Second-order L2L^2-regularity in nonlinear elliptic problems

A second-order regularity theory is developed for solutions to a class of quasilinear elliptic equations in divergence form, including the $p$-Laplace equation, with merely square-integrable right-hand side. Our results amount to the existence and square integrability of the weak derivatives of the nonlinear expression of the gradient under the divergence operator. This provides a nonlinear counterpart of the classical $L^2$-coercivity theory for linear problems, which is missing in the existing literature. Both local and global estimates are established. The latter apply to solutions to either Dirichlet or Neumann boundary value problems. Minimal regularity on the boundary of the domain is required. If the domain is convex, no regularity of its boundary is needed at all

Anomalous diffusion in polymers: long-time behaviour

We study the Dirichlet boundary value problem for viscoelastic diffusion in polymers. We show that its weak solutions generate a dissipative semiflow. We construct the minimal trajectory attractor and the global attractor for this problem.Comment: 13 page

PAMELA results on the cosmic-ray antiproton flux from 60 MeV to 180 GeV in kinetic energy

The satellite-borne experiment PAMELA has been used to make a new measurement of the cosmic-ray antiproton flux and the antiproton-to-proton flux ratio which extends previously published measurements down to 60 MeV and up to 180 GeV in kinetic energy. During 850 days of data acquisition approximately 1500 antiprotons were observed. The measurements are consistent with purely secondary production of antiprotons in the galaxy. More precise secondary production models are required for a complete interpretation of the results.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Collective Excitations of Holographic Quantum Liquids in a Magnetic Field

We use holography to study N=4 supersymmetric SU(Nc) Yang-Mills theory in the large-Nc and large-coupling limits coupled to a number Nf << Nc of (n+1)-dimensional massless supersymmetric hypermultiplets in the Nc representation of SU(Nc), with n=2,3. We introduce a temperature T, a baryon number chemical potential mu, and a baryon number magnetic field B, and work in a regime with mu >> T,\sqrt{B}. We study the collective excitations of these holographic quantum liquids by computing the poles in the retarded Green's function of the baryon number charge density operator and the associated peaks in the spectral function. We focus on the evolution of the collective excitations as we increase the frequency relative to T, i.e. the hydrodynamic/collisionless crossover. We find that for all B, at low frequencies the tallest peak in the spectral function is associated with hydrodynamic charge diffusion. At high frequencies the tallest peak is associated with a sound mode similar to the zero sound mode in the collisionless regime of a Landau Fermi liquid. The sound mode has a gap proportional to B, and as a result for intermediate frequencies and for B sufficiently large compared to T the spectral function is strongly suppressed. We find that the hydrodynamic/collisionless crossover occurs at a frequency that is approximately B-independent.Comment: 45 pages, 8 png and 47 pdf images in 22 figure

A genome-wide association study identifies protein quantitative trait loci (pQTLs)

There is considerable evidence that human genetic variation influences gene expression. Genome-wide studies have revealed that mRNA levels are associated with genetic variation in or close to the gene coding for those mRNA transcripts - cis effects, and elsewhere in the genome - trans effects. The role of genetic variation in determining protein levels has not been systematically assessed. Using a genome-wide association approach we show that common genetic variation influences levels of clinically relevant proteins in human serum and plasma. We evaluated the role of 496,032 polymorphisms on levels of 42 proteins measured in 1200 fasting individuals from the population based InCHIANTI study. Proteins included insulin, several interleukins, adipokines, chemokines, and liver function markers that are implicated in many common diseases including metabolic, inflammatory, and infectious conditions. We identified eight Cis effects, including variants in or near the IL6R (p = 1.8×10 -57), CCL4L1 (p = 3.9×10-21), IL18 (p = 6.8×10-13), LPA (p = 4.4×10-10), GGT1 (p = 1.5×10-7), SHBG (p = 3.1×10-7), CRP (p = 6.4×10-6) and IL1RN (p = 7.3×10-6) genes, all associated with their respective protein products with effect sizes ranging from 0.19 to 0.69 standard deviations per allele. Mechanisms implicated include altered rates of cleavage of bound to unbound soluble receptor (IL6R), altered secretion rates of different sized proteins (LPA), variation in gene copy number (CCL4L1) and altered transcription (GGT1). We identified one novel trans effect that was an association between ABO blood group and tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) levels (p = 6.8×10-40), but this finding was not present when TNF-alpha was measured using a different assay , or in a second study, suggesting an assay-specific association. Our results show that protein levels share some of the features of the genetics of gene expression. These include the presence of strong genetic effects in cis locations. The identification of protein quantitative trait loci (pQTLs) may be a powerful complementary method of improving our understanding of disease pathways. © 2008 Melzer et al

Probe-level linear model fitting and mixture modeling results in high accuracy detection of differential gene expression

BACKGROUND: The identification of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from Affymetrix GeneChips arrays is currently done by first computing expression levels from the low-level probe intensities, then deriving significance by comparing these expression levels between conditions. The proposed PL-LM (Probe-Level Linear Model) method implements a linear model applied on the probe-level data to directly estimate the treatment effect. A finite mixture of Gaussian components is then used to identify DEGs using the coefficients estimated by the linear model. This approach can readily be applied to experimental design with or without replication. RESULTS: On a wholly defined dataset, the PL-LM method was able to identify 75% of the differentially expressed genes within 10% of false positives. This accuracy was achieved both using the three replicates per conditions available in the dataset and using only one replicate per condition. CONCLUSION: The method achieves, on this dataset, a higher accuracy than the best set of tools identified by the authors of the dataset, and does so using only one replicate per condition

A Survey on the Krein-von Neumann Extension, the corresponding Abstract Buckling Problem, and Weyl-Type Spectral Asymptotics for Perturbed Krein Laplacians in Nonsmooth Domains

In the first (and abstract) part of this survey we prove the unitary equivalence of the inverse of the Krein--von Neumann extension (on the orthogonal complement of its kernel) of a densely defined, closed, strictly positive operator, $S\geq \varepsilon I_{\mathcal{H}}$ for some $\varepsilon >0$ in a Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ to an abstract buckling problem operator. This establishes the Krein extension as a natural object in elasticity theory (in analogy to the Friedrichs extension, which found natural applications in quantum mechanics, elasticity, etc.). In the second, and principal part of this survey, we study spectral properties for $H_{K,\Omega}$, the Krein--von Neumann extension of the perturbed Laplacian $-\Delta+V$ (in short, the perturbed Krein Laplacian) defined on $C^\infty_0(\Omega)$, where $V$ is measurable, bounded and nonnegative, in a bounded open set $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ belonging to a class of nonsmooth domains which contains all convex domains, along with all domains of class $C^{1,r}$, $r>1/2$.Comment: 68 pages. arXiv admin note: extreme text overlap with arXiv:0907.144

Acute pressure overload of the right ventricle. Comparison of two models of right-left shunt. Pulmonary artery to left atrium and right atrium to left atrium: experimental study

<p>Abtract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In right ventricular failure (RVF), an interatrial shunt can relieve symptoms of severe pulmonary hypertension by reducing right ventricular preload and increasing systemic flow. Using a pig model to determine if a pulmonary artery - left atrium shunt (PA-LA) is better than a right atrial - left atrial shunt (RA-LA), we compared the hemodynamic effects and blood gases between the two shunts.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Thirty, male Large White pigs weighting in average 21.3 kg ± 0.7 (SEM) were divided into two groups (15 pigs per group): In group 1, banding of the pulmonary artery and a pulmonary artery to left atrium shunt with an 8 mm graft (PA-LA) was performed and in group 2 banding of the pulmonary artery and right atrial to left atrial shunt (RA-LA) with a similar graft was performed. Hemodynamic parameters and blood gases were measured from all cardiac chambers in 10 and 20 minutes, half and one hour interval from the baseline (30 min from the banding). Cardiac output and flow of at the left anterior descending artery was also monitored.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In both groups, a stable RVF was generated. The PA-LA shunt compared to the RA-LA shunt has better hemodynamic performance concerning the decreased right ventricle afterload, the 4 fold higher mean pressure of the shunt, the better flow in left anterior descending artery and the decreased systemic vascular resistance. Favorable to the PA-LA shunt is also the tendency - although not statistically significant - in relation to central venous pressure, left atrial filling and cardiac output.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The PA-LA shunt can effectively reverse the catastrophic effects of acute RVF offering better hemodynamic characteristics than an interatrial shunt.</p

The deuteron: structure and form factors

A brief review of the history of the discovery of the deuteron in provided. The current status of both experiment and theory for the elastic electron scattering is then presented.Comment: 80 pages, 33 figures, submited to Advances in Nuclear Physic

Exclusive Leptoproduction of rho^0 Mesons from Hydrogen at Intermediate Virtual Photon Energies

Measurements of the cross section for exclusive virtual-photoproduction of rho^0 mesons from hydrogen are reported. The data were collected by the HERMES experiment using 27.5 GeV positrons incident on a hydrogen gas target in the HERA storage ring. The invariant mass W of the photon-nucleon system ranges from 4.0 to 6.0 GeV, while the negative squared four-momentum Q^2 of the virtual photon varies from 0.7 to 5.0 GeV^2. The present data together with most of the previous data at W > 4 GeV are well described by a model that infers the W-dependence of the cross section from the dependence on the Bjorken scaling variable x of the unpolarized structure function for deep-inelastic scattering. In addition, a model calculation based on Off-Forward Parton Distributions gives a fairly good account of the longitudinal component of the rho^0 production cross section for Q^2 > 2 GeV^2.Comment: 10 pages, 6 embedded figures, LaTeX for SVJour(epj) document class. Revisions: curves added to Fig. 1, several clarifications added to tex