61,509 research outputs found
Elucidating the role of DEPTOR in Alzheimer's disease
This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The mammalian or mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a Ser/Thr protein kinase that, in response to nutrient stimulation, regulates cellular growth, proliferation, survival, protein synthesis and gene transcription. It has also been implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD) with neuronal cells and hippocampal slices of AD transgenic mice experiencing dysregulated mTOR and synaptic plasticity in response to treatment with the toxic amyloid β (Aβ1-42) peptide, which has been implicated in AD. DEP domain-containing mTOR-interacting protein (DEPTOR) is a protein which can bind to mTOR and cause its inhibition, and functions as a regulatory protein of mTOR to control its activity. The inhibition of mTOR has been shown to have a neuroprotective effect; in an animal model, it was shown to protect against Aβ-induced neurotoxicity. In the present study, to investigate to role of DEPTOR in a model of AD, we neuronally differentiated the SH-SY5Y cell line and examined the effects of treatment with an Aβ42 peptide, thus mimicking plaque formation. This resulted in a significant increase in mTOR and a significant decrease in DEPTOR expression compared to the unstimulated controls. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, we demonstrate for the first time a reduction in the protein level of DEPTOR in the precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus and occipital lobe of a brain with AD compared to a normal control, as well as a significant reduction in DEPTOR expression in samples from late-onset AD (LOAD) compared to early-onset familial AD (EOFAD). The reduction in DEPTOR expression in cases of AD compared to healthy controls can lead to an augmentation of mTOR signalling, leading to Aβ accumulation, which in turn leads to a further reduction in DEPTOR expression. This results in the accumulation of amyloid plaque, shifting the balance from neuroprotection to neurodegeneration
Radio Observations of GRB Host Galaxies
We present 5.5 and 9.0 GHz observations of a sample of seventeen GRB host
galaxies at 0.5<z<1.4, using the radio continuum to explore their star
formation properties in the context of the small but growing sample of galaxies
with similar observations. Four sources are detected, one of those (GRB
100418A) likely due to lingering afterglow emission. We suggest that the
previously-reported radio afterglow of GRB 100621A may instead be due to host
galaxy flux. We see no strong evidence for redshift evolution in the typical
star formation rate of GRB hosts, but note that the fraction of `dark' bursts
with detections is higher than would be expected given constraints on the more
typical long GRB population. We also determine the average radio-derived star
formation rates of core collapse supernovae at comparable redshift, and show
that these are still well below the limits obtained for GRB hosts, and show
evidence for a rise in typical star formation rate with redshift in supernova
hosts.Comment: 15 pages, MNRAS accepte
Aerosol studies in mid-latitude coastal environments in Australia
The results of the evaluation of several inversion procedures that were used to select one which provides the most accurate atmospheric extinction profiles for small aerosol extinction coefficients (that often predominate in the maritime airmass) are presented. Height profiles of atmospheric extinction calculated by a two component atmospheric solution to the LIDAR equation will be compared with corresponding in-situ extinction profiles based on the size distribution profiles obtained in Western Australia. Values of the aerosol backscatter to extinction ratio obtained from multi-angle LIDAR measurements will be used in this solution
Thermodynamic processes generated by a class of completely positive quantum operations
An attempt toward the operational formulation of quantum thermodynamics is
made by employing the recently proposed operations forming positive
operator-valued measures for generating thermodynamic processes. The quantity
of heat as well as the von Neumann entropy monotonically increases under the
operations. The fixed point analysis shows that repeated applications of these
operations to a given system transform from its pure ground state at zero
temperature to the completely random state in the high temperature limit with
intermediate states being generically out of equilibrium. It is shown that the
Clausius inequality can be violated along the processes, in general. A
bipartite spin-1/2 system is analyzed as an explicit example.Comment: 22 pages and 1 figure. Modern Physics Letters B, in pres
Fundamental length in quantum theories with PT-symmetric Hamiltonians
The direct observability of coordinates x is often lost in PT-symmetric
quantum theories. A manifestly non-local Hilbert-space metric enters
the double-integral normalization of wave functions there. In the
context of scattering, the (necessary) return to the asymptotically fully local
metric has been shown feasible, for certain family of PT-symmetric toy
Hamiltonians H at least, in paper I (M. Znojil, Phys. Rev. D 78 (2008) 025026).
Now we show that in a confined-motion dynamical regime the same toy model
proves also suitable for an explicit control of the measure or width
of its non-locality. For this purpose each H is assigned here, constructively,
the complete menu of its hermitizing metrics
distinguished by their optional "fundamental lengths" .
The local metric of paper I recurs at while the most popular
CPT-symmetric hermitization proves long-ranged, with .Comment: 31 pp, 3 figure
B Leptonic Decays and B- bar B Mixing with 2+1 Flavors of Dynamical Quarks
Calculations of B leptonic decays and B- bar B mixing using NRQCD heavy and
Asqtad light valence quarks on the MILC dynamical configurations are described.
Smearing has been implemented to substantially reduce the statistical errors of
the matrix elements needed for the determination of f_B. The four-fermion
matrix elements needed for the determination of f_{B_s}^2B_{B_s} have been
calculated and a preliminary result is given.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, talk given at Lattice2004(heavy), Batavia,
Illinois, 21-26 Jun 200
Convex probability domain of generalized quantum measurements
Generalized quantum measurements with N distinct outcomes are used for
determining the density matrix, of order d, of an ensemble of quantum systems.
The resulting probabilities are represented by a point in an N-dimensional
space. It is shown that this point lies in a convex domain having at most d^2-1
dimensions.Comment: 7 pages LaTeX, one PostScript figure on separate pag
The Birmingham-CfA cluster scaling project - I: gas fraction and the M-T relation
We have assembled a large sample of virialized systems, comprising 66 galaxy
clusters, groups and elliptical galaxies with high quality X-ray data. To each
system we have fitted analytical profiles describing the gas density and
temperature variation with radius, corrected for the effects of central gas
cooling. We present an analysis of the scaling properties of these systems and
focus in this paper on the gas distribution and M-T relation. In addition to
clusters and groups, our sample includes two early-type galaxies, carefully
selected to avoid contamination from group or cluster X-ray emission. We
compare the properties of these objects with those of more massive systems and
find evidence for a systematic difference between galaxy-sized haloes and
groups of a similar temperature. We derive a mean logarithmic slope of the M-T
relation within R_200 of 1.84+/-0.06, although there is some evidence of a
gradual steepening in the M-T relation, with decreasing mass. We recover a
similar slope using two additional methods of calculating the mean temperature.
Repeating the analysis with the assumption of isothermality, we find the slope
changes only slightly, to 1.89+/-0.04, but the normalization is increased by
30%. Correspondingly, the mean gas fraction within R_200 changes from
(0.13+/-0.01)h70^-1.5 to (0.11+/-0.01)h70^-1.5, for the isothermal case, with
the smaller fractional change reflecting different behaviour between hot and
cool systems. There is a strong correlation between the gas fraction within
0.3*R_200 and temperature. This reflects the strong (5.8 sigma) trend between
the gas density slope parameter, beta, and temperature, which has been found in
previous work. (abridged)Comment: 27 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS; uses longtable.sty &
lscape.st
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