Stem cell-like populations and immunoregulatory molecules in periodontal granulation tissue

Background and Objectives: Determine the presence of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in healthy periodontal tissue and periodontal granulation tissue (GT) and explore associations between immuno‐regulatory molecules and selected subgingival microorganisms. Material and Methods: Mesenchymal stem cells were isolated, propagated and characterised by flow cytometry from a region of healthy gingival tissue and inflamed GT of 10 systemically healthy non‐smokers with chronic periodontitis. Tissue levels of immunoregulatory molecules were determined by qPCR and Gingival Crevicular Fluid (GCF) levels by ELISA. Subgingival plaque levels of periodontal pathogens were determined by qPCR Results: Cells with MSC‐properties were isolated from both inflamed GT and healthy gingival (G) tissue. A pro‐inflammatory process predominated in GT which was partly reflected in GCF and putative periodontal pathogens were higher at diseased sites. However, there was no significant difference in surface levels of mesenchymal (CD90, CD73, CD146, CD271, STRO‐1), endothelial (CD105, CD106), hematopoietic (CD34, CD45) and embryonic (SSEA‐4) stem cell markers between MSCs isolated from GT and G tissue. Conclusion: Periodontal lesions, albeit inflamed, retain healing potential as inferred by the presence of MSC‐like cells with similar immunophenotypic characteristics to those found in healthy periodontal tissue. Therefore, there might be merits for healing in preserving sufficient GT in‐situ during periodontal surgery

Pseudomembranous Trigonitis: A Common but Underrecognized Urological Entity

Pseudomembranous trigonitis is the term used to describe squamous metaplastic changes of the bladder trigone, which affect nearly 40% of adult females. We present the characteristics of this underrecognized clinical entity and encourage further relevant research

"Where is My Parcel?" Fast and Efficient Classifiers to Detect User Intent in Natural Language

We study the performance of customer intent classifiers designed to predict the most popular intent received through ASOS.com Customer Care Department, namely “Where is my order?”. These queries are characterised by the use of colloquialism, label noise and short message length. We conduct extensive experiments with twowell established classification models: logistic regression via n-grams to account for sequences in the dataand recurrent neural networks that perform the extraction of these sequential patterns automatically. Maintaining the embedding layer fixed to GloVe coordinates, a Mann-Whitney U test indicated that the F1 score on aheld out set of messages was lower for recurrent neural network classifiers than for linear n-grams classifiers (M1=0.828, M2=0.815; U=1,196, P=1.46e-20), unless all layers were jointly trained with all other network parameters (M1=0.831, M2=0.828, U=4,280, P=8.24e-4). This plain neural network produced top performance on a denoised set of labels (0.887 F1) matching with Human annotators (0.889 F1) and superior to linear classifiers (0.865 F1). Calibrating these models to achieveprecision levels above Human performance (0.93 Precision), our results indicate a small difference in Recall of 0.05 for the plain neural networks (training under 1hr), and 0.07 for the linear n-grams (training under 10min), revealing the latter as a judicious choice of model architecture in modern AI production systems

Spin Polaron Effective Magnetic Model for La_{0.5}Ca_{0.5}MnO_3

The conventional paradigm of charge order for La_{1-x}Ca_xMnO_3 for x=0.5 has been challenged recently by a Zener polaron picture emerging from experiments and theoretical calculations. The effective low energy Hamiltonian for the magnetic degrees of freedom has been found to be a cubic Heisenberg model, with ferromagnetic nearest neighbor and frustrating antiferromagnetic next nearest neighbor interactions in the planes, and antiferromagnetic interaction between planes. With linear spin wave theory and diagonalization of small clusters up to 27 sites we find that the behavior of the model interpolates between the A and CE-type magnetic structures when a frustrating intraplanar interaction is tuned. The values of the interactions calculated by ab initio methods indicate a possible non-bipartite picture of polaron ordering differing from the conventional one.Comment: 21 pages and 8 figures (included), Late

Long-time electron spin storage via dynamical suppression of hyperfine-induced decoherence in a quantum dot

The coherence time of an electron spin decohered by the nuclear spin environment in a quantum dot can be substantially increased by subjecting the electron to suitable dynamical decoupling sequences. We analyze the performance of high-level decoupling protocols by using a combination of analytical and exact numerical methods, and by paying special attention to the regimes of large inter-pulse delays and long-time dynamics, which are outside the reach of standard average Hamiltonian theory descriptions. We demonstrate that dynamical decoupling can remain efficient far beyond its formal domain of applicability, and find that a protocol exploiting concatenated design provides best performance for this system in the relevant parameter range. In situations where the initial electron state is known, protocols able to completely freeze decoherence at long times are constructed and characterized. The impact of system and control non-idealities is also assessed, including the effect of intra-bath dipolar interaction, magnetic field bias and bath polarization, as well as systematic pulse imperfections. While small bias field and small bath polarization degrade the decoupling fidelity, enhanced performance and temporal modulation result from strong applied fields and high polarizations. Overall, we find that if the relative errors of the control parameters do not exceed 5%, decoupling protocols can still prolong the coherence time by up to two orders of magnitude.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Magnetic Anisotropy in the Molecular Complex V15

We apply degenerate perturbation theory to investigate the effects of magnetic anisotropy in the magnetic molecule V15. Magnetic anisotropy is introduced via Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction in the full Hilbert space of the system. Our model provides an explanation for the rounding of transitions in the magnetization as a function of applied field at low temperature, from which an estimate for the DM interaction is found. We find that the calculated energy differences of the lowest energy states are consistent with the available data. Our model also offers a novel explanation for the hysteretic nature of the time-dependent magnetization data.Comment: Final versio

