Instanton, Monopole Condensation and Confinement

The confinement mechanism in the nonperturbative QCD is studied in terms of topological excitation as QCD-monopoles and instantons. In the 't Hooft abelian gauge, QCD is reduced into an abelian gauge theory with monopoles, and the QCD vacuum can be regarded as the dual superconductor with monopole condensation, which leads to the dual Higgs mechanism. The monopole-current theory extracted from QCD is found to have essential features of confinement. We find also close relation between monopoles and instantons using the lattice QCD. In this framework, the lowest $0^{++}$ glueball (1.5 $\sim$ 1.7GeV) can be identified as the QCD-monopole or the dual Higgs particle.Comment: Talk presented by H.Suganuma at the 5th Topical Seminar on The Irresistible Rise of the Standard Model, San Miniato al Todesco, Italy, 21-25 April 1997 5 pages, Plain Late

Weyl Invariant Formulation of Flux-Tube Solution in the Dual Ginzburg-Landau Theory

The flux-tube solution in the dual Ginzburg-Landau (DGL) theory in the Bogomol'nyi limit is studied by using the manifestly Weyl invariant form of the DGL Lagrangian. The dual gauge symmetry is extended to $[U(1)]_m^3$, and accordingly, there appear three different types of the flux-tube. The string tension for each flux-tube is calculated analytically and is found to be the same owing to the Weyl symmetry. It is suggested that the flux-tube can be treated in quite a similar way with the Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen vortex in the U(1) Abelian Higgs theory except for various types of flux-tube.Comment: 12 pages, revtex, no figur

Monopole Clustering and Color Confinement in the Multi-Instanton System

We study color confinement properties of the multi-instanton system, which seems to carry an essence of the nonperturbative QCD vacuum. Here we assume that the multi-instanton system is characterized by the infrared suppression of instantons as $f(\rho)\sim \rho^{-5}$ for large size $\rho$. We first investigate a monopole-clustering appearing in the maximally abelian (MA) gauge by considering the correspondence between instantons and monopoles. In order to clarify the infrared monopole properties, we make the ``block-spin'' transformation for monopole currents. The feature of monopole trajectories changes drastically with the instanton density. At a high instanton density, there appears one very long and highly complicated monopole loop covering the entire physical vacuum. Such a global network of long-monopole loops resembles the lattice QCD result in the MA gauge. Second, we observe that the SU(2) Wilson loop obeys an area law and the static quark potential is approximately proportional to the distance $R$ between quark and anti-quark in the multi-instanton system using the SU(2) lattice with a total volume of $V=(10 fm)^4$ and a lattice spacing of $a=0.05 fm$. We extract the string tension from the $5 \times 10^{6}$ measurements of Wilson loops. With an instanton density of $(N/V)=(1/fm)^4$ and a average instanton size of $\bar{\rho}=0.4 fm$, the multi-instanton system provides the string tension of about $0.4 GeV/fm$

Flux-Tube Ring and Glueball Properties in the Dual Ginzburg-Landau Theory

An intuitive approach to the glueball using the flux-tube ring solution in the dual Ginzburg-Landau theory is presented. The description of the flux-tube ring as the relativistic closed string with the effective string tension enables us to write the hamiltonian of the flux-tube ring using the Nambu-Goto action. Analyzing the Schr\"odinger equation, we discuss the mass spectrum and the wave function of the glueball. The lowest glueball state is found to have the mass $M_G \sim 1.6 GeV$ and the size $R_G \sim 0.5 fm$.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, revte

High-efficiency exfoliation of large-area mono-layer graphene oxide with controlled dimension

