Electroelasticity of Charged Black Branes

We present the first-order corrected dynamics of fluid branes carrying higher-form charge by obtaining the general form of their equations of motion to pole-dipole order. Assuming linear response theory, we characterize the corresponding effective theory of stationary bent charged (an)isotropic fluid branes in terms of two sets of response coefficients, the Young modulus and the piezoelectric moduli. We subsequently find large classes of examples in gravity of this effective theory, by constructing stationary strained charged black brane solutions to first order in a derivative expansion. Using solution generating techniques and bent neutral black branes as a seed solution, we obtain a class of charged black brane geometries carrying smeared Maxwell charge in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity. In the specific case of ten-dimensional space-time we furthermore use T-duality to generate bent black branes with higher-form charge, including smeared D-branes of type II string theory. By subsequently measuring the bending moment and the electric dipole moment which these geometries acquire due to the strain, we uncover that their form is captured by classical electroelasticity theory. In particular, we find that the Young modulus and the piezoelectric moduli of our strained charged black brane solutions are parameterized by a total of 4 response coefficients, both for the isotropic as well as anisotropic cases.Comment: v2: 40pp; typos fixe

Holographic Models for Theories with Hyperscaling Violation

We study in detail a variety of gravitational toy models for hyperscaling-violating Lifshitz (hvLif) space-times. These space-times have been recently explored as holographic dual models for condensed matter systems. We start by considering a model of gravity coupled to a massive vector field and a dilaton with a potential. This model supports the full class of hvLif space-times and special attention is given to the particular values of the scaling exponents appearing in certain non-Fermi liquids. We study linearized perturbations in this model, and consider probe fields whose interactions mimic those of the perturbations. The resulting equations of motion for the probe fields are invariant under the Lifshitz scaling. We derive Breitenlohner-Freedman-type bounds for these new probe fields. For the cases of interest the hvLif space-times have curvature invariants that blow up in the UV. We study the problem of constructing models in which the hvLif space-time can have an AdS or Lifshitz UV completion. We also analyze reductions of Schroedinger space-times and reductions of waves on extremal (intersecting) branes, accompanied by transverse space reductions, that are solutions to supergravity-like theories, exploring the allowed parameter range of the hvLif scaling exponents.Comment: version 3: matches published versio

Black Branes as Piezoelectrics

We find a realization of linear electroelasticity theory in gravitational physics by uncovering a new response coefficient of charged black branes, exhibiting their piezoelectric behavior. Taking charged dilatonic black strings as an example and using the blackfold approach we measure their elastic and piezolectric moduli. We also use our results to draw predictions about the equilibrium condition of charged dilatonic black rings in dimensions higher than six.Comment: v2: 9 pages; important sign corrections in section 3 and other minor corrections; published in PR

Temporal patterns of inflammatory gene expression in local tissues after banding or burdizzo castration in cattle

peer-reviewedBackground: Castration of male cattle has been shown to elicit inflammatory reactions and acute inflammation is initiated and sustained by the participation of cytokines. Methods: Sixty continental × beef bulls (Mean age 12 ± (s.e.) 0.2 months; Mean weight 341 ± (s.e.) 3.0 kg) were blocked by weight and randomly assigned to one of three treatments (n = 20 animals per treatment): 1) untreated control (Con); 2) banding castration at 0 min (Band); 3) Burdizzo castration at 0 min (Burd). Samples of the testis, epididymis and scrotal skin were collected surgically from 5 animals from each group at 12 h, 24 h, 7 d, and 14 d post-treatment, and analysed using real-time PCR. A repeated measurement analysis (Proc GLM) was performed using SAS. If there was no treatment and time interaction, main effects of treatment by time were tested by ANOVA. Results: Electrophoresis data showed that by 7 d post-castration RNA isolated from all the testicle samples of the Burd castrated animals, the epididymis and middle scrotum samples from Band castrates were degraded. Transitory effects were observed in the gene expression of IFN-γ, IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α at 12 h and 24 h post treatment. Burd castrates had greater (P < 0.05) testicular IFN-γ mRNA levels compared with Band and Con animals, but lower (P < 0.05) testicular TNF-α mRNA levels compared with Con animals. Band castrates had greater (P < 0.05) testicular IL-6 mRNA levels than Burd castrates at 12 h post-castration. Burd castrates had greater (P < 0.05) testicular IL-8 mRNA levels than Band and Con animals at 24 h post-castration. In the epididymis, Burd castrates had greater (P < 0.05) IL-6 mRNA (both at 12 h and 24 h post treatment) and IL-8 mRNA (12 h post treatment) levels compared with Band and Con animals; Burd castrates had greater (P = 0.049) IL-10 mRNA levels than Band castrates at 12 h post-castration. Conclusion: Banding castration caused more inflammatory associated gene expression changes to the epididymis and scrotum than burdizzo. Burdizzo caused more severe acute inflammatory responses, in terms of pro-inflammatory cytokine gene expression, in the testis and epididymis than banding

