Predicting D -> sigma pi

We examine the D -> sigma pi amplitude through a constituent quark-meson model, incorporating heavy quark and chiral symmetries, finding a good agreement with the recent E791 data analysis of D -> 3 pi via sigma.Comment: 6 pages, RevTex, One new contribution added, typos correcte

Reprogramming and transdifferentiation for cardiovascular development and regenerative medicine: where do we stand?

Heart disease remains a leading cause of mortality and a major worldwide healthcare burden. Recent advances in stem cell biology have made it feasible to derive large quantities of cardiomyocytes for disease modeling, drug development, and regenerative medicine. The discoveries of reprogramming and transdifferentiation as novel biological processes have significantly contributed to this paradigm. This review surveys the means by which reprogramming and transdifferentiation can be employed to generate induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) and induced cardiomyocytes (iCMs). The application of these patient-specific cardiomyocytes for both in vitro disease modeling and in vivo therapies for various cardiovascular diseases will also be discussed. We propose that, with additional refinement, human disease-specific cardiomyocytes will allow us to significantly advance the understanding of cardiovascular disease mechanisms and accelerate the development of novel therapeutic options

J/psi Absorption in Heavy Ion Collisions

We present a new calculation of the pi-J/psi dissociation cross sections within the Constituent Quark-Meson Model recently introduced. To discuss the absorption of J/psi in heavy-ion collisions, we assume the J/psi to be produced inside a thermalized pion gas, as discussed by Bjorken, and introduce the corrections due to absorption by nuclear matter as well. We fit the absorption length of the J/psi to the data obtained at the CERN SPS by the NA50 Collaboration for Pb-Pb collisions. Collisions of lower centrality allow us to determine the temperature and the energy density of the pion gas. For both these quantities we find values close to those indicated by lattice gauge calculations for the transition to a quark-gluon plasma. A simple extrapolation to more central collisions, which takes into account the increase of the energy deposited due to the increased nucleon flux, fails to reproduce the break in J/psi absorption indicated by NA50, thus lending support to the idea that an unconfined quark-gluon phase may have been produced. This conclusion could be sharpened by analysing in a similar way, as a function of centrality, other observables such as strange particle production.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

The exclusive B_s -> phi mu+ mu- process in a constituent quark model

We consider the exclusive B_s -> phi mu+ mu- process in the standard model using a constituent quark loop model approach together with a simple parameterization of the quark dynamics. The model allows to compute the decay form factors and therefore can give predictions for the decay rates, the invariant mass spectra and the asymmetries. This process is suppressed in the standard model but can be enhanced if new physics beyond the standard model is present, such as flavor-violating supersymmetric models. It constitutes therefore an interesting precision test of the standard model at forthcoming experiments.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables, LaTeX; minor changes to the introduction, table III and figure 3. Few references adde

Magnetic Oscillations in Dense Cold Quark Matter with Four-Fermion Interactions

The phase structures of Nambu-Jona-Lasinio models with one or two flavours have been investigated at non-zero values of $\mu$ and $H$, where $H$ is an external magnetic field and $\mu$ is the chemical potential. In the phase portraits of both models there arise infinitely many massless chirally symmetric phases, as well as massive ones with spontaneously broken chiral invariance, reflecting the existence of infinitely many Landau levels. Phase transitions of first and second orders and a lot of tricritical points have been shown to exist in phase diagrams. In the massless case, such a phase structure leads unavoidably to the standard van Alphen-de Haas magnetic oscillations of some thermodynamical quantities, including magnetization, pressure and particle density. In the massive case we have found an oscillating behaviour not only for thermodynamical quantities, but also for a dynamical quantity as the quark mass. Besides, in this case we have non-standard, i.e. non-periodic, magnetic oscillations, since the frequency of oscillations is an $H$-dependent quantity.Comment: latex, 29 pages, 8 figure

Generation of functional cardiomyocytes from the synoviocytes of patients with rheumatoid arthritis via induced pluripotent stem cells

Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of morbidity in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. This study aimed to generate and characterise cardiomyocytes from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) of RA patients. Fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLSs) from patients with RA and osteoarthritis (OA) were successfully reprogrammed into RA-iPSCs and OA-iPSCs, respectively. The pluripotency of iPSCs was confirmed by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and immunofluorescence staining. Established iPSCs were differentiated into cardiomyocytes using a small molecule-based monolayer differentiation protocol. Within 12 days of cardiac differentiation from patient-specific and control-iPSCs, spontaneously beating cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) were observed. All iPSC-CMs exhibited a reliable sarcomeric structure stained with antibodies against cardiac markers and similar expression profiles of cardiac-specific genes. Intracellular calcium signalling was recorded to compare calcium-handling properties among cardiomyocytes differentiated from the three groups of iPSCs. RA-iPSC-CMs had a lower amplitude and a shorter duration of calcium transients than the control groups. Peak tangential stress and the maximum contractile rate were also decreased in RA-iPSC-CMs, suggesting that contractility was reduced. This study demonstrates the successful generation of functional cardiomyocytes from pathogenic synovial cells in RA patients through iPSC reprogramming. Research using RA-iPSC-CMs might provide an opportunity to investigate the pathophysiology of cardiac involvement in RA

ASHLEYS: automated quality control for single-cell Strand-seq data

Single-cell DNA template strand sequencing (Strand-seq) enables chromosome length haplotype phasing, construction of phased assemblies, mapping sister-chromatid exchange events and structural variant discovery. The initial quality control of potentially thousands of single-cell libraries is still done manually by domain experts. ASHLEYS automates this tedious task, delivers near-expert performance and labels even large data sets in seconds. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: github.com/friendsofstrandseq/ashleys-qc, MIT license

J/psi couplings to charmed resonances and to pi

We present an evaluation of the strong couplings JD^(*)D^(*) and JD^(*)D^(*)pi by an effective field theory of quarks and mesons. These couplings are necessary to calculate pi+J/psi --> D^(*)+barD^(*) cross sections, an important background to the J/psi suppression signal in the quark-gluon plasma. We write down the general effective lagrangian and compute the relevant couplings in the soft pion limit and beyond.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 2 reference added and minor comments, style changed to RevTe

Novel codon-optimized mini-intronic plasmid for efficient, inexpensive, and xeno-free induction of pluripotency

The development of human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology has revolutionized the regenerative medicine field. This technology provides a powerful tool for disease modeling and drug screening approaches. To circumvent the risk of random integration into the host genome caused by retroviruses, non-integrating reprogramming methods have been developed. However, these techniques are relatively inefficient or expensive. The mini-intronic plasmid (MIP) is an alternative, robust transgene expression vector for reprogramming. Here we developed a single plasmid reprogramming system which carries codon-optimized (Co) sequences of the canonical reprogramming factors (Oct4, Klf4, Sox2, and c-Myc) and short hairpin RNA against p53 ("4-in-1 CoMiP"). We have derived human and mouse iPSC lines from fibroblasts by performing a single transfection. Either independently or together with an additional vector encoding for LIN28, NANOG, and GFP, we were also able to reprogram blood-derived peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) into iPSCs. Taken together, the CoMiP system offers a new highly efficient, integration-free, easy to use, and inexpensive methodology for reprogramming. Furthermore, the CoMIP construct is color-labeled, free of any antibiotic selection cassettes, and independent of the requirement for expression of the Epstein-Barr Virus nuclear antigen (EBNA), making it particularly beneficial for future applications in regenerative medicine

J/Psi strong couplings to the vector mesons

We present a study of the cross sections J/Psi X --> D^(*) \bar D^(*) (X = rho, Phi) based on the calculation of the effective tri- and four-linear couplings J/Psi (X) D^(*) \bar D^(*) within a constituent quark model. In particular, the details of the calculation of the four-linear couplings J/Psi X D^(*)\bar D^(*) are given. The results obtained have been used in a recent analysis of J/Psi absorption by the hot hadron gas formed in peripheral heavy-ion collisions at SPS energies.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure