A quantum dissipative system in an anisotropic non-linear absorbing environment

A canonical quantization scheme is represented for a quantum system interacting with a non-linear absorbing environment. The environment is taken anisotropic and the main system is coupled to its environment through some coupling tensors of various ranks. The non-linear response equation of the environment against the motion of the main system is obtained. The non-linear Langevin-Schrödinger equation is concluded as the macroscopic equation of motion of the dissipative system. The effect of non-linearity of the environment is investigated on the spontaneous emission of an initially excited two-level atom imbedded in such an environment.     

Influence of steady background gradients on the accuracy of molecular diffusion anisotropy measurements

Spatial susceptibility variations of body components lead to local gradients of the static magnetic field. Effects of such background gradients on fractional diffusion anisotropy (FA) measurements on whole-body magnetic resonance units operating at 1.5, 3.0 and 7.0 T were analyzed theoretically and experimentally. Analytical expressions were derived for the cases of diffusion occurring in isotropic media and in tissues with cylindrical symmetry (e.g., white matter tracts or skeletal musculature). Typical magnitudes of background gradient strengths were estimated from in vivo and in vitro measurements with B0 field mapping sequences. Additionally, numerical simulations of magnetic field distributions and resulting field gradients were performed considering tissue-air interfaces in simplified geometrical arrangements. For media with isotropic diffusion, both measurements and analytical calculations showed increasing FA inaccuracy with stronger coupling between diffusion-encoding and background gradients. For cylindrical symmetry, FA values were estimated for a standard diffusion tensor imaging protocol in a realistic scenario. At 1 mm distance from a water-air interface, susceptibility-related background gradients amount to approximately 9 mT/m at 7 T and lead to a relative error of the measured FA of up to 48%. The error in the anisotropy assessment rises considerably with increasing field strength and must be taken into account especially for experimental and clinical studies on modern high-field systems.     

Baryon-Baryon interactions from lattice QCD

We report on new attempt to investigate baryon-baryon interactions in lattice QCD.From the Bethe-Salpeter （BS） wave function,we have successfully extracted the nucleon-nucleon （NN） potentials in quenched QCD simulations,which reproduce qualitative features of modern NN potentials.The method has been extended to obtain the tensor potential as well as the central potential and also applied to the hyperonnucleon （YN） interactions,in both quenched and full QCD.     

Half Inverse Riordan Arrays and Their Related Vertical Recurrence Relation

We discuss two different procedures to study the half Riordan arrays and their inverses. One of the procedures shows that every Riordan array is the half Riordan array of a unique Riordan array. It is well known that every Riordan array has its half Riordan array. Therefore, this paper answers the converse question: Is every Riordan array the half Riordan array of some Riordan arrays? In addition, this paper shows that the vertical recurrence relation of the column entries of the half Riordan array is equivalent to the horizontal recurrence relation of the original Riordan array''s row entries.     

Investigation of strain effect on the hole mobility in GOI tri-gate pFETs including quantum confinement

The strain impact on hole mobility in the GOI tri-gate pFETs is investigated by simulating the strained Ge with quantum confinement from band structure to electro-static distribution as well as the effective mobility. Lattice mismatch strain induced by HfO2 warps and reshapes the valence subbands, and reduces the hole effective masses. The maximum value of hole density is observed near the top comers of the channel. The hole density is decreased by the lattice mismatch strain. The phonon scattering rate is degraded by strain, which results in higher hole mobility.     

Distinguishing and quantification of the human visual pathways using high-spatial-resolution diffusion tensor tractography

Quantification of the living human visual system using MRI methods has been challenging, but several applications demand a reliable and time-efficient data acquisition protocol. In this study, we demonstrate the utility of high-spatial-resolution diffusion tensor fiber tractography (DTT) in reconstructing and quantifying the human visual pathways. Five healthy males, age range 24–37 years, were studied after approval of the institutional review board (IRB) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. We acquired diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data with 1-mm slice thickness on a 3.0-Tesla clinical MRI scanner and analyzed the data using DTT with the fiber assignment by continuous tractography (FACT) algorithm. By utilizing the high-spatial-resolution DTI protocol with FACT algorithm, we were able to reconstruct and quantify bilateral optic pathways including the optic chiasm, optic tract, optic radiations free of contamination from neighboring white matter tracts.     

Combined prostate diffusion tensor imaging and dynamic contrast enhanced MRI at 3T — quantitative correlation with biopsy

The purpose of this work was to compare diagnostic accuracy of Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE MRI) and their combination in diagnosing prostate cancer. Twenty-five patients with clinical suspicion of prostate cancer underwent MRI, prior to transrectal ultrasound-guided biopsies. MRI data were correlated to biopsy results. Logistic regression models were constructed for the DTI parameters, DCE MRI parameters, and their combination. The areas under the receiver operator characteristic curves (AUC) were compared between the models. The nonparametric Wilcoxon signed rank test was used for statistical analysis. The sensitivity and specificity values were respectively 81% (74–87%) and 85% (79–90%) for DTI and 63% (55–70%) and 90% (85–94%) for DCE. The combination “DTI or DCE MRI” had 100% (97–100%) sensitivity and 77% (69–83%) specificity, while “DTI and DCE MRI” had 44% (37–52%) sensitivity and 98% (94–100%) specificity. The AUC for DTI+DCE parameters was significantly higher than that for either DTI (0.96 vs. 0.92, P=.0143) or DCE MRI parameters (0.96 vs. 0.87, P=.00187) alone. In conclusion, the combination of DTI and DCE MRI has significantly better accuracy in prostate cancer diagnosis than either technique alone.     

Automatic 3D tracking of cardiac material markers using slice-following and harmonic-phase MRI

A method to track a grid of cardiac material points in three dimensions using slice-following (SF) tagged magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and harmonic-phase MRI is presented. A three-dimensional grid of material points on the lines of intersections of short-axis (SA) and long-axis (LA) planes is automatically tracked by combining two-dimensional pathlines that are computed on both SA and LA image planes. This process yields the true three-dimensional motion of points originating on the image plane intersections. Experimental data from normal volunteers, each obtained in four short breath-holds using the SF harmonic phase MRI pulse sequence, is presented. A validation of two-dimensional in-plane tracks using this pulse sequence on a moving phantom is also presented.     

On warped product manifolds satisfying some curvature conditions

We determine curvature properties of pseudosymmetric type of certain warped product manifolds, and in particular of generalized Robertson–Walker spacetimes, with Einsteinian or quasi-Einsteinian fibre.