Extraskeletal Effects of Vitamin D Deficiency in Intensive Care Patients

There has been a progression of investigations of the biology and pharmacology of vitamin D. Original work proved the importance of this axis on bone and skeletal homeostasis. Subsequent knowledge of basic cellular physiology led to studies of the role of vitamin D in other tissues where calcium flux is important to cellular functions. This was the beginning of exploration of vitamin D in extraskeletal health. Next came investigations into extraskeletal diseases which appeared to be more prevalent in vitamin D-deficient individuals. It was surprising that not only was there higher mortality from those diseases associated with low vitamin D levels, but also all-cause mortality was higher as well. Cellular pathophysiology of these findings was explored. Finally, studies have focused on outcomes in seriously ill patients with those diseases when hospitalized in the intensive care unit (ICU). Inverse correlations have been seen of several common ICU outcomes with levels of vitamin D at entry to the ICU, but the current effort is now in clarifying a role for routine measurement of these levels and the possible role of at least vitamin D replacement or even supplementation in the ICU patient with multiple organ pharmacologic or mechanical life support

Non-fermi liquid scaling in CeRhSn

We have recently shown that CeRhSn exhibits non-Fermi liquid temperaturę dependences in its low-temperature physical properties. Here we suggest that the non-Fermi liquid behavior observed in CeRhSn may be due to the existence of a Griffiths phase in the vicinity of a quantum critical point, based on electrical resistivity, magnetic susceptibility, and specific heat measurements. For CeRhSn, the low-temperature scaling of bulk properties (C/T oc y oc T _1+A, where A < 1) is masked by an anomaly at about 6 K, which is of magnetic origin

Free expansion of a Bose-Einstein condensate at the presence of a thermal cloud

We investigate numerically the free-fall expansion of a $^{87}$Rb atoms condensate at nonzero temperatures. The classical field approximation is used to separate the condensate and the thermal cloud during the expansion. We calculate the radial and axial widths of the expanding condensate and find clear evidence that the thermal component changes the dynamics of the condensate. Our results are confronted against the experimental data