The effect of finite-conductvity Hartmann walls on the linear stability of Hunt's flow

We analyse numerically the linear stability of the fully developed liquid metal flow in a square duct with insulating side walls and thin electrically conducting horizontal walls with the wall conductance ratio $c=0.01\cdots 1$ subject to a vertical magnetic field with the Hartmann numbers up to $Ha=10^{4}.$ In a sufficiently strong magnetic field, the flow consists of two jets at the side walls walls and a near-stagnant core with the relative velocity $\sim(cHa)^{-1}.$ We find that for $Ha\gtrsim300,$ the effect of wall conductivity on the stability of the flow is mainly determined by the effective Hartmann wall conductance ratio $cHa.$ For $c\ll 1,$ the increase of the magnetic field or that of the wall conductivity has a destabilizing effect on the flow. Maximal destabilization of the flow occurs at $Ha\approx30/c.$ In a stronger magnetic field with $cHa\gtrsim 30,$ the destabilizing effect vanishes and the asymptotic results of Priede et al. [J. Fluid Mech. 649, 115, 2010] for the ideal Hunt's flow with perfectly conducting Hartmann walls are recovered.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, (minor revision, to appear in J Fluid Mech). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1510.0922

The accessory bacteriochlorophyll

The primary electron transfer in reaction centers of Rhodobacter sphaeroides is studied by subpicosecond absorption spectroscopy with polarized light in the spectral range of 920-1040 nm. Here the bacteriochlorophyll anion radical has an absorption band while the other pigments of the reaction center have vanishing ground-state absorption. The transient absorption data exhibit a pronounced 0.9-ps kinetic component which shows a strong dichroism. Evaluation of the data yields an angle between the transition moments of the special pair and the species related with the 0.9-ps kinetic component of 26 +/- 8 degrees. This angle compares favorably with the value of 29 degrees expected for the reduced accessory bacteriochlorophyll. Extensive transient absorbance data are fully consistent with a stepwise electron transfer via the accessory bacteriochlorophyll

Gas Plasma Protein Oxidation Increases Immunogenicity and Human Antigen-Presenting Cell Maturation and Activation

Protein vaccines rely on eliciting immune responses. Inflammation is a prerequisite for immune responses to control infection and cancer but is also associated with disease onset. Reactive oxygen species (ROSs) are central during inflammation and are capable of inducing non-enzymatic oxidative protein modifications (oxMods) associated with chronic disease, which alter the functionality or immunogenicity of proteins that are relevant in cancer immunotherapy. Specifically, antigen-presenting cells (APCs) take up and degrade extracellular native and oxidized proteins to induce adaptive immune responses. However, it is less clear how oxMods alter the protein’s immunogenicity, especially in inflammation-related short-lived reactive species. Gas plasma technology simultaneously generates a multitude of ROSs to modify protein antigens in a targeted and controlled manner to study the immunogenicity of oxMods. As model proteins relevant to chronic inflammation and cancer, we used gas plasma-treated insulin and CXCL8. We added those native or oxidized proteins to human THP-1 monocytes or primary monocyte-derived cells (moDCs). Both oxidized proteins caused concentration-independent maturation phenotype alterations in moDCs and THP-1 cells concerning surface marker expression and chemokine and cytokine secretion profiles. Interestingly, concentration-matched H2O2-treated proteins did not recapitulate the effects of gas plasma, suggesting sufficiently short diffusion distances for the short-lived reactive species to modify proteins. Our data provide evidence of dendric cell maturation and activation upon exposure to gas plasma- but not H2O2-modified model proteins. The biological consequences of these findings need to be elucidated in future inflammation and cancer disease models

Copy number variants are produced in response to low‐dose ionizing radiation in cultured cells

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106089/1/em21840.pd

Oxidized Proteins Differentially Affect Maturation and Activation of Human Monocyte-Derived Cells

In cancer, antigen-presenting cells (APC), including dendritic cells (DCs), take up and process proteins to mount adaptive antitumor immune responses. This often happens in the context of inflamed cancer, where reactive oxygen species (ROS) are ubiquitous to modify proteins. However, the inflammatory consequences of oxidized protein uptake in DCs are understudied. To this end, we investigated human monocyte-derived cell surface marker expression and cytokine release profiles when exposed to oxidized and native proteins. Seventeen proteins were analyzed, including viral proteins (e.g., CMV and HBV), inflammation-related proteins (e.g., HO1 and HMGB1), matrix proteins (e.g., Vim and Coll), and vastly in the laboratory used proteins (e.g., BSA and Ova). The multifaceted nature of inflammation-associated ROS was mimicked using gas plasma technology, generating reactive species cocktails for protein oxidation. Fourteen oxidized proteins led to elevated surface marker expression levels of CD25, CD40, CD80, CD86, and MHC-II as well as strongly modified release of IL6, IL8, IL10, IL12, IL23, MCP-1, and TNFα compared to their native counterparts. Especially IL8, heme oxygenase 2, and vimentin oxidation gave pronounced effects. Furthermore, protein kinase phospho-array studies in monocyte-derived cells pulsed with native vs. oxidized IL8 and insulin showed enhanced AKT and RSK2 phosphorylation. In summary, our data provide for the first time an overview of the functional consequences of oxidized protein uptake by human monocyte-derived cells and could therefore be a starting point for exploiting such principle in anticancer therapy in the future

Spectroscopic characterization of reaction centers of the (M)Y210W mutant of the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides

The tyrosine-(M)210 of the reaction center of Rhodobacter sphaeroides 2.4.1 has been changed to a tryptophan using site-directed mutagenesis. The reaction center of this mutant has been characterized by low-temperature absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy, time-resolved sub-picosecond spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The charge separation process showed bi-exponential kinetics at room temperature, with a main time constant of 36 ps and an additional fast time constant of 5.1 ps. Temperature dependent fluorescence measurements predict that the lifetime of P* becomes 4–5 times slower at cryogenic temperatures. From EPR and absorbance-detected magnetic resonance (ADMR, LD-ADMR) we conclude that the dimeric structure of P is not significantly changed upon mutation. In contrast, the interaction of the accessory bacteriochlorophyll BA with its environment appears to be altered, possibly because of a change in its position

Linear stability of magnetohydrodynamic flow in a square duct with thin conducting walls

This study is concerned with numerical linear stability analysis of liquid metal flow in a square duct with thin electrically conducting walls subject to a uniform transverse magnetic field. We derive an asymptotic solution for the base flow which is valid not only for high but also moderate magnetic fields. This solution shows that for low wall conductance ratios $c\ll1,$ an extremely strong magnetic field with the Hartmann number $Ha\sim c^{-4}$ is required to attain the asymptotic flow regime considered in the previous studies. We use a vector stream function/vorticity formulation and a Chebyshev collocation method to solve the eigenvalue problem for three-dimensional small-amplitude perturbations in ducts with realistic wall conductance ratios $c=1,0.1,0.01$ and Hartmann numbers up to $10^{4}.$ As for similar flows, instability in a sufficiently strong magnetic field is found to occur in the side-wall jets with the characteristic thickness $\delta\sim Ha^{-1/2}.$ This results in the critical Reynolds number and wavenumber increasing asymptotically with the magnetic field as $Re_{c}\sim110Ha^{1/2}$ and $k_{c}\sim0.5Ha^{1/2}.$ The respective critical Reynolds number based on the total volume flux in a square duct with $c\ll1$ is $\bar{Re}_{c}\approx520.$ Although this value is somewhat larger than$\bar{Re}_{c}\approx313$ found by Ting et al. (1991) for the asymptotic side-wall jet profile, it still appears significantly lower than the Reynolds numbers at which turbulence is observed in experiments as well as in direct numerical simulations of this type of flows.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, final versio

Argon Plasma Exposure Augments Costimulatory Ligands and Cytokine Release in Human Monocyte-Derived Dendritic Cells

Cold physical plasma is a partially ionized gas expelling many reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS/RNS). Several plasma devices have been licensed for medical use in dermatology, and recent experimental studies suggest their putative role in cancer treatment. In cancer therapies with an immunological dimension, successful antigen presentation and inflammation modulation is a key hallmark to elicit antitumor immunity. Dendritic cells (DCs) are critical for this task. However, the inflammatory consequences of DCs following plasma exposure are unknown. To this end, human monocyte-derived DCs (moDCs) were expanded from isolated human primary monocytes; exposed to plasma; and their metabolic activity, surface marker expression, and cytokine profiles were analyzed. As controls, hydrogen peroxide, hypochlorous acid, and peroxynitrite were used. Among all types of ROS/RNS-mediated treatments, plasma exposure exerted the most notable increase of activation markers at 24 h such as CD25, CD40, and CD83 known to be crucial for T cell costimulation. Moreover, the treatments increased interleukin (IL)-1α, IL-6, and IL-23. Altogether, this study suggests plasma treatment augmenting costimulatory ligand and cytokine expression in human moDCs, which might exert beneficial effects in the tumor microenvironment