On the connectivity of the escaping set for complex exponential Misiurewicz parameters

Let $ E_{\lambda}(z)=\lambda {\rm exp}(z), \lambda\in \mathbb{C}$, be the complex exponential family. For all functions in the family there is a unique asymptotic value at 0 (and no critical values). For a fixed $ \lambda$, the set of points in $ \mathbb{C}$ with orbit tending to infinity is called the escaping set. We prove that the escaping set of $ E_{\lambda}$ with $ \lambda$ Misiurewicz (that is, a parameter for which the orbit of the singular value is strictly preperiodic) is a connected set.

The glasses of the transept's rosette of the Cathedral of Tarragona: characterization, classification and decay.

The glasses of the rosette forming the main window of the transept of the Gothic Cathedral of Tarragona have been characterised by means of SEM/EDS, XRD, FTIR and electronic microprobe. The multivariate statistical treatment of these data allow to establish a classification of the samples forming groups having an historical significance and reflecting ancient restorations. Furthermore, the decay patterns and mechanisms have been determined and the weathering by-products characterised. It has been demonstrated a clear influence of the bioactivity in the decay of these glasses, which activity is partially controlled by the chemical composition of the glasses.

The glasses of the transept's rosette of the Cathedral of Tarragona: characterization, classification and decay.

The glasses of the rosette forming the main window of the transept of the Gothic Cathedral of Tarragona have been characterised by means of SEM/EDS, XRD, FTIR and electronic microprobe. The multivariate statistical treatment of these data allow to establish a classification of the samples forming groups having an historical significance and reflecting ancient restorations. Furthermore, the decay patterns and mechanisms have been determined and the weathering by-products characterised. It has been demonstrated a clear influence of the bioactivity in the decay of these glasses, which activity is partially controlled by the chemical composition of the glasses.

Synchronization of symmetric chaotic systems

This paper contains a study of the synchronization by homogeneous nonlinear driving of systems that are symmetric in phase space. The main consequence of this symmetry is the ability of the response to synchronize in more than just one way to the driving systems. These different forms of synchronization are to be understood as generalized synchronization states in which the motions of drive and response are in complete correlation, but the phase space distance between them does not converge to zero. In this case the synchronization phenomenon becomes enriched because there is multistability. As a consequence, there appear multiple basins of attraction and special responses to external noise. It is shown, by means of a computer simulation of various nonlinear systems, that: (i) the decay to the generalized synchronization states is exponential, (ii) the basins of attraction are symmetric, usually complicated, frequently fractal, and robust under the changes in the parameters, and (iii) the effect of external noise is to weaken the synchronization, and in some cases to produce jumps between the various synchronization states available

Long-term antiretroviral treatment initiated at primary HIV-1 infection affects the size, composition, and decay kinetics of the reservoir of HIV-1-infected CD4 T cells.

Initiation of antiretroviral therapy during the earliest stages of HIV-1 infection may limit the seeding of a long-lasting viral reservoir, but long-term effects of early antiretroviral treatment initiation remain unknown. Here, we analyzed immunological and virological characteristics of nine patients who started antiretroviral therapy at primary HIV-1 infection and remained on suppressive treatment for >10 years; patients with similar treatment duration but initiation of suppressive therapy during chronic HIV-1 infection served as controls. We observed that independently of the timing of treatment initiation, HIV-1 DNA in CD4 T cells decayed primarily during the initial 3 to 4 years of treatment. However, in patients who started antiretroviral therapy in early infection, this decay occurred faster and was more pronounced, leading to substantially lower levels of cell-associated HIV-1 DNA after long-term treatment. Despite this smaller size, the viral CD4 T cell reservoir in persons with early treatment initiation consisted more dominantly of the long-lasting central-memory and T memory stem cells. HIV-1-specific T cell responses remained continuously detectable during antiretroviral therapy, independently of the timing of treatment initiation. Together, these data suggest that early HIV-1 treatment initiation, even when continued for >10 years, is unlikely to lead to viral eradication, but the presence of low viral reservoirs and durable HIV-1 T cell responses may make such patients good candidates for future interventional studies aiming at HIV-1 eradication and cure. IMPORTANCE: Antiretroviral therapy can effectively suppress HIV-1 replication to undetectable levels; however, HIV-1 can persist despite treatment, and viral replication rapidly rebounds when treatment is discontinued. This is mainly due to the presence of latently infected CD4 T cells, which are not susceptible to antiretroviral drugs. Starting treatment in the earliest stages of HIV-1 infection can limit the number of these latently infected cells, raising the possibility that these viral reservoirs are naturally eliminated if suppressive antiretroviral treatment is continued for extremely long periods of time. Here, we analyzed nine patients who started on antiretroviral therapy within the earliest weeks of the disease and continued treatment for more than 10 years. Our data show that early treatment accelerated the decay of infected CD4 T cells and led to very low residual levels of detectable HIV-1 after long-term therapy, levels that were otherwise detectable in patients who are able to maintain a spontaneous, drug-free control of HIV-1 replication. Thus, long-term antiretroviral treatment started during early infection cannot eliminate HIV-1, but the reduced reservoirs of HIV-1 infected cells in such patients may increase their chances to respond to clinical interventions aiming at inducing a drug-free remission of HIV-1 infection.