PEER Testbed Study on a Laboratory Building: Exercising Seismic Performance Assessment

From 2002 to 2004 (years five and six of a ten-year funding cycle), the PEER Center organized the majority of its research around six testbeds. Two buildings and two bridges, a campus, and a transportation network were selected as case studies to “exercise” the PEER performance-based earthquake engineering methodology. All projects involved interdisciplinary teams of researchers, each producing data to be used by other colleagues in their research. The testbeds demonstrated that it is possible to create the data necessary to populate the PEER performancebased framing equation, linking the hazard analysis, the structural analysis, the development of damage measures, loss analysis, and decision variables. This report describes one of the building testbeds—the UC Science Building. The project was chosen to focus attention on the consequences of losses of laboratory contents, particularly downtime. The UC Science testbed evaluated the earthquake hazard and the structural performance of a well-designed recently built reinforced concrete laboratory building using the OpenSees platform. Researchers conducted shake table tests on samples of critical laboratory contents in order to develop fragility curves used to analyze the probability of losses based on equipment failure. The UC Science testbed undertook an extreme case in performance assessment—linking performance of contents to operational failure. The research shows the interdependence of building structure, systems, and contents in performance assessment, and highlights where further research is needed. The Executive Summary provides a short description of the overall testbed research program, while the main body of the report includes summary chapters from individual researchers. More extensive research reports are cited in the reference section of each chapter

Performance of a novel wafer scale CMOS active pixel sensor for bio-medical imaging

Recently CMOS Active Pixels Sensors (APSs) have become a valuable alternative to amorphous Silicon and Selenium Flat Panel Imagers (FPIs) in bio-medical imaging applications. CMOS APSs can now be scaled up to the standard 20 cm diameter wafer size by means of a reticle stitching block process. However despite wafer scale CMOS APS being monolithic, sources of non-uniformity of response and regional variations can persist representing a significant challenge for wafer scale sensor response. Non-uniformity of stitched sensors can arise from a number of factors related to the manufacturing process, including variation of amplification, variation between readout components, wafer defects and process variations across the wafer due to manufacturing processes. This paper reports on an investigation into the spatial non-uniformity and regional variations of a wafer scale stitched CMOS APS. For the first time a per-pixel analysis of the electro-optical performance of a wafer CMOS APS is presented, to address inhomogeneity issues arising from the stitching techniques used to manufacture wafer scale sensors. A complete model of the signal generation in the pixel array has been provided and proved capable of accounting for noise and gain variations across the pixel array. This novel analysis leads to readout noise and conversion gain being evaluated at pixel level, stitching block level and in regions of interest, resulting in a coefficient of variation ≤ 1.9%. The uniformity of the image quality performance has been further investigated in a typical X-ray application, i.e. mammography, showing a uniformity in terms of CNR among the highest when compared with mammography detectors commonly used in clinical practise. Finally, in order to compare the detection capability of this novel APS with the currently used technology (i.e. FPIs), theoretical evaluation of the Detection Quantum Efficiency (DQE) at zero-frequency has been performed, resulting in a higher DQE for this detector compared to FPIs. Optical characterization, X-ray contrast measurements and theoretical DQE evaluation suggest that a trade off can be found between the need of a large imaging area and the requirement of a uniform imaging performance, making the DynAMITe large area CMOS APS suitable for a range of bio-medical applications

The Antiferromagnetic Heisenberg Model on Clusters with Icosahedral Symmetry

The antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model is considered for spins $s_{i}={1/2}$ located on the vertices of the dodecahedron and the icosahedron, which belong to the point symmetry group $I_{h}$. Taking into account the permutational and spin inversion symmetries of the Hamiltonian results in a drastic reduction of the dimensionality of the problem, leading to full diagonalization for both clusters. There is a strong signature of the frustration present in the systems in the low energy spectrum, where the first excited states are singlets. Frustration also results in a doubly-peaked specific heat as a function of temperature for the dodecahedron. Furthermore, there is a discontinuity in the magnetization as a function of magnetic field for the dodecahedron, where a specific total spin sector never becomes the ground state in a field. This discontinuity is accompanied by a magnetization plateau. The calculation is also extended for $s_{i}=1$ where both systems again have singlet excitations. The magnetization of the dodecahedron has now two discontinuities in an external field and also magnetization plateaux, and the specific heat of the icosahedron a two-peak structure as a function of temperature. The similarities between the two systems suggest that the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a larger cluster with the same symmetry, the 60-site cluster, will have similar properties

Accurate Results from Perturbation Theory for Strongly Frustrated S=1/2S=1/2 Heisenberg Spin Clusters

We investigate the use of perturbation theory in finite sized frustrated spin systems by calculating the effect of quantum fluctuations on coherent states derived from the classical ground state. We first calculate the ground and first excited state wavefunctions as a function of applied field for a 12-site system and compare with the results of exact diagonalization. We then apply the technique to a 20-site system with the same three fold site coordination as the 12-site system. Frustration results in asymptotically convergent series for both systems which are summed with Pad\'e approximants. We find that at zero magnetic field the different connectivity of the two systems leads to a triplet first excited state in the 12-site system and a singlet first excited state in the 20-site system, while the ground state is a singlet for both. We also show how the analytic structure of the Pad\'e approximants at $|\lambda| \simeq 1$ evolves in the complex $\lambda$ plane at the values of the applied field where the ground state switches between spin sectors and how this is connected with the non-trivial dependence of the $$ number on the strength of quantum fluctuations. We discuss the origin of this difference in the energy spectra and in the analytic structures. We also characterize the ground and first excited states according to the values of the various spin correlation functions.Comment: Final version, accepted for publication in Physical review