2,285 research outputs found
Studies on gastro-intestinal helminths of Equus acinus in North Gujarat, India
A year round study (October to September) was conducted in the districts of North Gujarat (India) to identify the gastro-intestinal helminths of donkeys (Equus acinus), determine prevalence and correlate haematological parameters with parasite burdens. A total of 1794 faecal samples of donkeys contained the following helminths (prevalence % in brackets): Strongyloides westeri (17.2), Parascaris equorum (23.8), Strongylus sp. (55.3), an amphistome digenean (1.5), Anoplocephala sp. (1.0), Balantidium coli (13.1) and Eimeria leuckarti (7.0). Overall prevalence was 75.9 with a mean of 627 (50-1650) eggs per gram faeces. Seasonally the maximum prevalence (85.3) occurred in March and minimum (65.2) in July. 14% of donkeys were considered to be severely infected, 38% heavily, 36% moderately and 12% mildly infected. Larval cultures revealed the presence of (prevalence%): Cyathostomum sp. (48), Gyalocephalus sp. (8), Oesophagodontus sp. (6), Triodontophorus sp. (10), Strongyloides westeri (10), Strongylus vulgaris (30), Strongylus equines (40) and S. edentatus (30). Hematological indices were inversely proportional to epg counts.Keywords: donkeys, gastro-intestinal parasites, haematology, prevalence
The Drosophila Anion Exchanger (DAE) lacks a detectable interaction with the spectrin cytoskeleton
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Current models suggest that the spectrin cytoskeleton stabilizes interacting ion transport proteins at the plasma membrane. The human erythrocyte anion exchanger (AE1) was the first membrane transport protein found to be associated with the spectrin cytoskeleton. Here we evaluated a conserved anion exchanger from Drosophila (DAE) as a marker for studies of the downstream effects of spectrin cytoskeleton mutations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Sequence comparisons established that DAE belongs to the SLC4A1-3 subfamily of anion exchangers that includes human AE1. Striking sequence conservation was observed in the C-terminal membrane transport domain and parts of the N-terminal cytoplasmic domain, but not in the proposed ankyrin-binding site. Using an antibody raised against DAE and a recombinant transgene expressed in <it>Drosophila </it>S2 cells DAE was shown to be a 136 kd plasma membrane protein. A major site of expression was found in the stomach acid-secreting region of the larval midgut. DAE codistributed with an infolded subcompartment of the basal plasma membrane of interstitial cells. However, spectrin did not codistribute with DAE at this site or in anterior midgut cells that abundantly expressed both spectrin and DAE. Ubiquitous knockdown of DAE with dsRNA eliminated antibody staining and was lethal, indicating that DAE is an essential gene product in <it>Drosophila</it>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Based on the lack of colocalization and the lack of sequence conservation at the ankyrin-binding site, it appears that the well-characterized interaction between AE1 and the spectrin cytoskeleton in erythrocytes is not conserved in <it>Drosophila</it>. The results establish a pattern in which most of the known interactions between the spectrin cytoskeleton and the plasma membrane in mammals do not appear to be conserved in <it>Drosophila</it>.</p
Supersymmetric Intersecting Branes on the Waves
We construct a general family of supersymmetric solutions in time- and
space-dependent wave backgrounds in general supergravity theories describing
single and intersecting p-branes embedded into time-dependent dilaton-gravity
plane waves of an arbitrary (isotropic) profile, with the brane world-volume
aligned parallel to the propagation direction of the wave. We discuss how many
degrees of freedom we have in the solutions. We also propose that these
solutions can be used to describe higher-dimensional time-dependent "black
holes", and discuss their property briefly.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe
Intersecting black branes in strong gravitational waves
We consider intersecting black branes with strong gravitational waves
propagating along their worldvolume in the context of supergravity theories.
