Anisotropic Cosmological Constant and the CMB Quadrupole Anomaly

There are evidences that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) large-angle anomalies imply a departure from statistical isotropy and hence from the standard cosmological model. We propose a LCDM model extension whose dark energy component preserves its nondynamical character but wield anisotropic vacuum pressure. Exact solutions for the cosmological scale factors are presented, upper bounds for the deformation parameter are evaluated and its value is estimated considering the elliptical universe proposal to solve the quadrupole anomaly. This model can be constructed from a Bianchi I cosmology with cosmological constant from two different ways: i) a straightforward anisotropic modification of the vacuum pressure consistently with energy-momentum conservation; ii) a Poisson structure deformation between canonical momenta such that the dynamics remain invariant under scale factors rescalings.Comment: 8 pages, 2 columns, 1 figure. v2: figure improved, added comments on higher eccentricity powers and references. v3: typos corrected, version to appear in PR

Soluble CD40L and cardiovascular risk in asymptomatic low-grade carotid stenosis

Background and Purpose-We investigated whether soluble CD40L (sCD40L) may predict the risk of cardiovascular (CV) events in patients with asymptomatic carotid plaques. Methods-Forty-two patients with asymptomatic low-grade carotid stenosis (ALCS) and 21 controls without any carotid stenosis were enrolled. All subjects had at least a major cardiovascular risk factor (CRF). Plasma levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), IL-6, and sCD40L were measured. Subjects were reviewed every 12 months (median follow-up, 8 years). Results-ALCS patients had higher (P<0.0001) CRP, IL-6, and sCD40L than controls. Fourteen patients experienced a CV event. Cox regression analysis showed that only high sCD40L levels (P=0.003) independently predicted cardiovascular risk. Conclusions-High levels of sCD40L may predict the risk of CV events in ALCS

Bound vortex states and exotic lattices in multi-component Bose-Einstein condensates: The role of vortex-vortex interaction

We numerically study the vortex-vortex interaction in multi-component homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates within the realm of the Gross-Pitaevskii theory. We provide strong evidences that pairwise vortex interaction captures the underlying mechanisms which determine the geometric configuration of the vortices, such as different lattices in many-vortex states, as well as the bound vortex states with two (dimer) or three (trimer) vortices. Specifically, we discuss and apply our theoretical approach to investigate intra- and inter-component vortex-vortex interactions in two- and three-component Bose-Einstein condensates, thereby shedding light on the formation of the exotic vortex configurations. These results correlate with current experimental efforts in multi-component Bose-Einstein condensates, and the understanding of the role of vortex interactions in multiband superconductors.Comment: Published in PR

Incidence of mild cognitive impairment and dementia in Parkinson's disease: The Parkinson's disease cognitive impairment study

Background: Cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) includes a spectrum varying from Mild Cognitive Impairment (PD-MCI) to PD Dementia (PDD). The main aim of the present study is to evaluate the incidence of PD-MCI, its rate of progression to dementia, and to identify demographic and clinical characteristics which predict cognitive impairment in PD patients. Methods: PD patients from a large hospital-based cohort who underwent at least two comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations were retrospectively enrolled in the study. PD-MCI and PDD were diagnosed according to the Movement Disorder Society criteria. Incidence rates of PD-MCI and PDD were estimated. Clinical and demographic factors predicting PD-MCI and dementia were evaluated using Cox proportional hazard model. Results: Out of 139 enrolled PD patients, 84 were classified with normal cognition (PD-NC), while 55 (39.6%) fulfilled the diagnosis of PD-MCI at baseline. At follow-up (mean follow-up 23.5 ± 10.3 months) 28 (33.3%) of the 84 PD-NC at baseline developed MCI and 4 (4.8%) converted to PDD. The incidence rate of PD-MCI was 184.0/1000 pyar (95% CI 124.7-262.3). At multivariate analysis a negative association between education and MCI development at follow-up was observed (HR 0.37, 95% CI 0.15-0.89; p = 0.03). The incidence rate of dementia was 24.3/1000 pyar (95% CI 7.7-58.5). Out of 55 PD-MCI patients at baseline, 14 (25.4%) converted to PDD, giving an incidence rate of 123.5/1000 pyar (95% CI 70.3-202.2). A five time increased risk of PDD was found in PD patients with MCI at baseline (RR 5.09, 95% CI 1.60-21.4). Conclusion: Our study supports the relevant role of PD-MCI in predicting PDD and underlines the importance of education in reducing the risk of cognitive impairment

The treatment of hyperinsulinemic hypoglycaemia in adults: an update

Treatment of hyperinsulinemic hypoglycaemia (HH) is challenging due to the rarity of this condition and the difficulty of differential diagnosis. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the recent literature on the management of adult HH

Evolution of Anisotropies in Eddington-Born-Infeld Cosmology

Recently a Born-Infeld action for dark energy and dark matter that uses additional affine connections was proposed. At background level, it was shown that the new proposal can mimic the standard cosmological evolution. In Bianchi cosmologies, contrary to the scalar field approach (e.g., Chaplygin gas), the new approach leads to anisotropic pressure, raising the issues of stability of the isotropic solution under anisotropic perturbations and, being it stable, how the anisotropies evolve. In this work, the Eddington-Born-Infeld proposal is extended to a Bianchi type I scenario and residual post-inflationary anisotropies are shown to decay in time. Moreover, it is shown that the shears decay following a damped oscillatory pattern, instead of the standard exponential-like decay. Allowing for some fine tuning on the initial conditions, standard theoretical bounds on the shears can be avoided.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. v2: ref. added, v3: figs. improved, new paragraph in the Conclusions. Accepted in PR

Alterations on the evapotranspiration of sugarcane cultivars under distinct salinity levels applied in the fertigation

The aim of this research was to evaluate the effect of distinct levels of salinity on the evapotranspiration of the RB867515, RB855453, RB92579 and RB928064 sugarcane cultivars. The evapotranspiration was monitored during daytime period under meteorological conditions influenced, mainly by cloud variations. The salinity values were established by addition of 0, 50, 100 and 150 mM of Sodium Chloride (NaCl) to the nutrient solution, which was applied by fertigation, in such way that the electrical conductivity (EC) of the leached solution was near 3, 6, 10 and 13 dS m -1 , respectively. The increase of the NaCl concentration in the nutrient solution affected, significantly and in a linear manner, the evapotranspiration of all sugarcane cultivars, such that the days with low cloud provided the highest evapotranspiration values and the greater reduction among salinity levels. Analysis of the evapotranspiration accumulated during the daytime period showed that there were no significant differences among sugarcane cultivars and that, under the highest atmospheric water demand, the evapotranspiration decreased 48.5 g plant -1 EC -1 . This value represents the average reduction of 5.1% EC -1 when compared to the treatment without NaCl, considering data of all cultivars

Cognitive impairment and levodopa induced dyskinesia in Parkinson’s disease: a longitudinal study from the PACOS cohort

Aim of the study was to evaluate possible associations between cognitive dysfunctions and development of Levodopa Induced Dyskinesia (LID). PD patients from the Parkinson’s disease Cognitive impairment Study cohort who underwent a baseline and follow-up neuropsychological evaluations were enrolled. Mild Cognitive Impairment (PD-MCI) was diagnosed according to MDS level II criteria. The following cognitive domains were evaluated:&nbsp;episodic memory, attention, executive function, visuo-spatial function and language. A domain was considered as impaired when the subject scored 2 standard deviation below normality cut-off values in at least one test for each domain. Levodopa equivalent dose, UPDRS-ME and LID were recorded at baseline and follow-up. To identify possible neuropsychological predictors associated with the probability of LID development at follow-up, Cox proportional-hazards regression model was used. Out of 139 PD patients enrolled (87 men, mean age 65.7 ± 9.4), 18 (12.9%) were dyskinetic at baseline. Out of 121 patients non-dyskinetic at baseline, 22 (18.1%) developed LID at follow-up. The impairment of the attention and executive domains strongly predicted the development of LID (HR 4.45;95%CI 1.49–13.23 and HR 3.46; 95%CI 1.26–9.48 respectively). Impairment of the attention and executive domains increased the risk of dyskinesia reflecting the alteration of common cortical network

Additional simulation training:does it affect students' knowledge acquisition and retention?

Introduction Teaching medical skills during clinical rotation is a complex challenge, which often does not allow students to practise their skills. Nowadays, the use of simulation training has increased to teach skills to medical students. However, transferring the learnt skills from one setting to the other is challenging. In this study, we investigated whether adding a simulation training before the clinical rotation would improve students’ acquisition and retention of knowledge.Methods Two subsequent cohorts were compared. Group A followed the traditional curriculum without additional simulation training. Group B attended an additional simulation training, in which history taking, physical examination and procedures for the primary survey in emergency situations were taught. Both groups answered the same knowledge test before entering their clinical rotation and after 6 months. To analyse students’ scores over time, we conducted a repeated measure analysis of variance. To investigate the difference between knowledge, we conducted a t-test.Results Group B scored significantly higher in both tests and all subscores, except in the Trauma topic in the first measurement point. Students in group A showed decay in knowledge whereas group B showed an increase in knowledge.Conclusions Adding a simulation training, before students entered their clinical rotation, improves students’ knowledge acquisition and retention compared with those who did not receive the additional simulation training

Quantum corrections to gravity and their implications for cosmology and astrophysics

The quantum contributions to the gravitational action are relatively easy to calculate in the higher derivative sector of the theory. However, the applications to the post-inflationary cosmology and astrophysics require the corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action and to the cosmological constant, and those we can not derive yet in a consistent and safe way. At the same time, if we assume that these quantum terms are covariant and that they have relevant magnitude, their functional form can be defined up to a single free parameter, which can be defined on the phenomenological basis. It turns out that the quantum correction may lead, in principle, to surprisingly strong and interesting effects in astrophysics and cosmology.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, WS style, contribution to the Proceedings of the QFEXT-2011 conference in the Centro de Ciencias de Benasque Pedro Pasqual, Spai