Hyperthermia in the treatment of cancer: A review of the radiobiological basis

Temperatures in the range 41.5 C to 43.5 C tend to be more damaging to malignant than nonmalignant cells. Where local hyperthermia (41.5 C to 43.5 C) is combined with ionizing radiation, a significant therapeutic ratio may be realized. Total body hyperthermia, alone or combined with other therapeutic modalities, can provide palliation for some systemic malignancies but may not be as effective as local hyperthermia for treating local disease. The influence of hyperthermia on immune mechanisms and the risk of metastatic spread of potential tumor growth stimulation need further investigation. Among other questions needing elucidation before hyperthermia can be considered a standard treatment modality are the time-dose (for heating) relationships to produce an optimal therapeutic ratio and whether the late sequela of combined heat and ionizing radiation may result in an unacceptable risk of patient morbidity

Coronal mass ejections, magnetic clouds, and relativistic magnetospheric electron events: ISTP

The role of high-speed solar wind streams in driving relativistic electron acceleration within the Earth\u27s magnetosphere during solar activity minimum conditions has been well documented. The rising phase of the new solar activity cycle (cycle 23) commenced in 1996, and there have recently been a number of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and related “magnetic clouds” at 1 AU. As these CME/cloud systems interact with the Earth\u27s magnetosphere, some events produce substantial enhancements in the magnetospheric energetic particle population while others do not. This paper compares and contrasts relativistic electron signatures observed by the POLAR, SAMPEX, Highly Elliptical Orbit, and geostationary orbit spacecraft during two magnetic cloud events: May 27–29, 1996, and January 10–11, 1997. Sequences were observed in each case in which the interplanetary magnetic field was first strongly southward and then rotated northward. In both cases, there were large solar wind density enhancements toward the end of the cloud passage at 1 AU. Strong energetic electron acceleration was observed in the January event, but not in the May event. The relative geoeffectiveness for these two cases is assessed, and it is concluded that large induced electric fields (∂B/∂t) caused in situ acceleration of electrons throughout the outer radiation zone during the January 1997 event

Lattice theory for nonrelativistic fermions in one spatial dimension

I derive a loop representation for the canonical and grand-canonical partition functions for an interacting four-component Fermi gas in one spatial dimension and an arbitrary external potential. The representation is free of the "sign problem" irrespective of population imbalance, mass imbalance, and to a degree, sign of the interaction strength. This property is in sharp contrast with the analogous three-dimensional two-component interacting Fermi gas, which exhibits a sign problem in the case of unequal masses, chemical potentials, and repulsive interactions. The one-dimensional system is believed to exhibit many phenomena in common with its three-dimensional counterpart, including an analog of the BCS-BEC crossover, and nonperturbative universal few- and many-body physics at scattering lengths much larger than the range of interaction, making the theory an interesting candidate for numerical study. Positivity of the probability measure for the partition function allows for a mean-field treatment of the model; here, I present such an analysis for the interacting Fermi gas in the SU(4) (unpolarized, mass-symmetric) limit, and demonstrate that there exists a phase in which a continuum limit may be defined.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, references adde

Approximate solutions for the single soliton in a Skyrmion-type model with a dilaton scalar field

We consider the analytical properties of the single-soliton solution in a Skyrmion-type Lagrangian that incorporates the scaling properties of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) through the coupling of the chiral field to a scalar field interpreted as a bound state of gluons. The model was proposed in previous works to describe the Goldstone pions in a dense medium, being also useful for studying the properties of nuclear matter and the in-medium properties of mesons and nucleons. Guided by an asymptotic analysis of the Euler-Lagrange equations, we propose approximate analytical representations for the single soliton solution in terms of rational approximants exponentially localized. Following the Pad\'e method, we construct a sequence of approximants from the exact power series solutions near the origin. We find that the convergence of the approximate representations to the numerical solutions is considerably improved by taking the expansion coefficients as free parameters and then minimizing the mass of the Skyrmion using our ans\"atze for the fields. We also perform an analysis of convergence by computation of physical quantities showing that the proposed analytical representations are very useful useful for phenomenological calculations.Comment: 13 pages, 3 eps figures, version to be published in Phys.Rev.

Fingolimod modulates microglial activation to augment markers of remyelination

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Air speed and attitude probe

An air speed and attitude probe characterized by a pivot shaft normally projected from a data boom and supported thereby for rotation about an axis of rotation coincident with the longitudinal axis of the shaft is described. The probe is a tubular body supported for angular displacement about the axis of rotation and has a fin mounted on the body for maintaining one end of the body in facing relation with relative wind and has a pair of transducers mounted in the body for providing intelligence indicative of total pressure and static pressure for use in determining air speed. A stack of potentiometers coupled with the shaft to provide intelligence indicative of aircraft attitude, and circuitry connecting the transducers and potentiometers to suitable telemetry circuits are described

Decoding mode-mixing in black-hole merger ringdown

Optimal extraction of information from gravitational-wave observations of binary black-hole coalescences requires detailed knowledge of the waveforms. Current approaches for representing waveform information are based on spin-weighted spherical harmonic decomposition. Higher-order harmonic modes carrying a few percent of the total power output near merger can supply information critical to determining intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the binary. One obstacle to constructing a full multi-mode template of merger waveforms is the apparently complicated behavior of some of these modes; instead of settling down to a simple quasinormal frequency with decaying amplitude, some $|m| \neq \ell$ modes show periodic bumps characteristic of mode-mixing. We analyze the strongest of these modes -- the anomalous $(3,2)$ harmonic mode -- measured in a set of binary black-hole merger waveform simulations, and show that to leading order, they are due to a mismatch between the spherical harmonic basis used for extraction in 3D numerical relativity simulations, and the spheroidal harmonics adapted to the perturbation theory of Kerr black holes. Other causes of mode-mixing arising from gauge ambiguities and physical properties of the quasinormal ringdown modes are also considered and found to be small for the waveforms studied here.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables; new version has improved Figs. 1-3, consistent labelling of simulations between Tables I & II, additional/corrected references, and extra hyphen