86 research outputs found
Effect of a standardised dietary restriction protocol on multiple laboratory strains of Drosophila melanogaster
Background:
Outcomes of lifespan studies in model organisms are particularly susceptible to variations in technical procedures. This is especially true of dietary restriction, which is implemented in many different ways among laboratories.
Principal Findings:
In this study, we have examined the effect of laboratory stock maintenance, genotype differences and microbial infection on the ability of dietary restriction (DR) to extend life in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. None of these factors block the DR effect.
Conclusions:
These data lend support to the idea that nutrient restriction genuinely extends lifespan in flies, and that any mechanistic discoveries made with this model are of potential relevance to the determinants of lifespan in other organisms
Stationary distributions for diffusions with inert drift
Consider reflecting Brownian motion in a bounded domain in that acquires drift in proportion to the amount of local time spent on the boundary of the domain. We show that the stationary distribution for the joint law of the position of the reflecting Brownian motion and the value of the drift vector has a product form. Moreover, the first component is uniformly distributed on the domain, and the second component has a Gaussian distribution. We also consider more general reflecting diffusions with inert drift as well as processes where the drift is given in terms of the gradient of a potential
Strange quark production in a statistical effective model
An effective model with constituent quarks as fundamental degrees of freedom
is used to predict the relative strangeness production pattern in both high
energy elementary and heavy ion collisions. The basic picture is that of the
statistical hadronization model, with hadronizing color-singlet clusters
assumed to be at full chemical equilibrium at constituent quark level. Thus, by
assuming that at least the ratio between strange and non-strange constituent
quarks survives in the final hadrons, the apparent undersaturation of strange
particle phase space observed in the data can be accounted for. In this
framework, the enhancement of relative strangeness production in heavy ion
collisions in comparison with elementary collisions is mainly owing to the
excess of initial non-strange matter over antimatter and the so-called
canonical suppression, namely the constraint of exact color and flavor
conservation over small volumes.Comment: 22 pages, 9 postscript figures, slightly shortened version published
in Phys. Rev.
Charged particle densities from Au+Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}}=130 GeV
We present charged particle densities as a function of pseudorapidity and
collision centrality for the 197Au+197Au reaction at sqrt{s_{NN}}=130 GeV. An
integral charged particle multiplicity of 3860+/-300 is found for the 5% most
central events within the pseudorapidity range -4.7 <= eta <= 4.7. At
mid-rapidity an enhancement in the particle yields per participant nucleon pair
is observed for central events. Near to the beam rapidity, a scaling of the
particle yields consistent with the ``limiting fragmentation'' picture is
observed. Our results are compared to other recent experimental and theoretical
discussions of charged particle densities in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion
collisions.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures; to be published in Phys. Lett.
Experimental and Theoretical Challenges in the Search for the Quark Gluon Plasma: The STAR Collaboration's Critical Assessment of the Evidence from RHIC Collisions
We review the most important experimental results from the first three years
of nucleus-nucleus collision studies at RHIC, with emphasis on results from the
STAR experiment, and we assess their interpretation and comparison to theory.
The theory-experiment comparison suggests that central Au+Au collisions at RHIC
produce dense, rapidly thermalizing matter characterized by: (1) initial energy
densities above the critical values predicted by lattice QCD for establishment
of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP); (2) nearly ideal fluid flow, marked by
constituent interactions of very short mean free path, established most
probably at a stage preceding hadron formation; and (3) opacity to jets. Many
of the observations are consistent with models incorporating QGP formation in
the early collision stages, and have not found ready explanation in a hadronic
framework. However, the measurements themselves do not yet establish
unequivocal evidence for a transition to this new form of matter. The
theoretical treatment of the collision evolution, despite impressive successes,
invokes a suite of distinct models, degrees of freedom and assumptions of as
yet unknown quantitative consequence. We pose a set of important open
questions, and suggest additional measurements, at least some of which should
be addressed in order to establish a compelling basis to conclude definitively
that thermalized, deconfined quark-gluon matter has been produced at RHIC.Comment: 101 pages, 37 figures; revised version to Nucl. Phys.
