260 research outputs found

    Universal and unique features of kinesin motors: Insights from a comparison of fungal and animal conventional kinesins

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    Kinesins are microtubule motors that use the energy derived from the hydrolysis of ATP to move unidirectionally along microtubules, The founding member of this still growing superfamily is conventional kinesin, a dimeric motor that moves processively towards the plus end of microtubules, Within the family of conventional kinesins, two groups can be distinguished to date, one derived from animal species, and one originating from filamentous fungi. So far no conventional kinesin has been reported from plant cells. Fungal and animal conventional kinesins differ in several respects, both in terms of their primary sequence and their physiological properties. Thus all fungal conventional kinesins move at velocities that are 4-5 times higher than those of animal conventional kinesins, and all of them appear to lack associated light chains. Both groups of motors are characterized by a number of group-specific sequence features which are considered here with respect to their functional importance. Animal and fungal conventional kinesins also share a number of sequence characteristics which point to common principles of motor function. The overall domain organization is remarkably similar. A C-terminal sequence motif common to all kinesins, which constitutes the only region of high homology outside the motor domain, suggests common principles of cargo association in both groups of motors. Consideration of the differences of, and similarities between, fungal and animal kinesins offers novel possibilities for experimentation (e.g., by constructing chimeras) that can be expected to contribute to our understanding of motor function

    Non-Markovian control of qubit thermodynamics by frequent quantum measurements

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    We explore the effects of frequent, impulsive quantum nondemolition measurements of the energy of two-level systems (TLS), alias qubits, in contact with a thermal bath. The resulting entropy and temperature of both the system and the bath are found to be completely determined by the measurement rate, and unrelated to what is expected by standard thermodynamical rules that hold for Markovian baths. These anomalies allow for very fast control of heating, cooling and state-purification (entropy reduction) of qubits, much sooner than their thermal equilibration time.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

    Pseudo Goldstone Bosons Phenomenology in Minimal Walking Technicolor

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    We construct the non-linear realized Lagrangian for the Goldstone Bosons associated to the breaking pattern of SU(4) to SO(4). This pattern is expected to occur in any Technicolor extension of the standard model featuring two Dirac fermions transforming according to real representations of the underlying gauge group. We concentrate on the Minimal Walking Technicolor quantum number assignments with respect to the standard model symmetries. We demonstrate that for, any choice of the quantum numbers, consistent with gauge and Witten anomalies the spectrum of the pseudo Goldstone Bosons contains electrically doubly charged states which can be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure

    Functional diversity of chemokines and chemokine receptors in response to viral infection of the central nervous system.

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    Encounters with neurotropic viruses result in varied outcomes ranging from encephalitis, paralytic poliomyelitis or other serious consequences to relatively benign infection. One of the principal factors that control the outcome of infection is the localized tissue response and subsequent immune response directed against the invading toxic agent. It is the role of the immune system to contain and control the spread of virus infection in the central nervous system (CNS), and paradoxically, this response may also be pathologic. Chemokines are potent proinflammatory molecules whose expression within virally infected tissues is often associated with protection and/or pathology which correlates with migration and accumulation of immune cells. Indeed, studies with a neurotropic murine coronavirus, mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), have provided important insight into the functional roles of chemokines and chemokine receptors in participating in various aspects of host defense as well as disease development within the CNS. This chapter will highlight recent discoveries that have provided insight into the diverse biologic roles of chemokines and their receptors in coordinating immune responses following viral infection of the CNS

    Electroweak symmetry breaking in other terms

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    We analyse descriptions of electroweak symmetry breaking in terms of ultralocal antisymmetric tensor fields and gauge-singlet geometric variables, respectively; in particular, the Weinberg--Salam model and, ultimately, dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking by technicolour theories with enhanced symmetry groups. Our motivation is to unveil the manifestly gauge invariant structure of the different realisations. We find, for example, parallels to different types of torsion.Comment: 15p

    D* Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

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    This paper presents measurements of D^{*\pm} production in deep inelastic scattering from collisions between 27.5 GeV positrons and 820 GeV protons. The data have been taken with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The decay channel D+(D0Kπ+)π+D^{*+}\to (D^0 \to K^- \pi^+) \pi^+ (+ c.c.) has been used in the study. The e+pe^+p cross section for inclusive D^{*\pm} production with 5<Q2<100GeV25<Q^2<100 GeV^2 and y<0.7y<0.7 is 5.3 \pms 1.0 \pms 0.8 nb in the kinematic region {1.3<pT(D±)<9.01.3<p_T(D^{*\pm})<9.0 GeV and η(D±)<1.5| \eta(D^{*\pm}) |<1.5}. Differential cross sections as functions of p_T(D^{*\pm}), η(D±),W\eta(D^{*\pm}), W and Q2Q^2 are compared with next-to-leading order QCD calculations based on the photon-gluon fusion production mechanism. After an extrapolation of the cross section to the full kinematic region in p_T(D^{*\pm}) and η\eta(D^{*\pm}), the charm contribution F2ccˉ(x,Q2)F_2^{c\bar{c}}(x,Q^2) to the proton structure function is determined for Bjorken xx between 2 \cdot 104^{-4} and 5 \cdot 103^{-3}.Comment: 17 pages including 4 figure

    Observation of Scaling Violations in Scaled Momentum Distributions at HERA

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    Charged particle production has been measured in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) events over a large range of xx and Q2Q^2 using the ZEUS detector. The evolution of the scaled momentum, xpx_p, with Q2,Q^2, in the range 10 to 1280 GeV2GeV^2, has been investigated in the current fragmentation region of the Breit frame. The results show clear evidence, in a single experiment, for scaling violations in scaled momenta as a function of Q2Q^2.Comment: 21 pages including 4 figures, to be published in Physics Letters B. Two references adde

    Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA

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    Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5 GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the γp\gamma p centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4 GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil
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