Microsurgical Technique of Simultaneous Pancreas/Kidney Transplantation in the Rat: Clinical Experience and Review of the Literature

Background: For experimental basic research, standardized transplantation models reflecting technical and immunologic aspects are necessary. This article describes an experimental model of combined pancreas/kidney transplantation (PKTx) in detail. Materials and Methods: Donor rats underwent en bloc pancreatectomy and nephrectomy. Revascularization was performed using the aorta with the superior mesenteric artery and the inferior vena cava with the portal vein. Exocrine drainage of the pancreas took place over a segment of the duodenum which was transplanted side-to-side to the jejunum. The kidney vessels were transplanted end-to-side. The ureter was anastomosed by patch technique. Postoperatively, serum parameters were monitored daily. Biopsies for histopathology were taken on days 5, 8 and 12. Results: All 12 recipients survived the combined PKTx without serious surgical complications. One thrombosis of the portal vein led to organ failure. Blood glucose levels were normal by the 3rd postoperative day. The transplanted duodenal segment showed slight villous atrophy, and the kidneys were well perfused without vascular complications. The anastomosis between ureter and bladder was leakproof. Conclusions: Excellent graft function and survival rates can be achieved due to simplified operation technique and short operation time. It may thus have high clinical relevance to immunologic issues within the scope of basic research. Copyright (C) 2009 S. Karger AG, Base

Dynamical simulation of transport in one-dimensional quantum wires

Transport of single-channel spinless interacting fermions (Luttinger liquid) through a barrier has been studied by numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo methods. A novel stochastic integration over the real-time paths allows for direct computation of nonequilibrium conductance and noise properties. We have examined the low-temperature scaling of the conductance in the crossover region between a very weak and an almost insulating barrier.Comment: REVTex, 4 pages, 2 uuencoded figures (submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett.

Surface Enhancement of Superconductivity in Tin

The possibility of surface enhancement of superconductivity is examined experimentally. It is shown that single crystal tin samples with cold-worked surfaces represent a superconductor with a surface-enhanced order parameter (or negative surface extrapolation length b), whose magnitude can be controlled.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Combining the Hybrid Functional Method with Dynamical Mean-Field Theory

We present a new method to compute the electronic structure of correlated materials combining the hybrid functional method with the dynamical mean-field theory. As a test example of the method we study cerium sesquioxide, a strongly correlated Mott-band insulator. The hybrid functional part improves the magnitude of the pd-band gap which is underestimated in the standard approximations to density functional theory while the dynamical mean-field theory part splits the 4f-electron spectra into a lower and an upper Hubbard band.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, replaced with revised version, published in Europhys. Let

Extensive arterial and venous thrombo-embolism with chemotherapy for testicular cancer: a case report

Germ cell tumours tend to affect young adults and with advanced treatments achieve more than 90% cure rates. Over the years cisplatin has significantly improved the relapse free survival in these patients, hence forming an essential component of chemotherapy regimes. But, the thrombo-embolic complications suffered with cisplatin significantly affect the quality of life in these young patients

Requirement of RIZ1 for cancer prevention by methyl-balanced diet

The typical Western diet is not balanced in methyl nutrients that regulate the level of the methyl donor S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) and its derivative metabolite S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH), which in turn may control the activity of certain methyltransferases. Feeding rodents with amino acid defined and methyl-imbalanced diet decreases hepatic SAM and causes liver cancers. RIZ1 (PRDM2 or KMT8) is a tumor suppressor and functions in transcriptional repression by methylating histone H3 lysine 9. Here we show that a methyl-balanced diet conferred additional survival benefits compared to a tumor-inducing methyl-imbalanced diet only in mice with wild type RIZ1 but not in mice deficient in RIZ1. While absence of RIZ1 was tumorigenic in mice fed the balanced diet, its presence did not prevent tumor formation in mice fed the imbalanced diet. Unlike most of its related enzymes, RIZ1 was upregulated by methyl-balanced diet. Methyl-balanced diet did not fully repress oncogenes such as c-Jun in the absence of RIZ1. The data identify RIZ1 as a critical target of methyl-balanced diet in cancer prevention. The molecular understanding of dietary carcinogenesis may help people make informed choices on diet, which may greatly reduce the incidence of cancer

A New Interpretation of Flux Quantization

We study the effect of Aharonov-Bohm flux on the superconducting state in metallic cylinders. Although Byers and Yang attributed flux quantization to the flux-dependent minimum of kinetic energies of the Cooper pairs, it is shown that kinetic energies do not produce any discernible oscillations in the free energy of the superconducting state (relative to that of normal state) as a function of the flux. This result is indeed anticipated by the observation of persistent current in normal metal rings at low temperature. Instead, we have found that pairing interaction depends on the flux, leading to flux quantization. When the flux $(\Phi$) is given by $\Phi=n\times hc/2e$ (with integer n), the pairing interaction and the free energy become unchanged (even n) or almost unchanged (odd n), due to degenerate-state pairing resulting from the energy level crossing. As a result, flux quantization and Little-Parks oscillations follow.Comment: Revtex, 10 pages, 6 figures, For more information, send me an e-mail at [email protected]

Random Series and Discrete Path Integral methods: The Levy-Ciesielski implementation

We perform a thorough analysis of the relationship between discrete and series representation path integral methods, which are the main numerical techniques used in connection with the Feynman-Kac formula. First, a new interpretation of the so-called standard discrete path integral methods is derived by direct discretization of the Feynman-Kac formula. Second, we consider a particular random series technique based upon the Levy-Ciesielski representation of the Brownian bridge and analyze its main implementations, namely the primitive, the partial averaging, and the reweighted versions. It is shown that the n=2^k-1 subsequence of each of these methods can also be interpreted as a discrete path integral method with appropriate short-time approximations. We therefore establish a direct connection between the discrete and the random series approaches. In the end, we give sharp estimates on the rates of convergence of the partial averaging and the reweighted Levy-Ciesielski random series approach for sufficiently smooth potentials. The asymptotic rates of convergence are found to be O(1/n^2), in agreement with the rates of convergence of the best standard discrete path integral techniques.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures; the two equations before Eq. 14 are corrected; other typos are remove

Theoretical study of chlorine adsorption on the Ag(111) surface

Published versio

Correlation effects in MgO and CaO: Cohesive energies and lattice constants

A recently proposed computational scheme based on local increments has been applied to the calculation of correlation contributions to the cohesive energy of the CaO crystal. Using ab-initio quantum chemical methods for evaluating individual increments, we obtain 80% of the difference between the experimental and Hartree-Fock cohesive energies. Lattice constants corrected for correlation effects deviate by less than 1% from experimental values, in the case of MgO and CaO.Comment: LaTeX, 4 figure