420 research outputs found
On the stability of Dirac sheet configurations
Using cooling for SU(2) lattice configurations, purely Abelian constant
magnetic field configurations were left over after the annihilation of
constituents that formed metastable Q=0 configurations. These so-called Dirac
sheet configurations were found to be stable if emerging from the confined
phase, close to the deconfinement phase transition, provided their Polyakov
loop was sufficiently non-trivial. Here we show how this is related to the
notion of marginal stability of the appropriate constant magnetic field
configurations. We find a perfect agreement between the analytic prediction for
the dependence of stability on the value of the Polyakov loop (the holonomy) in
a finite volume and the numerical results studied on a finite lattice in the
context of the Dirac sheet configurations
Ileal and faecal protein digestibility measurement in humans and other non-ruminants - a comparative species view
A comparative non-ruminant species view of the contribution of the large intestinal metabolism to inaccuracies in nitrogen and amino acid absorption measurements is provided to assess potential implications for the determination of crude protein/amino acid digestibility in adult humans consuming lower digestible protein sources. Most of the amino acids in the hindgut are constituents of the microorganisms and significant microbial metabolism of dietary and endogenous amino acids occurs. Bacterial metabolism of nitrogen-containing compounds leads to a significant disappearance of nitrogen in the large intestine. Literature data show that some 79 % of the nitrogen entering the large intestine of the horse is absorbed. For dogs, sows, and growing pigs these estimates are 49, 34 and 16 %, respectively. The coefficient of gut differentiation of humans compares closely to that of dogs while the coefficient of fermentation in humans is the lowest of all non-ruminant species and closest to that of cats and dogs. Large intestinal digesta transit times of humans compare closest to adult dogs. Significant amino acid metabolism has been shown to occur in the large intestine of the adult dog. Use of the growing pig as an animal model is likely to underestimate the fermentation of amino acids in the human large intestine. Based on the significant degree of fermentation of nitrogen-containing components in the large intestine of several non-ruminant species, it can be expected that determination of amino acid digestibility at a faecal level in humans consuming low quality proteins would not provide accurate estimates of the amino acids absorbed by the intestine
The Association between Foot and Ulcer Microcirculation Measured with Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging and Healing of Diabetic Foot Ulcers
Diagnosis of peripheral artery disease in people with diabetes and a foot ulcer using current non-invasive blood pressure measurements is challenging. Laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) is a promising non-invasive technique to measure cutaneous microcirculation. This study investigated the association between microcirculation (measured with both LSCI and non-invasive blood pressure measurement) and healing of diabetic foot ulcers 12 and 26 weeks after measurement. We included sixty-one patients with a diabetic foot ulcer in this prospective, single-center, observational cohort-study. LSCI scans of the foot, ulcer, and ulcer edge were conducted, during baseline and post-occlusion hyperemia. Non-invasive blood pressure measurement included arm, foot, and toe pressures and associated indices. Healing was defined as complete re-epithelialization and scored at 12 and 26 weeks. We found no significant difference between patients with healed or non-healed foot ulcers for both types of measurements (p = 0.135–0.989). ROC curves demonstrated moderate sensitivity (range of 0.636–0.971) and specificity (range of 0.464–0.889), for LSCI and non-invasive blood pressure measurements. Therefore, no association between diabetic foot ulcer healing and LSCI-measured microcirculation or non-invasive blood pressure measurements was found. The healing tendency of diabetic foot ulcers is difficult to predict based on single measurements using current blood pressure measurements or LSCI
Center-stabilized Yang-Mills theory: confinement and large volume independence
We examine a double trace deformation of SU(N) Yang-Mills theory which, for
large and large volume, is equivalent to unmodified Yang-Mills theory up to
corrections. In contrast to the unmodified theory, large volume
independence is valid in the deformed theory down to arbitrarily small volumes.
The double trace deformation prevents the spontaneous breaking of center
symmetry which would otherwise disrupt large volume independence in small
volumes. For small values of , if the theory is formulated on with a sufficiently small compactification size , then an analytic
treatment of the non-perturbative dynamics of the deformed theory is possible.
