4,017 research outputs found
Differential Growth of Francisella tularensis, Which Alters Expression of Virulence Factors, Dominant Antigens, and Surface-carbohydrate Synthases, Governs the Apparent Virulence of Ft Schus4 to Immunized Animals
The gram-negative bacterium Francisella tularensis (Ft) is both a potential biological weapon and a naturally occurring microbe that survives in arthropods, fresh water amoeba, and mammals with distinct phenotypes in various environments. Previously, we used a number of measurements to characterize Ft grown in Brain-Heart Infusion (BHI) broth as (1) more similar to infection-derived bacteria, and (2) slightly more virulent in naive animals, compared to Ft grown in Mueller Hinton Broth (MHB). In these studies we observed that the free amino acids in MHB repress expression of select Ft virulence factors by an unknown mechanism. Here, we tested the hypotheses that Ft grown in BHI (BHI-Ft) accurately displays a full protein composition more similar to that reported for infection-derived Ft and that this similarity would make BHI-Ft more susceptible to pre-existing, vaccine-induced immunity than MHB-Ft. We performed comprehensive proteomic analysis of Ft grown in MHB, BHI, and BHI supplemented with casamino acids (BCA) and compared our findings to published omics data derived from Ft grown in vivo. Based on the abundance of ~1,000 proteins, the fingerprint of BHI-Ft is one of nutrient-deprived bacteria that-through induction of a stringent-starvation-like response-have induced the FevR regulon for expression of the bacterium\u27s virulence factors, immuno-dominant antigens, and surface-carbohydrate synthases. To test the notion that increased abundance of dominant antigens expressed by BHI-Ft would render these bacteria more susceptible to pre-existing, vaccine-induced immunity, we employed a battery of LVS-vaccination and S4-challenge protocols using MHB- and BHI-grown Ft S4. Contrary to our hypothesis, these experiments reveal that LVS-immunization provides a barrier to infection that is significantly more effective against an MHB-S4 challenge than a BHI-S4 challenge. The differences in apparent virulence to immunized mice are profoundly greater than those observed with primary infection of naive mice. Our findings suggest that tularemia vaccination studies should be critically evaluated in regard to the growth conditions of the challenge agent
Parallel algorithm with spectral convergence for nonlinear integro-differential equations
We discuss a numerical algorithm for solving nonlinear integro-differential
equations, and illustrate our findings for the particular case of Volterra type
equations. The algorithm combines a perturbation approach meant to render a
linearized version of the problem and a spectral method where unknown functions
are expanded in terms of Chebyshev polynomials (El-gendi's method). This
approach is shown to be suitable for the calculation of two-point Green
functions required in next to leading order studies of time-dependent quantum
field theory.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure
Study of biochemical markers in iron deficiency anemia
Background: The present study was aimed to study alterations in levels of oxidants and antioxidants in iron deficiency anemia (IDA).Methods: 30 patients of IDA in age group of 20-50 and 30 healthy subjects were included for study. Serum Iron, TIBC & Hb% were estimated to diagnose IDA. Serum Malondialdehyde (MDA), Nitric oxide (NO) as an oxidants & Superoxide dismutase (SOD), vitamin E, vitamin C, Zinc (Zn) levels as antioxidants were estimated.Results: Significant decreased levels of Hb%, serum iron, SOD, Vitamin C, vitamin E, Zn were found. TIBC, MDA, NO were significantly increased as compared to controls.Conclusion: The normal adult erythrocytes can resist oxidative stress by several antioxidant defense systems. In IDA, oxidative stress causes lipid peroxidation and membrane damage. So antioxidants can be used as a marker for prevention of membrane damage due to oxidative stress
Numerical Approximations Using Chebyshev Polynomial Expansions
We present numerical solutions for differential equations by expanding the
unknown function in terms of Chebyshev polynomials and solving a system of
linear equations directly for the values of the function at the extrema (or
zeros) of the Chebyshev polynomial of order N (El-gendi's method). The
solutions are exact at these points, apart from round-off computer errors and
the convergence of other numerical methods used in connection to solving the
linear system of equations. Applications to initial value problems in
time-dependent quantum field theory, and second order boundary value problems
in fluid dynamics are presented.Comment: minor wording changes, some typos have been eliminate
Genetic diversity and pathogenic variability among Indian isolates of Fusarium udum infecting pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) millsp.)
