3,685 research outputs found
Fusarium mycotoxin-contaminated wheat containing deoxynivalenol alters the gene expression in the liver and the jejunum of broilers
The effects of mycotoxins in the production of animal feed were investigated using broiler chickens. For the feeding trial, naturally Fusarium mycotoxin-contaminated wheat was used, which mainly contained deoxynivalenol (DON). The main effects of DON are reduction of the feed intake and reduced weight gain of broilers. At the molecular level, DON binds to the 60 S ribosomal subunit and subsequently inhibits protein synthesis at the translational level. However, little is known about other effects of DON, for example, at the transcriptional level. Therefore, a microarray analysis was performed, which allows the investigation of thousands of transcripts in one experiment. In the experiment, 20 broilers were separated into four groups of five broilers each at day 1 after hatching. The diets consisted of a control diet and three diets with calculated, moderate concentrations of 1.0, 2.5 and 5.0 mg DON/kg feed, which was attained by exchanging uncontaminated wheat with naturally mycotoxin-contaminated wheat up to the intended DON concentration. The broilers were held at standard conditions for 23 days. Three microarrays were used per group to determine the significant alterations of the gene expression in the liver (P < 0.05), and qPCR was performed on the liver and the jejunum to verify the results. No significant difference in BW, feed intake or feed conversion rate was observed. The nutrient uptake into the hepatic and jejunal cells seemed to be influenced by genes: SLC2A5 (fc: −1.54, DON2.5), which facilitates glucose and fructose transport and SLC7A10 (fc: +1.49, DON5), a transporter of d-serine and other neutral amino acids. In the jejunum, the palmitate transport might be altered by SLC27A4 (fc: −1.87, DON5) and monocarboxylates uptake by SLC16A1 (fc: −1.47, DON5). The alterations of the SLC gene expression may explain the reduced weight gain of broilers chronically exposed to DON-contaminated wheat. The decreased expressions of EIF2AK3 (fc: −1.29, DON2.5/5) and DNAJC3 (fc: −1.44, DON2.5) seem to be related to the translation inhibition. The binding of DON to the 60 S ribosomal subunit and the subsequent translation inhibition might be counterbalanced by the downregulation of EIF2AK3 and DNAJC3. The genes PARP1, MPG, EME1, XPAC, RIF1 and CHAF1B are mainly related to single-strand DNA modifications and showed an increased expression in the group with 5 mg DON/kg feed. The results indicate that significantly altered gene expression was already occurring at 2.5 mg DON/kg fee
Low temperature specific heat of the heavy fermion superconductor PrOsSb
We report the magnetic field dependence of the low temperature specific heat
of single crystals of the first Pr-based heavy fermion superconductor
PrOsSb. The low temperature specific heat and the magnetic phase
diagram inferred from specific heat, resistivity and magnetisation provide
compelling evidence of a doublet ground state and hence superconductivity
mediated by quadrupolar fluctuations. This establishes PrOsSb as a
very strong contender of superconductive pairing that is neither
electron-phonon nor magnetically mediated.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Upper Limit on the molecular resonance strengths in the C+C fusion reaction
Carbon burning is a crucial process for a number of important astrophysical
scenarios. The lowest measured energy is around E=2.1 MeV, only
partially overlapping with the energy range of astrophysical interest. The
currently adopted reaction rates are based on an extrapolation which is highly
uncertain because of potential resonances existing in the unmeasured energy
range and the complication of the effective nuclear potential. By comparing the
cross sections of the three carbon isotope fusion reactions,
C+C, C+C and C+C, we have
established an upper limit on the molecular resonance strengths in
C+C fusion reaction. The preliminary results are presented
and the impact on nuclear astrophysics is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, FUSION11 conference proceedin
Size-dependent Surface States on Strained Cobalt Nanoislands on Cu(111)
Low-temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy over Co nanoislands on
Cu(111) showed that the surface states of the islands vary with their size.
