490 research outputs found
Epidemiological information in sheep health management
We use epidemiology whenever we consider the management of sheep health. To measure a disease, we need a precise and unique case definition and we often use diagnostic tests to assist in defining a disease. Diagnostic tests are not always accurate. Thus, it is necessary to consider the decisions that will be taken, based on the result of testing, in order to decide the most useful approach to interpret a test based on its test sensitivity and specificity and the prevalence of the disease in a flock. This is particularly important when decisions on culling or selection of sheep to attain, e.g. freedom from disease, are made on the basis of test results. Infectious diseases spread within and between flocks in a variety of ways; brought-in sheep are the most likely source for introduction of a new pathogen or strain of a pathogen. When a pathogen enters a naïve flock, it spreads through susceptible sheep and persists in the flock, whilst there are susceptible sheep that can be infected. Pathogens use a variety of techniques to persist, including changes in the pathogen itself, alterations in infected hosts enabling them to remain infectious for prolonged periods or to be re-infected, persistence in other host species or in the environment. We need to consider these strategies to decide whether elimination or control of a particular pathogen is more likely to be effective. Whatever the flock control strategy, treatment of diseased individuals is essential for their welfare and can also protect the rest of the flock, if treatment reduces the infectious period. Decisions on management of disease are based on our knowledge of the flock and its management and the evidence base for various control strategies. There are now formal techniques for evaluating the evidence base that can assist in evaluating evidence. One area where we need to evaluate evidence is on cause. It is not possible to prove anything, but we can use the weight of evidence to evaluate likely cause. There are nine aspects of association with which we can evaluate a piece of evidence; these are: strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, dose–response, plausibility, coherence, experiment and analogy
Threshold Corrections and Gauge Symmetry in Twisted Superstring Models
Threshold corrections to the running of gauge couplings are calculated for
superstring models with free complex world sheet fermions. For two N=1
models, the threshold corrections lead to a small increase
in the unification scale. Examples are given to illustrate how a given particle
spectrum can be described by models with different boundary conditions on the
internal fermions. We also discuss how complex twisted fermions can enhance the
symmetry group of an N=4 model to the gauge group
. It is then shown how a mixing angle analogous
to the Weinberg angle depends on the boundary conditions of the internal
fermions.Comment: easier to Tex version, figures to be sent separatel
The dual phosphodiesterase 3 and 4 inhibitor RPL554 stimulates CFTR and ciliary beating in primary cultures of bronchial epithelia
Cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease caused by mutations in the CFTR gene, is a life-limiting disease characterized by chronic bacterial airway infection and severe inflammation. Some CFTR mutants have reduced responsiveness to cAMP/PKA signaling; hence, pharmacological agents that elevate intracellular cAMP are potentially useful for the treatment of CF. By inhibiting cAMP breakdown, phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitors stimulate CFTR in vitro and in vivo. Here, we demonstrate that PDE inhibition by RPL554, a drug that has been shown to cause bronchodilation in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients, stimulates CFTR-dependent ion secretion across bronchial epithelial cells isolated from patients carrying the R117H/F508del CF genotype. RPL554-induced CFTR activity was further increased by the potentiator VX-770, suggesting an additional benefit by the drug combination. RPL554 also increased cilia beat frequency in primary human bronchial epithelial cells. The results indicate RPL554 may increase mucociliary clearance through stimulation of CFTR and increasing ciliary beat frequency and thus could provide a novel therapeutic option for CF
Discrete Gauge Symmetries in Discrete MSSM-like Orientifolds
Motivated by the necessity of discrete Z_N symmetries in the MSSM to insure
baryon stability, we study the origin of discrete gauge symmetries from open
string sector U(1)'s in orientifolds based on rational conformal field theory.
By means of an explicit construction, we find an integral basis for the
couplings of axions and U(1) factors for all simple current MIPFs and
orientifolds of all 168 Gepner models, a total of 32990 distinct cases. We
discuss how the presence of discrete symmetries surviving as a subgroup of
broken U(1)'s can be derived using this basis. We apply this procedure to
models with MSSM chiral spectrum, concretely to all known U(3)xU(2)xU(1)xU(1)
and U(3)xSp(2)xU(1)xU(1) configurations with chiral bi-fundamentals, but no
chiral tensors, as well as some SU(5) GUT models. We find examples of models
with Z_2 (R-parity) and Z_3 symmetries that forbid certain B and/or L violating
MSSM couplings. Their presence is however relatively rare, at the level of a
few percent of all cases.Comment: 47 pages. References adde
Direct Signals for Large Extra Dimensions in the Production of Fermion Pairs at Linear Colliders
We analyze the potentiality of the new generation of linear
colliders to search for large extra dimensions via the production of fermion
pairs in association with Kaluza-Klein gravitons (G), i.e. . This process leads to a final state exhibiting a significant amount
of missing energy in addition to acoplanar lepton or jet pairs. We study in
detail this reaction using full tree level contibutions due to the graviton
emission and the standard model backgrounds. After choosing the cuts to enhance
the signal, we show that a linear collider with a center-of-mass energy of 500
GeV will be able to probe quantum gravity scales from 0.96(0.86) up to 4.1(3.3)
TeV at 2(5) level, depending on the number of extra dimensions.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures. Using RevTex, axodraw.sty. Discussion was
extended. No changes in the results. Accepted for publication by Phys. Rev.
