Influence of immune activation and inflammatory response on cardiovascular risk associated with the human immunodeficiency virus

Patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have an increased cardiovascular risk. Although initially this increased risk was attributed to metabolic alterations associated with antiretroviral treatment, in recent years, the attention has been focused on the HIV disease itself. Inflammation, immune system activation, and endothelial dysfunction facilitated by HIV infection have been identified as key factors in the development and progression of atherosclerosis. In this review, we describe the epidemiology and pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in patients with HIV infection and summarize the latest knowledge on the relationship between traditional and novel inflammatory, immune activation, and endothelial dysfunction biomarkers on the cardiovascular risk associated with HIV infectionThis work has been supported by grants from FIS (Programa Miguel Servet: CP10/00479, PI13/00802 and PI14/00883) and Spanish Society of Nephrology to Juan Antonio Moren

Superscaling and neutral current quasielastic neutrino-nucleus scattering

The superscaling approach is applied to studies of neutral current neutrino reactions in the quasielastic regime. Using input from scaling analyses of electron scattering data, predictions for high-energy neutrino and antineutrino cross sections are given and compared with results obtained using the relativistic Fermi gas model. The influence of strangeness content inside the nucleons in the nucleus is also explored.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (España) y FEDER,. FIS2005-01105, FPA2005-04460 y FIS2005- 00810Junta de Andalucía y el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencias de España (MEC) 04-17 y 05-22Department of Energy de los EE.UU. DE-FC02-94ER4081

Relativistic analyses of quasielastic neutrino cross sections at MiniBooNE kinematics

Two relativistic approaches are considered to evaluate the quasielastic double-differential and integrated neutrino-nucleus cross sections. One, based on the relativistic impulse approximation, relies on the microscopic description of nuclear dynamics using relativistic mean field theory, and incorporates a description of the final-state interactions. The second is based on the superscaling behavior exhibited by electron scattering data and its applicability, due to the universal character of the scaling function, to the analysis of neutrino scattering reactions. The role played by the vector meson-exchange currents in the two-particle two-hole sector is also incorporated and the results obtained are compared with the recent data for neutrinos measured by the MiniBooNE Collaboration.DGI FIS2008-01143 FPA2010-1742 FIS2008-04189Junta de Andalucía FPA2008-03770-E-INFN ACI2009-1053Spanish Consolider-Ingenio 2000 CSD2007-00042U.S. Department of Energy DE-FC02-94ER4081

Final-state interactions and superscaling in the semi-relativistic approach to quasielastic electron and neutrino scattering

The semi-relativistic approach to electron and neutrino quasielastic scattering from nuclei is extended to include final-state interactions. Starting with the usual nonrelativistic continuum shell model, the problem is relativized by using the semi-relativistic expansion of the current in powers of the initial nucleon momentum and relativistic kinematics. Two different approaches are considered for the final-state interactions: the Smith-Wambach 2p-2h damping model and the Dirac-equation-based potential extracted from a relativistic mean-field plus the Darwin factor. Using the latter, the scaling properties of (e,e′) and (νμ,μ-) cross sections for intermediate momentum transfers are investigated.DGI y FEDER BFM2002-03218 FIS05-01105 FPA2005-04460 FPA2006-13807 FPA2006-07393Junta de Andalucí

Bioinspired Synthesis of Platensimycin from Natural ent-Kaurenoic Acids

Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, PID2019-106222RB-C32/SRA (State Research Agency, 10.13039/501100011033)Universidad de Granada/CBU

Relativistic effects in two-particle emission for electron and neutrino reactions

Two-particle two-hole contributions to electroweak response functions are computed in a fully relativistic Fermi gas, assuming that the electroweak current matrix elements are independent of the kinematics. We analyze the genuine kinematical and relativistic effects before including a realistic meson-exchange current operator. This allows one to study the mathematical properties of the nontrivial seven-dimensional integrals appearing in the calculation and to design an optimal numerical procedure to reduce the computation time. This is required for practical applications to charged-current neutrino scattering experiments, in which an additional integral over the neutrino flux is performed. Finally, we examine the viability of this model to compute the electroweak two-particle–two-hole response functions.DGI FIS2011-24149 FIS2011-28738-C02-01Junta de Andalucía FQM-225 FQM-160U.S. Department of Energy DE-FC02-94ER4081

