498 research outputs found
Maximal length of trapped one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates
I discuss a Bogoliubov inequality for obtaining a rigorous bound on the
maximal axial extension of inhomogeneous one-dimensional Bose-Einstein
condensates. An explicit upper limit for the aspect ratio of a strongly
elongated, harmonically trapped Thomas-Fermi condensate is derived.Comment: 6 pages; contributed paper for Quantum Fluids and Solids, Trento
2004, to appear in JLT
Homeless drug users' awareness and risk perception of peer "Take Home Naloxone" use – a qualitative study
BACKGROUND
Peer use of take home naloxone has the potential to reduce drug related deaths. There appears to be a paucity of research amongst homeless drug users on the topic. This study explores the acceptability and potential risk of peer use of naloxone amongst homeless drug users. From the findings the most feasible model for future treatment provision is suggested.
METHODS
In depth face-to-face interviews conducted in one primary care centre and two voluntary organisation centres providing services to homeless drug users in a large UK cosmopolitan city. Interviews recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically by framework techniques.
RESULTS
Homeless people recognise signs of a heroin overdose and many are prepared to take responsibility to give naloxone, providing prior training and support is provided. Previous reports of the theoretical potential for abuse and malicious use may have been overplayed.
CONCLUSION
There is insufficient evidence to recommend providing "over the counter" take home naloxone" to UK homeless injecting drug users. However a programme of peer use of take home naloxone amongst homeless drug users could be feasible providing prior training is provided. Peer education within a health promotion framework will optimise success as current professionally led health promotion initiatives are failing to have a positive impact amongst homeless drug users
Adaptable-radius, time-orbiting magnetic ring trap for Bose-Einstein condensates
We theoretically investigate an adjustable-radius magnetic storage ring for
laser-cooled and Bose-condensed atoms. Additionally, we discuss a novel
time-dependent variant of this and other ring traps. Time-orbiting ring traps
provide a high optical access method for spin-flip loss prevention near a
storage ring's circular magnetic field zero. Our scalable storage ring will
allow one to probe the fundamental limits of condensate Sagnac interferometry.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. accepted in J Phys
Extension of Bogoliubov theory to quasi-condensates
We present an extension of the well-known Bogoliubov theory to treat low
dimensional degenerate Bose gases in the limit of weak interactions and low
density fluctuations. We use a density-phase representation and show that a
precise definition of the phase operator requires a space discretisation in
cells of size . We perform a systematic expansion of the Hamiltonian in
terms of two small parameters, the relative density fluctuations inside a cell
and the phase change over a cell. The resulting macroscopic observables can be
computed in one, two and three dimensions with no ultraviolet or infrared
divergence. Furthermore this approach exactly matches Bogoliubov's approach
when there is a true condensate. We give the resulting expressions for the
equation of state of the gas, the ground state energy, the first order and
second order correlations functions of the field. Explicit calculations are
done for homogeneous systems.Comment: 32 pages, 2 figures; typos corrected in revised versio
Prospective Epidemiological Observations on the Course of the Disease in Fibromyalgia Patients
OBJECTIVES: The aim of the study was to carry out a survey in patients with fibromyalgia (FM), to examine their general health status and work incapacity (disability-pension status), and their views on the effectiveness of therapy received, over a two-year observation period. METHODS: 48 patients diagnosed with FM, according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria, took part in the study. At baseline, and on average two years later, the patients underwent clinical investigation (dolorimetry, laboratory diagnostics, medical history taking) and completed the Fibromyalgia questionnaire (Dettmer and Chrostek [1]). RESULTS: 27/48 (56%) patients participated in the two-year follow-up. In general, the patients showed no improvement in their symptoms over the observation period, regardless of the type of therapy they had received. General satisfaction with quality of life improved, as did satisfaction regarding health status and the family situation, although the degree of pain experienced remain unchanged. In comparison with the initial examination, there was no change in either work-capacity or disability-pension status. CONCLUSIONS: The FM patients showed no improvement in pain, despite the many various treatments received over the two-year period. The increase in general satisfaction over the observation period was believed to be the result of patient instruction and education about the disease. To what extent a population of patients with FM would show similar outcomes if they did not receive any instruction/education about their disorder, cannot be ascertained from the present study; and, indeed, the undertaking of a study to investigate this would be ethically questionable. As present, no conclusions can be made regarding the influence of therapy on the primary and secondary costs associated with FM
Finite one dimensional impenetrable Bose systems: Occupation numbers
Bosons in the form of ultra cold alkali atoms can be confined to a one
dimensional (1d) domain by the use of harmonic traps. This motivates the study
of the ground state occupations of effective single particle states
, in the theoretical 1d impenetrable Bose gas. Both the system on a
circle and the harmonically trapped system are considered. The and
are the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions respectively of the one body
density matrix. We present a detailed numerical and analytic study of this
problem. Our main results are the explicit scaled forms of the density
matrices, from which it is deduced that for fixed the occupations
are asymptotically proportional to in both the circular
and harmonically trapped cases.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures (.eps), uses REVTeX
Disease self-management needs of adolescents with cancer: perspectives of adolescents with cancer and their parents and healthcare providers