In this work, we introduce a novel and facile method of exfoliating large-area, single-layer graphene oxide using a shearing stress. The shearing stress reactor consists of two concentric cylinders, where the inner cylinder rotates at controlled speed while the outer cylinder is kept stationary. We found that the formation of Taylor vortex flow with shearing stress can effectively exfoliate the graphite oxide, resulting in large-area single- or few-layer graphene oxide (GO) platelets with high yields (>90%) within 60 min of reaction time. Moreover, the lateral size of exfoliated GO sheets was readily tunable by simply controlling the rotational speed of the reactor and reaction time. Our approach for high-efficiency exfoliation of GO with controlled dimension may find its utility in numerous industrial applications including energy storage, conducting composite, electronic device, and supporting frameworks of catalyst

Ideal timing to transfer from an acute care hospital to an interdisciplinary inpatient rehabilitation program following a stroke: an exploratory study

BACKGROUND: Timely accessibility to organized inpatient stroke rehabilitation services may become compromised since the demand for rehabilitation services following stroke is rapidly growing with no promise of additional resources. This often leads to prolonged lengths of stays in acute care facilities for individuals surviving a stroke. It is believed that this delay spent in acute care facilities may inhibit the crucial motor recovery process taking place shortly after a stroke. It is important to document the ideal timing to initiate intensive inpatient stroke rehabilitation after the neurological event. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the specific influence of short, moderate and long onset-admission intervals (OAI) on rehabilitation outcomes across homogeneous subgroups of patients who were admitted to a standardized interdisciplinary inpatient stroke rehabilitation program. METHODS: A total of 418 patients discharged from the inpatient neurological rehabilitation program at the Montreal Rehabilitation Hospital Network after a first stroke (79% of all cases reviewed) were included in this retrospective study. After conducting a matching procedure across these patients based on the degree of disability, gender, and age, a total of 40 homogeneous triads (n = 120) were formed according to the three OAI subgroups: short (less than 20 days), moderate (between 20 and 40 days) or long (over 40 days; maximum of 70 days) OAI subgroups. The rehabilitation outcomes (admission and discharge Functional Independence Measure scores (FIM), absolute and relative FIM gain scores, rehabilitation length of stay, efficiency scores) were evaluated to test for differences between the three OAI subgroups. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that the three OAI subgroups were comparable for all rehabilitation outcomes studied. No statistical difference was found for admission (P = 0.305–0.972) and discharge (P = 0.083–0.367) FIM scores, absolute (P = 0.533–0.647) and relative (P = 0.496–0.812) FIM gain scores, rehabilitation length of stay (P = 0.096), and efficiency scores (P = 0.103–0.674). CONCLUSION: OAI does not seem to affect significantly inpatient stroke rehabilitation outcomes of patients referred from acute care facilities where rehabilitation services are rapidly initiated after the onset of the stroke and offered throughout their stay. However, other studies considering factors such as the type and intensity of the rehabilitation are required to support those results

Sarcopenia; Aging-related loss of muscle mass and function

Sarcopenia is a loss of muscle mass and function in the elderly that reduces mobility, diminishes quality of life, and can lead to fall-related injuries, which require costly hospitalization and extended rehabilitation. This review focuses on the aging-related structural changes and mechanisms at cellular and subcellular levels underlying changes in the individual motor unit: specifically, the perikaryon of -motoneuron, its neuromuscular junction(s), and the muscle fibers that it innervates. Loss of muscle mass with aging, which is largely due to the progressive loss of motoneurons, is associated with reduced muscle fiber number and size. Muscle function progressively declines because motoneuron loss is not adequately compensated by reinnervation of muscle fibers by the remaining motoneurons. At the intracellular level, key factors are qualitative changes in posttranslational modifications of muscle proteins and the loss of coordinated control between contractile, mitochondrial, and sarcoplasmic reticulum protein expression. Quantitative and qualitative changes in skeletal muscle during the process of aging also have been implicated in the pathogenesis of acquired and hereditary neuromuscular disorders. In experimental models, specific intervention strategies have shown encouraging results on limiting deterioration of motor unit structure and function under conditions of impaired innervation. Translated to the clinic, if these or similar interventions, by saving muscle and improving mobility, could help alleviate sarcopenia in the elderly, there would be both great humanitarian benefits and large cost savings for health care systems