152 research outputs found
Human cachexia induces changes in mitochondria, autophagy and apoptosis in the skeletal muscle
Cachexia is a wasting syndrome characterized by the continuous loss of skeletal muscle mass due to imbalance between protein synthesis and degradation, which is related with poor prognosis and compromised quality of life. Dysfunctional mitochondria are associated with lower muscle strength and muscle atrophy in cancer patients, yet poorly described in human cachexia. We herein investigated mitochondrial morphology, autophagy and apoptosis in the skeletal muscle of patients with gastrointestinal cancer-associated cachexia (CC), as compared with a weight-stable cancer group (WSC). CC showed prominent weight loss and increased circulating levels of serum C-reactive protein, lower body mass index and decreased circulating hemoglobin, when compared to WSC. Electron microscopy analysis revealed an increase in intermyofibrillar mitochondrial area in CC, as compared to WSC. Relative gene expression of Fission 1, a protein related to mitochondrial fission, was increased in CC, as compared to WSC. LC3 II, autophagy-related (ATG) 5 and 7 essential proteins for autophagosome formation, presented higher content in the cachectic group. Protein levels of phosphorylated p53 (Ser46), activated caspase 8 (Asp384) and 9 (Asp315) were also increased in the skeletal muscle of CC. Overall, our results demonstrate that human cancer-associated cachexia leads to exacerbated muscle-stress response that may culminate in muscle loss, which is in part due to disruption of mitochondrial morphology, dysfunctional autophagy and increased apoptosis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report showing quantitative morphological alterations in skeletal muscle mitochondria in cachectic patients
Supersymmetric BCS
We implement relativistic BCS superconductivity in N=1 supersymmetric field
theories with a U(1)_R symmetry. The simplest model contains two chiral
superfields with a Kahler potential modified by quartic terms. We study the
phase diagram of the gap as a function of the temperature and the specific
heat. The superconducting phase transition turns out to be first order, due to
the scalar contribution to the one-loop potential. By virtue of supersymmetry,
the critical curves depend logarithmically with the UV cutoff, rather than
quadratically as in standard BCS theory. We comment on the difficulties in
having fermion condensates when the chemical potential is instead coupled to a
baryonic U(1)_B current. We also discuss supersymmetric models of BCS with
canonical Kahler potential constructed by "integrating-in" chiral superfields.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figure
Rigidly Supersymmetric Gauge Theories on Curved Superspace
In this note we construct rigidly supersymmetric gauged sigma models and
gauge theories on certain Einstein four-manifolds, and discuss constraints on
these theories. In work elsewhere, it was recently shown that on some
nontrivial Einstein four-manifolds such as AdS, N=1 rigidly supersymmetric
sigma models are constrained to have target spaces with exact K\"ahler forms.
Similarly, in gauged sigma models and gauge theories, we find that
supersymmetry imposes constraints on Fayet-Iliopoulos parameters, which have
the effect of enforcing that K\"ahler forms on quotient spaces be exact. We
also discuss general aspects of universality classes of gauged sigma models, as
encoded by stacks, and also discuss affine bundle structures implicit in these
constructions.Comment: 23 pages; references added; more discussion added; v4: typos fixe
Entanglement Entropy of 3-d Conformal Gauge Theories with Many Flavors
Three-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) of deconfined gauge fields
coupled to gapless flavors of fermionic and bosonic matter describe quantum
critical points of condensed matter systems in two spatial dimensions. An
important characteristic of these CFTs is the finite part of the entanglement
entropy across a circle. The negative of this quantity is equal to the finite
part of the free energy of the Euclidean CFT on the three-sphere, and it has
been proposed to satisfy the so called F-theorem, which states that it
decreases under RG flow and is stationary at RG fixed points. We calculate the
three-sphere free energy of non-supersymmetric gauge theory with a large number
N_F of bosonic and/or fermionic flavors to the first subleading order in 1/N_F.
We also calculate the exact free energies of the analogous chiral and
non-chiral {\cal N} = 2 supersymmetric theories using localization, and find
agreement with the 1/N_F expansion. We analyze some RG flows of supersymmetric
theories, providing further evidence for the F-theorem.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures; v2 refs added, minor change
Dectin-1 Activation Exacerbates Obesity and Insulin Resistance in the Absence of MyD88
This work was supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, grant numbers 11/15682-4, 12/02270-2, 15/18121-4), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq, Regenera INCT Process Grant 465656/2014-5). JL is funded by the NIH/NIDDK R01DK106210. GDB is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology. Open access journalPeer reviewedPublisher PD
Thermalization from gauge/gravity duality: Evolution of singularities in unequal time correlators
We consider a gauge/gravity dual model of thermalization which consists of a
collapsing thin matter shell in asymptotically Anti-de Sitter space. A central
aspect of our model is to consider a shell moving at finite velocity as
determined by its equation of motion, rather than a quasi-static approximation
as considered previously in the literature. By applying a divergence matching
method, we obtain the evolution of singularities in the retarded unequal time
correlator , which probes different stages of the thermalization. We
find that the number of singularities decreases from a finite number to zero as
the gauge theory thermalizes. This may be interpreted as a sign of decoherence.
