The clinical status of low energy laser therapy in 1989

Low energy laser therapy has gained varying acceptance as a treatment for a broad range of soft tissue, musculoskeletal and neurological conditions. A controversial, but surprisingly large body of research with cell cultures suggests that laser irradiation can nondestructively alter cellular processes. Unfortunately, animal and human studies are often contradictory and difficult to evaluate due to differing study designs. As a result, the clinical effectiveness of low energy laser therapy remains debatable. Nevertheless, the findings are intriguing and deserve further investigation.     

Electronic structure and Fermi surface of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8

Applying angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of high angular and energy resolution we have measured the electronic structure of single crystals of Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O₈ near the Fermi energy. Along the high symmetry direction X a band is observed to disperse upwards and to cross the Fermi level, whose unoccupied part constitutes the hole-like carriers responsible for the superconductivity. From spectra along the M direction we find evidence for an electron pocket around the M point. The measured band widths appear to be drastically reduced compared with band structure calculations indicating strong electronic correlation effects. From the observation of Fermi-Dirac-like cut-offs in the spectra due to band crossings through the Fermi level we can confirm the existence and, in particular, the shape of the Fermi surface as calculated by band structure calculations.     

Operator stable laws: Series representations and domains of normal attraction

LetX,X ₁,X ₂,... be i.i.d. random vectors in ^d. The limit laws that can arise by suitable affine normalizations of the partial sums,S _n=X ₁+...+X _n, are calledoperator-stable laws. These laws are a natural extension to ^d of the stable laws on. Thegeneralized domain of attraction of [GDOA()] is comprised of all random vectorsX whose partial sums can be affinely normalized to converge to . If the linear part of the affine transformation is restricted to take the formn ^–B for some exponent operatorB naturally associated to thenX is in thegeneralized domain of normal attraction of [GDONA()]. This paper extends the theory of operator-stable laws and their domains of attraction and normal attraction.     

A Dynamic location problem for graphs

We introduce a class of optimization problems, calleddynamic location problems, involving the processing of requests that occur sequentially at the nodes of a graphG. This leads to the definition of a new parameter of graphs, called the window indexWX(G), that measures how large a window into the future is needed to solve every instance of the dynamic location problem onG optimally on-line. We completely characterize this parameter:WX(G)k if and only ifG is a weak retract of a product of complete graphs of size at mostk. As a byproduct, we obtain two (polynomially recognizable) structural characterizations of such graphs, extending a result of Bandelt.     

A renormalization group proof of perturbative renormalizability

This paper presents a proof of bounds on the renormalized perturbation expansion of the euclidean ₄ ⁴ theory. Its aim is partly pedagogical: by combining the insights and techniques of numerous authors it is now possible to define the perturbation expansion and bound it in a very few pages. The present version is based on the renormalized tree expansion adapted to the continuous renormalization group: all detailed results are proved by induction on the size of the tree. The continuous RG version presented here has one big advantage over the discrete RG version discussed elsewhere. In the continuous version, a tree has a more restrictive structure: there is a one-to-one correspondence between forks of the tree and lines of Feynman graphs. This extra structure eliminates the need to introduce Feynman graphs in the first place. It also reduces the number of cases to be analyzed at a given inductive step and simplifies the combinatorical estimates.Research supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council     

Discrimination of frequency transitions by human infants

Difference limens (DLs) for linear frequency transitions using a 1.0-kHz pulsed-tone standard were obtained from 6- to 9-month-old human infants in a series of three experiments. A repeating standard "yes-no" operant headturning technique and an adaptive staircase (tracking) procedure were used to obtain difference limens from a total of 71 infants. The DLs for 300-ms upward and downward linear frequency sweeps were approximately 3%-4% when the repeating standard was an unmodulated 1.0-kHz pulsed tone of 300-ms duration. These DLs for frequency sweeps were not significantly different from DLs for frequency increments and decrements using 330-ms pulsed tones [J. M. Sinnott and R. N. Aslin, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 78, 1986-1992 (1985)]. The DLs for frequency sweeps of 50 ms appended to the beginning or the end of a 250-ms unmodulated 1.0-kHz tone were approximately 6%-7%. This greater DL for brief frequency sweeps was confirmed by varying the duration but not the extent of the sweep. Finally, DLs were greater than 50% when the repeating standard was a 50-ms rising or falling frequency sweep appended to the beginning of a 250-ms unmodulated 1.0-kHz tone. These results suggest that rapid frequency transitions are much more difficult to discriminate from frequency transitions of the same category (rising or falling) than from either a frequency transition of the opposite category (falling or rising) or an unmodulated tone.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Oscillatory and Asymptotic Behavior of Damped Functional Differential Equations

New theorems on the oscillatory and asymptotic behavior of solutions of the damped differential equations with deviating arguments of the form are established.     

Quadratically constrained minimum cross-entropy analysis

Quadratically constrained minimum cross-entropy problem has recently been studied by Zhang and Brockett through an elaborately constructed dual. In this paper, we take a geometric programming approach to analyze this problem. Unlike Zhang and Brockett, we separate the probability constraint from general quadratic constraints and use two simple geometric inequalities to derive its dual problem. Furthermore, by using the dual perturbation method, we directly prove the strong duality theorem and derive a dual-to-primal conversion formula. As a by-product, the perturbation proof gives us insights to develop a computation procedure that avoids dual non-differentiability and allows us to use a general purpose optimizer to find an-optimal solution for the quadratically constrained minimum cross-entropy analysis.     

On consistency of bounding operations in deterministic global optimization

This technical comment refers to the discussion of strong consistency of several bounding procedures in Lemma 2.1 and Proposition 2.1 of Ref. 1. A necessary clarification is given of the notion of convergence _q in Lemma 2.1, and a derivation of Proposition 2.1 is presented that includes a new and simple consistency proof of the classical bounding by convex envelopes used in many branch-and-bound procedures.     

Metastable patterns in solutions of ut = ϵ2uxx − f(u)

We consider the equation in question on the interval 0 ≦ x ≦ 1 having Neumann boundary conditions, with f(u) = F(u), where F is a double well energy density with equal minima at u = ±1. The only stable states of the system are patternless constant solutions. But given two-phase initial data, a pattern of interfacial layers typically forms far out of equilibrium. The ensuing nonlinear relaxation process is extremely slow: patterns persist for exponentially long times proportional to exp{A_±l/?, where A = F(±1) and l is the minimum distance between layers. Physically, a tiny potential jump across a layer drives its motion. We prove the existence and persistence of these metastable patterns, and characterise accurately the equations governing their motion. The point of view is reminiscent of center manifold theory: a manifold parametrising slowly evolving states is introduced, a neighbourhood is shown to be normally attracting, and the parallel flow is characterised to high relative accuracy. Proofs involve a detailed study of the Dirichlet problem, spectral gap analysis, and energy estimates.