In this regime, we show that the deformed Yang-Mills theory has a mass gap and
exhibits linear confinement. Increasing the circumference or number of
colors decreases the separation of scales on which the analytic treatment
relies. However, there are no order parameters which distinguish the small and
large radius regimes. Consequently, for small the deformed theory provides
a novel example of a locally four-dimensional pure gauge theory in which one
has analytic control over confinement, while for large it provides a simple
fully reduced model for Yang-Mills theory. The construction is easily
generalized to QCD and other QCD-like theories.Comment: 29 pages, expanded discussion of multiple compactified dimension
Semi-Automatic Tracking of Laser Speckle Contrast Images of Microcirculation in Diabetic Foot Ulcers
Foot ulcers are a severe complication of diabetes mellitus. Assessment of the vascular status of diabetic foot ulcers with Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSCI) is a promising approach for diagnosis and prognosis. However, manual assessment during analysis of LSCI limits clinical applicability. Our aim was to develop and validate a fast and robust tracking algorithm for semi-automatic analysis of LSCI data. The feet of 33 participants with diabetic foot ulcers were recorded with LSCI, including at baseline, during the Post-Occlusive Reactive Hyperemia (PORH) test, and during the Buerger's test. Different regions of interest (ROIs) were used to measure microcirculation in different areas of the foot. A tracking algorithm was developed in MATLAB to reposition the ROIs in the LSCI scans. Manual- and algorithm-tracking of all recordings were compared by calculating the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC). The algorithm was faster in comparison with the manual approach (90 s vs. 15 min). Agreement between manual- and algorithm-tracking was good to excellent during baseline (ICC = 0.896-0.984; p <0.001), the PORH test (ICC = 0.790-0.960; p <0.001), and the Buerger's test (ICC = 0.851-0.978; p <0.001), resulting in a tracking algorithm that delivers assessment of LSCI in diabetic foot ulcers with results comparable to a labor-intensive manual approach, but with a 10-fold workload reduction.</p
Validation of a smartphone-based infrared thermal camera and its possibilities with 3D thermal mapping of diabetic foot ulcer detection
Strong Coupling Phenomena on the Noncommutative Plane
We study strong coupling phenomena in U(1) gauge theory on the
non-commutative plane. To do so, we make use of a T-dual description in terms
of an limit of U(N) gauge theory on a commutative torus. The
magnetic flux on this torus is taken to be , while the area scales like
1/N, keeping fixed. With a few assumptions, we argue that the
speed of high frequency light in pure non-commutative QED is modified in the
non-commutative directions by the factor , where
is the non-commutative parameter. If charged flavours are included,
there is an upper bound on the momentum of a photon propagating in the
non-commutative directions, beyond which it is unstable against production of
charged pairs. We also discuss a particular limit of pure
non-commutative QED which is T-dual to a more conventional limit
with fixed. In the non-commutative description, this limit gives rise to
an exotic theory of open strings.Comment: 24 pages, latex, 2 figures, corrected typo in eqn 6.
Probing for Instanton Quarks with epsilon-Cooling
We use epsilon-cooling, adjusting at will the order a^2 corrections to the
lattice action, to study the parameter space of instantons in the background of
non-trivial holonomy and to determine the presence and nature of constituents
with fractional topological charge at finite and zero temperature for SU(2). As
an additional tool, zero temperature configurations were generated from those
at finite temperature with well-separated constituents. This is achieved by
"adiabatically" adjusting the anisotropic coupling used to implement finite
temperature on a symmetric lattice. The action and topological charge density,
as well as the Polyakov loop and chiral zero-modes are used to analyse these
configurations. We also show how cooling histories themselves can reveal the
presence of constituents with fractional topological charge. We comment on the
interpretation of recent fermion zero-mode studies for thermalized ensembles at
small temperatures.Comment: 26 pages, 14 figures in 33 part
Tube Model for Light-Front QCD
We propose the tube model as a first step in solving the bound state problem
in light-front QCD. In this approach we neglect transverse variations of the
fields, producing a model with 1+1 dimensional dynamics. We then solve the two,
three, and four particle sectors of the model for the case of pure glue SU(3).
We study convergence to the continuum limit and various properties of the
spectrum.Comment: 29 page
Writhe of center vortices and topological charge -- an explicit example
The manner in which continuum center vortices generate topological charge
density is elucidated using an explicit example. The example vortex
world-surface contains one lone self-intersection point, which contributes a
quantum 1/2 to the topological charge. On the other hand, the surface in
question is orientable and thus must carry global topological charge zero due
to general arguments. Therefore, there must be another contribution, coming
from vortex writhe. The latter is known for the lattice analogue of the example
vortex considered, where it is quite intuitive. For the vortex in the
continuum, including the limit of an infinitely thin vortex, a careful analysis
is performed and it is shown how the contribution to the topological charge
induced by writhe is distributed over the vortex surface.Comment: 33 latex pages, 10 figures incorporating 14 ps files. Furthermore,
the time evolution of the vortex line discussed in this work can be viewed as
a gif movie, available for download by following the PostScript link below --
watch for the cute feature at the self-intersection poin
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