Effective Theory Approach to the Skyrme model and Application to Pentaquarks

The Skyrme model is reconsidered from an effective theory point of view. From the most general chiral Lagrangian up to including terms of order $p^4$, $N_c$ and $\delta m^2$ ($\delta m\equiv m_s-m$), new interactions, which have never been considered before, appear upon collective coordinate quantization. We obtain the parameter set best fitted to the observed low-lying baryon masses, by performing the second order perturbative calculations with respect to $\delta m$. We calculate the masses and the decay widths of the other members of (mainly) anti-decuplet pentaquark states. The formula for the decay widths is reconsidered and its baryon mass dependence is clarified.Comment: 65 pages, 1 figure. Revised version:the complete second order perturbative calculations performed and two appendices adde

Safety and efficacy of combination therapy with low-dose gemcitabine, paclitaxel, and sorafenib in patients with cisplatin-resistant urothelial cancer

Various regimens including molecular targeted agents have been examined in patients with cisplatin (CDDP)-resistant urothelial cancer (UC). However, some studies have been stopped owing to the development of severe adverse events. The main aim of this study was to examine the anticancer effects, changes in the quality of life (QoL), and safety of combined therapy of low-dose gemcitabine, paclitaxel, and sorafenib (LD-GPS) in patients with CDDP-resistant UC. Twenty patients were treated with gemcitabine (700 mg/m2 on day 1), paclitaxel (70 mg/m2 on day 1), and sorafenib (400 mg/day on days 8?22). QoL and pain relief were evaluated using the short-form survey (SF)-36 for bodily pain and the visual analog scale (VAS). VAS scores were significantly decreased by both the second- and third-line therapies (P = 0.012 and 0.028, respectively). The bodily pain score from the SF-36 survey was also significantly (P = 0.012) decreased. Complete responses, partial responses, and stable disease were found in 0 (0.0 %), 1 (5.0 %), and 13 patients (65 %), respectively. The median (interquartile range) period of overall survival after starting of this therapy was 7 (5?11) months. Three patients (15.0 %) stopped therapy because of grade 3 fatigue and hand?foot reactions. LD-GPS therapy was well tolerated by patients with CDDP-resistant UC. QoL was maintained, and improvements in their pain levels were found after treatment; pain relief was detected after third-line therapy. We suggest that this treatment regimen is worthy of consideration as second- and third-line therapy for patients with CDDP-resistant UC

Two-Sided Malicious Security for Private Intersection-Sum with Cardinality

Private intersection-sum with cardinality allows two parties, where each party holds a private set and one of the parties additionally holds a private integer value associated with each element in her set, to jointly compute the cardinality of the intersection of the two sets as well as the sum of the associated integer values for all the elements in the intersection, and nothing beyond that. We present a new construction for private intersection sum with cardinality that provides malicious security with abort and guarantees that both parties receive the output upon successful completion of the protocol. A central building block for our constructions is a primitive called shuffled distributed oblivious PRF (DOPRF), which is a PRF that offers oblivious evaluation using a secret key shared between two parties, and in addition to this allows obliviously permuting the PRF outputs of several parallel oblivious evaluations. We present the first construction for shuffled DOPRF with malicious security. We further present several new sigma proof protocols for relations across Pedersen commitments, ElGamal encryptions, and Camenisch-Shoup encryptions that we use in our main construction, for which we develop new batching techniques to reduce communication. We implement and evaluate the efficiency of our protocol and show that we can achieve communication cost that is only 4-5 times greater than the most efficient semi-honest protocol. When measuring monetary cost of executing the protocol in the cloud, our protocol is 25 times more expensive than the semi-honest protocol. Our construction also allows for different parameter regimes that enable trade-offs between communication and computation

An investigation of the possible influence of microorganisms on the uptake of trace metals by ulva lactuca

Trace metals are actual or potential pollutants in estuarine and coastal ecosystems. Anthropogenic activities, such as mining, industries and waste streams, can result in an increased release of trace metals into the environment at concentrations that may impact on the health, biological diversity and use of coastal ecosystems. They can be transported in food chains after absorption from the water by plants and consequently assessing the behaviour of metals requires an understanding of the factors that control the uptake of metals by organisms. In an attempt to investigate the effect of microorganisms on metal behaviour this study examines the effect that bacterial concentrations in solution have on the uptake of two sample trace elements, cadmium and selenium, by the algae Ulva lactuca. Algae collected from the Coledale area were tested for metal uptake in the presence of bacteria cultured from waters in the same area. Different concentrations of bacteria in solution were inoculated into salt-water media that contained samples of the algae and known concentrations of radioisotopes of selenium and cadmium. The algae were measured, by radiochemical methods, for metal uptake rates under the different treatment conditions. No overall conclusions could be developed as it proved difficult to maintain measurable differences between the bacterial inoculant concentrations in the experimental media. The differing concentrations of the bacterial treatments was the main variable in the experimental design and thus an analysis of the other experimental results, such as algae uptake, against these treatments was inhibited by the lack of significant difference within the bacterial measurements. The study did, however, provide valuable information for developing new experimental procedures to improve any further research into this area. A modified experimental procedure is proposed so that the impact of this important component (bacterial concentration variation) on metal behaviour in coastal waters can be investigated in more detail