760 research outputs found
Patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 3 and Liver Disease: Opportunities to Unravel Mechanisms Underlying Statistical Associations
no abstract availabl
Implication of gut microbiota in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
It is now well established that gut flora and chronic liver diseases are closely interrelated. This association is most evident at late stages of the disease: cirrhosis and impaired liver function are associated with intestinal bacterial overgrowth, small bowel dysmotility, increased gut permeability, and decreased immunological defenses, all of which promote bacterial translocation from the gut to the systemic circulation, leading to infections that in turn aggravate liver dysfunction in a vicious circle [1]. For a long time, the implication of gut flora in the pathophysiology of less advanced chronic liver diseases has been underestimated because technical limitations allow only for the culture of a small fraction of gut bacteria. Recent technological progress and next-generation DNA sequencing have allowed for more sophisticated analysis and sampling of the gut microbiota by culture-independent methods [2]. Thanks to these recent technological advances, knowledge about the role of gut microbiota disruption (dysbiosis) in gut diseases such as colon cancer, inflammatory bowel diseases, and irritable bowel syndrome has greatly increased, with possible new therapeutic strategies. More surprisingly, gut dysbiosis has been implicated in chronic metabolic disorders such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases [3]. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the liver manifestation of the metabolic syndrome and thus evolves in the same context as these metabolic diseases [4]. It is therefore not surprising that recent literature emphasizes a potential role for gut dysbiosis in the pathophysiology of NAFLD. [...
Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and the Gut Microbiome
Recent progress has allowed a more comprehensive study of the gut microbiota. Gut microbiota helps in health maintenance and gut dysbiosis associates with chronic metabolic diseases. Modulation of short-chain fatty acids and choline bioavailability, lipoprotein lipase induction, alteration of bile acid profile, endogenous alcohol production, or liver inflammation secondary to endotoxemia result from gut dysbiosis. Modulation of the gut microbiota by pre/probiotics gives promising results in animal, but needs to be evaluated in human before use in clinical practice. Gut microbiota adds complexity to the pathophysiology of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease but represents an opportunity to discover new therapeutic targets
Ising cubes with enhanced surface couplings
Using Monte Carlo techniques, Ising cubes with ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor
interactions and enhanced couplings between surface spins are studied. In
particular, at the surface transition, the corner magnetization shows
non-universal, coupling-dependent critical behavior in the thermodynamic limit.
Results on the critical exponent of the corner magnetization are compared to
previous findings on two-dimensional Ising models with three intersecting
defect lines.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures included, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Conformal Field Theory and Hyperbolic Geometry
We examine the correspondence between the conformal field theory of boundary
operators and two-dimensional hyperbolic geometry. By consideration of domain
boundaries in two-dimensional critical systems, and the invariance of the
hyperbolic length, we motivate a reformulation of the basic equation of
conformal covariance. The scale factors gain a new, physical interpretation. We
exhibit a fully factored form for the three-point function. A doubly-infinite
discrete series of central charges with limit c=-2 is discovered. A
correspondence between the anomalous dimension and the angle of certain
hyperbolic figures emerges. Note: email after 12/19: [email protected]: 7 pages (PlainTeX
A Simple Model for the DNA Denaturation Transition
We study pairs of interacting self-avoiding walks on the 3d simple cubic
lattice. They have a common origin and are allowed to overlap only at the same
monomer position along the chain. The latter overlaps are indeed favored by an
energetic gain.
This is inspired by a model introduced long ago by Poland and Sheraga [J.
Chem. Phys. {\bf 45}, 1464 (1966)] for the denaturation transition in DNA
where, however, self avoidance was not fully taken into account. For both
models, there exists a temperature T_m above which the entropic advantage to
open up overcomes the energy gained by forming tightly bound two-stranded
structures.
Numerical simulations of our model indicate that the transition is of first
order (the energy density is discontinuous), but the analog of the surface
tension vanishes and the scaling laws near the transition point are exactly
those of a second order transition with crossover exponent \phi=1. Numerical
and exact analytic results show that the transition is second order in modified
models where the self-avoidance is partially or completely neglected.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, 20 postscript figure
Universal finite-size scaling analysis of Ising models with long-range interactions at the upper critical dimensionality: Isotropic case
We investigate a two-dimensional Ising model with long-range interactions
that emerge from a generalization of the magnetic dipolar interaction in spin
systems with in-plane spin orientation. This interaction is, in general,
anisotropic whereby in the present work we focus on the isotropic case for
which the model is found to be at its upper critical dimensionality. To
investigate the critical behavior the temperature and field dependence of
several quantities are studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. On the
basis of the Privman-Fisher hypothesis and results of the renormalization group
the numerical data are analyzed in the framework of a finite-size scaling
analysis and compared to finite-size scaling functions derived from a
Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson model in zero mode (mean-field) approximation. The
obtained excellent agreement suggests that at least in the present case the
concept of universal finite-size scaling functions can be extended to the upper
critical dimensionality.Comment: revtex4, 10 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl
Novel Transversity Properties in Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering
The -odd distribution functions contributing to transversity properties of
the nucleon and their role in fueling nontrivial contributions to azimuthal
asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering are investigated. We
use a dynamical model to evaluate these quantities in terms of HERMES
kinematics.Comment: 5 pages revtex; 5 eps figures. References added. To appear as a Rapid
Communication in Physical Review
The dual parametrization for gluon GPDs
We consider the application of the dual parametrization for the case of gluon
GPDs in the nucleon. This provides opportunities for the more flexible modeling
unpolarized gluon GPDs in a nucleon which in particular contain the invaluable
information on the fraction of nucleon spin carried by gluons. We perform the
generalization of Abel transform tomography approach for the case of gluons. We
also discuss the skewness effect in the framework of the dual parametrization.
We strongly suggest to employ the fitting strategies based on the dual
parametrization to extract the information on GPDs from the experimental data.Comment: 37 pages, 2 figure
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