Resistin: A reappraisal

Abstract From a biological point of view, aging can be considered a progressive inability of an organism to react to stress, maintain homeostasis, and survive unfavourable changes during post-maturational life. The expression of several adipokines changes during aging and for some changes, a role in the onset of chronic disease and frailty has been proposed. Among adipokines, resistin was shown in recent studies to play a key role in aging. Resistin is a small secreted protein that regulates glucose metabolism in mammalians. High resistin levels induce insulin resistance and exert proinflammatory effects. Consistently, resistin has been shown to play a pivotal role in various metabolic, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases. Herein, the role of resistin as a molecular link between aging and age-related conditions was reviewed and the clinical implications of this knowledge discussed

vitamin C, aging and Alzheimer's disease

Accumulating evidence in mice models of accelerated senescence indicates a rescuing role of ascorbic acid in premature aging. Supplementation of ascorbic acid appeared to halt cell growth, oxidative stress, telomere attrition, disorganization of chromatin, and excessive secretion of inflammatory factors, and extend lifespan. Interestingly, ascorbic acid (AA) was also found to positively modulate inflamm-aging and immunosenescence, two hallmarks of biological aging. Moreover, ascorbic acid has been shown to epigenetically regulate genome integrity and stability, indicating a key role of targeted nutrition in healthy aging. Growing in vivo evidence supports the role of ascorbic acid in ameliorating factors linked to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathogenesis, although evidence in humans yielded equivocal results. The neuroprotective role of ascorbic acid not only relies on the general free radical trapping, but also on the suppression of pro-inflammatory genes, mitigating neuroinflammation, on the chelation of iron, copper, and zinc, and on the suppression of amyloid-beta peptide (Aβ) fibrillogenesis. Epidemiological evidence linking diet, one of the most important modifiable lifestyle factors, and risk of Alzheimer's disease is rapidly increasing. Thus, dietary interventions, as a way to epigenetically modulate the human genome, may play a role in the prevention of AD. The present review is aimed at providing an up to date overview of the main biological mechanisms that are associated with ascorbic acid supplementation/bioavailability in the process of aging and Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, we will address new fields of research and future directions.</jats:p

Electronic and phononic states of the Holstein-Hubbard dimer of variable length

We consider a model Hamiltonian for a dimer including all the electronic one- and two-body terms consistent with a single orbital per site, a free Einstein phonon term, and an electron-phonon coupling of the Holstein type. The bare electronic interaction parameters were evaluated in terms of Wannier functions built from Gaussian atomic orbitals. An effective polaronic Hamiltonian was obtained by an unrestricted displaced-oscillator transformation, followed by evaluation of the phononic terms over a squeezed-phonon variational wave function. For the cases of quarter-filled and half-filled orbital, and over a range of dimer length values, the ground state was identified by simultaneously and independently optimizing the orbital shape, the phonon displacement and the squeezing effect strength. As the dimer length varies, we generally find discontinuous changes of both electronic and phononic states, accompanied by an appreciable renormalization of the effective electronic interactions across the transitions, due to the equilibrium shape of the wave functions strongly depending on the phononic regime and on the type of ground state.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX, 10 PostScript figures; to appear in Phys. Rev.

Exact ground states for the four-electron problem in a two-dimensional finite Hubbard square system

We present exact explicit analytical results describing the exact ground state of four electrons in a two dimensional square Hubbard cluster containing 16 sites taken with periodic boundary conditions. The presented procedure, which works for arbitrary even particle number and lattice sites, is based on explicitly given symmetry adapted base vectors constructed in r-space. The Hamiltonian acting on these states generates a closed system of 85 linear equations providing by its minimum eigenvalue the exact ground state of the system. The presented results, described with the aim to generate further creative developments, not only show how the ground state can be exactly obtained and what kind of contributions enter in its construction, but emphasize further characteristics of the spectrum. On this line i) possible explications are found regarding why weak coupling expansions often provide a good approximation for the Hubbard model at intermediate couplings, or ii) explicitly given low lying energy states of the kinetic energy, avoiding double occupancy, suggest new roots for pairing mechanism attracting decrease in the kinetic energy, as emphasized by kinetic energy driven superconductivity theories.Comment: 37 pages, 18 figure

Electronic states, Mott localization, electron-lattice coupling, and dimerization for correlated one-dimensional systems. II

We discuss physical properties of strongly correlated electron states for a linear chain obtained with the help of the recently proposed new method combining the exact diagonalization in the Fock space with an ab initio readjustment of the single-particle orbitals in the correlated state. The method extends the current discussion of the correlated states since the properties are obtained with varying lattice spacing. The finite system of N atoms evolves with the increasing interatomic distance from a Fermi-liquid-like state into the Mott insulator. The criteria of the localization are discussed in detail since the results are already convergent for N>=8. During this process the Fermi-Dirac distribution gets smeared out, the effective band mass increases by ~50%, and the spin-spin correlation functions reduce to those for the Heisenberg antiferromagnet. Values of the microscopic parameters such as the hopping and the kinetic-exchange integrals, as well as the magnitude of both intra- and inter-atomic Coulomb and exchange interactions are calculated. We also determine the values of various local electron-lattice couplings and show that they are comparable to the kinetic exchange contribution in the strong-correlation limit. The magnitudes of the dimerization and the zero-point motion are also discussed. Our results provide a canonical example of a tractable strongly correlated system with a precise, first-principle description as a function of interatomic distance of a model system involving all hopping integrals, all pair-site interactions, and the exact one-band Wannier functions.Comment: 18 pages, REVTEX, submitted to Phys. Rev.

