Uterine infusion of bacteria alters the transcriptome of bovine oocytes

Postpartum uterine infection reduces fertility in dairy cattle; however, the mechanisms of uterine infection‐mediated infertility are unknown. Paradoxically, infection‐induced infertility persists after the resolution of disease. Oocytes are a finite resource, which are present at various stages of development during uterine infection. It is likely that oocyte development is influenced by uterine infection‐induced changes to the follicular microenvironment. To better understand the impact of infection on oocyte quality we employed global transcriptomics of oocytes collected from heifers after receiving intrauterine infusion of pathogenic Escherichia coli and Trueperella pyogenes . We hypothesized that the oocyte transcriptome would be altered in response to intrauterine infection. A total of 452 differentially expressed genes were identified in oocytes collected from heifers 4 days after bacteria infusion compared to vehicle infusion, while 539 differentially expressed genes were identified in oocytes collected from heifers 60 days after bacteria infusion. Only 42 genes were differentially expressed in bacteria‐infused heifers at both Day 4 and Day 60. Interferon, HMGB1, ILK, IL‐6, and TGF‐beta signaling pathways were downregulated in oocytes collected at Day 4 from bacteria‐infused heifers, while interferon, ILK, and IL‐6 signaling were upregulated in oocytes collected at Day 60 from bacteria‐infused heifers. These data suggest that bacterial infusion alters the oocyte transcriptome differently at Day 4 and Day 60, suggesting different follicle stages are susceptible to damage. Characterizing the long‐term impacts of uterine infection on the oocyte transcriptome aids in our understanding of how infection causes infertility in dairy cattle

Goldstone boson counting in linear sigma models with chemical potential

We analyze the effects of finite chemical potential on spontaneous breaking of internal symmetries within the class of relativistic field theories described by the linear sigma model. Special attention is paid to the emergence of ``abnormal'' Goldstone bosons with quadratic dispersion relation. We show that their presence is tightly connected to nonzero density of the Noether charges, and formulate a general counting rule. The general results are demonstrated on an SU(3)xU(1) invariant model with an SU(3)-sextet scalar field, which describes one of the color-superconducting phases of QCD.Comment: 10 pages, REVTeX4, 4 eps figures, v2: general discussion in Sec. IV expanded and improved, references added, other minor corrections throughout the tex

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the linear sigma model at finite chemical potential: One-loop corrections

We investigate spontaneous symmetry breaking within the linear sigma model with the SU(2)xU(1) internal symmetry at finite chemical potential, which was suggested as a model for kaon condensation in the CFL phase of dense quark matter. One-loop corrections to the scalar field effective potential as well as its propagator are calculated. Particular attention is paid to the type-II Goldstone boson that appears in the Bose--Einstein condensed phase. Furthermore, we show that the type-I Goldstone boson -- the superfluid phonon -- is allowed to decay due to the nonlinearity of its dispersion relation at high momentum, and determine its decay width.Comment: 13 pages, REVTeX4, 37 eps figures; v2: substantial error in Sec. IV corrected, references added, other minor corrections; version to appear in Phys. Rev.

A Quantum Adiabatic Evolution Algorithm Applied to Random Instances of an NP-Complete Problem

A quantum system will stay near its instantaneous ground state if the Hamiltonian that governs its evolution varies slowly enough. This quantum adiabatic behavior is the basis of a new class of algorithms for quantum computing. We test one such algorithm by applying it to randomly generated, hard, instances of an NP-complete problem. For the small examples that we can simulate, the quantum adiabatic algorithm works well, and provides evidence that quantum computers (if large ones can be built) may be able to outperform ordinary computers on hard sets of instances of NP-complete problems.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, email correspondence to [email protected] ; a shorter version of this article appeared in the April 20, 2001 issue of Science; see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/292/5516/47

Engendering Accountability: Gender Crimes Under International Criminal Law

Gender crimes, such as rape, sexual assault, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution, have always been perpetrated during war, yet the laws of war have been slow to acknowledge these crimes and to bring their perpetrators to justice. This article examines the response of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to this lacuna in international law, and analyzes the mainly positive developments they have made in this area in relation to the definition of rape and to the prosecution of gender crimes as crimes against humanity, war crimes, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and genocide. It also traces the procedural safeguards instituted to facilitate the prosecution of gender crimes. The authors consider the way in which these advances have been taken forward in the Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the usefulness of other responses, such as the truth commissions in Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and the gacaca courts in Rwanda

Revisiting Critical Vortices in Three-Dimensional SQED

We consider renormalization of the central charge and the mass of the ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric Abelian vortices in 2+1 dimensions. We obtain ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric theory in 2+1 dimensions by dimensionally reducing the ${\cal N}=1$ SQED in 3+1 dimensions with two chiral fields carrying opposite charges. Then we introduce a mass for one of the matter multiplets without breaking N=2 supersymmetry. This massive multiplet is viewed as a regulator in the large mass limit. We show that the mass and the central charge of the vortex get the same nonvanishing quantum corrections, which preserves BPS saturation at the quantum level. Comparison with the operator form of the central extension exhibits fractionalization of a global U(1) charge; it becomes 1/2 for the minimal vortex. The very fact of the mass and charge renormalization is due to a "reflection" of an unbalanced number of the fermion and boson zero modes on the vortex in the regulator sector.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures Minor modifications, reference adde

Stability of the magnetic Schr\"odinger operator in a waveguide

The spectrum of the Schr\"odinger operator in a quantum waveguide is known to be unstable in two and three dimensions. Any enlargement of the waveguide produces eigenvalues beneath the continuous spectrum. Also if the waveguide is bent eigenvalues will arise below the continuous spectrum. In this paper a magnetic field is added into the system. The spectrum of the magnetic Schr\"odinger operator is proved to be stable under small local deformations and also under small bending of the waveguide. The proof includes a magnetic Hardy-type inequality in the waveguide, which is interesting in its own

Spontaneously Broken Spacetime Symmetries and Goldstone's Theorem

Goldstone's theorem states that there is a massless mode for each broken symmetry generator. It has been known for a long time that the naive generalization of this counting fails to give the correct number of massless modes for spontaneously broken spacetime symmetries. We explain how to get the right count of massless modes in the general case, and discuss examples involving spontaneously broken Poincare and conformal invariance.Comment: 4 pages; 1 figure; v2: minor corrections. version to appear on PR

Nuclear Structure Calculations with Low-Momentum Potentials in a Model Space Truncation Approach

We have calculated the ground-state energy of the doubly magic nuclei 4He, 16O and 40Ca within the framework of the Goldstone expansion starting from various modern nucleon-nucleon potentials. The short-range repulsion of these potentials has been renormalized by constructing a low-momentum potential V-low-k. We have studied the connection between the cutoff momemtum Lambda and the size of the harmonic oscillator space employed in the calculations. We have found a fast convergence of the results with a limited number of oscillator quanta.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, to be published on Physical Review