5,538 research outputs found
Circadian Variation of Brain Histamine in Goldfish
Teleosts may make an excellent model to study brain histamine function. Fishes are phylogenetically closer to the basic vertebrate blueprint than higher vertebrates. They appear to have a simpler histaminergic system in terms of central nervous system distribution and, contrary to higher vertebrates, brain histamine appears to be strictly neuronal. In this preliminary study, we examined circadian variation of brain histamine in goldfish, Carassius auratus, as this neurotransmitter correlates with circadian behavior of some mammals. Two groups of juvenile goldfish were held in 24 60L aquaria, six fish per aquarium, on reversed photoperiods; L:D 12:12 with light onset either at 0700 or 1900 h. Fish were sampled every 4 h. At a sampling time, all the fish in a tank were taken; each sampling, for both groups, was done in replicate. Brain histamine was determined by immunoassay. There was a significant circadian variation in histamine on both photoperiod regimes with the highest levels during the photophase. These results support the hypothesis of an early phylogenic role for histamine in vertebrate circadian physiology
kt Effects in Direct-Photon Production
We discuss the phenomenology of initial-state parton-kt broadening in
direct-photon production and related processes in hadron collisions. After a
brief summary of the theoretical basis for a Gaussian-smearing approach, we
present a systematic study of recent results on fixed-target and collider
direct-photon production, using complementary data on diphoton and pion
production to provide empirical guidance on the required amount of kt
broadening. This approach provides a consistent description of the observed
pattern of deviation of next-to-leading order QCD calculations relative to the
direct-photon data, and accounts for the shape and normalization difference
between fixed-order perturbative calculations and the data. We also discuss the
uncertainties in this phenomenological approach, the implications of these
results on the extraction of the gluon distribution of the nucleon, and the
comparison of our findings to recent related work.Comment: LaTeX, uses revtex and epsf, 37 pages, 15 figure
Examination of direct-photon and pion production in proton-nucleon collisions
We present a study of inclusive direct-photon and pion production in hadronic
interactions, focusing on a comparison of the ratio of gamma/pi0 yields with
expectations from next-to-leading order perturbative QCD (NLO pQCD). We also
examine the impact of a phenomenological model involving k_T smearing (which
approximates effects of additional soft-gluon emission) on absolute predictions
for photon and pion production and their ratio.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures. Minor changes in wording and in figure
Report of the QCD Tools Working Group
We report on the activities of the ``QCD Tools for heavy flavors and new
physics searches'' working group of the Run II Workshop on QCD and Weak Bosons.
The contributions cover the topics of improved parton showering and comparisons
of Monte Carlo programs and resummation calculations, recent developments in
Pythia, the methodology of measuring backgrounds to new physics searches,
variable flavor number schemes for heavy quark electro-production, the
underlying event in hard scattering processes, and the Monte Carlo MCFM for NLO
processes.Comment: LaTeX, 47 pages, 41 figures, 10 tables, uses run2col.sty, to appear
in the Proceedings of the Workshop on "QCD and Weak Boson Physics in Run II",
Fermilab, March - November 199
Photon Production from a Quark--Gluon Plasma
In-medium interactions of a particle in a hot plasma are considered in the
framework of thermal field theory. The formalism to calculate gauge invariant
rates for photon and dilepton production from the medium is given. In the
application to a QED plasma, astrophysical consequences are pointed out. The
photon production rate from strongly interacting quarks in the quark--gluon
plasma, which might be formed in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, is
calculated in the previously unaccessible regime of photon energies of the
order of the plasma temperature. For temperatures below the chiral phase
transition, an effective field theory incorporating dynamical chiral symmetry
breaking is employed, and perturbative QCD at higher temperatures. A smooth
transition between both regions is obtained. The relevance to the soft photon
problem and to high energy heavy ion experiments is discussed.Comment: Paper in ReVTeX. Figures and complete paper available via anonymous
ftp, ftp://tpri6c.gsi.de/pub/phenning/hq95ga
Cyclic AMP-specific phosphodiesterase, PDE8A1, is activated by protein kinase A-mediated phosphorylation
The cyclic AMP-specific phosphodiesterase PDE8 has been shown to play a pivotal role in important processes such as steroidogenesis, T cell adhesion, regulation of heart beat and chemotaxis. However, no information exists on how the activity of this enzyme is regulated. We show that under elevated cAMP conditions, PKA acts to phosphorylate PDE8A on serine 359 and this action serves to enhance the activity of the enzyme. This is the first indication that PDE8 activity can be modulated by a kinase, and we propose that this mechanism forms a feedback loop that results in the restoration of basal cAMP levels. (C) 2012 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier B. V. All rights reserve
Evidence for Parton kT Effects in High pT Particle Production
Inclusive pizero and direct-photon cross sections in the kinematic range 3.5
< pT < 12 GeV/c with central rapidities are presented for 530 and 800 GeV/c
proton beams and a 515 GeV/c pi- beam incident on beryllium targets. Current
Next-to-Leading-Order perturbative QCD calculations fail to adequately describe
the data for conventional choices of scales. Kinematic distributions from these
hard scattering events provide evidence that the interacting partons carry
significant initial-state parton transverse momentum (kT). Incorporating these
kT effects phenomenologically greatly improves the agreement between
calculations and the measured cross sections.Comment: 11 pages including 6 pages of figures with caption
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