The boson-fermion model with on-site Coulomb repulsion between fermions

The boson-fermion model, describing a mixture of itinerant electrons hybridizing with tightly bound electron pairs represented as hard-core bosons, is here generalized with the inclusion of a term describing on-site Coulomb repulsion between fermions with opposite spins. Within the general framework of the Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, it is shown that around the symmetric limit of the model this interaction strongly competes with the local boson-fermion exchange mechanism, smoothly driving the system from a pseudogap phase with poor conducting properties to a metallic regime characterized by a substantial reduction of the fermionic density. On the other hand, if one starts from correlated fermions described in terms of the one-band Hubbard model, the introduction in the half-filled insulating phase of a coupling with hard-core bosons leads to the disappearance of the correlation gap, with a consequent smooth crossover to a metallic state.Comment: 7 pages, 6 included figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Isotope Effect in the Presence of Magnetic and Nonmagnetic Impurities

The effect of impurities on the isotope coefficient is studied theoretically in the framework of Abrikosov-Gor'kov approach generalized to account for both potential and spin-flip scattering in anisotropic superconductors. An expression for the isotope coefficient as a function of the critical temperature is obtained for a superconductor with an arbitrary contribution of spin-flip processes to the total scattering rate and an arbitrary degree of anisotropy of the superconducting order parameter, ranging from isotropic s-wave to d-wave and including anisotropic s-wave and mixed (s+d)-wave as particular cases. It is found that both magnetic and nonmagnetic impurities enhance the isotope coefficient, the enhancement due to magnetic impurities being generally greater than that due to nonmagnetic impurities. From the analysis of the experimental results on La-Sr-Cu-M-O high temperature superconductor, it is concluded that the symmetry of the pairing state in this system differs from a pure d-wave.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Quantum Monte Carlo and variational approaches to the Holstein model

Based on the canonical Lang-Firsov transformation of the Hamiltonian we develop a very efficient quantum Monte Carlo algorithm for the Holstein model with one electron. Separation of the fermionic degrees of freedom by a reweighting of the probability distribution leads to a dramatic reduction in computational effort. A principal component representation of the phonon degrees of freedom allows to sample completely uncorrelated phonon configurations. The combination of these elements enables us to perform efficient simulations for a wide range of temperature, phonon frequency and electron-phonon coupling on clusters large enough to avoid finite-size effects. The algorithm is tested in one dimension and the data are compared with exact-diagonalization results and with existing work. Moreover, the ideas presented here can also be applied to the many-electron case. In the one-electron case considered here, the physics of the Holstein model can be described by a simple variational approach.Comment: 18 pages, 11 Figures, v2: one typo correcte

SIM Regional Supplementary Comparison : SIM.L-S6. Calibration of gauge blocks by mechanical comparison

This supplementary comparison concerns the calibration of gauge blocks by mechanical comparison, which is a technique of paramount importance as it is at the highest level in the traceability chain of length for most countries of the American Continent. This comparison is designed to support the submitted CMC claims of these countries. The measurand is the central length of several gauge blocks as defined in ISO 3650 and the circulated gauge blocks were used for two comparisons carried out in two stages: the first stage, SIM.L-K1:2007, Calibration of gauge blocks by optical interferometry (2007–2010); the gauge blocks were also measured by mechanical comparison for those NMI also participating in SIM.L-S6:2007; the second stage, SIM.L-S6:2007, Calibration of gauge blocks by mechanical comparison (2010–2011) for the participants that measured only by mechanical comparison. In this second comparison there were 16 participants, 14 from the Americas, and 2 invited NMIs from other regions. The circulation in the second stage had 10 participants.Fil: Viliesid, Miguel. Centro Nacional de Metrología (CENAM); MéxicoFil: Colín Castellanos, Carlos. Centro Nacional de Metrología (CENAM); MéxicoFil: Chávez, T. Centro Nacional de Metrología (CENAM); MéxicoFil: Chaudhary, K. P. National Physical Laboratory (NPL); IndiaFil: Dvořáček, Frantisek. Czech Metrology Institute (CMI); República ChecaFil: Stoup, John. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Estados UnidosFil: Santos Barros, Wellington. Instituto Nacional de Metrologia, Qualidade e Tecnologia (INMetro); BrasilFil: Vaudagna, Leandro. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial (INTI); ArgentinaFil: Morales, Roberto. Laboratorio Nacional de Longitud (DICTUC); ChileFil: Acquarone, Alejandro. Laboratorio Tecnológico del Uruguay (LATU); UruguayFil: Carrasco, J. Servicio Nacional de Metrología (INDECOPI); PerúFil: Vega, M. Instituto Boliviano de Metrología (IBMetro); BoliviaFil: Salazar, M. Instituto Ecuatoriano de Normalización (INEN); EcuadorFil: Gil, V. Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (SIC); ColombiaFil: Dimas, J. Centro Nacional de Metrología de Panamá (CENAMEP); PanamáFil: Reyes, E. Laboratorio Costarricense de Metrología (LACOMET); Costa RicaFil: Hamilton, F. Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS); Trinidad y TobagoFil: Reddock, T. Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS); Trinidad y TobagoFil: Durga, S. Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ); JamaicaFil: Burton, T. Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ); Jamaic