Capsaicin affects the structure and phase organization of phospholipid membranes

AbstractCapsaicin is a natural compound with pharmacological and toxicological effects, which given its hydrophobicity, can influence the structure of membranes. The interaction of capsaicin with model membranes of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine and dielaidoylphosphatidylethanolamine has been studied by using differential scanning calorimetry, fluorescent probe spectroscopy and 31P-nuclear magnetic resonance. Capsaicin remarkably affects the phase transition of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine, shifting the transition temperature to lower values, and giving rise, at relatively high capsaicin concentrations, to the appearance of two peaks in the thermogram. These peaks may correspond to separated phases as indicated by the partial phase diagram. Whereas capsaicin did not affect the fluorescence polarization of the probes diphenylhexatriene and trimethylammonium-diphenylhexatriene, it clearly affected that of the probe 2-anthroyloxystearic acid, indicating that the perturbation produced by capsaicin on the membrane would be mainly at the position where this fluorophore is located. On the other hand, capsaicin, at relatively low concentrations, gives rise to immiscible phases in the presence of dielaidoylphoshatidylethanolamine and decrease the temperature of the lamellar to hexagonal HII phase transition. At concentrations of capsaicin higher than 0.3 mol fraction, isotropic phases were detected. The possible implications of the effects of capsaicin on biological membranes are discussed

Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics, multiphoton algebras and coherent states

The multiphoton algebras for one-dimensional Hamiltonians with infinite discrete spectrum, and for their associated kth-order SUSY partners are studied. In both cases, such an algebra is generated by the multiphoton annihilation and creation operators, as well as by Hamiltonians which are functions of an appropriate number operator. The algebras obtained turn out to be polynomial deformations of the corresponding single-photon algebra previously studied. The Barut-Girardello coherent states, which are eigenstates of the annihilation operator, are obtained and their uncertainty relations are explored by means of the associated quadratures.Comment: Last version of the paper, 6 figure

Seasonal variability of antioxidant biomarkers in mussels Mytilus galloprovincialis from the Spanish N-NW coast.

Marine organisms are highly seasonal animals in relation to their physiology which depends, among other factors, on their annual cycle of reproduction. In bivalves, reproductive cycle is regulated by two main environmental factors: temperature and food availability. Specifically, bivalves are undergoing high variable environmental conditions. Integrated pollution monitoring carried out by the IEO along the N-NW coast of Spain has evidenced that the variability of the environmental conditions produce spatial differences in mussel condition which seems to mask the biomarker responses to pollution. Thus, there is a need to study the natural variability of biological responses used as pollution biomarkers at different seasons and in different habitats in order to establish an adequate link between chemical pollution and biological responses. This study aims to assess the natural variability of some biomarker responses on the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis in 5 different sites from the Spanish Marine Pollution Monitoring Program which are differentiated in their natural ecology and their anthropogenic pressure. The potential influence of environmental and endogenous factors that can cause biomarker´s seasonal fluctuations was examined. Biomarkers analyzed in this study are considered among the most usefull biological tools applied in pollution monitoring programs, including exposure indicators (superoxide dismutase –SOD-, catalase –CAT-, glutathione reductase –GR-, glutathione peroxidase –GPx-, glutathione-s-transfersase –GST-) and a damage indicator (lipid peroxidation –LPO-). Mussel biological characterization from a histological and anatomical point of view was also performed. Results evidenced that biomarkers were clearly influenced by the annual cycle (all of them were affected by the season) but also significant differences between sites were found in some biomarkers (GR and GST). Thus, not only environmental but also endogenous factors must be considered in monitoring programs in the study of biomarkers responses.Society of Environmenta Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC

From Josephson junction metamaterials to tunable pseudo-cavities

arXiv:1305.4844v1The scattering through a Josephson junction (JJ) interrupting a superconducting line is revisited including power leakage. We also discuss how to make tunable and broadband resonant mirrors by concatenating junctions. As an application, we show how to construct cavities using these mirrors, thus connecting two research fields: JJ quantum metamaterials and coupled-cavity arrays. We finish by discussing the first nonlinear corrections to the scattering and their measurable effects. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.This work was supported by Spanish government projects FIS2009-10061, and FIS2011-25167 conanced by FEDER funds. We thanks Aragon government support to group FENOL, CAM research consortium QUITEMAD and PROMISCE European project.Peer Reviewe

