Stability of alteplase in presence of cavitation

Several experimental studies have demonstrated that ultrasound (US) can accelerate enzymatic fibrinolysis and this effect is further enhanced in the presence of ultrasound contrast agents (UCA). Although UCA have been shown to be safe when administered to ischemic stroke patients, safety information of these agents in the thrombolysis setting is limited. Therefore, in this study we investigated potential adverse effects of acoustic cavitation generated by UCA on alteplase (t-PA), the drug used for treatment of ischemic stroke patients. A volume of 0.9 mL of alteplase was dispensed into a custom-made polyester sample tube. For treatments in the presence or absence of cavitation either 0.1 mL Optison or phosphate buffer saline was combined with alteplase. Three independent samples of each treatment group were exposed to ultrasound of 2 MHz frequency at three different peak negative acoustic pressures of 0.5, 1.7, and 3.5 MPa for a duration of 60 min. All treatments were carried out in a cavitation detection system which was used to insonify the samples and record acoustic emissions generated within the sample. After ultrasound exposure, the treated samples and three untreated drug samples were tested for their enzymatic activity using a chromogenic substrate. The insonified samples containing Optison demonstrated cavitational activity proportional to acoustic pressure. No significant cavitation activity was observed in the absence of Optison. Enzymatic activity of alteplase in both insonified groups was comparable to that in the control group. These tests demonstrated that exposure of alteplase to 60 min of 2 MHz ultrasound at acoustic pressures ranging from 0.5 MPa to 3.5 MPa, in the presence or absence of Optison had no adverse effects on the stability of this therapeutic compound.     

Thermal Spin Squeezing as a Signature of Thermal Global Entanglement in Heisenberg Models

We study thermal spin squeezing (TSS) and thermal global entanglement (TGE) in a general Heisenberg spin chain, in the presence of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and an external magnetic field. We derive an inequality associating the squeezing parameter and the global concurrence, which establishes (TSS) as a signature of (TGE). The inequality reduces to equality for particular symmetric chains which also associates TSS with bipartite entanglement in such systems. We also check the results by presenting two numerical examples.     

Two-Phase Inertial Flow in Homogeneous Porous Media: A Theoretical Derivation of a Macroscopic Model

The purpose of this article is to derive a macroscopic model for a certain class of inertial two-phase, incompressible, Newtonian fluid flow through homogenous porous media. Starting from the continuity and Navier–Stokes equations in each phase β and γ, the method of volume averaging is employed subjected to constraints that are explicitly provided to obtain the macroscopic mass and momentum balance equations. These constraints are on the length- and time-scales, as well as, on some quantities involving capillary, Weber and Reynolds numbers that define the class of two-phase flow under consideration. The resulting macroscopic momentum equation relates the phase-averaged pressure gradient to the filtration or Darcy velocity in a coupled nonlinear form explicitly given by

Mapping dynamical heterogeneity in structural glasses to correlated fluctuations of the time variables

Dynamical heterogeneities--strong fluctuations near the glass transition--are believed to be crucial to explain much of the glass transition phenomenology. One hypothesis for their origin is that they emerge from soft (Goldstone) modes associated with a broken continuous symmetry under time reparametrizations. To test this hypothesis, we use numerical simulation data to construct coarse grained observables and decompose their fluctuations into two transverse components associated with the postulated soft modes and a longitudinal component unrelated to them. We find that as temperature is lowered and time scales are increased, the time reparametrization fluctuations become increasingly dominant, and that their correlation volumes grow together with those of the dynamical heterogeneities, while the correlation volumes for longitudinal fluctuations remain small.     

Continuous wavelets on compact manifolds

Let M be a smooth compact oriented Riemannian manifold, and let Δ _M be the Laplace–Beltrami operator on M. Say \({0 \neq f \in \mathcal{S}(\mathbb {R}^+)}\) , and that f (0)  =  0. For t  >  0, let K _t (x, y) denote the kernel of f (t ² Δ _M ). We show that K _t is well-localized near the diagonal, in the sense that it satisfies estimates akin to those satisfied by the kernel of the convolution operator f (t ²Δ) on \({\mathbb {R}^n}\) . We define continuous \({\mathcal {S}}\)-wavelets on M, in such a manner that K _t (x, y) satisfies this definition, because of its localization near the diagonal. Continuous \({\mathcal {S}}\)-wavelets on M are analogous to continuous wavelets on \({\mathbb {R}^n}\) in \({\mathcal {S}}\) (\({\mathbb {R}^n}\)). In particular, we are able to characterize the Hölder continuous functions on M by the size of their continuous \({\mathcal {S}}\)-wavelet transforms, for Hölder exponents strictly between 0 and 1. If M is the torus \({\mathbb T^2}\) or the sphere S ², and f (s)  =  se ^?s (the “Mexican hat” situation), we obtain two explicit approximate formulas for K _t , one to be used when t is large, and one to be used when t is small.