Prominent K-shell emission lines of neutral iron (hereafter Fe I-K lines) and hard-continuum X-rays from molecular clouds (MCs) in the Sagittarius B (Sgr B) region were found in two separate Suzaku ...observations in 2005 and 2009. The X-ray flux of the Fe I-K lines decreased in correlation with the hard-continuum flux by a factor of 0.4-0.5 in four years, which is almost equal to the light traveling across the MCs. The rapid and correlated time variability, the equivalent width of the Fe I-K lines, and the K edge absorption depth of Fe I are consistently explained by 'X-ray echoes' due to the fluorescent and Thomson scattering of an X-ray flare from an external source. The required flux of the X-ray flare depends on the distance to the MCs and its time duration. Even for a case with a minimum distance, the flux is larger than those of the brightest Galactic X-ray sources. Based on these facts, we conclude that the supermassive black hole Sgr A* exhibited a large flare a few hundred years ago with a luminosity of more than 4 X 1039 erg s--1. The 'X-ray echo' from Sgr B, located a few hundred light-years from Sgr A*, has now reached the Earth.
ABSTRACT From the rate of hydrogen ionization and the gamma-ray flux, we derived the spectrum of relativistic and subrelativistic cosmic rays (CRs) nearby and inside the molecular cloud Sgr B2 near ...the Galactic Center. We studied two cases of CR propagation in molecular clouds: free propagation and scattering of particles by magnetic fluctuations excited by the neutral gas turbulence. We showed that in the latter case CR propagation inside the cloud can be described as diffusion with a coefficient of cm2 s−1. For the case of hydrogen ionization by subrelativistic protons, we showed that their spectrum outside the cloud is quite hard with a spectral index of . The energy density of subrelativistic protons ( eV cm−3) is one order of magnitude higher than that of relativistic CRs. These protons generate the 6.4 keV emission from Sgr B2, which was about 30% of the flux observed by Suzaku in 2013. Future observations for the period after 2013 may discover the background flux generated by subrelativistic CRs in Sgr B2. Alternatively, hydrogen ionization of the molecular gas in Sgr B2 may be caused by high energy electrons. We showed that the spectrum of electron bremsstrahlung is harder than the observed continuum from Sgr B2, and in principle, this X-ray component provided by electrons could be seen from the INTEGRAL data as a stationary high energy excess above the observed spectrum .
This study investigated the effectiveness of treatment with Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) assessed by ultrasonography (US) activity, and the influence of patient ...characteristics and previous treatments.
This prospective study assessed 60 treatment initiations among 53 Japanese patients diagnosed with RA who underwent treatment with JAK inhibitors during June 2013 to February 2020. Of the 53 patients, seven patients were enrolled in duplicate because they were treated with two different JAK inhibitors at different periods. For each case, the improvement rate on the power Doppler (PD) score was assessed at 6 month follow-up. Median improvement rate of PD score was used to classify cases as either US responders or non-responders, and patient characteristics were compared between the two groups.
All indicators of clinical disease activity and US activity showed a significant improvement at 3 months compared with baseline. Although the JAK inhibitor-cycler group and the interleukin-6 (IL-6) inhibitor inadequate response (IR) group tended to show a later improvement for US activity, all indicators of clinical disease activity and US activity showed a significant improvement at 6 months compared with baseline for both groups. Multivariate analysis showed that concomitant methotrexate use and an IR to the previous biologic or targeted-synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (b/tsDMARD) treatment were independently and significantly associated with US responders.
Use of a JAK inhibitor in combination with methotrexate and an absence of IR to any previous b/tsDMARDs demonstrated superior effectiveness for patients with RA.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The cross-slip process of a screw dislocation from the basal to the prismatic plane in magnesium was studied using the density functional theory and the molecular dynamics calculations. An ...atomistic method for calculating the total Peierls energy map has been devised to track the transition path of a dissociated and/or constricted screw dislocation in the cross-slip process. The barrier of a screw dislocation from the basal to the prismatic plane is estimated by the density functional theory for the first time to be meV per Burgers vector length. The activation enthalpy for the cross slip is calculated using a line tension model based on the density functional theory to be 1.4-1.7 eV, which is in reasonable agreement with experiments. On the basis of the results, the effect of temperature on the cross-slip process of the dissociated screw dislocation on the basal plane is studied in detail using the molecular dynamics method with the embedded-atom-method (EAM) interatomic potential, in which the critical resolved shear stress for the cross slip is evaluated. It is confirmed that the bowed-out dislocation line on the prismatic plane consists of slightly dissociated rectilinear segments with connecting jogs at low temperatures and, as the temperature rises, the curved dislocation line becomes smooth with many segments. The motion of an dislocation on the prismatic plane is jerky in the low temperature region, while it is retarded by the formation of the largely dissociated plateau segment above the room temperature. A large reduction of the critical shear stress for the cross slip is obtained when the screw dislocation interacts with a hard-sphere particle placed on the basal plane in the low temperature region.
