21 research outputs found
Genetic architecture of human obesity traits in the rhesus macaque
Objective: Whereas the metabolic consequences of obesity have been studied extensively in the rhesus macaque, corollary genetic studies of obesity are nonexistent. This study assessed genetic contributions to spontaneous adiposity in this species.
Methods: Phenotypic variation by age class and sex for BMI, waist to height ratio, waist to thigh ratio, and waist circumference was assessed in 583 macaques. Total and sex-specific heritability for all traits was estimated, including waist to thigh ratio adjusted for BMI, as well as genotypic and phenotypic correlations. In addition, functional genetic variation at BDNF, FTO, LEP, LEPR, MC4R, PCSK1, POMC, and SIM1 was assessed in four animals with extreme spontaneous adiposity.
Results: Trait heritability in the combined sample was low to moderate (0.14-0.32), whereas sex-specific heritability was more substantial (0.20-0.67). Heritability was greater in females for all traits except BMI. All traits were robustly correlated, with genetic correlations of 0.63 to 0.93 indicating substantial pleiotropy. Likely functional variants were discovered in the four macaques at all eight human obesity genes, including six missense mutations in BDNF, FTO, LEP, LEPR, and PCSK1 and, notably, one nonsense mutation in LEPR.
Conclusions: A moderate polygenic contribution to adiposity in rhesus macaques was found, as well as mutations with potentially larger effects in multiple genes that influence obesity in humans
Radiation from a uniformly accelerating harmonic oscillator
We consider a radiation from a uniformly accelerating harmonic oscillator
whose minimal coupling to the scalar field changes suddenly. The exact time
evolutions of the quantum operators are given in terms of a classical solution
of a forced harmonic oscillator. After the jumping of the coupling constant
there occurs a fast absorption of energy into the oscillator, and then a slow
emission follows. Here the absorbed energy is independent of the acceleration
and proportional to the log of a high momentum cutoff of the field. The emitted
energy depends on the acceleration and also proportional to the log of the
cutoff. Especially, if the coupling is comparable to the natural frequency of
the detector () enormous energies are radiated away
from the oscillator.Comment: 26 pages, 1 eps figure, RevTeX, minor correction in grammar, add a
discussio
Can spacetime curvature induced corrections to Lamb shift be observable?
The Lamb shift results from the coupling of an atom to vacuum fluctuations of
quantum fields, so corrections are expected to arise when the spacetime is
curved since the vacuum fluctuations are modified by the presence of spacetime
curvature. Here, we calculate the curvature-induced correction to the Lamb
shift outside a spherically symmetric object and demonstrate that this
correction can be remarkably significant outside a compact massive
astrophysical body. For instance, for a neutron star or a stellar mass black
hole, the correction is 25% at a radial distance of ,
16% at and as large as 1.6% even at , where is
the mass of the object, the Newtonian constant, and the speed of light.
In principle, we can look at the spectra from a distant compact super-massive
body to find such corrections. Therefore, our results suggest a possible way of
detecting fundamental quantum effects in astronomical observations.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, slight title change, clarifications and more
discussions added, version to be published in JHE
Noninertial effects on a Dirac neutral particle inducing an analogue of the Landau quantization in the cosmic string spacetime
We discuss the behaviour of external fields that interact with a Dirac
neutral particle with a permanent electric dipole moment in order to achieve
relativistic bound states solutions in a noninertial frame and in the presence
of a topological defect spacetime. We show that the noninertial effects of the
Fermi-Walker reference frame induce a radial magnetic field even in the absence
of magnetic charges, which is influenced by the topology of the cosmic string
spacetime. We then discuss the conditions that the induced fields must satisfy
to yield the relativistic bound states corresponding to the
Landau-He-McKellar-Wilkens quantization in the cosmic string spacetime. Finally
we obtain the Dirac spinors for positive-energy solutions and the Gordon
decomposition of the Dirac probability current.Comment: 15 pages, no figure, this paper will be published in volume 42 of the
Brazilian Journal of Physic