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The Interaction of Obesity and Age and their effect on Adipose Tissue Metabolism in the Mouse
Numerous studies have investigated how bulk lipid metabolism is influenced in obesity and in particular how the composition of triglycerides found in the cytosol change with increased adipocyte expansion. However, in part reflecting the analytical challenge the composition of cell membranes, and in particular glycerophospholipids, an important membrane component, have been seldom investigated. Cell membrane components contribute to a variety of cellular processes including maintaining organelle functionality, providing an optimized environment for numerous proteins and providing important pools for metabolites, such as choline for one-carbon metabolism and S-adenosylmethionine for DNA methylation. Here, I have conducted a comprehensive lipidomic and transcriptomic study of white adipose tissue in mice that become obese either through genetic modification (ob/ob genotype), diet (high-fat diet) or a combination of the two across the life course. Specifically, I demonstrated that the changes in triglyceride metabolism that dominate the overall lipid composition of white adipose tissue were distinct from the compositional changes of glycerophospholipids. These latter lipids became more unsaturated to maintain the fluidity and normal function of the membrane in the initiation of obesity but then turned saturated after long-term administration of HFD and aging. This suggests that while triglycerides within the adipose tissue may be a relatively inert store of lipids, the compositional changes occur in cell membranes with more far-reaching functional consequences in both obesity and aging. The two-phase change of phospholipids can be correlated well with transcriptional and one-carbon metabolic changes within the adipocytes. The transcriptomic study demonstrated that the lipid metabolic pathways regulated by the peroxisome, AMPK, insulin and PPARγ signaling were activated in the initiation of obesity but inhibited in the adipose tissue of old ob/ob mice along with up-regulated inflammation pathways. The brown and white adipose tissue of PPARα-knock-out mice were also studied by lipidomic tools to get a deeper understanding of the effect of the peroxisome and PPAR system on adipose tissue and lipid metabolism during obesity. Most of the lipids were increased and became more saturated and shorter in adipose tissues of PPARα null mice, which is in good accordance with the results of the former animal study. In conclusion, my work using different rodent models and multi-omics techniques demonstrated a protective metabolic mechanism activated in the initiation but impaired at the end of the processes of obesity and aging, which could be an explanation of the similarity of obesity and aging in terms of high incidence of the metabolic syndrome and related diseases
Domain wall brane in a reduced Born-Infeld- theory
The Born-Infeld theory is reduced from the Born-Infeld determinantal
gravity in Weitzenb\"ock spacetime. We investigate a braneworld scenario in
this theory and obtain an analytic domain wall solution by utilizing the
first-order formalism. The model is stable against the linear tensor
perturbation. It is shown that the massless graviton is localized on the brane,
but the continuous massive gravitons are non-localized and will generate a tiny
correction with the behavior of to the Newtonian potential.
The four-dimensional teleparallel gravity is recovered as an effective infrared
theory on the brane. As a physical application, we consider the
(quasi-)localization property of spin-1/2 Dirac fermion in this model.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, published versio
Coupled-resonator-induced transparency with a squeezed vacuum
We present the first experimental observation of quantum fluctuation spectra
in two coupled optical cavities with an injected squeezed vacuum light. The
quadrature components of the reflected squeezed vacuum spectra are measured by
phase sensitive homodyne detector. The experimental results demonstrate
coupled-resonator-induced transparency in the quantum regime, in which
electromagnetically-induced-transparency-like characteristic of the absorption
and dispersion properties of the coupled optical cavities determines the
line-shape of the reflected quantum noise spectra.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Effects of polymer additives in the bulk of turbulent thermal convection
We present experimental evidence that a minute amount of polymer additives
can significantly enhance heat transport in the bulk region of turbulent
thermal convection. The effects of polymer additives are found to be the
\textit{suppression} of turbulent background fluctuations that give rise to
incoherent heat fluxes that make no net contribution to heat transport, and at
the same time to \textit{increase} the coherency of temperature and velocity
fields. The suppression of small-scale turbulent fluctuations leads to more
coherent thermal plumes that result in the heat transport enhancement. The fact
that polymer additives can increase the coherency of thermal plumes is
supported by the measurements of a number of local quantities, such as the
extracted plume amplitude and width, the velocity autocorrelation functions and
the velocity-temperature cross-correlation coefficient. The results from local
measurements also suggest the existence of a threshold value for the polymer
concentration, only above which can significant modification of the plume
coherent properties and enhancement of the local heat flux be observed.
Estimation of the plume emission rate suggests that the second effect of
polymer additives is to stabilize the thermal boundary layers.Comment: 8 figures, 11 page
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