A Cellular automaton model for crowd movement and egress simulation

Ein Zellularautomatenmodell zur Simulation von Fußgängerbewegung und Evakuierungen The movement of crowds is a field of research that attracts increasing interest. This is due to three major reasons: pattern formation and selforganization processes that occur in crowd dynamics, the advancement of simulation techniques, and its applications (planning of pedestrian facilities, crowd management, or evacuation analysis). In this thesis, a model for simulating crowd movement is developed and its characteristics investigated and compared to alternative approaches. Additionally, simulations of the evacuation of aircraft, buildings, and ships is presented

Identification of binding proteins for cholesterol absorption inhibitors as components of the intestinal cholesterol transporter

AbstractTo identify protein components of the intestinal cholesterol transporter, rabbit small intestinal brush border membrane vesicles were submitted to photoaffinity labeling using photoreactive derivatives of 2-azetidinone cholesterol absorption inhibitors. An integral membrane protein of Mr 145.3±7.5 kDa was specifically labeled in brush border membrane vesicles from rabbit jejunum and ileum. Its labeling was concentration-dependently inhibited by the presence of cholesterol absorption inhibitors whereas bile acids, D-glucose, fatty acids or cephalexin had no effect. The inhibitory potency of 2-azetidinones to inhibit photolabeling of the 145 kDa protein correlated with their in vivo activity to inhibit intestinal cholesterol absorption. These results suggest that an integral membrane protein of Mr 145 kDa is (a component of) the cholesterol absorption system in the brush border membrane of small intestinal enterocytes

Scalable and Transfer-Free Fabrication of MoS2/SiO2 Hybrid Nanophotonic Cavity Arrays with Quality Factors Exceeding 4000

We report the fully-scalable fabrication of a large array of hybrid molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) -silicon dioxide (SiO2) one-dimensional, free-standing photonic-crystal cavities capable of enhancement of the MoS2 photoluminescence at the narrow cavity resonance. We demonstrate continuous tunability of the cavity resonance wavelength across the entire emission band of MoS2 simply by variation of the photonic crystal periodicity. Device fabrication started by substrate-scale growth of MoS2 using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on non-birefringent thermal oxide on a silicon wafer;it was followed by lithographic fabrication of a photonic crystal nanocavity array on the same substrate at more than 50% yield of functional devices. Our cavities exhibit three dominant modes with measured linewidths less than 0.2 nm, corresponding to quality factors exceeding 4000. All experimental findings are found to be in excellent agreement with finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations. CVD MoS2 provides scalable access to a direct band gap, inorganic, stable and efficient emitter material for onchip photonics without the need for epitaxy and is at CMOS compatible processing parameters even for back-end-of-line integration;our findings suggest feasibility of cavity based line-narrowing in MoS2-based on-chip devices as it is required for instance for frequency-multiplexed operation in on-chip optical communication and sensing

Logarithmic observables in critical percolation

Although it has long been known that the proper quantum field theory description of critical percolation involves a logarithmic conformal field theory (LCFT), no direct consequence of this has been observed so far. Representing critical bond percolation as the Q = 1 limit of the Q-state Potts model, and analyzing the underlying S_Q symmetry of the Potts spins, we identify a class of simple observables whose two-point functions scale logarithmically for Q = 1. The logarithm originates from the mixing of the energy operator with a logarithmic partner that we identify as the field that creates two propagating clusters. In d=2 dimensions this agrees with general LCFT results, and in particular the universal prefactor of the logarithm can be computed exactly. We confirm its numerical value by extensive Monte-Carlo simulations.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. V2: as publishe

Integrable quantum field theories with OSP(m/2n) symmetries

We conjecture the factorized scattering description for OSP(m/2n)/OSP(m-1/2n) supersphere sigma models and OSP(m/2n) Gross Neveu models. The non-unitarity of these field theories translates into a lack of `physical unitarity' of the S matrices, which are instead unitary with respect to the non-positive scalar product inherited from the orthosymplectic structure. Nevertheless, we find that formal thermodynamic Bethe ansatz calculations appear meaningful, reproduce the correct central charges, and agree with perturbative calculations. This paves the way to a more thorough study of these and other models with supergroup symmetries using the S matrix approach.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figure

Inter-kingdom Signaling by the Legionella Quorum Sensing Molecule LAI-1 Modulates Cell Migration through an IQGAP1-Cdc42-ARHGEF9-Dependent Pathway

Small molecule signaling promotes the communication between bacteria as well as between bacteria and eukaryotes. The opportunistic pathogenic bacterium Legionella pneumophila employs LAI-1 (3-hydroxypentadecane-4-one) for bacterial cell-cell communication. LAI-1 is produced and detected by the Lqs (Legionella quorum sensing) system, which regulates a variety of processes including natural competence for DNA uptake and pathogen-host cell interactions. In this study, we analyze the role of LAI-1 in inter-kingdom signaling. L. pneumophila lacking the autoinducer synthase LqsA no longer impeded the migration of infected cells, and the defect was complemented by plasmid-borne lqsA. Synthetic LAI-1 dose-dependently inhibited cell migration, without affecting bacterial uptake or cytotoxicity. The forward migration index but not the velocity of LAI-1-treated cells was reduced, and the cell cytoskeleton appeared destabilized. LAI-1-dependent inhibition of cell migration involved the scaffold protein IQGAP1, the small GTPase Cdc42 as well as the Cdc42-specific guanine nucleotide exchange factor ARHGEF9, but not other modulators of Cdc42, or RhoA, Rac1 or Ran GTPase. Upon treatment with LAI-1, Cdc42 was inactivated and IQGAP1 redistributed to the cell cortex regardless of whether Cdc42 was present or not. Furthermore, LAI-1 reversed the inhibition of cell migration by L. pneumophila, suggesting that the compound and the bacteria antagonistically target host signaling pathway(s). Collectively, the results indicate that the L. pneumophila quorum sensing compound LAI-1 modulates migration of eukaryotic cells through a signaling pathway involving IQGAP1, Cdc42 and ARHGEF9

B Cell Characteristics at Baseline Predict Vaccination Response in RTX Treated Patients

Background: Vaccination is considered as most efficient strategy in controlling SARS-CoV-2 pandemic spread. Nevertheless, patients with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases receiving rituximab (RTX) are at increased risk to fail humoral and cellular responses upon vaccination. The ability to predict vaccination responses is essential to guide adequate safety and optimal protection in these patients. Methods: B- and T- cell data before vaccination were evaluated for characteristics predicting vaccine responses in altogether 15 patients with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases receiving RTX. Eleven patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) on other therapies, 11 kidney transplant recipients (KTR) on regular immunosuppression and 15 healthy controls (HC) served as controls. A multidimensional analysis of B cell subsets via UMAP algorithm and a correlation matrix were performed in order to identify predictive markers of response in patients under RTX therapy. Results: Significant differences regarding absolute B cell counts and specific subset distribution pattern between the groups were identified at baseline. In this context, the majority of B cells from vaccination responders of the RTX group (RTX IgG+) were naïve and transitional B cells, whereas vaccination non-responders (RTX IgG-) carried preferentially plasmablasts and double negative (CD27-IgD-) B cells. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between neutralizing antibodies and B cells expressing HLA-DR and CXCR5 as well as an inverse correlation with CD95 expression and CD21low expression by B cells among vaccination responders. Summary: Substantial repopulation of the naïve B cell compartment after RTX therapy appeared to be essential for an adequate vaccination response, which seem to require the additional capability of antigen presentation and germinal center formation. Moreover, expression of exhaustion markers represent negative predictors of vaccination responses

Interplay of the Scaling Limit and the Renormalization Group: Implications for Symmetry Restoration

Symmetry restoration is usually understood as a renormalization group induced phenomenon. In this context, the issue of whether one-loop RG equations can be trusted in predicting symmetry restoration has recently been the subject of much debate. Here we advocate a more pragmatic point of view and expand the definition of symmetry restoration to encompass all situations where the physical properties have only a weak dependence upon an anisotropy in the bare couplings. Moreover we concentrate on universal properties, and so take a scaling limit where the physics is well described by a field theory. In this context, we find a large variety of models that exhibit, for all practical purposes, symmetry restoration: even if symmetry is not restored in a strict sense, physical properties are surprisingly insensitive to the remaining anisotropy. Although we have adopted an expanded notion of symmetry restoration, we nonetheless emphasize that the scaling limit also has implications for symmetry restoration as a renormalization group induced phenomenon. In all the models we considered, the scaling limit turns out to only permit bare couplings which are nearly isotropic and small. Then the one-loop beta-function should contain all the physics and higher loop orders can be neglected. We suggest that this feature generalizes to more complex models. We exhibit a large class of theories with current-current perturbations (of which the SO(8) model of interest in two-leg Hubbard ladders/armchair carbon nanotubes is one) where the one-loop beta-functions indicates symmetry restoration and so argue that these results can be trusted within the scaling limit.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, RevTe

Phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate is a potent enhancer of B cells with a granzyme B+ regulatory phenotype

IntroductionThe infusion of ex-vivo-generated regulatory B cells may represent a promising novel therapeutic approach for a variety of autoimmune and hyperinflammatory conditions including graft-versus-host disease.MethodsPreviously, we developed a protocol for the generation of a novel population of regulatory B cells, which are characterized by secretion of enzymatically active granzyme B (GraB cells). This protocol uses recombinant interleukin 21 (IL-21) and goat-derived F(ab)’2 fragments against the human B cell receptor (anti-BCR). Generally, the use of xenogeneic material for the manufacturing of advanced therapy medicinal products should be avoided to prevent adverse immune reactions as well as potential transmission of so far unknown diseases.ResultsIn the present work we demonstrated that phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate (PMA/TPA), a phorbol ester with a particular analogy to the second messenger diacylglycerol (DAG), is a potent enhancer of IL-21-induced differentiation of pre-activated B cells into GraB cells. The percentage of GraB cells after stimulation of pre-activated B cells with IL-21 and PMA/TPA was not significantly lower compared to stimulation with IL-21 and anti-BCR.DiscussionGiven that PMA/TPA has already undergone encouraging clinical testing in patients with certain haematological diseases, our results suggest that PMA/TPA may be a safe and feasible alternative for ex-vivo manufacturing of GraB cells

The N-representability problem, the pseudo-spectral decomposition of antisymmetric 1-body operators, and collective behaviour

The pseudo--spectral decomposition of an $N$--particle antisymmetric 1--body positive--semidefinite operator that corresponds to the canonical convex decomposition into the extreme elements of the dual cone of the set of fermion $N$--representable $1$--density operators has been derived. An attempt at constucting a mathematical model for collective behaviour of a system of $N$--fermions that originates from the pseudo--spectral decomposition is presented.Comment: 28 pages, compressed and uuencoded Postscript, 2 figure