The role of a class III gibberellin 2-oxidase in tomato internode elongation

[EN] A network of environmental inputs and internal signaling controls plant growth, development and organ elongation. In particular, the growth-promoting hormone gibberellin (GA) has been shown to play a significant role in organ elongation. The use of tomato as a model organism to study elongation presents an opportunity to study the genetic control of internode-specific elongation in a eudicot species with a sympodial growth habit and substantial internodes that can and do respond to external stimuli. To investigate internode elongation, a mutant with an elongated hypocotyl and internodes but wild-type petioles was identified through a forward genetic screen. In addition to stem-specific elongation, this mutant, named tomato internode elongated -1 (tie-1) is more sensitive to the GA biosynthetic inhibitor paclobutrazol and has altered levels of intermediate and bioactive GAs compared with wild-type plants. The mutation responsible for the internode elongation phenotype was mapped to GA2oxidase 7, a class III GA 2-oxidase in the GA biosynthetic pathway, through a bulked segregant analysis and bioinformatic pipeline, and confirmed by transgenic complementation. Furthermore, bacterially expressed recombinant TIE protein was shown to have bona fide GA 2-oxidase activity. These results define a critical role for this gene in internode elongation and are significant because they further the understanding of the role of GA biosynthetic genes in organ-specific elongation.This work used the Vincent J. Coates Genomics Sequencing Laboratory at UC Berkeley, supported by NIH S10 Instrumentation Grants S10RR029668 and S10RR027303. We thank the Tomato Genetics Resource Center for providing seed of the M82 and Heinz cultivars. The material was developed by and/or obtained from the UC Davis/C M Rick Tomato Genetics Resource Center and maintained by the Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. We thank Anthony Bolger, Alisdair Fernie and Bjorn Usadel for providing us with access to pre-publication genomic reads of the S. lycopersicum cultivar M82, and Cristina Urbez and Noel Blanco-Tourinan (IBMCP, Spain) for technical help with in vitro production of TIE1. This work was supported in part by the Elsie Taylor Stocking Memorial Fellowship awarded to ASL in 2013, by NSF grant IOS-0820854, by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture project CA-D-PLB-2465-H, by internal UC Davis funds, and by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness grant BFU2016-80621-P.Lavelle, A.; Gath, N.; Devisetty, U.; Carrera Bergua, E.; Lopez Diaz, I.; Blazquez Rodriguez, MA.; Maloof, J. (2018). The role of a class III gibberellin 2-oxidase in tomato internode elongation. The Plant Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.14145SAndrés, F., Porri, A., Torti, S., Mateos, J., Romera-Branchat, M., García-Martínez, J. L., … Coupland, G. (2014). SHORT VEGETATIVE PHASE reduces gibberellin biosynthesis at theArabidopsisshoot apex to regulate the floral transition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(26), E2760-E2769. doi:10.1073/pnas.1409567111Bolger, A., Scossa, F., Bolger, M. E., Lanz, C., Maumus, F., Tohge, T., … Fernie, A. R. (2014). The genome of the stress-tolerant wild tomato species Solanum pennellii. Nature Genetics, 46(9), 1034-1038. doi:10.1038/ng.3046Bowen, M. E., Henke, K., Siegfried, K. R., Warman, M. L., & Harris, M. P. (2011). Efficient Mapping and Cloning of Mutations in Zebrafish by Low-Coverage Whole-Genome Sequencing. Genetics, 190(3), 1017-1024. doi:10.1534/genetics.111.136069Burset, M. (2000). Analysis of canonical and non-canonical splice sites in mammalian genomes. Nucleic Acids Research, 28(21), 4364-4375. doi:10.1093/nar/28.21.4364Chen, W., Yao, J., Chu, L., Yuan, Z., Li, Y., & Zhang, Y. (2015). Genetic mapping of the nulliplex-branch gene (gb_nb1) in cotton using next-generation sequencing. Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 128(3), 539-547. doi:10.1007/s00122-014-2452-2Cingolani, P., Platts, A., Wang, L. L., Coon, M., Nguyen, T., Wang, L., … Ruden, D. M. (2012). A program for annotating and predicting the effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms, SnpEff. Fly, 6(2), 80-92. doi:10.4161/fly.19695Cuperus, J. T., Montgomery, T. A., Fahlgren, N., Burke, R. T., Townsend, T., Sullivan, C. M., & Carrington, J. C. (2009). Identification of MIR390a precursor processing-defective mutants in Arabidopsis by direct genome sequencing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(1), 466-471. doi:10.1073/pnas.0913203107Curtis, M. D., & Grossniklaus, U. (2003). A Gateway Cloning Vector Set for High-Throughput Functional Analysis of Genes in Planta. Plant Physiology, 133(2), 462-469. doi:10.1104/pp.103.027979Devisetty, U. K., Covington, M. F., Tat, A. V., Lekkala, S., & Maloof, J. N. (2014). Polymorphism Identification and Improved Genome Annotation ofBrassica rapaThrough Deep RNA Sequencing. G3&amp;#58; Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 4(11), 2065-2078. doi:10.1534/g3.114.012526Eckardt, N. A. (2007). GA Perception and Signal Transduction: Molecular Interactions of the GA Receptor GID1 with GA and the DELLA Protein SLR1 in Rice. The Plant Cell, 19(7), 2095-2097. doi:10.1105/tpc.107.054916Ernst, H. A., Lo Leggio, L., Willemoës, M., Leonard, G., Blum, P., & Larsen, S. (2006). Structure of the Sulfolobus solfataricus α-Glucosidase: Implications for Domain Conservation and Substrate Recognition in GH31. Journal of Molecular Biology, 358(4), 1106-1124. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2006.02.056Fillatti, J. J., Kiser, J., Rose, R., & Comai, L. (1987). Efficient Transfer of a Glyphosate Tolerance Gene into Tomato Using a Binary Agrobacterium Tumefaciens Vector. Nature Biotechnology, 5(7), 726-730. doi:10.1038/nbt0787-726Garrison , E. Marth , G. 2012 Haplotype-based variant detection from short-read sequencingHedden, P., & Graebe, J. E. (1985). Inhibition of gibberellin biosynthesis by paclobutrazol in cell-free homogenates ofCucurbita maxima endosperm andMalus pumila embryos. Journal of Plant Growth Regulation, 4(1-4), 111-122. doi:10.1007/bf02266949Kimura, S., & Sinha, N. (2008). Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum): A Model Fruit-Bearing Crop. Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, 2008(12), pdb.emo105-pdb.emo105. doi:10.1101/pdb.emo105Koenig, D., Jimenez-Gomez, J. M., Kimura, S., Fulop, D., Chitwood, D. H., Headland, L. R., … Maloof, J. N. (2013). Comparative transcriptomics reveals patterns of selection in domesticated and wild tomato. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(28), E2655-E2662. doi:10.1073/pnas.1309606110Li, H., & Durbin, R. (2009). Fast and accurate short read alignment with Burrows-Wheeler transform. Bioinformatics, 25(14), 1754-1760. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp324Li, H., Handsaker, B., Wysoker, A., Fennell, T., Ruan, J., … Homer, N. (2009). The Sequence Alignment/Map format and SAMtools. Bioinformatics, 25(16), 2078-2079. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp352Li, J., Sima, W., Ouyang, B., Wang, T., Ziaf, K., Luo, Z., … Ye, Z. (2012). Tomato SlDREB gene restricts leaf expansion and internode elongation by downregulating key genes for gibberellin biosynthesis. Journal of Experimental Botany, 63(18), 6407-6420. doi:10.1093/jxb/ers295Lorrain, S., & Fankhauser, C. (2012). Plant Development: Should I Stop or Should I Grow? Current Biology, 22(16), R645-R647. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.06.054Menda, N., Semel, Y., Peled, D., Eshed, Y., & Zamir, D. (2004). In silicoscreening of a saturated mutation library of tomato. The Plant Journal, 38(5), 861-872. doi:10.1111/j.1365-313x.2004.02088.xMichelmore, R. W., Paran, I., & Kesseli, R. V. (1991). Identification of markers linked to disease-resistance genes by bulked segregant analysis: a rapid method to detect markers in specific genomic regions by using segregating populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 88(21), 9828-9832. doi:10.1073/pnas.88.21.9828Pimenta Lange, M. J., Liebrandt, A., Arnold, L., Chmielewska, S.