Aminosidine plus sodium stibogluconate for the treatment of Indian kala-azar: a randomized dose-finding clinical trial

This randomized, open sequential design trial was set up to assess the efficacy, tolerability and toxicity of 20 d courses of combined intramuscular aminosidine and sodium stibogluconate at various dosages in patients with newly-diagnosed kala-azar in Bihar, India. Three successive studies of 96 patients each were originally planned with aminosidine administered at 12, 6 and 3 mg/kg/d, respectively. For each aminosidine dosage, patients were randomly assigned to receive sodium stibogluconate at 20, 10 or 5 mg/kg/d of antimony. Ninety-six patients were enrolled and assigned aminosidine 12 mg/kg/d as scheduled. In the subsequent study with aminosidine at 6 mg/kg/d, the trial was interrupted after 40 patients had entered owing to inadequacy of the treatment. With aminosidine 12 mg/kg/d the success rates with sodium stibogluconate at 20, 10 and 5 mg/kg/d were 88%, 71% and 72%, respectively and did not differ significantly. With aminosidine 6 mg/kg/d, 69%, 50% and 46% of patients were cured with the same sodium stibogluconate doses, respectively; again, there was no significant difference between the subgroups. The overall success rate with aminosidine at 12 mg/kg/d (76%) was significantly higher than that with 6 mg/kg/d (55%) (odds ratio = 2·69; 95% confidence interval, 1·11-6·4). Patients improved clinically and the treatments were equally well tolerated. The combination of aminosidine 12 mg/kg/d and sodium stibogluconate 20 mg/kg/d for 20 d appears to be an effective and safe replacement in Bihar for sodium stibogluconate alone for ⩾40

Chiral spin liquid and emergent anyons in a Kagome lattice Mott insulator

Topological phases in frustrated quantum spin systems have fascinated researchers for decades. One of the earliest proposals for such a phase was the chiral spin liquid put forward by Kalmeyer and Laughlin in 1987 as the bosonic analogue of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Elusive for many years, recent times have finally seen a number of models that realize this phase. However, these models are somewhat artificial and unlikely to be found in realistic materials. Here, we take an important step towards the goal of finding a chiral spin liquid in nature by examining a physically motivated model for a Mott insulator on the Kagome lattice with broken time-reversal symmetry. We first provide a theoretical justification for the emergent chiral spin liquid phase in terms of a network model perspective. We then present an unambiguous numerical identification and characterization of the universal topological properties of the phase, including ground state degeneracy, edge physics, and anyonic bulk excitations, by using a variety of powerful numerical probes, including the entanglement spectrum and modular transformations.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures; partially supersedes arXiv:1303.696

Dual frequency emission in a compact semiconductor laser for coherent population trapping cesium atomic clocks

We present the dual-frequency emission of a diode-pumped vertical external-cavity semiconductor laser at 852 nm dedicated to coherent population trapping experiments. With a compact cavity more than 10mW is demonstrated in each polarization, with a frequency difference in the GHz range. One polarization has been stabilized on an atomic transitio

Zeros of Brauer characters and linear actions of finite groups: Small primes

We describe the finite groups whose p-Brauer character table, for p = 2 or p = 3, does not contain any zero. This completes the analysis in [6], where we considered the case p 65 5

Evaluation of the noise properties of a dual-frequency VECSEL for compact Cs atomic clocks (Poster)

International audienceWe evaluate a dual-frequency and dual-polarization optically-pumped semiconductor laser emitting at 852 nm as a new laser source for compact atomic clocks based on the coherent population trapping (CPT) technique. The frequency difference between the laser modes is tunable to 9.2 GHz corresponding to the ground state hyperfine-split of Cs. Impact of the laser noise has been investigated. Laser relative intensity noise is limited by the pump-RIN transfer to a level of-110 dB/Hz. Laser frequency noise shows excess mechanical and technical noise resulting in a laser linewidth of 1 MHz at 1 s in lock operation. The noise performance and spectral properties of the laser are already adequate to realize CPT experiments and should result in Allan standard-deviation of the clock below 1 × 10-12 at 1 second

Coherent dual-frequency emission of a vertical external-cavity semiconductor laser at the cesium D2 line

International audienceWe describe the dual-frequency and dual-polarization emission of a diode-pumped vertical external-cavity semiconductor laser at 852 nm dedicated to the coherent population trapping of cesium atoms. The output power reaches ∼20 mW on each frequency, with a frequency difference in the GHz range

Groups whose degree graph has three independent vertices

Let G be a finite group, and let cd(G) denote the set of degrees of the irreducible complex characters of G. This paper is a contribution to the study of the degree graph of G, that is, the prime graph built on the set cd(G). Namely, we characterize finite groups whose degree graph has three independent vertices (i.e., three vertices that are pairwise non-adjacent). Our result turns out to be a generalization of several previously-known theorems concerning the structure of the degree graph

Finite groups with real conjugacy classes of prime size

We determine the structure of a finite group G whose noncentral real conjugacy classes have prime size. In particular, we show that G is solvable and that the set of the sizes of its real classes is one of the following: {1},{1, 2}, {1, p}, or {1, 2, p}, where p is an odd prime