Growing a population of Cynara cardunculus L. for further selection as a reference energy crop

A population of cultivated cardoon (Cynara cardunculus var. altilis DC) was grown in Madrid (Spain) as a reference crop to select outstanding individuals for energy applications. The work was carried out within the frame of the Spanish funded projects PROBIOCOM (INIA) and FP13-ENER. Seeds for this work were produced by one of the partners of PROBIOCOM - the Agro-Energy Group of UPM - and came from a clonal crop (in vitro propagated plants) previously grown in Madrid. IMIDRA, as Head of that Project, established the reference crop according to the protocol for cardoon energy crop and was responsible for the crop. Seeds were sown in seed trays and once the plants had true leaves they were transplanted into the field. Collection of field data involved 449 individuals at the rosette stage and the dataset comprised the measurement of plant height, rosette diameter and leaf length; leaf type was determined as well. Individuals exhibiting larger leaf size were selected and categorized into two categories: undivided-like leaf blade (16 individuals) and pinnately lobed leaf blade (12 individuals). For these individuals, leaf fresh weight, number of leaves and leaf length of previously selected leaves were determined. Furthermore, three measurements were performed with a SPAD chlorophyll meter and the Munsell color chart. Morphological features were taken according CPVO-OCVV and UPOV protocols. Most plants exhibited pinnately leaves which generally resulted in larger sizes than the undivided-like leaf plants. Results suggested that the morphological plant type could be used as a preliminary selection criterion of C. cardunculus for biomass production; however, further studies are needed at harvest time to confirm this trend

Enabling CUDA acceleration within virtual machines using rCUDA

The hardware and software advances of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have favored the development of GPGPU (General-Purpose Computation on GPUs) and its adoption in many scientific, engineering, and industrial areas. Thus, GPUs are increasingly being introduced in high-performance computing systems as well as in datacenters. On the other hand, virtualization technologies are also receiving rising interest in these domains, because of their many benefits on acquisition and maintenance savings. There are currently several works on GPU virtualization. However, there is no standard solution allowing access to GPGPU capabilities from virtual machine environments like, e.g., VMware, Xen, VirtualBox, or KVM. Such lack of a standard solution is delaying the integration of GPGPU into these domains. In this paper, we propose a first step towards a general and open source approach for using GPGPU features within VMs. In particular, we describe the use of rCUDA, a GPGPU (General-Purpose Computation on GPUs) virtualization framework, to permit the execution of GPU-accelerated applications within virtual machines (VMs), thus enabling GPGPU capabilities on any virtualized environment. Our experiments with rCUDA in the context of KVM and VirtualBox on a system equipped with two NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 cards illustrate the overhead introduced by the rCUDA middleware and prove the feasibility and scalability of this general virtualizing solution. Experimental results show that the overhead is proportional to the dataset size, while the scalability is similar to that of the native environment.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A characterization of the wave front set defined by the iterates of an operator with constant coefficients

[EN] We characterize the wave front set WF*P (u) with respect to the iterates of a linear partial differential operator with constant coefficients of a classical distribution u is an element of D '(Omega), Omega an open subset in R-n. We use recent Paley-Wiener theorems for generalized ultradifferentiable classes in the sense of Braun, Meise and Taylor. We also give several examples and applications to the regularity of operators with variable coefficients and constant strength. Finally, we construct a distribution with prescribed wave front set of this type.The authors were partially supported by FAR2011 (Universita di Ferrara), "Fondi per le necessita di base della ricerca" 2012 and 2013 (Universita di Ferrara) and the INDAM-GNAMPA Project 2014 "Equazioni Differenziali a Derivate Parziali di Evoluzione e Stocastiche" The research of the second author was partially supported by MINECO of Spain, Project MTM2013-43540-P.Boiti, C.; Jornet Casanova, D. (2017). 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