-M., Felsberger, A., Freier, E., … Lange, T. (2013). Functional characterization of gibberellin oxidases from cucumber, Cucumis sativus L. Phytochemistry, 90, 62-69. doi:10.1016/j.phytochem.2013.02.006Raskin, I., & Kende, H. (1984). Role of Gibberellin in the Growth Response of Submerged Deep Water Rice. Plant Physiology, 76(4), 947-950. doi:10.1104/pp.76.4.947Reinecke, D. M., Wickramarathna, A. D., Ozga, J. A., Kurepin, L. V., Jin, A. L., Good, A. G., & Pharis, R. P. (2013). Gibberellin 3-oxidase Gene Expression Patterns Influence Gibberellin Biosynthesis, Growth, and Development in Pea. PLANT PHYSIOLOGY, 163(2), 929-945. doi:10.1104/pp.113.225987Robinson, M. D., & Oshlack, A. (2010). A scaling normalization method for differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data. Genome Biology, 11(3), R25. doi:10.1186/gb-2010-11-3-r25Robinson, M. D., McCarthy, D. J., & Smyth, G. K. (2009). edgeR: a Bioconductor package for differential expression analysis of digital gene expression data. Bioinformatics, 26(1), 139-140. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp616Robinson, J. T., Thorvaldsdóttir, H., Winckler, W., Guttman, M., Lander, E. S., Getz, G., & Mesirov, J. P. (2011). Integrative genomics viewer. Nature Biotechnology, 29(1), 24-26. doi:10.1038/nbt.1754Schneeberger, K., Ossowski, S., Lanz, C., Juul, T., Petersen, A. H., Nielsen, K. L., … Andersen, S. U. (2009). SHOREmap: simultaneous mapping and mutation identification by deep sequencing. Nature Methods, 6(8), 550-551. doi:10.1038/nmeth0809-550Schneider, C. A., Rasband, W. S., & Eliceiri, K. W. (2012). NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis. Nature Methods, 9(7), 671-675. doi:10.1038/nmeth.2089Schomburg, F. M., Bizzell, C. M., Lee, D. J., Zeevaart, J. A. D., & Amasino, R. M. (2002). Overexpression of a Novel Class of Gibberellin 2-Oxidases Decreases Gibberellin Levels and Creates Dwarf Plants. The Plant Cell, 15(1), 151-163. doi:10.1105/tpc.005975Seo, M., Jikumaru, Y., & Kamiya, Y. (2011). Profiling of Hormones and Related Metabolites in Seed Dormancy and Germination Studies. Methods in Molecular Biology, 99-111. doi:10.1007/978-1-61779-231-1_7Sun, T. (2011). The Molecular Mechanism and Evolution of the GA–GID1–DELLA Signaling Module in Plants. Current Biology, 21(9), R338-R345. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.02.036Sun, T., & Gubler, F. (2004). MOLECULAR MECHANISM OF GIBBERELLIN SIGNALING IN PLANTS. Annual Review of Plant Biology, 55(1), 197-223. doi:10.1146/annurev.arplant.55.031903.141753Thorvaldsdottir, H., Robinson, J. T., & Mesirov, J. P. (2012). Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV): high-performance genomics data visualization and exploration. Briefings in Bioinformatics, 14(2), 178-192. doi:10.1093/bib/bbs017(2012). The tomato genome sequence provides insights into fleshy fruit evolution. Nature, 485(7400), 635-641. doi:10.1038/nature11119Trapnell, C., Pachter, L., & Salzberg, S. L. (2009). TopHat: discovering splice junctions with RNA-Seq. Bioinformatics, 25(9), 1105-1111. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp120Trapnell, C., Roberts, A., Goff, L., Pertea, G., Kim, D., Kelley, D. R., … Pachter, L. (2012). Differential gene and transcript expression analysis of RNA-seq experiments with TopHat and Cufflinks. Nature Protocols, 7(3), 562-578. doi:10.1038/nprot.2012.016Tsai, H., Howell, T., Nitcher, R., Missirian, V., Watson, B., Ngo, K. J., … Comai, L. (2011). Discovery of Rare Mutations in Populations: TILLING by Sequencing. Plant Physiology, 156(3), 1257-1268. doi:10.1104/pp.110.169748Ueguchi-Tanaka, M., Nakajima, M., Katoh, E., Ohmiya, H., Asano, K., Saji, S., … Matsuoka, M. (2007). Molecular Interactions of a Soluble Gibberellin Receptor, GID1, with a Rice DELLA Protein, SLR1, and Gibberellin. The Plant Cell, 19(7), 2140-2155. doi:10.1105/tpc.106.043729Wickham, H. (2016). ggplot2. Use R! doi:10.1007/978-3-319-24277-4Winter, D., Vinegar, B., Nahal, H., Ammar, R., Wilson, G. V., & Provart, N. J. (2007). An «Electronic Fluorescent Pictograph» Browser for Exploring and Analyzing Large-Scale Biological Data Sets. PLoS ONE, 2(8), e718. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000718Xu, H., Liu, Q., Yao, T., & Fu, X. (2014). Shedding light on integrative GA signaling. Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 21, 89-95. doi:10.1016/j.pbi.2014.06.010Yamaguchi, S. (2008). Gibberellin Metabolism and its Regulation. Annual Review of Plant Biology, 59(1), 225-251. doi:10.1146/annurev.arplant.59.032607.09280