Both near-horizon and space-filling gravitational wave modes are included in
our ansatz. The equations of motion (originally, partial differential
equations) are shown to reduce to ordinary differential equations, which
include a Toda-like system. For special arrangements of intersecting black
branes, the Toda-like system becomes integrable, permitting a more thorough
analysis of the gravitational equations of motion.Comment: 17 pages; v2: cosmetic improvements, published versio
Clip-level feature aggregation : a key factor for video-based person re-identification
In the task of video-based person re-identification, features
of persons in the query and gallery sets are compared to search the
best match. Generally, most existing methods aggregate the frame-level
features together using a temporal method to generate the clip-level fea-
tures, instead of the sequence-level representations. In this paper, we
propose a new method that aggregates the clip-level features to obtain
the sequence-level representations of persons, which consists of two parts,
i.e., Average Aggregation Strategy (AAS) and Raw Feature Utilization
(RFU). AAS makes use of all frames in a video sequence to generate
a better representation of a person, while RFU investigates how batch
normalization operation influences feature representations in person re-
identification. The experimental results demonstrate that our method
can boost the performance of existing models for better accuracy. In
particular, we achieve 87.7% rank-1 and 82.3% mAP on MARS dataset
without any post-processing procedure, which outperforms the existing
state-of-the-art
Stringy effects in black hole decay
We compute the low energy decay rates of near-extremal three(four) charge
black holes in five(four) dimensional N=4 string theory to sub-leading order in
the large charge approximation. This involves studying stringy corrections to
scattering amplitudes of a scalar field off a black hole. We adapt and use
recently developed techniques to compute such amplitudes as near-horizon
quantities. We then compare this with the corresponding calculation in the
microscopic configuration carrying the same charges as the black hole. We find
perfect agreement between the microscopic and macroscopic calculations; in the
cases we study, the zero energy limit of the scattering cross section is equal
to four times the Wald entropy of the black hole.Comment: 32 page
Evidence for a fractional quantum Hall state with anisotropic longitudinal transport
At high magnetic fields, where the Fermi level lies in the N=0 lowest Landau
level (LL), a clean two-dimensional electron system (2DES) exhibits numerous
incompressible liquid phases which display the fractional quantized Hall effect
(FQHE) (Das Sarma and Pinczuk, 1997). These liquid phases do not break
rotational symmetry, exhibiting resistivities which are isotropic in the plane.
In contrast, at lower fields, when the Fermi level lies in the third
and several higher LLs, the 2DES displays a distinctly different class of
collective states. In particular, near half filling of these high LLs the 2DES
exhibits a strongly anisotropic longitudinal resistance at low temperatures
(Lilly et al., 1999; Du et al., 1999). These "stripe" phases, which do not
exhibit the quantized Hall effect, resemble nematic liquid crystals, possessing
broken rotational symmetry and orientational order (Koulakov et al., 1996;
Fogler et al., 1996; Moessner and Chalker, 1996; Fradkin and Kivelson, 1999;
Fradkin et al, 2010). Here we report a surprising new observation: An
electronic configuration in the N=1 second LL whose resistivity tensor
simultaneously displays a robust fractionally quantized Hall plateau and a
strongly anisotropic longitudinal resistance resembling that of the stripe
phases.Comment: Nature Physics, (2011
Local Optical Probe of Motion and Stress in a multilayer graphene NEMS
Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMSs) are emerging nanoscale elements at the
crossroads between mechanics, optics and electronics, with significant
potential for actuation and sensing applications. The reduction of dimensions
compared to their micronic counterparts brings new effects including
sensitivity to very low mass, resonant frequencies in the radiofrequency range,
mechanical non-linearities and observation of quantum mechanical effects. An
important issue of NEMS is the understanding of fundamental physical properties
conditioning dissipation mechanisms, known to limit mechanical quality factors
and to induce aging due to material degradation. There is a need for detection
methods tailored for these systems which allow probing motion and stress at the
nanometer scale. Here, we show a non-invasive local optical probe for the
quantitative measurement of motion and stress within a multilayer graphene NEMS
provided by a combination of Fizeau interferences, Raman spectroscopy and
electrostatically actuated mirror. Interferometry provides a calibrated
measurement of the motion, resulting from an actuation ranging from a
quasi-static load up to the mechanical resonance while Raman spectroscopy
allows a purely spectral detection of mechanical resonance at the nanoscale.
Such spectroscopic detection reveals the coupling between a strained
nano-resonator and the energy of an inelastically scattered photon, and thus
offers a new approach for optomechanics
Manipulating infrared photons using plasmons in transparent graphene superlattices
Superlattices are artificial periodic nanostructures which can control the
flow of electrons. Their operation typically relies on the periodic modulation
of the electric potential in the direction of electron wave propagation. Here
we demonstrate transparent graphene superlattices which can manipulate infrared
photons utilizing the collective oscillations of carriers, i.e., plasmons of
the ensemble of multiple graphene layers. The superlattice is formed by
depositing alternating wafer-scale graphene sheets and thin insulating layers,
followed by patterning them all together into 3-dimensional
photonic-crystal-like structures. We demonstrate experimentally that the
collective oscillation of Dirac fermions in such graphene superlattices is
unambiguously nonclassical: compared to doping single layer graphene,
distributing carriers into multiple graphene layers strongly enhances the
plasmonic resonance frequency and magnitude, which is fundamentally different
from that in a conventional semiconductor superlattice. This property allows us
to construct widely tunable far-infrared notch filters with 8.2 dB rejection
ratio and terahertz linear polarizers with 9.5 dB extinction ratio, using a
superlattice with merely five graphene atomic layers. Moreover, an unpatterned
superlattice shields up to 97.5% of the electromagnetic radiations below 1.2
terahertz. This demonstration also opens an avenue for the realization of other
transparent mid- and far-infrared photonic devices such as detectors,
modulators, and 3-dimensional meta-material systems.Comment: under revie
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