Applications of the Mellin-Barnes integral representation

We apply the Mellin-Barnes integral representation to several situations of interest in mathematical-physics. At the purely mathematical level, we derive useful asymptotic expansions of different zeta-functions and partition functions. These results are then employed in different topics of quantum field theory, which include the high-temperature expansion of the free energy of a scalar field in ultrastatic curved spacetime, the asymptotics of the $p$-brane density of states, and an explicit approach to the asymptotics of the determinants that appear in string theory.Comment: 20 pages, LaTe

Immunopathology of Postprimary Tuberculosis: Increased T-Regulatory Cells and DEC-205-Positive Foamy Macrophages in Cavitary Lesions

Postprimary tuberculosis occurs in immunocompetent people infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is restricted to the lung and accounts for 80% of cases and nearly 100% of transmission. Little is known about the immunopathology of postprimary tuberculosis due to limited availability of specimens. Tissues from 30 autopsy cases of pulmonary tuberculosis were located. Sections of characteristic lesions of caseating granulomas, lipid pneumonia, and cavitary stages of postprimary disease were selected for immunohistochemical studies of macrophages, lymphocytes, endothelial cells, and mycobacterial antigens. A higher percentage of cells in lipid pneumonia (36.1%) and cavitary lesions (27.8%) were positive for the dendritic cell marker DEC-205, compared to granulomas (9.0%, P < .05). Cavities contained significantly more T-regulatory cells (14.8%) than found in lipid pneumonia (5.2%) or granulomas (4.8%). Distribution of the immune cell types may contribute to the inability of the immune system to eradicate tuberculosis

Lactoferrin Augmentation of the BCG Vaccine Leads to Increased Pulmonary Integrity

The goal of vaccination to prevent tuberculosis disease (TB) is to offer long-term protection to the individual and the community. In addition, the success of any protective TB vaccine should include the ability to limit cavitary formation and disease progression. The current BCG vaccine protects against disseminated TB disease in children by promoting development of antigenic-specific responses. However, its efficacy is limited in preventing postprimary pulmonary disease in adults that is responsible for the majority of disease and transmission. This paper illustrates the use of lactoferrin as an adjuvant to boost efficacy of the BCG vaccine to control organism growth and limit severe manifestation of pulmonary disease. This resulting limitation in pathology may ultimately, limit spread of bacilli and subsequent transmission of organisms between individuals. The current literature is reviewed, and data is presented to support molecular mechanisms underlying lactoferrin's utility as an adjuvant for the BCG vaccine

Generalized partition functions and interpolating statistics

We show that the assumption of quasiperiodic boundary conditions (those that interpolate continuously periodic and antiperiodic conditions) in order to compute partition functions of relativistic particles in 2+1 space-time can be related with anyonic physics. In particular, in the low temperature limit, our result leads to the well known second virial coefficient for anyons. Besides, we also obtain the high temperature limit as well as the full temperature dependence of this coefficient.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, updated and enlarged versio

Thermodynamics of Relativistic Fermions with Chern-Simons Coupling

We study the thermodynamics of the relativistic Quantum Field Theory of massive fermions in three space-time dimensions coupled to an Abelian Maxwell-Chern-Simons gauge field. We evaluate the specific heat at finite temperature and density and find that the variation with the statistical angle is consistent with the non-relativistic ideas on generalized statistics.Comment: 12 pages, REVTe

Lactoferrin Augmentation of the BCG Vaccine Leads to Increased Pulmonary Integrity

The goal of vaccination to prevent tuberculosis disease (TB) is to offer long-term protection to the individual and the community. In addition, the success of any protective TB vaccine should include the ability to limit cavitary formation and disease progression. The current BCG vaccine protects against disseminated TB disease in children by promoting development of antigenic-specific responses. However, its efficacy is limited in preventing postprimary pulmonary disease in adults that is responsible for the majority of disease and transmission. This paper illustrates the use of lactoferrin as an adjuvant to boost efficacy of the BCG vaccine to control organism growth and limit severe manifestation of pulmonary disease. This resulting limitation in pathology may ultimately, limit spread of bacilli and subsequent transmission of organisms between individuals. The current literature is reviewed, and data is presented to support molecular mechanisms underlying lactoferrin&apos;s utility as an adjuvant for the BCG vaccine

Finite Number and Finite Size Effects in Relativistic Bose-Einstein Condensation

Bose-Einstein condensation of a relativistic ideal Bose gas in a rectangular cavity is studied. Finite size corrections to the critical temperature are obtained by the heat kernel method. Using zeta-function regularization of one-loop effective potential, lower dimensional critical temperatures are calculated. In the presence of strong anisotropy, the condensation is shown to occur in multisteps. The criteria of this behavior is that critical temperatures corresponding to lower dimensional systems are smaller than the three dimensional critical temperature.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, Fig.3 replaced, to appear in Physical Review