Prevention of Protein Glycation by Natural Compounds

Non-enzymatic protein glycosylation (glycation) contributes to many diseases and aging of organisms. It can be expected that inhibition of glycation may prolong the lifespan. The search for inhibitors of glycation, mainly using in vitro models, has identified natural compounds able to prevent glycation, especially polyphenols and other natural antioxidants. Extrapolation of results of in vitro studies on the in vivo situation is not straightforward due to differences in the conditions and mechanism of glycation, and bioavailability problems. Nevertheless, available data allow to postulate that enrichment of diet in natural anti-glycating agents may attenuate glycation and, in consequence, ageing

Two particle correlations from the energy scan with p+p interactions

The NA61/Shine experiment aims to discover the critical point of strongly interacting matter and study the properties of the onset of deconfinement. These goals are to be achieved by performing a two dimensional phase diagram T-mu_B scan by measurements of hadron production properties in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus interactions as a function of collision energy and system size. Close to the phase transition and/or close to the critical point large fluctuations are predicted. In this contribution preliminary results on two-particle correlations in pseudorapidity and azimuthal angle will be presented for p+p interactions at beam momenta: 20, 31, 40, 80 and 158 GeV/c. The NA61/Shine results will be compared with the corresponding data of other experiments and model predictions. A striking evolution with collision energy is observed

Mordell-Weil ranks of families of elliptic curves associated to Pythagorean triples

We study the family of elliptic curves $y^2=x(x-a^2)(x-b^2)$ parametrized by Pythagorean triples $(a,b,c)$. We prove that for a generic triple the lower bound of the rank of the Mordell-Weil group over $\mathbb{Q}$ is 1, and for some explicitly given infinite family the rank is 2. To each family we attach an elliptic surface fibered over the projective line. We show that the lower bounds for the rank are optimal, in the sense that for each generic fiber of such an elliptic surface its corresponding Mordell-Weil group over the function field $\mathbb{Q}(t)$ has rank 1 or 2, respectively. In order to prove this, we compute the characteristic polynomials of the Frobenius automorphisms acting on the second $\ell$-adic cohomology groups attached to elliptic surfaces of Kodaira dimensions 0 and 1.Comment: 19 page