1,498 research outputs found
Fungal Surface and Innate Immune Recognition of Filamentous Fungi
The innate immune system performs specific detection of molecules from infectious agents through pattern recognition receptors. This recognition triggers inflammatory responses and activation of microbicidal mechanisms by leukocytes. Infections caused by filamentous fungi have increased in incidence and represent an important cause of mortality and morbidity especially in individuals with immunosuppression. This review will discuss the innate immune recognition of filamentous fungi molecules and its importance to infection control and disease
Tracking Curvaton(s)?
The ratio of the curvaton energy density to that of the dominant component of
the background sources may be constant during a significant period in the
evolution of the Universe. The possibility of having tracking curvatons, whose
decay occurs prior to the nucleosynthesis epoch, is studied. It is argued that
the tracking curvaton dynamics is disfavoured since the value of the curvature
perturbations prior to curvaton decay is smaller than the value required by
observations. It is also argued, in a related context, that the minimal
inflationary curvature scale compatible with the curvaton paradigm may be
lowered in the case of low-scale quintessential inflation.Comment: 20 pages, 4figure
Gravitational Lensing by Black Holes
We review the theoretical aspects of gravitational lensing by black holes,
and discuss the perspectives for realistic observations. We will first treat
lensing by spherically symmetric black holes, in which the formation of
infinite sequences of higher order images emerges in the clearest way. We will
then consider the effects of the spin of the black hole, with the formation of
giant higher order caustics and multiple images. Finally, we will consider the
perspectives for observations of black hole lensing, from the detection of
secondary images of stellar sources and spots on the accretion disk to the
interpretation of iron K-lines and direct imaging of the shadow of the black
hole.Comment: Invited article for the GRG special issue on lensing (P. Jetzer, Y.
Mellier and V. Perlick Eds.). 31 pages, 12 figure
Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor in Protozoan Infections
Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a cytokine that plays a central role in immune and inflammatory responses. In the present paper, we discussed the participation of MIF in the immune response to protozoan parasite infections. As a general trend, MIF participates in the control of parasite burden at the expense of promoting tissue damage due to increased inflammation
Gravitational lensing by stars with angular momentum
Gravitational lensing by spinning stars, approximated as homogeneous spheres,
is discussed in the weak field limit. Dragging of inertial frames, induced by
angular momentum of the deflector, breaks spherical symmetry. I examine how the
gravito-magnetic field affects image positions, caustics and critical curves.
Distortion in microlensing-induced light curves is also considered.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures; to appear in MNRA
Computational exploration of molecular receptive fields in the olfactory bulb reveals a glomerulus-centric chemical map
© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Progress in olfactory research is currently hampered by incomplete knowledge about chemical receptive ranges of primary receptors. Moreover, the chemical logic underlying the arrangement of computational units in the olfactory bulb has still not been resolved. We undertook a large-scale approach at characterising molecular receptive ranges (MRRs) of glomeruli in the dorsal olfactory bulb (dOB) innervated by the MOR18-2 olfactory receptor, also known as Olfr78, with human ortholog OR51E2. Guided by an iterative approach that combined biological screening and machine learning, we selected 214 odorants to characterise the response of MOR18-2 and its neighbouring glomeruli. We found that a combination of conventional physico-chemical and vibrational molecular descriptors performed best in predicting glomerular responses using nonlinear Support-Vector Regression. We also discovered several previously unknown odorants activating MOR18-2 glomeruli, and obtained detailed MRRs of MOR18-2 glomeruli and their neighbours. Our results confirm earlier findings that demonstrated tunotopy, that is, glomeruli with similar tuning curves tend to be located in spatial proximity in the dOB. In addition, our results indicate chemotopy, that is, a preference for glomeruli with similar physico-chemical MRR descriptions being located in spatial proximity. Together, these findings suggest the existence of a partial chemical map underlying glomerular arrangement in the dOB. Our methodology that combines machine learning and physiological measurements lights the way towards future high-throughput studies to deorphanise and characterise structure-activity relationships in olfaction.Peer reviewe
Electromagnetic waves around dilatonic stars and naked singularities
We study the propagation of classical electromagnetic waves on the simplest
four-dimensional spherically symmetric metric with a dilaton background field.
Solutions to the relevant equations are obtained perturbatively in a parameter
which measures the strength of the dilaton field (hence parameterizes the
departure from Schwarzschild geometry). The loss of energy from outgoing modes
is estimated as a back-scattering process against the dilaton background, which
would affect the luminosity of stars with a dilaton field. The radiation
emitted by a freely falling point-like source on such a background is also
studied by analytical and numerical methods.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur
Gravitational lensing in the Kerr-Randers optical geometry
A new geometric method to determine the deflection of light in the equatorial
plane of the Kerr solution is presented, whose optical geometry is a surface
with a Finsler metric of Randers type. Applying the Gauss-Bonnet theorem to a
suitable osculating Riemannian manifold, adapted from a construction by Naz\i
m, it is shown explicitly how the two leading terms of the asymptotic
deflection angle of gravitational lensing can be found in this way.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure. Accepted by Gen. Rel. Grav. Version 2: change of
notation in sec.
Strong Gravitational Lensing in a Charged Squashed Kaluza- Klein Black hole
In this paper we investigate the strong gravitational lensing in a charged
squashed Kaluza-Klein black hole. We suppose that the supermassive black hole
in the galaxy center can be considered by a charged squashed Kaluza-Klein black
hole and then we study the strong gravitational lensing theory and estimate the
numerical values for parameters and observables of it. We explore the effects
of the scale of extra dimension and the charge of black hole
on these parameters and observables.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure
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