Genetic diversity and pathogenic variability among Fusarium udum isolates collected from different
geographical locations of India were studied. All the isolates exhibited variable levels of virulence
against a susceptible pigeonpea cultivar (T-21). The genetic diversity allelic variations among these
isolates were estimated using RAPD molecular markers. All the thirteen RAPD primers were found to
be highly reproducible and produced a total of 126 loci of which 69 loci were polymorphic. Primer OPB
17 amplified highest number of polymorphic bands with maximum polymorphic information content
(PIC) of 4.00. Percentage of polymorphism revealed by individual primers varied from 33.3 to 76.9%
with an average of 53.4%. Further, cluster analysis of OPB-17 and provided a substantially
discrimination of all the isolates. Our results showed a high degree of variability in pathogenicity and
genetic diversity among the populations. Therefore the present studies indicate that the F. udum may
have significant impact towards the emergence/evolutionary development
Nonequilibrium perturbation theory for complex scalar fields
Real-time perturbation theory is formulated for complex scalar fields away
from thermal equilibrium in such a way that dissipative effects arising from
the absorptive parts of loop diagrams are approximately resummed into the
unperturbed propagators. Low order calculations of physical quantities then
involve quasiparticle occupation numbers which evolve with the changing state
of the field system, in contrast to standard perturbation theory, where these
occupation numbers are frozen at their initial values. The evolution equation
of the occupation numbers can be cast approximately in the form of a Boltzmann
equation. Particular attention is given to the effects of a non-zero chemical
potential, and it is found that the thermal masses and decay widths of
quasiparticle modes are different for particles and antiparticles.Comment: 15 pages using RevTeX; 2 figures in 1 Postscript file; Submitted to
Phys. Rev.
Resumming the large-N approximation for time evolving quantum systems
In this paper we discuss two methods of resumming the leading and next to
leading order in 1/N diagrams for the quartic O(N) model. These two approaches
have the property that they preserve both boundedness and positivity for
expectation values of operators in our numerical simulations. These
approximations can be understood either in terms of a truncation to the
infinitely coupled Schwinger-Dyson hierarchy of equations, or by choosing a
particular two-particle irreducible vacuum energy graph in the effective action
of the Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis formalism. We confine our discussion to the
case of quantum mechanics where the Lagrangian is . The
key to these approximations is to treat both the propagator and the
propagator on similar footing which leads to a theory whose graphs have the
same topology as QED with the propagator playing the role of the photon.
The bare vertex approximation is obtained by replacing the exact vertex
function by the bare one in the exact Schwinger-Dyson equations for the one and
two point functions. The second approximation, which we call the dynamic Debye
screening approximation, makes the further approximation of replacing the exact
propagator by its value at leading order in the 1/N expansion. These two
approximations are compared with exact numerical simulations for the quantum
roll problem. The bare vertex approximation captures the physics at large and
modest better than the dynamic Debye screening approximation.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures. The color version of a few figures are
separately liste
The Boltzmann equation for colourless plasmons in hot QCD plasma. Semiclassical approximation
Within the framework of the semiclassical approximation, we derive the
Boltzmann equation describing the dynamics of colorless plasmons in a hot QCD
plasma. The probability of the plasmon-plasmon scattering at the leading order
in the coupling constant is obtained. This probability is gauge-independent at
least in the class of the covariant and temporal gauges. It is noted that the
structure of the scattering kernel possesses important qualitative difference
from the corresponding one in the Abelian plasma, in spite of the fact that we
focused our study on the colorless soft excitations. It is shown that
four-plasmon decay is suppressed by the power of relative to the process of
nonlinear scattering of plasmons by thermal particles at the soft momentum
scale. It is stated that the former process becomes important in going to the
ultrasoft region of the momentum scale.Comment: 41, LaTeX, minor changes, identical to published versio
Entropy and Uncertainty of Squeezed Quantum Open Systems
We define the entropy S and uncertainty function of a squeezed system
interacting with a thermal bath, and study how they change in time by following
the evolution of the reduced density matrix in the influence functional
formalism. As examples, we calculate the entropy of two exactly solvable
squeezed systems: an inverted harmonic oscillator and a scalar field mode
evolving in an inflationary universe. For the inverted oscillator with weak
coupling to the bath, at both high and low temperatures, , where r is
the squeeze parameter. In the de Sitter case, at high temperatures, where , being the coupling to the bath and H
the Hubble constant. These three cases confirm previous results based on more
ad hoc prescriptions for calculating entropy. But at low temperatures, the de
Sitter entropy is noticeably different. This result, obtained
from a more rigorous approach, shows that factors usually ignored by the
conventional approaches, i.e., the nature of the environment and the coupling
strength betwen the system and the environment, are important.Comment: 36 pages, epsfig, 2 in-text figures include
A Generalized Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem for Nonlinear Response Functions
A nonlinear generalization of the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem (FDT) for
the n-point Green functions and the amputated 1PI vertex functions at finite
temperature is derived in the framework of the Closed Time Path formalism. We
verify that this generalized FDT coincides with known results for n=2 and 3.
New explicit relations among the 4-point nonlinear response and correlation
(fluctuation) functions are presented.Comment: 34 pages, Revte
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