Cationic lipid-based nanoparticles mediate functional delivery of acetate to tumor cells in vivo leading to significant anticancer effects

Metabolic reengineering using nanoparticle delivery represents an innovative therapeutic approach to normalizing the deregulation of cellular metabolism underlying many diseases, including cancer. Here, we demonstrated a unique and novel application to the treatment of malignancy using a short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-encapsulated lipid-based delivery system – liposome-encapsulated acetate nanoparticles for cancer applications (LITA-CAN). We assessed chronic in vivo administration of our nanoparticle in three separate murine models of colorectal cancer. We demonstrated a substantial reduction in tumor growth in the xenograft model of colorectal cancer cell lines HT-29, HCT-116 p53+/+ and HCT-116 p53-/-. Nanoparticle-induced reductions in histone deacetylase gene expression indicated a potential mechanism for these anti-proliferative effects. Together, these results indicated that LITA-CAN could be used as an effective direct or adjunct therapy to treat malignant transformation in vivo

Bose-Einstein condensation with magnetic dipole-dipole forces

Ground-state solutions in a dilute gas interacting via contact and magnetic dipole-dipole forces are investigated. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first example of studies of the Bose-Einstein condensation in a system with realistic long-range interactions. We find that for the magnetic moment of e.g. chromium and a typical value of the scattering length all solutions are stable and only differ in size from condensates without long-range interactions. By lowering the value of the scattering length we find a region of unstable solutions. In the neighborhood of this region the ground state wavefunctions show internal structures not seen before in condensates. Finally, we find an analytic estimate for the characteristic length appearing in these solutions.Comment: final version, 4 pages, 4 figure

Context, Complexity and Contestation: Birmingham's Agreed Syllabuses for Religious Education since the 1970s

publication-status: AcceptedThis is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in the Journal of Beliefs and Values, September 2011. Available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/ or DOI: 10.1080/13617672.2011.600823The present article offers an historical perspective on the 1975, 1995 and 2007 Birmingham Agreed Syllabuses for Religious Education. It draws upon historical evidence uncovered as part of ‘The hidden history of curriculum change in religious education in English schools, 1969–1979’ project, and curriculum history theories, especially David Labaree’s observations about the distance between the ‘rhetorical’ and ‘received’ curricula. We argue that, contrary to the existing historiography, curriculum change in religious education (RE) has been evolutionary not revolutionary. Multiple reasons are posited to explain this, not least among which is the capacity and agency of teachers. Furthermore, we argue that ongoing debates about the nature and purpose of RE, as exemplified in the Birmingham context, reflect the multiple expectations that religious educators and other stakeholders had, and continue to have, of the curriculum subject. These debates contribute to the inertia evident in the implementation of RE curriculum reforms. A consciousness of the history of RE enables curriculum contestations to be contextualised and understood, and, thereby, provides important insights which can be applied to ongoing and future debates and developments

Vacuum structure of Toroidal Carbon Nanotubes

Low energy excitations in carbon nanotubes can be described by an effective field theory of two components spinor. It is pointed out that the chiral anomaly in 1+1 dimensions should be observed in a metallic toroidal carbon nanotube on a planar geometry with varying magnetic field. We propose an experimental setup for studying this quantum effect. We also analyze the vacuum structure of the metallic toroidal carbon nanotube including the Coulomb interactions and discuss some effects of external charges on the vacuum.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Boson-fermion unification, superstrings, and Bohmian mechanics

Bosonic and fermionic particle currents can be introduced in a more unified way, with the cost of introducing a preferred spacetime foliation. Such a unified treatment of bosons and fermions naturally emerges from an analogous superstring current, showing that the preferred spacetime foliation appears only at the level of effective field theory, not at the fundamental superstring level. The existence of the preferred spacetime foliation allows an objective definition of particles associated with quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Such an objective definition of particles makes the Bohmian interpretation of particle quantum mechanics more appealing. The superstring current allows a consistent Bohmian interpretation of superstrings themselves, including a Bohmian description of string creation and destruction in terms of string splitting. The Bohmian equations of motion and the corresponding probabilistic predictions are fully relativistic covariant and do not depend on the preferred foliation.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figure, revised, to appear in Found. Phy

Chiral Magnetic Effect in Hydrodynamic Approximation

We review derivations of the chiral magnetic effect (ChME) in hydrodynamic approximation. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the basics of the effect. The main challenge now is to account for the strong interactions between the constituents of the fluid. The main result is that the ChME is not renormalized: in the hydrodynamic approximation it remains the same as for non-interacting chiral fermions moving in an external magnetic field. The key ingredients in the proof are general laws of thermodynamics and the Adler-Bardeen theorem for the chiral anomaly in external electromagnetic fields. The chiral magnetic effect in hydrodynamics represents a macroscopic manifestation of a quantum phenomenon (chiral anomaly). Moreover, one can argue that the current induced by the magnetic field is dissipation free and talk about a kind of "chiral superconductivity". More precise description is a ballistic transport along magnetic field taking place in equilibrium and in absence of a driving force. The basic limitation is exact chiral limit while the temperature--excitingly enough- does not seemingly matter. What is still lacking, is a detailed quantum microscopic picture for the ChME in hydrodynamics. Probably, the chiral currents propagate through lower-dimensional defects, like vortices in superfluid. In case of superfluid, the prediction for the chiral magnetic effect remains unmodified although the emerging dynamical picture differs from the standard one.Comment: 35 pages, prepared for a volume of the Springer Lecture Notes in Physics "Strongly interacting matter in magnetic fields" edited by D. Kharzeev, K. Landsteiner, A. Schmitt, H.-U. Ye

Fitting the integrated Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies

Fitting the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies is an almost universally used technique that has matured significantly in the last decade. Model predictions and fitting procedures have improved significantly over this time, attempting to keep up with the vastly increased volume and quality of available data. We review here the field of SED fitting, describing the modelling of ultraviolet to infrared galaxy SEDs, the creation of multiwavelength data sets, and the methods used to fit model SEDs to observed galaxy data sets. We touch upon the achievements and challenges in the major ingredients of SED fitting, with a special emphasis on describing the interplay between the quality of the available data, the quality of the available models, and the best fitting technique to use in order to obtain a realistic measurement as well as realistic uncertainties. We conclude that SED fitting can be used effectively to derive a range of physical properties of galaxies, such as redshift, stellar masses, star formation rates, dust masses, and metallicities, with care taken not to over-interpret the available data. Yet there still exist many issues such as estimating the age of the oldest stars in a galaxy, finer details ofdust properties and dust-star geometry, and the influences of poorly understood, luminous stellar types and phases. The challenge for the coming years will be to improve both the models and the observational data sets to resolve these uncertainties. The present review will be made available on an interactive, moderated web page (sedfitting.org), where the community can access and change the text. The intention is to expand the text and keep it up to date over the coming years.Comment: 54 pages, 26 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters