Clostridial Diseases Encountered In Veterinary Medicine

Although one of the Clostridial. diseases of animals has been recognized as a distinct entity for 70 years, knowledge concerning disease caused by infections due to this genus of bacteria seems to have lagged somewhat as compared with some of the other bacterial diseases. The reason for this apparent lag is obvious. Symptoms and pathological lesions associated with Clostridial infections usually result from the effects of toxins which enter the blood stream. The fact that the actual site of infection is often quite remote from the site of greatest injury may, of course, be confusing to the investigator

Spatio-temporal Fermionization of Strongly Interacting 1D Bosons

Building on the recent experimental achievements obtained with scanning electron microscopy on ultracold atoms, we study one-dimensional Bose gases in the crossover between the weakly (quasi-condensate) and the strongly interacting (Tonks-Girardeau) regime. We measure the temporal two-particle correlation function and compare it with calculations performed using the Time Evolving Block Decimation algorithm. More pronounced antibunching is observed when entering the more strongly interacting regime. Even though this mimics the onset of a fermionic behavior, we highlight that the exact and simple duality between 1D bosons and fermions does not hold when such dynamical response is probed. The onset of fermionization is also reflected in the density distribution, which we measure \emph{in situ} to extract the relevant parameters and to identify the different regimes. Our results show agreement between experiment and theory and give new insight into the dynamics of strongly correlated many-body systems

Reflection of a Lieb-Liniger wave packet from the hard-wall potential

Nonequilibrium dynamics of a Lieb-Liniger system in the presence of the hard-wall potential is studied. We demonstrate that a time-dependent wave function, which describes quantum dynamics of a Lieb-Liniger wave packet comprised of N particles, can be found by solving an $N$-dimensional Fourier transform; this follows from the symmetry properties of the many-body eigenstates in the presence of the hard-wall potential. The presented formalism is employed to numerically calculate reflection of a few-body wave packet from the hard wall for various interaction strengths and incident momenta.Comment: revised version, improved notation, Fig. 5 adde

Myelofibrosis: molecular and cell biological aspects

A subset of myeloproliferative disorders (MPN) and myelodyplastic syndromes (MDS) evolves to fibrosis of the bone marrow associated with haematopoietic insufficiency. We have been interested in chemokines involved in fibrogenesis within the bone marrow. Besides TGFβ we could identify a number of additional mediators including osteoprotegerin and bone morphogenic proteins. In MPN JAK2 or MPL mutation are not linked to the propensity for bone marrow fibrosis. The hypothesis that an increased intramedullary decay of megakaryocytes undergoing appotosis takes place within the marrow, thus liberating fibrogenic cytokines, could not be confirmed. On the contrary, megakaryocytes in primary fibrosis revealed low expression of proapoptotic genes such as BNIP3. Interestingly, BNIP 3 expression was down regulated in megakaryocytic cell lines kept in hypoxic conditions. Furthermore, expression arrays revealed hypoxia inducible genes to be up-regulated in primary myelofibrosis. Fibrotic MPN are characterized by aberrant proplatelet formation which represent cytoplasmic pseudopodia and normally extend into the sinus. In fibrotic MPN orientation of proplatelet growth appears to be disturbed, which could lead to an aberrant deposition of platelets in the marrow with consecutive liberation of fibrogenic cytokines

Histone citrullination represses miRNA expression resulting in increased oncogene mRNAs in somatolactotrope cells.

Peptidylarginine deiminase (PAD) enzymes convert histone arginine residues into citrulline to modulate chromatin organization and gene expression. Although PADs are expressed in anterior pituitary gland cells, their functional role and expression in pituitary adenomas is unknown. To begin to address these questions, we first examined normal human pituitaries and pituitary adenomas and found that PAD2, PAD4 and citrullinated histones are highest in prolactinomas and somatoprolactinomas. In the somatoprolactinoma-derived GH3 cell line, PADs citrullinate histone H3, which is attenuated by a pan-PAD inhibitor. RNA-sequencing and ChIP studies show that the expression of microRNAs let-7c-2, miR-23b and miR-29c is suppressed by histone citrullination. Our studies demonstrate that these miRNAs directly target the mRNA of the oncogenes HMGA, IGF-1 and N-MYC, which are highly implicated in human prolactinoma/somatoprolactinoma pathogenesis. Our results are the first to define a direct role for PAD catalyzed histone citrullination in miRNA expression, which may underlie the etiology of prolactinoma and somatoprolactinoma tumors through regulation of oncogene expression

Rationality of Direct Tax Revenue Forecasts under Asymmetric Losses: Evidence from Swiss Cantons

The current debt crisis has shed light on the importance of accurate fiscal forecasts. In particular, the accuracy of revenue forecasts is central since they set the limit within which expenditure should remain in order to reach fiscal balance. Therefore, forecasting tax revenue accurately is a key step in the implementation of sound fiscal policies. The current paper contributes to the empirical literature on budget predictions by providing new evidence about Swiss cantons. Using data from 26 Swiss cantons over 1944-2010, we apply the method developed by Elliott et al. (2005) to test the rationality of direct tax revenue forecasts. We mainly find that 1) when considering the percent forecast error, loss functions are asymmetric in a majority of cantons, 2) allowing for asymmetric losses, results of rationality tests are substantially altered in the sense that more cantons turn out to produce rational forecasts 3) when considering forecasts of growth rates, almost no evidence of asymmetric loss function is found and finally 4) forecasts of tax revenue growth rate turn out to be rational in a higher number of cantons than forecasts of levels of tax revenue