Phi meson production in Au+Au and p+p collisions at sqrt (s)=200 GeV
We report the STAR measurement of Phi meson production in Au+Au and p+p
collisions at sqrt (s)=200 GeV. Using the event mixing technique, the Phi
spectra and yields are obtained at mid-rapidity for five centrality bins in
Au+Au collisions and for non-singly-diffractive p+p collisions. It is found
that the Phi transverse momentum distributions from Au+Au collisions are better
fitted with a single-exponential while the p+p spectrum is better described by
a double-exponential distribution. The measured nuclear modification factors
indicate that Phi production in central Au+Au collisions is suppressed relative
to peripheral collisions when scaled by the number of binary collisions. The
systematics of versus centrality and the constant Phi/K- ratio versus beam
species, centrality, and collision energy rule out kaon coalescence as the
dominant mechanism for Phi production.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Kaon and Pion Production in Central Au+Au Collisions at \sqrt{s_{NN}}=62.4 GeV
Invariant pT spectra and rapidity densities covering a large rapidity
range(-0.1 < y < 3.5) are presented for and mesons from
central Au+Au collisions at = 62.4 GeV. The mid-rapidity yields
of meson particles relative to their anti-particles are found to be close to
unity (, ) while the anti-proton to
proton ratio is . The rapidity dependence of the
ratio is consistent with a small increase towards forward
rapidities while the and ratios show a steep decrease to
0.3 for kaons and 0.022 for protons at . It is observed that
the kaon production relative to its own anti-particle as well as to pion
production in wide rapidity and energy ranges shows an apparent universal
behavior consistent with the baryo-chemical potential, as deduced from the
ratio, being the driving parameter.Comment: Submitted to PLB, 6 journal pages, 7 figure
Improving Genetic Prediction by Leveraging Genetic Correlations Among Human Diseases and Traits
Genomic prediction has the potential to contribute to precision medicine. However, to date, the utility of such predictors is limited due to low accuracy for most traits. Here theory and simulation study are used to demonstrate that widespread pleiotropy among phenotypes can be utilised to improve genomic risk prediction. We show how a genetic predictor can be created as a weighted index that combines published genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics across many different traits. We apply this framework to predict risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in the Psychiatric Genomics consortium data, finding substantial heterogeneity in prediction accuracy increases across cohorts. For six additional phenotypes in the UK Biobank data, we find increases in prediction accuracy ranging from 0.7 for height to 47 for type 2 diabetes, when using a multi-trait predictor that combines published summary statistics from multiple traits, as compared to a predictor based only on one trait. © 2018 The Author(s)
Genome-wide association study identifies 30 Loci Associated with Bipolar Disorder
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) founding member and Bipolar disorder working group co-chair Pamela Sklar. We thank the participants who donated their time, experiences and DNA to this research, and to the clinical and scientific teams that worked with them. We are deeply indebted to the investigators who comprise the PGC. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of any funding or regulatory body. Analyses were carried out on the NL Genetic Cluster Computer (http://www.geneticcluster.org ) hosted by SURFsara, and the Mount Sinai high performance computing cluster (http://hpc.mssm.edu).Bipolar disorder is a highly heritable psychiatric disorder. We performed a genome-wide association study including 20,352 cases and 31,358 controls of European descent, with follow-up analysis of 822 variants with P<1x10-4 in an additional 9,412 cases and 137,760 controls. Eight of the 19 variants that were genome-wide significant (GWS, p < 5x10-8) in the discovery GWAS were not GWS in the combined analysis, consistent with small effect sizes and limited power but also with genetic heterogeneity. In the combined analysis 30 loci were GWS including 20 novel loci. The significant loci contain genes encoding ion channels, neurotransmitter transporters and synaptic components. Pathway analysis revealed nine significantly enriched gene-sets including regulation of insulin secretion and endocannabinoid signaling. BDI is strongly genetically correlated with schizophrenia, driven by psychosis, whereas BDII is more strongly correlated with major depressive disorder. These findings address key clinical questions and provide potential new biological mechanisms for BD.This work was funded in part by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, Stanley Medical Research Institute, University of Michigan, Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Fund L.L.C., Marriot Foundation and the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine, the NIMH Intramural Research Program; Canadian Institutes of Health Research; the UK Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, NIHR, NRS, MRC, Wellcome Trust; European Research Council; German Ministry for Education and Research, German Research Foundation IZKF of Münster, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, ImmunoSensation, the Dr. Lisa-Oehler Foundation, University of Bonn; the Swiss National Science Foundation; French Foundation FondaMental and ANR; Spanish Ministerio de Economía, CIBERSAM, Industria y Competitividad, European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Generalitat de Catalunya, EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme; BBMRI-NL; South-East Norway Regional Health Authority and Mrs. Throne-Holst; Swedish Research Council, Stockholm County Council, Söderström Foundation; Lundbeck Foundation, Aarhus University; Australia NHMRC, NSW Ministry of Health, Janette M O'Neil and Betty C Lynch
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