Occupied states exhibit a sizeable downward energy shift as the island size
decreases. The position of the occupied states also significantly changes
across the islands. Atomic-scale simulations and ab inito calculations
demonstrate that the driving force for the observed shift is related to
size-dependent mesoscopic relaxations in the nanoislands.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Isometric embeddings in bounded cohomology
This paper is devoted to the construction of norm-preserving maps between bounded cohomology groups. For a graph of groups with amenable edge groups we construct an isometric embedding of the direct sum of the bounded cohomology of the vertex groups in the bounded cohomology of the fundamental group of the graph of groups. With a similar technique we prove that if (X,Y) is a pair of CW-complexes and the fundamental group of each connected component of Y is amenable, the isomorphism between the relative bounded cohomology of (X,Y) and the bounded cohomology of X in degree at least 2 is isometric. As an application we provide easy and self-contained proofs of Gromov Equivalence Theorem and of the additivity of the simplicial volume with respect to gluings along pi_1-injective boundary components with amenable fundamental group
Cosmological Perturbations Generated in the Colliding Bubble Braneworld Universe
We compute the cosmological perturbations generated in the colliding bubble
braneworld universe in which bubbles filled with five-dimensional anti-de
Sitter space (AdS5)expanding within a five dimensional de Sitter space (dS5) or
Minkowski space (M5) collide to form a (3+1) dimensional local brane on which
the cosmology is virtually identical to that of the Randall-Sundrum model. The
perturbation calculation presented here is valid to linear order but treats the
fluctuations of the expanding bubbles as (3+1) dimensional fields localized on
the bubble wall. We find that for bubbles expanding in dS5 the dominant
contribution to the power spectrum is `red' but very small except in certain
cases where the fifth dimension is not large or the bubbles have expanded to
far beyond the dS5 apparent horizon length. This paper supersedes a previous
version titled "Exactly Scale-Invariant Cosmological Perturbations From a
Colliding Bubble Braneworld Universe" in which we erroneously claimed that a
scale-invariant spectrum results for the case of bubbles expanding in M5. This
present paper corrects the errors of the previous version and extends the
analysis to the more interesting and general case of bubbles expanding in dS5.Comment: 29 pages Latex with eps figures. Major errors in the original version
of the paper corrected and analysis extended to bubbles expanding in dS
Poly-essential and general Hyperelastic World (brane) models
This article provides a unified treatment of an extensive category of
non-linear classical field models whereby the universe is represented (perhaps
as a brane in a higher dimensional background) in terms of a structure of a
mathematically convenient type describable as hyperelastic, for which a
complete set of equations of motion is provided just by the energy-momentum
conservation law. Particular cases include those of a perfect fluid in
quintessential backgrounds of various kinds, as well as models of the elastic
solid kind that has been proposed to account for cosmic acceleration. It is
shown how an appropriately generalised Hadamard operator can be used to
construct a symplectic structure that controles the evolution of small
perturbations, and that provides a characteristic equation governing the
propagation of weak discontinuities of diverse (extrinsic and extrinsic) kinds.
The special case of a poly-essential model - the k-essential analogue of an
ordinary polytropic fluid - is examined and shown to be well behaved (like the
fluid) only if the pressure to density ratio is positive.Comment: 16 pages Latex, Contrib. to 10th Peyresq Pysics Meeting, June 2005:
Micro and Macro Structures of Spacetim
Optical study of the electronic phase transition of strongly correlated YbInCu_4
Infrared, visible and near-UV reflectivity measurements are used to obtain
conductivity as a function of temperature and frequency in YbInCu_4, which
exhibits an isostructural phase-transition into a mixed-valent phase below
T_v=42 K. In addition to a gradual loss of spectral weight with decreasing
temperature extending up to 1.5 eV, a sharp resonance appears at 0.25 eV in the
mixed-valent phase. This feature can be described in terms of excitations into
the Kondo (Abrikosov-Suhl) resonance, and, like the sudden reduction of
resistivity, provides a direct reflection of the onset of coherence in this
strongly correlated electron system.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures (to appear in Phys. Rev. B
Singular behaviour of the electromagnetic field
The singularities of the electromagnetic field are derived to include all the
point-like multipoles representing an electric charge and current distribution.
Firstly derived in the static case, the result is generalized to the dynamic
one. We establish a simple procedure for passing from the first, to the second
case.Comment: Latex, 21.pages, no figure
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