Effects of hadronic potentials on elliptic flows in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Within the framework of a multiphase transport (AMPT) model that includes both initial partonic and final hadronic interactions, we show that including mean-field potentials in the hadronic phase leads to a splitting of the elliptic flows of particles and their antiparticles, providing thus a plausible explanation of the different elliptic flows between $p$ and ${\bar p}$, $K^+$ and $K^-$, and $\pi^+$ and $\pi^-$ observed in recent Beam Energy Scan (BES) program at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC).Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure

Mechanics of Tunable Helices and Geometric Frustration in Biomimetic Seashells

Helical structures are ubiquitous in nature and engineering, ranging from DNA molecules to plant tendrils, from sea snail shells to nanoribbons. While the helical shapes in natural and engineered systems often exhibit nearly uniform radius and pitch, helical shell structures with changing radius and pitch, such as seashells and some plant tendrils, adds to the variety of this family of aesthetic beauty. Here we develop a comprehensive theoretical framework for tunable helical morphologies, and report the first biomimetic seashell-like structure resulting from mechanics of geometric frustration. In previous studies, the total potential energy is everywhere minimized when the system achieves equilibrium. In this work, however, the local energy minimization cannot be realized because of the geometric incompatibility, and hence the whole system deforms into a shape with a global energy minimum whereby the energy in each segment may not necessarily be locally optimized. This novel approach can be applied to develop materials and devices of tunable geometries with a range of applications in nano/biotechnology

Clinical effects research of the excision of pterygium combined with limbal epithelial autograft with conjunctival grafting on recurrent pterygium

AIM: To observe the clinical effects of the excision of pterygium combined with limbal epithelial autograft with conjunctival grafting on recurrent pterygium. <p>METHODS: Totally 84 patients(84 eyes)with first recurrent pterygium were allocated two groups: excision pterygium with limbal epithelial autograft with conjunctival(group A, 43 cases with 43 eyes)and excision of pterygium with conjunctival autograft(group B, 41 cases with 41 eyes), the post-operative follow-up period of 12 months, we analyzed the repair time of epithelium, tear break-up time(1 month and 3 months), Schirmer l test(1 month and 3 months), corneal fluorescence staining test(1 month and 3 months), and recurrent rate. <p>RESULTS: The group A had a shorter repair time of epithelium and lower recurrent rate, compared with the group B, which had statistically significant difference(<i>P</i><0.05), but there was no statistically significant difference in the tear break-up time, corneal fluorescence staining test and the Schirmer l test in 1 month and 3 months between the two groups(<i>P</i>>0.05). <p>CONCLUSION:Limbal epithelial autograft with conjunctival transplantation is a convenient, safe, effective method for the treatment of recurrent pterygium

Partonic effects on higher-order anisotropic flows in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Higher-order anisotropic flows $v_{4}$ and $v_{6}$ in heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider are studied in a multiphase transport model that has previously been used successfully for describing the elliptic flow $v_2$ in these collisions. We find that the same parton scattering cross section of about 10 \textrm{mb} used in explaining the measured $v_2$ can also reproduce the recent data on $v_{4}$ and $v_{6}$ from Au + Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ \textrm{AGeV}. It is further found that the $$ is a more sensitive probe of the initial partonic dynamics in these collisions than $v_{2}$. Moreover, higher-order parton anisotropic flows are nonnegligible and satisfy the scaling relation $v_{n,q}(p_{T})\sim v_{2,q}^{n/2}(p_{T})$, which leads naturally to the observed similar scaling relation among hadron anisotropic flows when the coalescence model is used to describe hadron production from the partonic matter.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, version to appear in PRC as a Rapid Communicatio

Investigations of urethral sphincter activity in mice with bladder hyperalgesia before and after drug administration of gabapentin.

