Lymphocytes apoptosis in patients with acute exacerbation of asthma.

Asthma is characterized by airway inflammation, which can be now assessed by the analysis of induced sputum. Ten patients with asthma were investigated during acute exacerbation for the quantification of apoptosis, for Bcl-2 and Fas expression, in induced sputum lymphocytes. They were compared to 12 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and 10 healthy controls. Spontaneous apoptosis was determined by staining nuclei with propidium iodide, and analyzed with a FACScan. Bcl-2 was measured by Western blotting, and results were obtained by densitometric scanning, done by the gel proanalyser. The investigation of Fas was performed using the streptavidin-biotin preroxidase-complex method. Patients with asthma and patients with COPD exhibited a significant increase of cellularity, percentage of neutrophils, eosinophils and lymphocytes when compared to healthy controls. Apoptosis in induced sputum mononuclear cells was found decreased in patients with asthma compared to COPD patients and healthy controls. The quantification of apoptosis was measured after exposure to anti-cytokine antibodies. Anti-TNF-alpha antibody blocked the apoptosis in both patients groups and healthy controls, suggesting that TNF-alpha acted as an inducer of apoptosis. Anti-IL-10 blocked apoptosis completely exclusively in patients with asthma. Bcl-2 expression was found to be increased in induced sputum mononuclear cells from patients with asthma, compared to healthy controls and patients with COPD. Expression of Fas could be detected in patients with asthma, at a lower level than COPD patients and healthy controls. Distinct mechanisms of apoptosis were found in patients with asthma and patients with COPD, characterized by different levels of Bcl-2 and Fas expression. Induction of apoptosis should be a beneficial process in allergic inflammation traduced in induced sputum mononuclear cells. The apoptosis process is assumed by two different mechanisms in asthma and COPD. Our findings indicated that in asthmatic patients, activated lymphocytes accumulate in the bronchi; because of their prolonged survival that maintains inflammation

Analysis of electromagnetic field generated by a magnetic pulse joining machine

In magnetic pulse joining process, the principal components are the massive coil and the workpieces. In the coil-workpiece region, the magnetic field is generated by a pulsed and intense current. The welding is produced by the eddy current in the workpieces. An equivalent electrical scheme is proposed to specify the characteristics of the magnetic pulse generator. The main purpose of this article is to study the propagation of the electromagnetic fields in the coil and its propagation around the coil. The generator is modelled by an RLC circuit. The current pulse is based on experimental measurements using a Rogowski coil and integrated in the numerical simulation as an RLC circuit. Then using magnetic field theory, we measured the magnetic field around the coil using a flux loop and by introducing an analytical model of a massive one turn coil transformed into a multi-turn one. The analytical model is based on mutual inductance between two coaxial circular coils. A 3D numerical simulation using the finite element method and electromagnetic solver in ls-dyna software is developed to calculate the current distribution in the coil. The current density given by numerical analysis shows how the current is insignificant in the outer corners of the massive coil. This approximation is related to the analytical model design by neglecting these corners. Finally, we proposed an experimental setup to estimate electromagnetic fields around the coil. To validate the analytical method and using a massive one turn coil, we performed experimental measurements of magnetic flux density using an external one-turn coil

Elevation of serum soluble E-selectin and VCAM-1 in severe asthma.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the significance of circulating adhesion molecules associated with leucocyte-endothelial cell interactions in asthma, serum levels of soluble E (sE)-selectin, soluble P (sP)-selectin, soluble L (sL)-selectin, and soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (sVCAM-1) were measured in mild, moderate and severe asthma. METHOD: Serum levels of sE-selectin, sP-selectin, sL-selectin, and sVCAM-1 were measured in 32 women with asthma and 30 healthy donors using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method. Twenty patients were suffering from severe asthma, and 12 from mild/moderate asthma. RESULTS: Serum sE-selectin and sVCAM-1 levels from patients with asthma were significantly higher than those observed in healthy donors (p < 0.01). The levels of sP-selectin were the same as those of controls. The level of sE-selectin exhibited an important increase in the severe asthmatic patients compared with mild/moderate asthma (p < 0.01). The sVCAM-1 level was increased in severe asthma when compared with healthy controls. There was no correlation between the levels of soluble selectins and the age of the patients. A significant correlation was found between sE-selectin and sVCAM-1 levels. CONCLUSION: These data indicate that circulating soluble forms of the selectins may have different kinetics during the clinical course of asthma, suggesting that they may reflect different inflammatory pathways in severe asthma. Both sVCAM-1 and sE-selectin may be useful immunological markers for monitoring disease activity in asthma

