Comment on "Spectroscopic Evidence for Multiple Order Parameter Components in the Heavy Fermion Superconductor CeCoIn5_5"

Recently, Rourke et al. reported point-contact spectroscopy results on the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn$_5$ [1]. They obtained conductance spectra on the c-axis surfaces of CeCoIn$_5$ single crystals. Their major claims are two-fold: CeCoIn$_5$ has i) d-wave pairing symmetry and ii) two coexisting order parameter components. In this Comment, we show that these claims are not warranted by the data presented. [1] Rourke et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 107005 (2005).Comment: accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett., final for

An inequality involving the second largest and smallest eigenvalue of a distance-regular graph

For a distance-regular graph with second largest eigenvalue (resp. smallest eigenvalue) \mu1 (resp. \muD) we show that (\mu1+1)(\muD+1)<= -b1 holds, where equality only holds when the diameter equals two. Using this inequality we study distance-regular graphs with fixed second largest eigenvalue.Comment: 15 pages, this is submitted to Linear Algebra and Applications

Enhancing the conductance of a two-electron nanomechanical oscillator

We consider electron transport through a mobile island (i.e., a nanomechanical oscillator) which can accommodate one or two excess electrons and show that, in contrast to immobile islands, the Coulomb blockade peaks, associated with the first and second electrons entering the island, have different functional dependences on the nano-oscillator parameters when the island coupling to its leads is asymmetric. In particular, the conductance for the second electron (i.e., when the island is already charged) is greatly enhanced in comparison to the conductance of the first electron in the presence of an external electric field. We also analyze the temperature dependence of the two conduction peaks and show that these exhibit different functional behaviors.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Periodontitis-induced systemic inflammation exacerbates atherosclerosis partly via endothelial-mesenchymal transition in mice.

Growing evidence suggests close associations between periodontitis and atherosclerosis. To further understand the pathological relationships of these associations, we developed periodontitis with ligature placement around maxillary molars or ligature placement in conjunction with Porphyromonas gingivalis lipopolysaccharide injection at the ligature sites (ligature/P.g. LPS) in Apolipoprotein E knock out mice and studied the atherogenesis process in these animals. The mice were fed with high fat diet for 11 weeks and sacrificed for analyzing periodontitis, systemic inflammation, and atherosclerosis. Controls did not develop periodontitis or systemic inflammation and had minimal lipid deposition in the aortas, but mice receiving ligature or ligature/P.g. LPS showed severe periodontitis, systemic inflammation, and aortic plaque formation. The aortic plaque contained abundant macrophages and cells expressing both endothelial and mesenchymal cell markers. The severity of periodontitis was slightly higher in mice receiving ligature/P.g. LPS than ligature alone, and the magnitude of systemic inflammation and aortic plaque formation were also notably greater in the mice with ligature/P.g. LPS. These observations indicate that the development of atherosclerosis is due to systemic inflammation caused by severe periodontitis. In vitro, P.g. LPS enhanced the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines from macrophages and increased the adhesion of monocytes to endothelial cells by upregulating the expression of adhesion molecules from endothelial cells. Moreover, secretory proteins, such as TNF-α, from macrophages induced endothelial-mesenchymal transitions of the endothelial cells. Taken together, systemic inflammation induced by severe periodontitis might exacerbate atherosclerosis via, in part, causing aberrant functions of vascular endothelial cells and the activation of macrophages in mice

Cdk5 Phosphorylates Dopamine D2 Receptor and Attenuates Downstream Signaling

The dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) is a key receptor that mediates dopamine-associated brain functions such as mood, reward, and emotion. Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5) is a proline-directed serine/threonine kinase whose function has been implicated in the brain reward circuit. In this study, we revealed that the serine 321 residue (S321) in the third intracellular loop of DRD2 (D2i3) is a novel regulatory site of Cdk5. Cdk5-dependent phosphorylation of S321 in the D2i3 was observed in in vitro and cell culture systems. We further observed that the phosphorylation of S321 impaired the agonist-stimulated surface expression of DRD2 and decreased G protein coupling to DRD2. Moreover, the downstream cAMP pathway was affected in the heterologous system and in primary neuronal cultures from p35 knockout embryos likely due to the reduced inhibitory activity of DRD2. These results indicate that Cdk5-mediated phosphorylation of S321 inhibits DRD2 function, providing a novel regulatory mechanism for dopamine signaling.X111111sciescopu

A Perspective Towards NCIFA and CIFA in Named-Data Networking Architecture

Named-Data Networking (NDN) is the most promising architecture in the future Internet. NDN ensure high availability of contents and security of the data packet. However, it may disturb the stability and security in NDN routing such as Interest Flooding Attack (IFA). There are many existing detection and mitigation technique about IFA which labelled a non-collusive type of routing threats where it causes the PIT resources to exhausted and legitimate request could not perform in communication. Unfortunately, all the existing counter-measure mechanism could not defend the Collusive Interest Flooding Attack (CIFA). The attacks initiated with a satisfying interest and malicious data producer will reply to the corresponding request before the expiry of existing PIT entries in NDN router along the path. CIFA is classified as low rate intermittent attack which is very difficult in distinguish with legitimate requests. Thus, CIFA is more vulnerable and threatens than previous NCIFA. Moreover, there is no benchmark datasets or any public datasets to perform further experiments on detecting CIFA. Thus, there is a need to produce reliable datasets for future investigation in detection or mitigation relevant attacks in NDN