2,848 research outputs found
FK506 IN PEDIATRIC KIDNEY-TRANSPLANTATION - PRIMARY AND RESCUE EXPERIENCE
Between December 14, 1989, and December 17, 1993,43 patients undergoing kidney transplantation alone at the Childrenâs Hospital of Pittsburgh received FK506 as the primary immunosuppressive agent. The mean recipient age was 10.2 ± 4.8 years (range 0.7â17.4), with 7 (16%) children under 5 years of age and 2 (5%) under 2 years of age. Fifteen (35%) children underwent retransplantation, and 5 (12%) had a panel reactive antibody level greater than 40%. Twenty-two (51%) cases were with cadaveric donors, and 21 (49%) were with living donors. The mean follow-up is 25 ± 14 months. There were no deaths. One and three year actuarial graft survival was 98% and 85%. The mean serum creatinine and BUN were 1.2 ± 0.6 mg/dl and 26 ± 11 mg/dl; the calculated creatinine clearance was 75 ± 23 ml/min/1.73 m(2). Twenty-four (62%) patients have been successfully withdrawn from steroids, and 24 (62%) require no anti-hypertensive medication. Improved growth was seen, particularly in pre-adolescent children off steroids. Between July 28, 1990, and December 2, 1993, 24 children were referred for rescue therapy with FK506, 14.6 ± 16.4 months (range 1.1â53.2) after transplantation. Nineteen (79%) were referred because of resistant rejection; 4 (17%) were referred because of proteinuria; 1 (4%) was switched because of steroid-related obesity. There were no deaths. One and two year graft survival was 75% and 68%. Seventeen (71%) patients were successfully rescued, including 1 of 2 patients who arrived on dialysis. Four (24%) of the successfully rescued patients were weaned off steroids. While not without side effects, which include nephrotoxicity, neurotoxicity, diabetogenicity, and viral complications, FK506 appears to be an effective immunosuppressive agent for both primary and rescue therapy after kidney transplantation. Its steroid-sparing qualities may be of particular importance in the pediatric population
Skyrmion Multi-Walls
Skyrmion walls are topologically-nontrivial solutions of the Skyrme system
which are periodic in two spatial directions. We report numerical
investigations which show that solutions representing parallel multi-walls
exist. The most stable configuration is that of the square -wall, which in
the limit becomes the cubically-symmetric Skyrme crystal. There is
also a solution resembling parallel hexagonal walls, but this is less stable.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
Genetic improvement of wheat for dry environments - a trait based approach
Item does not contain fulltext23 januari 201
Superluminal neutrinos in long baseline experiments and SN1987a
Precise tests of Lorentz invariance in neutrinos can be performed using long
baseline experiments such as MINOS and OPERA or neutrinos from astrophysical
sources. The MINOS collaboration reported a measurement of the muonic neutrino
velocities that hints to super-luminal propagation, very recently confirmed at
6 sigma by OPERA. We consider a general parametrisation which goes beyond the
usual linear or quadratic violation considered in quantum-gravitational models.
We also propose a toy model showing why Lorentz violation can be specific to
the neutrino sector and give rise to a generic energy behaviour E^alpha, where
alpha is not necessarily an integer number. Supernova bounds and the preferred
MINOS and OPERA regions show a tension, due to the absence of shape distortion
in the neutrino bunch in the far detector of MINOS. The energy independence of
the effect has also been pointed out by the OPERA results.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures; comment on Cherenkov emission added, version
matching JHEP published pape
Flavour physics constraints in the BMSSM
We study the implications of the presence of the two leading-order,
non-renormalizable operators in the Higgs sector of the MSSM to flavour physics
observables. We identify the constraints of flavour physics on the parameters
of the BMSSM when we: a) focus on a region of parameters for which electroweak
baryogenesis is feasible, b) use a CMSSM-like parametrization, and c) consider
the case of a generic NUHM-type model. We find significant differences as
compared to the standard MSSM case.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure
The DmsABC Sulfoxide Reductase Supports Virulence in Non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae.
Although molybdenum-containing enzymes are well-established as having a key role in bacterial respiration, it is increasingly recognized that some may also support bacterial virulence. Here, we show that DmsABC, a putative dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) reductase, is required for fitness of the respiratory pathogen Haemophilus influenzae (Hi) in different models of infection. Expression of the dmsABC operon increased with decreasing oxygen availability, but despite this, a Hi2019Îd msA strain did not show any defects in anaerobic growth on chemically defined medium (CDM), and viability was also unaffected. Although Hi2019Îd msA exhibited increased biofilm formation in vitro and greater resistance to hypochlorite killing compared to the isogenic wild-type strain, its survival in contact with primary human neutrophils, in infections of cultured tissue cells, or in a mouse model of lung infection was reduced compared to Hi2019WT. The tissue cell infection model revealed a two-fold decrease in intracellular survival, while in the mouse model of lung infection Hi2019Îd msA was strongly attenuated and below detection levels at 48 h post-inoculation. While Hi2019WT was recovered in approximately equal numbers from bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and lung tissue, survival of Hi2019Îd msA was reduced in lung tissue compared to BALF samples, indicating that Hi2019Îd msA had reduced access to or survival in the intracellular niche. Our data clearly indicate for the first time a role for DmsABC in H. influenzae infection and that the conditions under which DmsABC is required in this bacterium are closely linked to interactions with the host
CP Violation in Supersymmetry with Effective Minimal Flavour Violation
We analyze CP violation in supersymmetry with Effective Minimal Flavour
Violation, as recently proposed in arXiv:1011.0730. Unlike the case of standard
Minimal Flavour Violation, we show that all the phases allowed by the flavour
symmetry can be sizable without violating existing Electric Dipole Moment
constraints, thus solving the SUSY CP problem. The EDMs at one and two loops
are precisely analyzed as well as their correlations with the expected CP
asymmetries in B physics.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures. v2: Discussion in section 2 extended,
conclusions unchanged. Matches published versio
Hierarchies of Susy Splittings and Invisible Photinos as Dark Matter
We explore how to generate hierarchies in the splittings between
superpartners. Some of the consequences are the existence of invisible
components of dark matter, new inflaton candidates, invisible monopoles and a
number of invisible particles that might dominate during various eras, in
particular between BBN and recombination and decay subsequently.Comment: 16 pages. v3: Ref. 27 has been modified. v4: Published versio
The Algorithmic Origins of Life
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is
that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that
its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The
unique informational narrative of living systems suggests that life may be
characterized by context-dependent causal influences, and in particular, that
top-down (or downward) causation -- where higher-levels influence and constrain
the dynamics of lower-levels in organizational hierarchies -- may be a major
contributor to the hierarchal structure of living systems. Here we propose that
the origin of life may correspond to a physical transition associated with a
shift in causal structure, where information gains direct, and
context-dependent causal efficacy over the matter it is instantiated in. Such a
transition may be akin to more traditional physical transitions (e.g.
thermodynamic phase transitions), with the crucial distinction that determining
which phase (non-life or life) a given system is in requires dynamical
information and therefore can only be inferred by identifying causal
architecture. We discuss some potential novel research directions based on this
hypothesis, including potential measures of such a transition that may be
amenable to laboratory study, and how the proposed mechanism corresponds to the
onset of the unique mode of (algorithmic) information processing characteristic
of living systems.Comment: 13 pages, 1 tabl
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