Spontaneous Evolution Research Articles

Effects of spontaneously generated coherence in a microwave-driven four-level atomic system

The effect of spontaneously generated coherence (SGC) on spontaneous emission and dynamical evolution of a microwave-driven four-level atomic system is studied. Interesting phenomena due to SGC, such as spectral-line narrowing, spectra-line enhancement, spectral-line suppression, and fluorescence quenching, are shown in the spontaneous emission spectra, which can be effectively modulated by amplitude and phase of the microwave field. Due to SGC, the total populations are partly, even completely, trapped in upper levels in steady state, the decay time of which is sensitive to the phase of the microwave field. In the dressed state picture, multiple SGC arise during the process of three close-lying states decaying to the same state. The corresponding experiment to observe the expected phenomena related to SGC can be more conveniently realized in atoms, since no rigorous conditions are required and the amplitude and phase of the microwave field can be conveniently controlled.

Goat's milk allergies in children following specific oral tolerance induction to cow's milk

Being allergic to goat and sheep’s milk whilst having a good tolerance to cow’s milk is relatively uncommon. For cow’s milk allergy, keeping to a dairy-free diet is the recommended treatment and the patient is advised against introducing milk from other ruminants due to the existence of cross-reactivity between species. When there is not a spontaneous evolution towards tolerance from four years of age, the allergy is considered persistent. Recently, there has been a move to treat those patients with specific oral tolerance induction (SOTI). The results are good and enable patients to follow a diet without any cow’s milk restrictions. It would seem logical to suppose that induced artificial tolerance to cow’s milk proteins could extend to all dairy proteins regardless of their animal origin, as usually occurs in natural tolerance. However, some of our patients treated in this way have suffered allergic reactions after having eaten goat and sheep cheese. We report two cases of an IgE-mediated allergy to goat and sheep’s milk without any actual clinical CMA.

Experimental Research of Spontaneous Evolution from Ultracold Rydberg Atoms to Plasma

The spontaneous evolution from ultracold Rydberg atoms to plasma is investigated in a caesium MOT by using the method of field ionization. The plasma transferred from atoms in different Rydberg states (n = 22-32) are obtained experimentally. Dependence of the threshold time of evolving to plasma and the threshold number of initial Rydberg atoms on the principal quantum number of initial Rydberg states is studied. The experimental results are in agreement with hot-cold Rydberg–Rydberg atom collision ionization theory.

Evolution and Prognosis Value of Intrarenal Reflux

PURPOSE The aim of this multicenter, prospective observational case-control study was to evaluate the prognostic significance of intrarenal reflux (IRR). MATERIAL AND METHODS Thirty three patients aged 0 to 3 years with IRR, followed during three years, were compared to 27 children (controls) with high-grade vesicoureteric reflux (VUR) without IRR matched in gender, age and VUR grade. All patients received urinary antibioprophylaxis during observation and antireflux surgery was performed in children who got recurrent urinary tract infections (UTI). DMSA scan performed at study entry, by 18 and 36 months of follow-up was scored for each refluxing renal unit from 0 (normal) to 3 (severe). RESULTS At entry, IRR was a complication of 42 refluxing renal units (RRU), including 7 VUR grade 3, 17 grade 4 and 18 grade 5. VUR was revealed by UTI in 21/32 patients with IRR compared to 11/27 patients in the control group (chi square, p<0.05). DMSA score was not different between the 42 RRU with IRR (1.45±0.15) compared to the 44 high-grade (grade 3 and over) RRU without IRR (1.07±0.18; NS). During the follow-up, the incidence of UTI and new renal scars were similar between the two groups. In addition, 18/33 patients with IRR and 13/27 patients in the control group underwent anti-reflux surgery due to recurrent UTI (Chi-square NS). CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, the spontaneous evolution of IRR is more pejorative owing to a greater risk for urinary tract infection and a trend to increase renal scarring. With medical management the prognosis of high-grade VUR with IRR is not different from high-grade VUR without IRR.

Evolution of tibial SSEP after traumatic spinal cord injury: Baseline for clinical trials

Objective To describe the spontaneous evolution of tibial somatosensory evoked potentials (tSSEPs) after spinal cord injury (SCI) and its relation to neurological and functional parameters. Methods tSSEPs were assessed in 297 patients within five standardized time intervals throughout the first year after injury, along with neurological and functional parameters. Results Roughly 60% of the patients did not show any recordable tSSEP throughout the first year after injury. Approximately 20% had recordable potentials at every assessment stage and showed an improvement of tSSEP parameters over time. In about 10% of the patients, a potential recovered during the first year. In the remaining cases, potentials were inconsistently recordable. All groups showed a similar amount of neurological and functional improvement. Conclusions Recordability, latencies and amplitudes of tSSEPs can change over time after SCI. The early recordability of a tSSEP is associated with a favorable functional and neurological status and outcome. In contrast, an initially absent tSSEP is not always associated with a poorer status and outcome but only in those 75% of the patients in whom the potential remains absent. Significance This exact description of the spontaneous improvements of neurophysiological, neurological and functional parameters after SCI is an important prerequisite in appraising the efficacy of new interventional therapies.

Hépatite auto-immune et grossesse : à propos de trois grossesses consécutives chez une patiente

Spontaneous evolution of autoimmune hepatitis during pregnancy is not well known and nor is its consequences on pregnancy evolution. Immunosuppressive treatment during pregnancy is sometimes necessary but the long- and short-term consequences are unrecognized. We relate a patient's disease with autoimmune hepatitis and cirrhosis and three consecutive pregnancies with different obstetrical and medical complications.

The transformation of ultra-cold Rydberg atom to plasma

Ultra-cold Rydberg atoms are obtained using three-photon excitation in the Cs magneto-optical trap(MOT), and the signals of the plasma are measured through changing the interaction time. The spontaneous evolution and the ionization mechanism are investigated.

Molecular homochirality and the parity‐violating energy difference. A critique with new proposals

Previous proposals for the origin of molecular homochirality, based on the effect of the weak neutral current (WNC) on enantiomers, and the amplification of the resultant parity-violating energy difference (PVED), are possibly flawed. The additive amplification of PVED in crystals and polymers ("Yamagata hypothesis") cannot lead to detectable levels of optical activity, the original theory apparently overestimating PVED by a factor equal to Avogadro's number. An alternative theory based on the irreversible and spontaneous evolution of a dynamically fluctuating system is apparently impractical. However, the nonlinear amplification of PVED via autocatalytic polymerization may be possible as indicated by a simplified physico-chemical approach. This may also occur during crystallization and melting, and form the basis of the second order asymmetric transformation. (Thus, reported differences in the melting points of enantiomers in several cases may well be real). Also, the preponderance of racemic compounds over conglomerates may be based on the destabilization of the conglomerate by the action of the WNC on the crystalline lattice. The WNC may also be involved in the anomalous scattering of X-rays, which possibly arises from their circular polarization: the current theory would need to be revised accordingly.

Surface charge driven size evolution during the formation of self-assembled nanostructuresfrom discrete hydrophilic silver nanoparticles

We investigate the spontaneous evolution of mercaptosuccinic acid-capped silver nanoparticles (MSA-Ag)of size 2.5 ± 1.0 nm during the formation of assembled nanostructures at the air/water interface. In thephase transfer approach induced by the cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammoniumbromide (CTAB), the fusion among MSA-Ag nanoparticles is notably accelerated owing tothe formation of a CTA–MSA bilayer on the particle surface. Provided that thesize-selective separation is carried out in advance for these polydisperse MSA-Agnanoparticles, either a unitary or a binary orderly superlattice composed of evolvednanoparticles is obtained at the air/water interface. For self-corrective equilibrium growthby adjusting the pH value of the bulk solution through the diffusion of HCl vapor, acompetition is found between the superlattice formation and the size growth. The possiblesize evolution mechanism of each method is proposed. This work also shows thatcontrollable evolution is a useful approach to prepare nanostructures with structuraldiversity.

Conservation Management of Tasmanian Devils in the Context of an Emerging, Extinction-threatening Disease: Devil Facial Tumor Disease

An emerging infectious facial cancer threatens Tasmanian devils with extinction. The disease is likely to occur across the range of the devil within 5 years. This urgent time frame requires management options that can be implemented immediately: the establishment of insurance populations, in captivity, wild-living on islands, and aiming for eradication in areas that can be isolated. The long-term options of the spontaneous or assisted evolution of resistance or development of a field-deliverable vaccine are unlikely to be available in time. The disease’s characteristic allograft transmission through intimate contact simplifies isolation of insurance populations and breaking transmission in suppression trials. Better knowledge of contact matrices in wild devils will help focus timing and demographic targets of removals. A metapopulation approach is needed that integrates captive and wild-living island and peninsula (disease suppression) populations to minimize the loss of genetic diversity over 50 years until either extinction and reintroduction can occur, resistance evolves or a field-deliverable vaccine is developed. Given the importance of the insurance populations and the low genetic diversity of devils, a conservative target for retention of 95% genetic diversity is recommended. Encouraging preliminary results of the first disease-suppression trial on a large peninsula show fewer late stage tumors and no apparent population decline. Limiting geographic spread or suppressing the disease on a broadscale are both unlikely to be feasible. Since the synergy of devil decline and impending fox establishment could have devastating consequences for Tasmanian wildlife, it is crucial to manage the dynamics of new and old predator species together.

