Combined SIRT3 and SIRT5 deletion is associated with inner retinal dysfunction in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes

Abstract Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a major cause of blindness in working adults in the industrialized world. In addition to vision loss caused by macular edema and pathological angiogenesis, DR patients often exhibit neuronal dysfunction on electrophysiological testing, suggesting that there may be an independent neuronal phase of disease that precedes vascular disease. Given the tremendous metabolic requirements of the retina and photoreceptors in particular, we hypothesized that derangements in metabolic regulation may accelerate retinal dysfunction in diabetes. As such, we induced hyperglycemia with streptozotocin in mice with monoallelic Nampt deletion from rod photoreceptors, mice lacking SIRT3, and mice lacking SIRT5 and tested multiple components of retinal function with electroretinography. None of these mice exhibited accelerated retinal dysfunction after induction of hyperglycemia, consistent with normal-appearing retinal morphology in hyperglycemic Sirt3 −/− or Sirt5 −/− mice. However, mice lacking both SIRT3 and SIRT5 (Sirt3 −/− Sirt5 −/− mice) exhibited significant evidence of inner retinal dysfunction after induction of hyperglycemia compared to hyperglycemic littermate controls, although this dysfunction was not accompanied by gross morphological changes in the retina. These results suggest that SIRT3 and SIRT5 may be involved in regulating neuronal dysfunction in DR and provide a foundation for future studies investigating sirtuin-based therapies

Quark Coalescence with Quark Number Conservation and the Effect on Quark-Hadron Scaling

We develop a new formulation of the quark coalescence model by including the quark number conservation in order to describe the hadronization of the bulk of the quark-gluon plasma. The scalings between hadron and quark phase space distributions are shown to depend on the transverse momentum. For hard quarks, our general scalings reproduce the usual quadratic scaling relation for mesons and the cubic scaling relation for baryons. For softer quarks, however, the inclusion of the quark number conservation leads to a linear scaling for the hadron species that dominates the quark number of each flavor, while the scalings of non-dominant hadrons depend on the coalescence dynamics. For charm mesons, we find that the distribution of soft $D$ mesons does not depend on the light quark distribution but the distribution of soft $J/\psi$ mesons is inversely correlated to the light quark distribution.Comment: Added 6 more equations to explain the derivations; added discussions; final published versio

Effective hadronic Lagrangian for charm mesons

An effective hadronic Lagrangian including the charm mesons is introduced to study their interactions in hadronic matter. Using coupling constants that are determined either empirically or by the SU(4) symmetry, we have evaluated the absorption cross sections of $J/\psi$ and the scattering cross sections of $D$ and $D^*$ by $\pi$ and $\rho$ mesons.Comment: 5 pages, 4 eps figures, presented at Strangeness 2000, Berkeley. Uses iopart.cl

A large-scale one-way quantum computer in an array of coupled cavities

We propose an efficient method to realize a large-scale one-way quantum computer in a two-dimensional (2D) array of coupled cavities, based on coherent displacements of an arbitrary state of cavity fields in a closed phase space. Due to the nontrivial geometric phase shifts accumulating only between the qubits in nearest-neighbor cavities, a large-scale 2D cluster state can be created within a short time. We discuss the feasibility of our method for scale solid-state quantum computationComment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Embryo impacts and gas giant mergers II: Diversity of Hot Jupiters' internal structure

We consider the origin of compact, short-period, Jupiter-mass planets. We propose that their diverse structure is caused by giant impacts of embryos and super-Earths or mergers with other gas giants during the formation and evolution of these hot Jupiters. Through a series of numerical simulations, we show that typical head-on collisions generally lead to total coalescence of impinging gas giants. Although extremely energetic collisions can disintegrate the envelope of gas giants, these events seldom occur. During oblique and moderately energetic collisions, the merger products retain higher fraction of the colliders' cores than their envelopes. They can also deposit considerable amount of spin angular momentum to the gas giants and desynchronize their spins from their orbital mean motion. We find that the oblateness of gas giants can be used to infer the impact history. Subsequent dissipation of stellar tide inside the planets' envelope can lead to runaway inflation and potentially a substantial loss of gas through Roche-lobe overflow. The impact of super-Earths on parabolic orbits can also enlarge gas giant planets' envelope and elevates their tidal dissipation rate over $\sim$ 100 Myr time scale. Since giant impacts occur stochastically with a range of impactor sizes and energies, their diverse outcomes may account for the dispersion in the mass-radius relationship of hot Jupiters.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA