It is beautiful because it is holy: the life & work of Robert Lax

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses

Deformation of a renormalization-group equation applied to infinite-order phase transitions

By adding a linear term to a renormalization-group equation in a system exhibiting infinite-order phase transitions, asymptotic behavior of running coupling constants is derived in an algebraic manner. A benefit of this method is presented explicitly using several examples.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, revtex4, typo corrected, references adde

Effect of soil moisture condition on the conversion rate of oxamyl.

The decomposition of oxamyl in four soils under moist conditions was measured in incubation experiments at 15 deg C. Half-lives of oxamyl in soils with moisture tensions of approx. -9.8 X 103 Pa were 13 days in a clay loam, 14 days in a loamy sand, 34 days in a peaty sand and 39 days in a humic loamy sand. The rate of oxamyl decomposition in the clay loam decreased with decreasing soil moisture content down to values for below wilting point. Oxamyl decomposition in the humic loamy sand decreased with decreasing soil moisture content, but increased sharply in the very dry range. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission

Cardiac sarcoma presenting with abdominal pain and mimicking myxoma on echocardiogram

Cardiac sarcoma’s are highly aggressive tumours. Clear resection margins ± autotransplant, followed by chemotherapy, offers the best survival chance. Therefore, frozen section should be preformed when there is ambiguity in diagnosis

Treatment of migraine : from clinical trial to general practice

Room for improvement is present in the treatment of migraine in primary care. However, inviting all patients who receive prescriptions for __2 triptans each month to have an evaluation consultation with their general practitioner (GP), produces insufficient effect on headache outcomes and costs. However, it remains important to stay alert on patients who are candidate for preventive treatment. When discussing the possibility of preventive treatment, GPs should keep in mind possible barriers in patients. Also, GPs have to ask themselves if they do not deny patients a possibly effective treatment because of their own negative ideas towards preventive medication. Also, we learned that when designing pragmatic studies in primary care, there are methodological issues that make it harder to prove the effectiveness of an intervention. First, the outcomes of pragmatic studies in primary care can negatively affected by changes in the behaviour of GPs and patients in the control group. Second, the quality of life outcome measures that are often used in this type of research are harder to validate and to interpret than the more robust outcome measures that are used in clinical trialsUBL - phd migration 201