First evidence for the two-body charmless baryonic decay

The results of a search for the rare two-body charmless baryonic decays TeX and TeX are reported. The analysis uses a data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.9 fb−1, of pp collision data collected by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. An excess of TeX candidates with respect to background expectations is seen with a statistical significance of 3.3 standard deviations. This is the first evidence for a two-body charmless baryonic B 0 decay. No significant TeX signal is observed, leading to an improvement of three orders of magnitude over previous bounds. If the excess events are interpreted as signal, the 68.3% confidence level intervals on the branching fractions are $ TeX $ where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.

Accuracy and Precision of Head Motion Information in Multi-Channel Free Induction Decay Navigators for Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Free induction decay (FID) navigators were found to qualitatively detect rigid-body head movements, yet it is unknown to what extent they can provide quantitative motion estimates. Here, we acquired FID navigators at different sampling rates and simultaneously measured head movements using a highly accurate optical motion tracking system. This strategy allowed us to estimate the accuracy and precision of FID navigators for quantification of rigid-body head movements. Five subjects were scanned with a 32-channel head coil array on a clinical 3T MR scanner during several resting and guided head movement periods. For each subject we trained a linear regression model based on FID navigator and optical motion tracking signals. FID-based motion model accuracy and precision was evaluated using cross-validation. FID-based prediction of rigid-body head motion was found to be with a mean translational and rotational error of 0.14±0.21 mm and 0.08±0.13(°) , respectively. Robust model training with sub-millimeter and sub-degree accuracy could be achieved using 100 data points with motion magnitudes of ±2 mm and ±1(°) for translation and rotation. The obtained linear models appeared to be subject-specific as inter-subject application of a "universal" FID-based motion model resulted in poor prediction accuracy. The results show that substantial rigid-body motion information is encoded in FID navigator signal time courses. Although, the applied method currently requires the simultaneous acquisition of FID signals and optical tracking data, the findings suggest that multi-channel FID navigators have a potential to complement existing tracking technologies for accurate rigid-body motion detection and correction in MRI.

On Short Exponential Sums Involving Fourier Coefficients of Holomorphic Cusp Forms

By an exponential sum of the Fourier coefficients of a holomorphic cusp form we mean the sum which is formed by first taking the Fourier series of the said form,then cutting the beginning and the tail away and considering the remaining sum on the real axis. For simplicity’s sake, typically the coefficients are normalized. However, this isn’t so important as the normalization can be done and removed simply by using partial summation. We improve the approximate functional equation for the exponential sums of the Fourier coefficients of the holomorphic cusp forms by giving an explicit upper bound for the error term appearing in the equation. The approximate functional equation is originally due to Jutila [9] and a crucial tool for transforming sums into shorter sums. This transformation changes the point of the real axis on which the sum is to be considered. We also improve known upper bounds for the size estimates of the exponential sums. For very short sums we do not obtain any better estimates than the very easy estimate obtained by multiplying the upper bound estimate for a Fourier coefficient (they are bounded by the divisor function as Deligne [2] showed) by the number of coefficients. This estimate is extremely rough as no possible cancellation is taken into account. However, with small sums, it is unclear whether there happens any remarkable amounts of cancellation.