Emission of neutron–proton and proton–proton pairs in neutrino scattering

We use a recently developed model of relativistic meson-exchange currents to compute the neutron–proton and proton–proton yields in (νμ,μ−) scattering from 12C in the 2p–2h channel. We compute the response functions and cross sections with the relativistic Fermi gas model for different kinematics from intermediate to high momentum transfers. We find a large contribution of neutron–proton configurations in the initial state, as compared to proton–proton pairs. In the case of charge-changing neutrino scattering the 2p–2h cross section of proton–proton emission (i.e., np in the initial state) is much larger than for neutron–proton emission (i.e., two neutrons in the initial state) by a (ω,q)-dependent factor. The different emission probabilities of distinct species of nucleon pairs are produced in our model only by meson-exchange currents, mainly by the Δ isobar current. We also analyze other effects including exchange contributions and the effect of the axial and vector currents.Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica FIS2014-59386-P y FIS2014-53448-C2-1Agencia de Innovación y Desarrollo de Andalucía FQM225 y FQM160Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad IJCI-2014-20038Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare IS-MANYBODYU.S. Department of Energy DE-FC02-94ER4081

Solar-Simulated Ultraviolet Radiation Induces Abnormal Maturation and Defective Chemotaxis of Dendritic Cells

Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light induces immunosuppression. Different evidences indicate that this phenomenon is mainly a consequence of the effect of UV light on skin dendritic cells (DC). To investigate the cellular and molecular basis of this type of immunosuppression, we assessed in vitro the effect of solar-simulated UV radiation on the phenotypic and functional characteristics of human monocyte-derived DC and Langerhans-like DC. UV radiation induced a decreased expression of molecules involved in antigen capture as DC-SIGN and the mannose receptor. This effect was accompanied by a diminished endocytic capacity, an enhanced expression of molecules involved in antigen presentation such as major histocompatibility complex-II and CD86, and a significant increase in their capability to stimulate T cells. Furthermore, irradiated DC failed to acquire a full mature phenotype upon treatment with lipopolysaccharide. On the other hand, solar-simulated radiation induced the secretion of tumor necrosis factor-αand interleukin (IL)-10 by DC, but no IL-12. Interestingly, solar-simulated UV radiation also caused an altered migratory phenotype, with an increased expression of CXCR4, and a lack of induction of CCR7, thus correlating with a high chemotactic response to stromal cell-derived factor 1(SDF-1) (CXCL12), but not to secondary lymphoid tissue chemokine (SLC) (CCL21). These data indicate that solar-simulated UV radiation induces a defective maturation and an anomalous migratory phenotype of DC

Constraining scalar fields with stellar kinematics and collisional dark matter

The existence and detection of scalar fields could provide solutions to long-standing puzzles about the nature of dark matter, the dark compact objects at the centre of most galaxies, and other phenomena. Yet, self-interacting scalar fields are very poorly constrained by astronomical observations, leading to great uncertainties in estimates of the mass $m_\phi$ and the self-interacting coupling constant $\lambda$ of these fields. To counter this, we have systematically employed available astronomical observations to develop new constraints, considerably restricting this parameter space. In particular, by exploiting precise observations of stellar dynamics at the centre of our Galaxy and assuming that these dynamics can be explained by a single boson star, we determine an upper limit for the boson star compactness and impose significant limits on the values of the properties of possible scalar fields. Requiring the scalar field particle to follow a collisional dark matter model further narrows these constraints. Most importantly, we find that if a scalar dark matter particle does exist, then it cannot account for both the dark-matter halos and the existence of dark compact objects in galactic nucleiComment: 23 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication by JCAP after minor change