27,060 research outputs found
Mathematical modelling of the pathogenesis of multiple myeloma-induced bone disease
Multiple myeloma (MM) is the second most common haematological malignancy and results in destructive bone lesions. The interaction between MM cells and the bone microenvironment plays an important role in the development of the tumour cells and MM-induced bone disease and forms a 'vicious cycle' of tumour development and bone destruction, intensified by suppression of osteoblast activity and promotion of osteoclast activity. In this paper, a mathematical model is proposed to simulate how the interaction between MM cells and the bone microenvironment facilitates the development of the tumour cells and the resultant bone destruction. It includes both the roles of inhibited osteoblast activity and stimulated osteoclast activity. The model is able to mimic the temporal variation of bone cell concentrations and resultant bone volume after the invasion and then removal of the tumour cells and explains why MM-induced bone lesions rarely heal even after the complete removal of MM cells. The behaviour of the model compares well with published experimental data. The model serves as a first step to understand the development of MM-induced bone disease and could be applied further to evaluate the current therapies against MM-induced bone disease and even suggests new potential therapeutic targets
Fragmentation of spherical radioactive heavy nuclei as a novel probe of transient effects in fission
Peripheral collisions with radioactive heavy-ion beams at relativistic
energies are discussed as an innovative approach for probing the transient
regime experienced by fissile systems evolving towards quasi-equilibrium. A
dedicated experiment using the advanced technical installations of GSI,
Darmstadt, permitted to realize ideal conditions for the investigation of
relaxation effects in the meta-stable well. Combined with a highly sensitive
experimental signature, it provides a measure of the transient effects with
respect to the flux over the fission barrier. Within a two-step reaction
process, 45 proton-rich unstable spherical isotopes produced by
projectile-fragmentation of a stable 238U beam have been used as secondary
projectiles. The fragmentation of the radioactive projectiles on lead results
in nearly spherical compound nuclei which span a wide range in excitation
energy and fissility. The decay of these excited systems by fission is studied
with a dedicated set-up which permits the detection of both fission products in
coincidence and the determination of their atomic numbers with high resolution.
The width of the fission-fragment nuclear charge distribution is shown to be
specifically sensitive to pre-saddle transient effects and is used to establish
a clock for the passage of the saddle point. The comparison of the experimental
results with model calculations points to a fission delay of (3.3+/-0.7).10-21s
for initially spherical compound nuclei, independent of excitation energy and
fissility. This value suggests a nuclear dissipation strength at small
deformation of (4.5+/-0.5).1021s-1. The very specific combination of the
physics and technical equipment exploited in this work sheds light on previous
controversial conclusions.Comment: 38 pages, 15 figure
Multiplexed Readout of Transmon Qubits with Josephson Bifurcation Amplifiers
Achieving individual qubit readout is a major challenge in the development of
scalable superconducting quantum processors. We have implemented the
multiplexed readout of a four transmon qubit circuit using non-linear
resonators operated as Josephson bifurcation amplifiers. We demonstrate the
simultaneous measurement of Rabi oscillations of the four transmons. We find
that multiplexed Josephson bifurcation is a high-fidelity readout method, the
scalability of which is not limited by the need of a large bandwidth nearly
quantum-limited amplifier as is the case with linear readout resonators.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, and 31 reference
The Ca II infrared triplet's performance as an activity indicator compared to Ca II H and K
Aims. A large number of Calcium Infrared Triplet (IRT) spectra are expected
from the GAIA- and CARMENES missions. Conversion of these spectra into known
activity indicators will allow analysis of their temporal evolution to a better
degree. We set out to find such a conversion formula and to determine its
robustness.
Methods. We have compared 2274 Ca II IRT spectra of active main-sequence F to
K stars taken by the TIGRE telescope with those of inactive stars of the same
spectral type. After normalizing and applying rotational broadening, we
subtracted the comparison spectra to find the chromospheric excess flux caused
by activity. We obtained the total excess flux, and compared it to established
activity indices derived from the Ca II H & K lines, the spectra of which were
obtained simultaneously to the infrared spectra.
Results. The excess flux in the Ca II IRT is found to correlate well with
and , as well as , if the
-dependency is taken into account. We find an empirical conversion formula
to calculate the corresponding value of one activity indicator from the
measurement of another, by comparing groups of datapoints of stars with similar
B-V.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Functions preserving nonnegativity of matrices
The main goal of this work is to determine which entire functions preserve
nonnegativity of matrices of a fixed order -- i.e., to characterize entire
functions with the property that is entrywise nonnegative for every
entrywise nonnegative matrix of size . Towards this goal, we
present a complete characterization of functions preserving nonnegativity of
(block) upper-triangular matrices and those preserving nonnegativity of
circulant matrices. We also derive necessary conditions and sufficient
conditions for entire functions that preserve nonnegativity of symmetric
matrices. We also show that some of these latter conditions characterize the
even or odd functions that preserve nonnegativity of symmetric matrices.Comment: 20 pages; expanded and corrected to reflect referees' remarks; to
appear in SIAM J. Matrix Anal. App
Comparative growth and static allometry in the genus Chlorocebus
Characterizing variation in growth across populations is critical to understanding multiple aspects of development in primates, including within-taxon developmental plasticity and the evolution of life history patterns. Growth in wild primates has often been reported and directly compared across larger taxonomic groups and within social groups, but comparisons are rarely investigated across widely dispersed populations of a single taxon. With the Vervet Phenome-Genome Project and the International Vervet Research Consortium, we trapped 936 vervet monkeys of all ages representing three populations (Kenyan pygerythrus, South African pygerythrus, and sabaeus from St. Kitts & Nevis). We gathered 10 different body measurements from each including mass, body breadth and length, segmental limb lengths, and chest circumference. To gain a better understanding of how ontogenetic patterns vary in these populations, we calculated bivariate allometry coefficients, derived using PCA on log-transformed and z-standardized trait values, and compared them to isometric vector coefficients. Within all population samples, around weaning age most traits showed a negative allometric relationship to body length. As each population ages, however, distinct patterns emerge, showing population differences in onset and intensity of growth among traits. In concordance with other analyses on growth in these populations, our results suggest that there exist relative differences in patterns of growth between Chlorocebus populations, further suggesting selection for unique developmental pathways in each
On different cascade-speeds for longitudinal and transverse velocity increments
We address the problem of differences between longitudinal and transverse
velocity increments in isotropic small scale turbulence. The relationship of
these two quantities is analyzed experimentally by means of stochastic
Markovian processes leading to a phenomenological Fokker- Planck equation from
which a generalization of the Karman equation is derived. From these results, a
simple relationship between longitudinal and transverse structure functions is
found which explains the difference in the scaling properties of these two
structure functions.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, now with corrected postscrip
Guessing probability distributions from small samples
We propose a new method for the calculation of the statistical properties, as
e.g. the entropy, of unknown generators of symbolic sequences. The probability
distribution of the elements of a population can be approximated by
the frequencies of a sample provided the sample is long enough so that
each element occurs many times. Our method yields an approximation if this
precondition does not hold. For a given we recalculate the Zipf--ordered
probability distribution by optimization of the parameters of a guessed
distribution. We demonstrate that our method yields reliable results.Comment: 10 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScrip
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