Chiral and Parity Symmetry Breaking for Planar Fermions: Effects of a Heat Bath and Uniform External Magnetic Field

We study chiral symmetry breaking for relativistic fermions, described by a parity violating Lagrangian in 2+1-dimensions, in the presence of a heat bath and a uniform external magnetic field. Working within their four-component formalism allows for the inclusion of both parity-even and -odd mass terms. Therefore, we can define two types of fermion anti-fermion condensates. For a given value of the magnetic field, there exist two different critical temperatures which would render one of these condensates identically zero, while the other would survive. Our analysis is completely general: it requires no particular simplifying hierarchy among the energy scales involved, namely, bare masses, field strength and temperature. However, we do reproduce some earlier results, obtained or anticipated in literature, corresponding to special kinematical regimes for the parity conserving case. Relating the chiral condensate to the one-loop effective Lagrangian, we also obtain the magnetization and the pair production rate for different fermion species in a uniform electric field through the replacement $B\to-iE$.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

The Intellectual Structure of Esports Research

We aim to map the intellectual structure of eSports research in social Science to understand its evolution and status. This article uses a cocitation analysis focused on eSports scientific literature, which identifies the main clusters, intellectual turning points, and burst papers, showing research priorities, trends, connections and dissemination paths in this research field. This methodology allows us to examine the dominant theories and expands the scientific knowledge of eSports, detecting the main research areas and sources of knowledge. The results show 1) how sportification can be the key to achieving the desired fit between traditional sport and eSports; 2) the existence of eleven different research areas that analyse eSports; and 3) the emerging research topics in this field linked to management, audiences and fan engagement, which are vital issues to be addressed by academia, such as the proposed research agenda outlines

Polygalacturonase gene FaPG1 downregulation is related to increased strawberry fruit resistance to fungal decay

Plant health is a major target in breading programs because crops are under constant biotic stress, and climate change is exacerbating pests and disease negative impacts in agriculture. Obtaining crop varieties armed with better defences is a potential strategy to reduce losses from biotic attacks. Plant cell walls perform crucial roles on many physiological processes, and under biotic stress, play crucial defensive roles as protecting barrier, as well as a source of integrity signalling molecules. Plant immunity has evolved a complex multi-layered system which first line of defence is initiated by conserved molecular patterns coming from pathogens, named pathogen-associated molecular patterns or PAMPs, or from their own corrupted cell walls due to pathogen invasion, named damaged-associated molecular patterns or DAMPs. Accumulating evidence from cell wall mutants has unveiled several components and mechanisms of plant innate immunity under biotic stresses, mostly in Arabidopsis, but still little is known from species with agronomic interest as strawberry. Our group has an established strawberry transgenic collection of cell wall mutants. Among them, RNAseq expression profiles of FaPG1 mutants has shown downregulation of other cell wall related genes than PG [1], but the mechanisms underneath required further investigation. FaPG genes code for enzymes with endo-PG activity related to oligogalacturonic acid (OGA) release, which would be associated to the changes in gene expression of other cell wall genes than FaPG. In this work, postharvest assays of FaPG1 fruits showed not only the increased fruit firmness typical of this mutant, but a better resistance to fungal infections by Botrytis cinerea, enhancing fruit shelf life in comparison with control fruits.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Long-Term Labeling of Hippocampal Neural Stem Cells by a Lentiviral Vector

Using a lentivirus-mediated labeling method, we investigated whether the adult hippocampus retains long-lasting, self-renewing neural stem cells (NSCs). We first showed that a single injection of a lentiviral vector expressing a green fluorescent protein (LV PGK-GFP) into the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the adult hippocampus enabled an efficient, robust, and long-term marking of self-renewing NSCs and their progeny. Interestingly, a subset of labeled cells showed the ability to proliferate multiple times and give rise to Sox2+ cells, clearly suggesting the ability of NSCs to self-renew for an extensive period of time (up to 6 months). In addition, using GFP+ cells isolated from the SGZ of mice that received a LV PGK-GFP injection 3 months earlier, we demonstrated that some GFP+ cells displayed the essential properties of NSCs, such as self-renewal and multipotency. Furthermore, we investigated the plasticity of NSCs in a perforant path transection, which has been shown to induce astrocyte formation in the molecular layer of the hippocampus. Our lentivirus (LV)-mediated labeling study revealed that hippocampal NSCs are not responsible for the burst of astrocyte formation, suggesting that signals released from the injured perforant path did not influence NSC fate determination. Therefore, our studies showed that a gene delivery system using LVs is a unique method to be used for understanding the complex nature of NSCs and may have translational impact in gene therapy by efficiently targeting NSCs

179. Correcting the Bleeding Phenotype in Hemophilia Ausing Lentivirally FVIII-Corrected Endothelial Cells Differentiated from Hemophilic Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC)

Hemophilia A (HA) is a bleeding disorder caused by factor VIII (FVIII) gene mutations.Somatic cells can be reprogrammed to generate autologous, disease-free iPSCs, then differentiated into cell targetsrelevant for gene and cell therapy. Our aim is to develop a novel HA treatment strategy generating FVIII-corrected patient-specific iPSCs from peripheral blood cells anddifferentiating them into functional endothelial cells (ECs), secreting FVIII after transplantation

Comparative study of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) as a treatment for retinal dystrophies

Retinal dystrophies (RD) are major causes of familial blindness and are characterized by progressive dysfunction of photoreceptor and/or retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells. In this study, we aimed to evaluate and compare the therapeutic effects of two pluripotent stem cell (PSC)-based therapies. We differentiated RPE from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) or human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and transplanted them into the subretinal space of the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rat. Once differentiated, cells from either source of PSC resembled mature RPE in their morphology and gene expression profile. Following transplantation, both hESC- and hiPSC-derived cells maintained the expression of specific RPE markers, lost their proliferative capacity, established tight junctions, and were able to perform phagocytosis of photoreceptor outer segments. Remarkably, grafted areas showed increased numbers of photoreceptor nuclei and outer segment disk membranes. Regardless of the cell source, human transplants protected retina from cell apoptosis, glial stress and accumulation of autofluorescence, and responded better to light stimuli. Altogether, our results show that hESC- and hiPSC-derived cells survived, migrated, integrated, and functioned as RPE in the RCS rat retina, providing preclinical evidence that either PSC source could be of potential benefit for treating RD