Decay of linkage disequilibrium within genes across HGDP-CEPH human samples: most population isolates do not show increased LD

Background It is well known that the pattern of linkage disequilibrium varies between human populations, with remarkable geographical stratification. Indirect association studies routinely exploit linkage disequilibrium around genes, particularly in isolated populations where it is assumed to be higher. Here, we explore both the amount and the decay of linkage disequilibrium with physical distance along 211 gene regions, most of them related to complex diseases, across 39 HGDP-CEPH population samples, focusing particularly on the populations defined as isolates. Within each gene region and population we use r2 between all possible single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) pairs as a measure of linkage disequilibrium and focus on the proportion of SNP pairs with r2 greater than 0.8. Results Although the average r2 was found to be significantly different both between and within continental regions, a much higher proportion of r2 variance could be attributed to differences between continental regions (2.8% vs. 0.5%, respectively). Similarly, while the proportion of SNP pairs with r2 > 0.8 was significantly different across continents for all distance classes, it was generally much more homogenous within continents, except in the case of Africa and the Americas. The only isolated populations with consistently higher LD in all distance classes with respect to their continent are the Kalash (Central South Asia) and the Surui (America). Moreover, isolated populations showed only slightly higher proportions of SNP pairs with r2 > 0.8 per gene region than non-isolated populations in the same continent. Thus, the number of SNPs in isolated populations that need to be genotyped may be only slightly less than in non-isolates. Conclusion The 'isolated population' label by itself does not guarantee a greater genotyping efficiency in association studies, and properties other than increased linkage disequilibrium may make these populations interesting in genetic epidemiology.

Bound state solutions of schrödinger equation for a more general exponential screened coulomb potential via Nikiforov-Uvarov method

The arbitrary angular momentum solutions of the Schrödinger equation for a diatomic molecule with the general exponential screened coulomb potential of the form V(r) = (- a / r){1+ (1+ b )e-2b } has been presented. The energy eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenfunctions are calculated analytically by the use of Nikiforov-Uvarov (NU) method which is related to the solutions in terms of Jacobi polynomials. The bounded state eigenvalues are calculated numerically for the 1s state of N2 CO and NO

Electrophysiological evidence for the presence of NR2C subunits of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors in rat neurons of the nucleus tractus solitarius

The nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) plays an important role in the control of autonomic reflex functions. Glutamate, acting on N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) and non-NMDA ionotropic receptors, is the major neurotransmitter in this nucleus, and the relative contribution of each receptor to signal transmission is unclear. We have examined NMDA excitatory postsynaptic currents (NMDA-EPSCs) in the subpostremal NTS using the whole cell patch clamp technique on a transverse brainstem slice preparation. The NMDA-EPSCs were evoked by stimulation of the solitary tract over a range of membrane potentials. The NMDA-EPSCs, isolated pharmacologically, presented the characteristic outward rectification and were completely blocked by 50 µM DL-2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid. The I-V relationship of the NMDA response shows that current, with a mean (± SEM) amplitude of -41.2 ± 5.5 pA, is present even at a holding potential of -60 mV, suggesting that the NMDA receptors are weakly blocked by extracellular Mg2+ at near resting membrane potentials. This weak block can also be inferred from the value of 0.67 ± 0.17 for parameter delta obtained from a fit of the Woodhull equation to the I-V relationship. The maximal inward current measured on the I-V relationship was at -38.7 ± 4.2 mV. The decay phase of the NMDA currents was fitted with one exponential function with a decay time constant of 239 ± 51 and 418 ± 80 ms at a holding potential of -60 and +50 mV, respectively, which became slower with depolarization (e-fold per 145 mV). The biophysical properties of the NMDA receptors observed in the present study suggest that these receptors in the NTS contain NR2C subunits and may contribute to the synaptic signal integration.