Abstract Purpose The ability for adolescents with cancer (AWC) to engage in disease self-management may result in improved cancer outcomes and quality-of-life ratings for this group. Despite this, a comprehensive self-management program for this group is yet to be developed. To ensure that selfmanagement programming developed for AWC meets the needs of this group, discussion with key stakeholders (i.e., AWC, parents, and healthcare providers) is required. Methods A descriptive qualitative design was used. Adolescents (n029) who varied in age (12 to 18 years) and type of cancer, their parents (n030) and their healthcare providers (n022) were recruited from one large tertiary-care oncology center. Audio-taped semi-structured individual and focusgroup interviews were conducted with participants. Transcribed data were organized into categories that reflected emerging themes. Results Four major themes, which captured the selfmanagement needs of AWC, emerged from the data. These themes were: (1) disease knowledge and cancer care skills, (2) knowledge and skills to support effective transition to adult healthcare, (3) delivery of AWC-accessible healthcare services, and (4) supports for the adolescent with cancer. Conclusions In order to provide comprehensive, relevant, and acceptable self-management programs to AWC, the voices of this population, their parents, and healthcare providers should be considered. Findings from this study will be used to develop and evaluate cancer self-management programming for AWC. Implications for cancer survivors Self-management represents an important avenue for exploration into improving cancer outcomes and quality of life for survivors of cancers during adolescence
Low-dimensional Bose gases
We present an improved many-body T-matrix theory for partially Bose-Einstein
condensed atomic gases by treating the phase fluctuations exactly. The
resulting mean-field theory is valid in arbitrary dimensions and able to
describe the low-temperature crossover between three, two and one-dimensional
Bose gases. When applied to a degenerate two-dimensional atomic hydrogen gas,
we obtain a reduction of the three-body recombination rate which compares
favorably with experiment. Supplementing the mean-field theory with a
renormalization-group approach to treat the critical fluctuations, we also
incorporate into the theory the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition that occurs in a
homogeneous Bose gas in two dimensions. In particular, we calculate the
critical conditions for the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition as a function
of the microscopic parameters of the theory. The proposed theory is further
applied to a trapped one-dimensional Bose gas, where we find good agreement
with exact numerical results obtained by solving a nonlinear Langevin field
equation.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, revte
Transdimensional inversion of receiver functions and surface wave dispersion
International audienceWe present a novel method for joint inversion of receiver functions and surface wave dispersion data, using a transdimensional Bayesian formulation. This class of algorithm treats the number of model parameters (e.g. number of layers) as an unknown in the problem. The dimension of the model space is variable and a Markov chain Monte Carlo (McMC) scheme is used to provide a parsimonious solution that fully quantifies the degree of knowledge one has about seismic structure (i.e constraints on the model, resolution, and trade-offs). The level of data noise (i.e. the covariance matrix of data errors) effectively controls the information recoverable from the data and here it naturally determines the complexity of the model (i.e. the number of model parameters). However, it is often difficult to quantify the data noise appropriately, particularly in the case of seismic waveform inversion where data errors are correlated. Here we address the issue of noise estimation using an extended Hierarchical Bayesian formulation, which allows both the variance and covariance of data noise to be treated as unknowns in the inversion. In this way it is possible to let the data infer the appropriate level of data fit. In the context of joint inversions, assessment of uncertainty for different data types becomes crucial in the evaluation of the misfit function. We show that the Hierarchical Bayes procedure is a powerful tool in this situation, because it is able to evaluate the level of information brought by different data types in the misfit, thus removing the arbitrary choice of weighting factors. After illustrating the method with synthetic tests, a real data application is shown where teleseismic receiver functions and ambient noise surface wave dispersion measurements from the WOMBAT array (South-East Australia) are jointly inverted to provide a probabilistic 1D model of shear-wave velocity beneath a given station
Quantitative Imaging of D-2-Hydroxyglutarate in Selected Histological Tissue Areas by a Novel Bioluminescence Technique
Patients with malignant gliomas have a poor prognosis with average survival of less than 1 year. Whereas in other tumor entities the characteristics of tumor metabolism are successfully used for therapeutic approaches, such developments are very rare in brain tumors, notably in gliomas. One metabolic feature characteristic of gliomas, in particular diffuse astrocytomas and oligodendroglial tumors, is the variable content of D-2-hydroxyglutarate (D2HG), a metabolite that was discovered first in this tumor entity. D2HG is generated in large amounts due to various "gain-of-function" mutations in the isocitrate dehydrogenases IDH1 and 1DH2. Meanwhile, D2HG has been detected in several other tumor entities, including intrahepatic bile-duct cancer, chondrosarcoma, acute myeloid leukemia, and angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma. D2HG is barely detectable in healthy tissue (<0.1 mM), but its concentration increases up to 35 mM in malignant tumor tissues. Consequently, the "oncometabolite" D2HG has gained increasing interest in the field of tumor metabolism. To facilitate its quantitative measurement without loss of spatial resolution at a microscopical level, we have developed a novel bioluminescence assay for determining D2HG in sections of snap-frozen tissue. The assay was verified independently by photometric tests and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. The novel technique allows the microscopically resolved determination of D2HG in a concentration range of 0-10 mu mol/g tissue (wet weight). In combination with the already established bioluminescence imaging techniques for ATP, glucose, pyruvate, and lactate, the novel D2HG assay enables a comparative characterization of the metabolic profile of individual tumors in a further dimension
- …