the A-type trace anomaly. Here, unlike in conventional
holographic constructions with Einstein gravity, we are able to distinguish
this quantity from other central charges or the leading coefficient in the
entropy density of a thermal bath. In general, we are also able to identify
this quantity with the coefficient of a universal contribution to the
entanglement entropy in a particular construction. Our results suggest that
these coefficients appearing in entanglement entropy play the role of central
charges in odd-dimensional CFT's. We conjecture a new c-theorem on the space of
odd-dimensional field theories, which extends Cardy's proposal for even
dimensions. Beyond holography, we were able to show that for any
even-dimensional CFT, the universal coefficient appearing the entanglement
entropy which we calculate is precisely the A-type central charge.Comment: 62 pages, 4 figures, few typo's correcte
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