PurposeThis study investigated the effect of gabapentin on lower urinary tract dysfunction focusing on urethral activities and cystitis-induced hyperalgesia in a mouse model of painful bladder syndrome/interstitial cystitis (PBS/IC). The electromyography&nbsp;(EMG) of external urethral sphincter&nbsp;(EUS) was difficult to obtain, but contained useful information to examine the drug effect in mice.MethodsFemale C57BL/6J mice were intraperitoneally (ip) administration with either saline or 200&nbsp;mg/kg of cyclophosphamide (CYP) 48&nbsp;h before experimental evaluation. Cystitis mice were treated with administration of gabapentin (25 or 50&nbsp;mg/kg, ip). Cystometry and EUS EMG were obtained and analyzed during continuous bladder infusion. The visceral pain-related visceromotor reflex (VMR) was recorded in response to isotonic bladder distension.ResultsCystitis mice showed shorter inter-contraction intervals and increased occurrence of non-voiding contractions during bladder infusion, with increased VMR during isotonic bladder distension, indicating cystitis-induced bladder hyperalgesia. Gabapentin (50&nbsp;mg/kg) suppressed effects of CYP on cystometry, but not on EUS EMG activity, during bladder infusion. The effect on urodynamic recordings lasted 4&nbsp;h. VMR was significantly reduced by gabapentin.ConclusionsThe present study showed that CYP-induced cystitis in mice is a model of visceral hyperalgesia affecting detrusor contractions, not urethral activations. The technique of using EUS&nbsp;EMG to evaluate the drug effects on urethral activities is novel and useful for future investigations. Gabapentin can be as a potential treatment for detrusor overactivity and PBS/IC

The Decay Properties of the 1^{-+} Hybrid State

Within the framework of the QCD sum rules, we consider the three-point correlation function, work at the limit q^2 -> 0 and m_\pi -> 0, and pick out the singular term ~ {1\over q^2} to extract the pionic coupling constants of the 1^{-+} hybrid meson. Then we calculate the decay widths of different modes. The decay width of the S-wave modes b_1 \pi, f_1\pi increases quickly as the hybrid meson mass and decay momentum increase. But for the low mass hybrid meson around 1.6 GeV, the P-wave decay mode \rho \pi is very important and its width is around 180 MeV, while the widths of \eta \pi and \eta^\prime \pi are strongly suppressed. We suggest the experimental search of \pi_1(1600) through the decay chains at BESIII: e^+e^- -> J/\psi(\psi') -> \pi_1 +\gamma or e^+e^- -> J/\psi(\psi') -> \pi_1 +\rho where the \pi_1 state can be reconstructed through the decay modes \pi_1 -> \rho\pi -> \pi^+\pi^-\pi^0 or \pi_1 -> f_1(1285)\pi^0. It is also interesting to look for \pi_1 using the available BELLE/BABAR data through the process e^+e^- -> \gamma^\ast -> \rho\pi_1, b_1\pi_1, \gamma \pi_1 etc.Comment: one reference correcte

GPUSCAN++^{++}:Efficient Structural Graph Clustering on GPUs

Structural clustering is one of the most popular graph clustering methods, which has achieved great performance improvement by utilizing GPUs. Even though, the state-of-the-art GPU-based structural clustering algorithm, GPUSCAN, still suffers from efficiency issues since lots of extra costs are introduced for parallelization. Moreover, GPUSCAN assumes that the graph is resident in the GPU memory. However, the GPU memory capacity is limited currently while many real-world graphs are big and cannot fit in the GPU memory, which makes GPUSCAN unable to handle large graphs. Motivated by this, we present a new GPU-based structural clustering algorithm, GPUSCAN++, in this paper. To address the efficiency issue, we propose a new progressive clustering method tailored for GPUs that not only avoid high parallelization costs but also fully exploits the computing resources of GPUs. To address the GPU memory limitation issue, we propose a partition-based algorithm for structural clustering that can process large graphs with limited GPU memory. We conduct experiments on real graphs, and the experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm can achieve up to 168 times speedup compared with the state-of-the-art GPU-based algorithm when the graph can be resident in the GPU memory. Moreover, our algorithm is scalable to handle large graphs. As an example, our algorithm can finish the structural clustering on a graph with 1.8 billion edges using less than 2 GB GPU memory