Universal scaling properties of extremal cohesive holographic phases

We show that strongly-coupled, translation-invariant holographic IR phases at finite density can be classified according to the scaling behaviour of the metric, the electric potential and the electric flux introducing four critical exponents, independently of the details of the setup. Solutions fall into two classes, depending on whether they break relativistic symmetry or not. The critical exponents determine key properties of these phases, like thermodynamic stability, the (ir)relevant deformations around them, the low-frequency scaling of the optical conductivity and the nature of the spectrum for electric perturbations. We also study the scaling behaviour of the electric flux through bulk minimal surfaces using the Hartnoll-Radicevic order parameter, and characterize the deviation from the Ryu-Takayanagi prescription in terms of the critical exponents.Comment: v4: corrected a typo in eqn (3.29), now (3.28). Conclusions unchange

Quantization of fields over de Sitter space by the method of generalized coherent states

A system of generalized coherent states for the de Sitter group obeying the Klein-Gordon equation and corresponding to the massive spin zero particles over the de Sitter space is considered. This allows us to construct the quantized scalar field by the resolution over these coherent states; the corresponding propagator is computed by the method of analytic continuation to the complex de Sitter space and coincides with expressions obtained previously by other methods. Considering the case of spin 1/2 we establish the connection of the invariant Dirac equation over the de Sitter space with irreducible representations of the de Sitter group. The set of solutions of this equation is obtained in the form of the product of two different systems of generalized coherent states for the de Sitter group. Using these solutions the quantized Dirac field over de Sitter space is constructed and its propagator is found. It is a result of action of some de Sitter invariant spinor operator onto the spin zero propagator with an imaginary shift of a mass. We show that the constructed propagators possess the de Sitter-invariance and causality properties.Comment: 19 pages, LATEX, using ioplppt.sty and iopfts.st

The bimodality of the 10k zCOSMOS-bright galaxies up to z ~ 1: a new statistical and portable classification based on the optical galaxy properties

Our goal is to develop a new and reliable statistical method to classify galaxies from large surveys. We probe the reliability of the method by comparing it with a three-dimensional classification cube, using the same set of spectral, photometric and morphological parameters.We applied two different methods of classification to a sample of galaxies extracted from the zCOSMOS redshift survey, in the redshift range 0.5 < z < 1.3. The first method is the combination of three independent classification schemes, while the second method exploits an entirely new approach based on statistical analyses like Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Unsupervised Fuzzy Partition (UFP) clustering method. The PCA+UFP method has been applied also to a lower redshift sample (z < 0.5), exploiting the same set of data but the spectral ones, replaced by the equivalent width of H$\alpha$. The comparison between the two methods shows fairly good agreement on the definition on the two main clusters, the early-type and the late-type galaxies ones. Our PCA-UFP method of classification is robust, flexible and capable of identifying the two main populations of galaxies as well as the intermediate population. The intermediate galaxy population shows many of the properties of the green valley galaxies, and constitutes a more coherent and homogeneous population. The fairly large redshift range of the studied sample allows us to behold the downsizing effect: galaxies with masses of the order of $3\cdot 10^{10}$ Msun mainly are found in transition from the late type to the early type group at $z>0.5$, while galaxies with lower masses - of the order of $10^{10}$ Msun - are in transition at later epochs; galaxies with $M <10^{10}$ Msun did not begin their transition yet, while galaxies with very large masses ($M > 5\cdot 10^{10}$ Msun) mostly completed their transition before $z\sim 1$.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in A&