Modeling and Optimization of Phosphate Recovery from Industrial Wastewater and Precipitation of Solid Fertilizer using Experimental Design Methodology

In this work, the experimental design methodology is applied to optimize phosphate salts precipitation as struvite and others applied in soil fertilization from treated industrial wastewater stream. This is a process to maximize phosphate recovery percentage from inlet wastewater stream containing interfering foreign ions. Therefore, these optimized conditions could be used as input data for engineering design-software for successive equipment required in wastewater treatment plant. A four factors Box–Behnken experimental design was used to model and optimize the operating parameters. The optimum operating conditions were quite efficient in trapping 86.10 % recovered phosphates in industrial stream, and 92.6 % in synthetic solution at pH of 10.89, time of reaction of 34.76 min, temperature of 25.23 °C and R of 2.25 with an insignificance effect for molar ratio (R) between Mg and PO4 ions. If these optimal parameters were shifted, the reached recovery percentage would decrease with the precipitated struvite. The precipitated salts were subjected to characterization through different chemical techniques confirming the presence of struvite with schertelite as a mixed slow release fertilizer

Universal Texture of Quark and Lepton Mass Matrices and a Discrete Symmetry Z_3

Recent neutrino data have been favourable to a nearly bimaximal mixing, which suggests a simple form of the neutrino mass matrix. Stimulated by this matrix form, a possibility that all the mass matrices of quarks and leptons have the same form as in the neutrinos is investigated. The mass matrix form is constrained by a discrete symmetry Z_3 and a permutation symmetry S_2. The model, of course, leads to a nearly bimaximal mixing for the lepton sectors, while, for the quark sectors, it can lead to reasonable values of the CKM mixing matrix and masses.Comment: 24 pages, RevTEX, no figure, some references and comments were adde

Higgs-mediated leptonic decays of B_s and B_d mesons as probes of supersymmetry

If tan(beta) is large, down-type quark mass matrices and Yukawa couplings cannot be simultaneously diagonalized, and flavour violating couplings of the neutral Higgs bosons are induced at the 1-loop level. These couplings lead to Higgs-mediated contributions to the decays B_s -> mu+ mu- and B_d -> tau+ tau-, at a level that might be of interest for the current Tevatron run, or possibly, at B-factories. We evaluate the branching ratios for these decays within the framework of minimal gravity-, gauge- and anomaly-mediated SUSY breaking models, and also in SU(5) supergravity models with non-universal gaugino mass parameters at the GUT scale. We find that the contribution from gluino loops, which seems to have been left out in recent phenomenological analyses, is significant. We explore how the branching fraction varies in these models, emphasizing parameter regions consistent with other observations.Comment: Revised to accommodate minor changes in original text and update reference

Flavour Changing Neutral Higgs Boson Decays from Squark - Gluino Loops

We study the flavour changing neutral Higgs boson decays that can be induced from genuine supersymmetric particles at the one-loop level and within the context of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. We consider all the possible flavour changing decay channels of the three neutral Higgs bosons into second and third generation quarks, and focus on the Supersymmetric-QCD corrections from squark-gluino loops which are expected to provide the dominant contributions. We assume here the more general hypothesis for flavour mixing, where there is misalignment between the quark and squark sectors, leading to a flavour non-diagonal squark mass matrix. The form factors involved, and the corresponding Higgs partial decay widths and branching ratios, are computed both analytically and numerically, and their behaviour with the parameters of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model and with the squark mass mixing are analyzed in full detail. The large rates found, are explained in terms of the non-decoupling behaviour of these squark-gluino loop corrections in the scenario with very large supersymmetric mass parameters. Our results show that if these decays are seen in future colliders they could provide clear indirect signals of supersymmetry.Comment: 32 Pages and 12 PostScript Level 2 Figures. Some references adde

SUSY-electroweak one-loop contributions to Flavour-Changing Higgs-Boson Decays

The SUSY-EW one-loop quantum contributions to flavour-changing MSSM Higgs-boson decays into $b \bar s$ and $s \bar b$ are computed and discussed. We use the full diagrammatic approach that is valid for all $\tan \beta$ values and do not rely on the mass-insertion approximation for the characteristic flavour-changing parameter. We analyze in full detail the dependence of these flavour-changing partial widths on all the relevant MSSM parameters and also study the non-decoupling behaviour of these widths with the SUSY mass parameters. We find that these contributions are sizable as compared to the SM ones, and together with the SUSY-QCD contributions they can be very efficient as an indirect method in the future search for Supersymmetry.Comment: LaTeX, 25 pages, 12 figures. Text improved and References added. Version to appear in Phys.Rev.