The cerebral activation pattern due to acupuncture is not completely understood. Although the effect of acupuncture on cerebral haemodynamics has been studied, no previous report has focused on ...different puncture and stimulation methods. We used functional MRI (fMRI) in 15 healthy subjects to investigate cortical activation during stimulation of two real acupoints (Liv3 and G40) and one sham point, needled in a random and, for the subjects, blinded order employing rotating and non-rotating methods, using a blocked paradigm on a 1.5 tesla imager. Compared to the non-rotating stimulation method, during rotating stimulation of the real acupoints, we observed an increase in activation in both secondary somatosensory cortical areas, frontal areas, the right side of the thalamus and the left side of the cerebellum; no such effects of the needling technique were seen while stimulating the sham point. The observation that rotating the needle strengthened the effects of acupuncture only at real acupoints suggests that, as claimed in Chinese traditional medicine, stimulation of these acupoints has a specific effect on cortical neuronal activity, absent with sham acupoints. These specific cerebral activation patterns might explain the therapeutic effects of acupuncture in certain subjects.
The Near Detector for the MINOS Experiment at Fermilab is composed of alternating planes of scintillator strips and steel plates, and is read out with 64-channel, multi-anode photomultiplier tubes. ...The instrumentation uses a custom integrated circuit designed at Fermilab for the front end analog processing, called the QIE. The system can measure single photoelectrons to high precision with a dynamic range of 16 bits. The electronics operates in two modes. It records all events that occur during the 10 /spl mu/s "fast spill" of the beam from the Fermilab Main Injector at a rate of 53 MHz, using a gate from the beamline controls to force data acquisition. The system can also acquire data from cosmic rays that pass through the detector for calibration. In this case, dynode signals from the photomultipliers are used as the trigger, causing digitization and readout of the associated channels. Zero suppression and normalization are done in the front end electronics. The system is "triggerless" in that there is no global hardware trigger. Instead, each event is tagged with a "timestamp", which is used in postprocessing to reconstruct events and discard noise hits. The system of 10,000 channels is now built and installed, and operational at Fermilab. The components of the system are described and preliminary system performance is reported.
We report a measurement of the atmospheric neutrino flavor ratio, R, using a sample of quasi-elastic neutrino interactions occurring in an iron medium. The flavor ratio (tracks/showers) of ...atmospheric neutrinos in a 3.9 fiducial kiloton-year exposure of Soudan 2 is 0.64±0.11(stat.)±0.06(syst.) of that expected. Important aspects of our main analysis have been checked by carrying out two independent, alternative analyses; one is based upon automated scanning, the other uses a multivariate approach for background subtraction. Similar results are found by all three approaches.
The atmospheric neutrino flavour ratio measured using a 1.52 kton-year exposure of Soudan 2 is found to be 0.72 ± 0.19
−0.07
+0.05 relative to the expected value from a Monte Carlo calculation. The ...possible background of interactions of neutrons and photons produced in muon interactions in the rock surrounding the detector has been investigated and is shown not to produce low values of the ratio.
No safe and convenient regimen has proved to be effective for the management of recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis.
After inducing clinical remission with open-label fluconazole given in three 150-mg ...doses at 72-hour intervals, we randomly assigned 387 women with recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis to receive treatment with fluconazole (150 mg) or placebo weekly for six months, followed by six months of observation without therapy. The primary outcome measure was the proportion of women in clinical remission at the end of the first six-month period. Secondary efficacy measures were the clinical outcome at 12 months, vaginal mycologic status, and time to recurrence on the basis of Kaplan-Meier analysis.
Weekly treatment with fluconazole was effective in preventing symptomatic vulvovaginal candidiasis. The proportions of women who remained disease-free at 6, 9, and 12 months in the fluconazole group were 90.8 percent, 73.2 percent, and 42.9 percent, as compared with 35.9 percent, 27.8 percent, and 21.9 percent, respectively, in the placebo group (P< 0.001). The median time to clinical recurrence in the fluconazole group was 10.2 months, as compared with 4.0 months in the placebo group (P<0.001). There was no evidence of fluconazole resistance in isolates of Candida albicans or of superinfection with C. glabrata. Fluconazole was discontinued in one patient because of headache.
Long-term weekly treatment with fluconazole can reduce the rate of recurrence of symptomatic vulvovaginal candidiasis. However, a long-term cure remains difficult to achieve.
A shadow of the Moon, with a statistical significance of 5{sigma}, has been observed in the underground muon flux at a depth of 2090 mwe using the Soudan 2 detector. The angular resolution of the ...detector is well described by a Gaussian with a sigma {<=}0.3 degree sign . The position of the shadow confirms that the alignment of the detector is known to better than 0.15 degree sign and has remained stable during ten years of data taking. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society.
The formation of a pre-silicide layer below Ni1−xPtxSi films is reported with structure and composition distinctly different from previously observed diffusion layers. It was found that during ...two-step rapid thermal annealing Ni interstitial diffusion can kinetically dominate over the formation of Ni silicide, which results in a metastable pre-silicide layer. Aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy experiments have revealed Ni to occupy interstitial and substitutional sites in the pre-silicide layer. Rapid thermal annealing and Pt alloying determines the stoichiometry and thickness of the layer, while the point defect configurations give rise to lowering of the associated Schottky barrier heights. The pre-silicide layer effectively limits diffusion of Ni into the substrate and therefore allows for the low-temperature growth of Ni2Si and NiSi.
The magnetized steel and scintillator calorimeters of the MINOS experiment Allison, W.W.M.; Andreopoulos, C.; Ayres, D.S. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
11/2008, Letnik:
596, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment uses an accelerator-produced neutrino beam to perform precision measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters in the ...“atmospheric neutrino” sector associated with muon neutrino disappearance. This long-baseline experiment measures neutrino interactions in Fermilab's NuMI neutrino beam with a near detector at Fermilab and again 735
km downstream with a far detector in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in northern Minnesota. The two detectors are magnetized steel-scintillator tracking calorimeters. They are designed to be as similar as possible in order to ensure that differences in detector response have minimal impact on the comparisons of event rates, energy spectra and topologies that are essential to MINOS measurements of oscillation parameters. The design, construction, calibration and performance of the far and near detectors are described in this paper.
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