Moreover, in a second part of the paper, we show explicitly that the thermal
correlator is characterized by the existence of singularities in the complex
time plane. By studying a quasi-static state, we show the singularities at real
times originate from contributions of normal modes. We also investigate the
possibility of obtaining complex singularities from contributions of
quasi-normal modes.Comment: 35 pages, 4 figure
Three form potential in (special) minimal supergravity superspace and supermembrane supercurrent
This contribution begins the study of the complete superfield Lagrangian
description of the interacting system of D=4 N=1 supergravity (SUGRA) and
supermembrane. Firstly, we review a 'three form supergravity' by Ovrut and
Waldram, which we prefer to call 'special minimal supergravity'. This off-shell
formulation of simple SUGRA is appropriate for our purposes as the
supermembrane action contains the so-called Wess-Zumino term given by the
integral over a three form potential in superspace, C3. We describe this
formulation in the frame of Wess--Zumino superfield approach, showing how the
basic variations of minimal SUGRA are restricted by the conditions of the
existence of a three-form potential C3 in its superspace. In this language the
effect of dynamical generation of cosmological constant, known to be
characteristic for this formulation of SUGRA, appears in its superfield form,
first described by Ogievetsky and Sokatchev in their formulation of SUGRA as a
theory of axial vector superfield. Secondly, we vary the supermembrane action
with respect to the special minimal SUGRA superfields (basic variations) and
obtain the supercurrent superfields as well as the supergravity superfield
equations with the supermembrane contributions.Comment: 18 pages, no figures. V2: Important references added. The abstract
and presentation have been changed to reflect the overloop with that.
Submitted to the QTS7 Proceedings. J. Phys. style use
Black hole determinants and quasinormal modes
We derive an expression for functional determinants in thermal spacetimes as
a product over the corresponding quasinormal modes. As simple applications we
give efficient computations of scalar determinants in thermal AdS, BTZ black
hole and de Sitter spacetimes. We emphasize the conceptual utility of our
formula for discussing `1/N' corrections to strongly coupled field theories via
the holographic correspondence.Comment: 28 pages. v2: slightly improved exposition, references adde
Non-equilibrium Dynamics of O(N) Nonlinear Sigma models: a Large-N approach
We study the time evolution of the mass gap of the O(N) non-linear sigma
model in 2+1 dimensions due to a time-dependent coupling in the large-
limit. Using the Schwinger-Keldysh approach, we derive a set of equations at
large which determine the time dependent gap in terms of the coupling.
These equations lead to a criterion for the breakdown of adiabaticity for slow
variation of the coupling leading to a Kibble-Zurek scaling law. We describe a
self-consistent numerical procedure to solve these large- equations and
provide explicit numerical solutions for a coupling which starts deep in the
gapped phase at early times and approaches the zero temperature equilibrium
critical point in a linear fashion. We demonstrate that for such a
protocol there is a value of the coupling where the gap
function vanishes, possibly indicating a dynamical instability. We study the
dependence of on both the rate of change of the coupling and
the initial temperature. We also verify, by studying the evolution of the mass
gap subsequent to a sudden change in , that the model does not display
thermalization within a finite time interval and discuss the implications
of this observation for its conjectured gravitational dual as a higher spin
theory in .Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures. Typos corrected, references rearranged and
added.v3 : sections rearranged, abstract modified, comment about Kibble-Zurek
scaling correcte
Quivers, YBE and 3-manifolds
We study 4d superconformal indices for a large class of N=1 superconformal
quiver gauge theories realized combinatorially as a bipartite graph or a set of
"zig-zag paths" on a two-dimensional torus T^2. An exchange of loops, which we
call a "double Yang-Baxter move", gives the Seiberg duality of the gauge
theory, and the invariance of the index under the duality is translated into
the Yang-Baxter-type equation of a spin system defined on a "Z-invariant"
lattice on T^2. When we compactify the gauge theory to 3d, Higgs the theory and
then compactify further to 2d, the superconformal index reduces to an integral
of quantum/classical dilogarithm functions. The saddle point of this integral
unexpectedly reproduces the hyperbolic volume of a hyperbolic 3-manifold. The
3-manifold is obtained by gluing hyperbolic ideal polyhedra in H^3, each of
which could be thought of as a 3d lift of the faces of the 2d bipartite
graph.The same quantity is also related with the thermodynamic limit of the BPS
partition function, or equivalently the genus 0 topological string partition
function, on a toric Calabi-Yau manifold dual to quiver gauge theories. We also
comment on brane realization of our theories. This paper is a companion to
another paper summarizing the results.Comment: 61 pages, 16 figures; v2: typos correcte
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