Nanoscale incipient plastic deformation in crystalline metals occurs as the result of the collective motion of dislocations. It is known as “nanoplasticity” and is recognized as the elementary ...process of the macroscopic deformation. Abrupt increases in indent displacements called displacement bursts were observed in recent nanoindentation experiments; that is, the specific behavior for nanoplasticity. In the present study, experimental tests are first conducted to educe the unique nature of the nanoscale deformation. Subsequently, large-scale atomistic simulations are performed to predict the incipient plastic deformation and a new discrete dislocation model combined with the boundary element analysis is constructed to capture the collective motion of the dislocations. Our results suggest that the incipient plastic deformation requires much higher critical shear stress than the theoretical shear strength due to high compressive stress distribution beneath the indenter, and that the displacement burst is induced by surface rearrangement corresponding to hundreds of dislocation dipoles.
Objectives: Using multicentre ultrasound (US) cohort data among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we aimed to identify baseline factors that permit differentiation between two patient cohorts ...achieving US remission and clinical remission, and to determine the factors contributing to the discrepancy.
Method: We reviewed 248 Japanese patients diagnosed with RA who underwent treatment with biological disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs at 13 centres. We performed US assessments of the synovia of 22 joints. We assessed the percentages of patients with clinical remission and US remission, defined as total power Doppler scores of 0 at 12 months.
Results: The 87 patients who achieved US remission were divided into a group that achieved both clinical and US remission (n = 53) and a group that achieved US remission only (n = 34). Baseline factors that were significantly and independently associated with clinical remission at 12 months among patients who also achieved US remission included short disease duration, the presence of concomitant methotrexate use, and low patient global assessment score (p < 0.05, p < 0.05, and p < 0.005, respectively).
Conclusions: RA patients with baseline high patient global assessment scores and long disease duration at baseline were unlikely to achieve clinical remission even after achieving US remission. Objective joint assessments using US provide additional information of potential importance for the management of RA.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Because solute impurities have an effect on embrittlement through segregation under irradiation, solute stability and the influence of irradiation on the diffusion characteristics of impurities ...become prominent due to several acceleration effects of high irradiance circumstances in irradiated materials. In this study, the diffusion characteristics of several impurities in non-magnetic fcc iron are investigated using first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations. In accordance with classical diffusion and transition state theories, we nonempirically evaluated the contribution to properties of the binding energy between vacancy and each impurity and the migration enthalpy. The migration energy was calculated using the nudged elastic band method with DFT. The vacancy formation energy, including the entropic contributions to free energies in γ-iron, was evaluated by considering vibrational phonon frequencies based on frozen phonons employing the harmonic approximation for the lattice dynamics. Consequently, we confirmed that the binding energy between large-radius impurities and vacancies is larger than that with an equivalent size of the solvent element, and that the migration enthalpies of these impurities are quite small compared with self diffusion. This finding may indicate that the electronic binding states at the saddle point have a large influence on the migration of impurities.
The material strengths of polycrystalline metals have been widely predicted according to the grain size, where yield stress is governed by slip transfer through the grain boundary (GB). The ...transferability of a dislocation across a GB is enormously important in the deformation process as well as the interaction between a dislocation and GB. This paper proposes a new criterion for the transferability of dislocations through a GB that considers both the intergranular crystallographic orientation of slip systems and the applied stress condition. Atomistic simulations were carried out to investigate the slip transfer event of simple bicrystals composed of Σ3(1̄12) GB than Σ3(1̄11) GBs under uniaxial deformation and to illustrate the availability of this criterion. As a result, in contrast to the predictions of conventional criteria such as the M-value, dislocations propagated more easily across the Σ3(1̄11) and Σ3(1̄12) GB under given stress states, reflecting a larger L′-value of Σ3 bicrystal associated with higher transferability.
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