On the gravitodynamics of moving bodies
In the present work we propose a generalization of Newton's gravitational
theory from the original works of Heaviside and Sciama, that takes into account
both approaches, and accomplishes the same result in a simpler way than the
standard cosmological approach. The established formulation describes the local
gravitational field related to the observables and effectively implements the
Mach's principle in a quantitative form that retakes Dirac's large number
hypothesis. As a consequence of the equivalence principle and the application
of this formulation to the observable universe, we obtain, as an immediate
result, a value of Omega = 2. We construct a dynamic model for a galaxy without
dark matter, which fits well with recent observational data, in terms of a
variable effective inertial mass that reflects the present dynamic state of the
universe and that replicates from first principles, the phenomenology proposed
in MOND. The remarkable aspect of these results is the connection of the effect
dubbed dark matter with the dark energy field, which makes it possible for us
to interpret it as longitudinal gravitational waves.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures. Final version: almost identical to the reference
journal; Cent. Eur. J. Phys. 201
Nucleon Charge and Magnetization Densities from Sachs Form Factors
Relativistic prescriptions relating Sachs form factors to nucleon charge and
magnetization densities are used to fit recent data for both the proton and the
neutron. The analysis uses expansions in complete radial bases to minimize
model dependence and to estimate the uncertainties in radial densities due to
limitation of the range of momentum transfer. We find that the charge
distribution for the proton is significantly broad than its magnetization
density and that the magnetization density is slightly broader for the neutron
than the proton. The neutron charge form factor is consistent with the Galster
parametrization over the available range of Q^2, but relativistic inversion
produces a softer radial density. Discrete ambiguities in the inversion method
are analyzed in detail. The method of Mitra and Kumari ensures compatibility
with pQCD and is most useful for extrapolating form factors to large Q^2.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. C. Two new figures and accompanying text have
been added and several discussions have been clarified with no significant
changes to the conclusions. Now contains 47 pages including 21 figures and 2
table
Gauge and Scheme Dependence of Mixing Matrix Renormalization
We revisit the issue of mixing matrix renormalization in theories that
include Dirac or Majorana fermions. We show how a gauge-variant on-shell
renormalized mixing matrix can be related to a manifestly gauge-independent one
within a generalized scheme of renormalization. This
scheme-dependent relation is a consequence of the fact that in any scheme of
renormalization, the gauge-dependent part of the mixing-matrix counterterm is
ultra-violet safe and has a pure dispersive form. Employing the unitarity
properties of the theory, we can successfully utilize the afore-mentioned
scheme-dependent relation to preserve basic global or local symmetries of the
bare Lagrangian through the entire process of renormalization. As an immediate
application of our study, we derive the gauge-independent renormalization-group
equations of mixing matrices in a minimal extension of the Standard Model with
isosinglet neutrinos.Comment: 31 pages, LaTeX, uses axodraw.st
Exome sequencing in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis implicates a novel gene, DNAJC7, encoding a heat-shock protein
To discover novel genes underlying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), we aggregated exomes from 3,864 cases and 7,839 ancestry-matched controls. We observed a significant excess of rare protein-truncating variants among ALS cases, and these variants were concentrated in constrained genes. Through gene level analyses, we replicated known ALS genes including SOD1, NEK1 and FUS. We also observed multiple distinct protein-truncating variants in a highly constrained gene, DNAJC7. The signal in DNAJC7 exceeded genome-wide significance, and immunoblotting assays showed depletion of DNAJC7 protein in fibroblasts in a patient with ALS carrying the p.Arg156Ter variant. DNAJC7 encodes a member of the heat-shock protein family, HSP40, which, along with HSP70 proteins, facilitates protein homeostasis, including folding of newly synthesized polypeptides and clearance of degraded proteins. When these processes are not regulated, misfolding and accumulation of aberrant proteins can occur and lead to protein aggregation, which is a pathological hallmark of neurodegeneration. Our results highlight DNAJC7 as a novel gene for ALS
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