A Long-Term Evolutionary Pressure on the Amount of Noncoding DNA

A significant part of eukaryotic noncoding DNA is viewed as the passive result of mutational processes, such as the proliferation of mobile elements. However, sequences lacking an immediate utility can nonetheless play a major role in the long-term evolvability of a lineage, for instance by promoting genomic rearrangements. They could thus be subject to an indirect selection. Yet, such a long-term effect is difficult to isolate either in vivo or in vitro. Here, by performing in silico experimental evolution, we demonstrate that, under low mutation rates, the indirect selection of variability promotes the accumulation of noncoding sequences: Even in the absence of self-replicating elements and mutational bias, noncoding sequences constituted an important fraction of the evolved genome because the indirectly selected genomes were those that were variable enough to discover beneficial mutations. On the other hand, high mutation rates lead to compact genomes, much like the viral ones, although no selective cost of genome size was applied: The indirectly selected genomes were those that were small enough for the genetic information to be reliably transmitted. Thus, the spontaneous evolution of the amount of noncoding DNA strongly depends on the mutation rate. Our results suggest the existence of an additional pressure on the amount of noncoding DNA, namely the indirect selection of an appropriate trade-off between the fidelity of the transmission of the genetic information and the exploration of the mutational neighborhood. Interestingly, this trade-off resulted robustly in the accumulation of noncoding DNA so that the best individual leaves one offspring without mutation (or only neutral ones) per generation.

K výročí Augusta Comta: pozitivistický koncept spontánního vzniku jazyka

Studie se skládá ze dvou částí, z nichž první je věnovaná obecné charakteristice A. Comta jako likvidátora filozofie, hlasatele sjednocující systemizace a romantického humanitáře; dále je v ní mapován Comtův vliv na T. G. Masaryka (kde je sledována hlavně filiace Comte-Brentano-TGM) a F. X. Šaldu (zejména z hlediska jeho akceptace Comtovy myšlenky "vlády mrtvých"). Druhá část zahrnuje rozbor Comtova chápání spontánního vývoje a kritické komentáře k Comtově koncepci spontánní geneze jazyka, v níž je viděn předstupeň Durkheimova sociologismu.

Gene expression profiling and gene copy‐number changes in malignant mesothelioma cell lines

Malignant mesothelioma (MM) is an asbestos-induced tumor that acquires aneuploid DNA content during the tumorigenic process. We used instable MM cell lines as an in vitro model to study the impact of DNA copy-number changes on gene expression profiling, in the course of their chromosomal redistribution process. Two MM cell lines, PMR-MM2 (early passages of in vitro culture) and PMR-MM7 (both early and late passages of in vitro culture), were cytogenetically characterized. Genomic gains and losses were precisely defined using microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization (array-CGH), and minimal overlapping analysis led to the identification of the common unbalanced genomic regions. Using the U133Plus 2.0 Affymetrix gene chip array, we analyzed PMR-MM7 early and late passages for genome-wide gene expression, and correlated the differentially expressed genes with copy-number changes. The presence of a high number of genetic imbalances occurring from early to late culture steps reflected the tendency of MM cells toward genomic instability. The selection of specific chromosomal abnormalities observed during subsequent cultures demonstrated the spontaneous evolution of the cancer cells in an in vitro environment. MM cell lines were characterized by copy-number changes associated with the TP53 apoptotic pathway already present at the first steps of in vitro culture. Prolonged culture led to acquisition of additional chromosomal copy-number changes associated with dysregulation of genes involved in cell adhesion, regulation of mitotic cell cycle, signal transduction, carbohydrate metabolism, motor activity, glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis, protein binding activity, lipid transport, ATP synthesis, and methyltransferase activity.

Spontaneous evolution of low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL)

S: Selected Abstracts Presented at the XVII Meeting of the Spanish Association of Cervical Pathology and Colposcopy

A Pre-HAART Follow-up Study of the Hematologic Manifestations in Children With Perinatal HIV-1 Infection: Suggestions for Reclassification of Clinical Staging

Hematologic manifestations in perinatally human immunodeficiency virus-1-infected children have not been widely described in literature. Knowledge of the spontaneous evolution of this disease is essential for achieving optimum care of patients. We analyzed the main hematologic manifestations developed in the prehighly active antiretroviral therapy period of 1217 children, collected from the Italian Register for HIV infection. In 111 patients, the hematologic sign was the first clinical manifestation. Among anemic and neutropenic patients, the fraction of patients in clinical class C was significantly higher than the corresponding fraction in class B (76%, P<0.001 and 74%, P<0.01), and significantly lower in thrombocytopenic patients (42%, P<0.001). The overall progression from class B to C was overlapping to the control group; when separated, however, anemic patients progressed faster (P<0.0001), whereas thrombocytopenic patients had a slower progression, similar to the nonhematologic patients in class A. Anemic patients had a worse prognosis than the control group (P<0.0001), similar to the nonhematologic patients in class C. Finally, the negative prognostic value of anemia was independent from the immunologic condition. Anemia was associated with greater mortality risks. Thrombocytopenia appeared, paradoxically, to be a positive prognostic factor within class B. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classification presently defines hematologic patients as a single entity; a finer distinction could improve its relevance for the rational design of prevention and therapy.

Spontaneous evolution of social exchange—An experimental study

Each of several exchange partners owns a specific commodity which she can share with others. Unlike in other social dilemma scenarios like prisoners’ dilemma, public goods games, etc., voluntary cooperation relies on bilateral exchanges whose profitabilities are interdependent. How will mutual sharing evolve? Will it include all group members or will smaller groups be more efficient? Our experimental data shed partly new light on older topics: cooperation is now relation specific, allowing for discrimination; group size effects are explored dynamically rather than in one-shot interaction; and, finally, we have weakened demand effects for voluntary cooperation by realistic efficiency gains.

Thermodynamically Stable Pickering Emulsions

We show that under appropriate conditions, mixtures of oil, water, and nanoparticles form thermodynamically stable oil-in-water emulsions with monodisperse droplet diameters in the range of 30-150 nm. This observation challenges current wisdom that so-called Pickering emulsions are at most metastable and points to a new class of mesoscopic equilibrium structures. Thermodynamic stability is demonstrated by the spontaneous evolution of binary droplet mixtures towards one intermediate size distribution. Equilibrium interfacial curvature due to an asymmetric charge distribution induced by adsorbed colloids explains the growth of emulsion droplets upon salt addition. Moreover, the existence of a minimal radius of curvature with a concomitant expulsion of excess oil is in close analogy with microemulsions.

361 L’OCT et la périmétrie reliée au FO dans la fermeture spontanée d’un trou maculaire traumatique : à propos d’un cas

Traumatic macular hole (TMH) closure after ocular trauma is not uncommon, especially in young people. We report a case of TMH prospectively followed using OCT (OCT-3) and fundus-related perimetry (MP-1 microperimetry). A 36 years-old man was diagnosed with TMH a few hours after a traumatism of his left eye (soccer ball). We analyzed the spontaneous evolution of the TMH performing OCT-3 and MP-1, up to 18 months after the initial observation. At initial examination, visual acuity was light perception and fundoscopy revealed a macular hole with associated commotio retinae of the posterior pole. OCT-3 showed the presence of a full-thickness macular hole with cuff of subretinal fluid and minimal parafoveal edema. MP-1 showed unstable and eccentric fixation and diffuse reduction of sensitivity. As early as one-week follow-up, the macular hole closed spontaneously and visual acuity improved. At the 18-month follow-up, best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was 20/40, OCT scans showed complete closure of the macular hole with some atrophic changes, and MP-1 revealed a localized reduction of sensitivity (superior aspect of the posterior pole) and a new eccentric and stable fixation (preferred-retinal-locus, PRL). In our case, OCT and fundus-related perimetry were respectively able to show the spontaneous closure of TMH and the development of the new PRL. OCT-3 and MP-1 are useful tools to predict the evolution of TMH.

Strategies for sustainable development of industrial park in Ulsan, South Korea—From spontaneous evolution to systematic expansion of industrial symbiosis

The Korea National Cleaner Production Center (KNCPC) affiliated to the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) has started a 15 year, 3-phase EIP master plan with the support of Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Energy (MOCIE). A total of 6 industrial parks, including industrial parks in Ulsan city, known as the industrial capital of South Korea, are planning projects to find the feasibility of shifting existing industrial parks to eco-industrial parks. The basic survey shows that Ulsan industrial complex has been continuously evolving from conventional industrial complexes to eco-industrial parks by spontaneous industrial symbiosis. This paper describes the Korean national policies and the developmental activities of this vision to drive the global trend of innovation for converting the existing industrial parks to eco-industrial parks through inter-industry waste, energy, and material exchange in Ulsan Industrial complexes. In addition, the primary and supportive components of the Ulsan EIP pilot project, which will be implemented for 5 years is elaborated with its schedules and economic benefits.

Thirteen-Year Spontaneous Evolution of Helicobacter pylori Gastritis Acquired During Early Childhood

To the Editor .— Helicobacter pylori infection is usually contracted in early childhood, before the age of 5 years.1 The infection causes chronic gastritis that is responsible in adulthood for atrophic gastritis, which could lead to gastric carcinoma.2 However, there are very few available data about the natural evolution of H pylori gastritis during childhood. We previously published a prospective 2-year study of 18 asymptomatic H pylori –infected children.3 The study revealed a slight aggravation …