Exploring prospects of novel drugs for tuberculosis

Tuberculosis remains a disease with an enormous impact on public health worldwide. With the continuously increasing epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis, new drugs are desperately needed. However, even for the treatment of drug-sensitive tuberculosis, new drugs are required to shorten the treatment duration and thereby prevent development of drug resistance. Within the past ten years, major advances in tuberculosis drug research have been made, leading to a considerable number of antimycobacterial compounds which are now in the pipeline. Here we discuss a number of these novel promising tuberculosis drugs, as well as the discovery of two new potential drug targets for the development of novel effective drugs to curb the tuberculosis pandemic, ie, the coronin 1 and protein kinase G pathways. Protein kinase G is secreted by mycobacteria and is responsible for blocking lysosomal delivery within the macrophage. Coronin 1 is responsible for activating the phosphatase, calcineurin, and thereby preventing phagosome-lysosome fusion within the macrophage. Blocking these two pathways may lead to rapid killing of mycobacteri

Deep spectroscopic luminosity function of Abell 85: no evidence for a steep upturn of the faint-end slope

We present a new deep determination of the spectroscopic LF within the virial radius of the nearby and massive Abell\,85 (A85) cluster down to the dwarf regime (M* + 6) using VLT/VIMOS spectra for $\sim 2000$ galaxies with m$_r \leq 21$ mag and $\langle \mu_{e,r} \rangle \leq 24$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$. The resulting LF from 438 cluster members is best modelled by a double Schechter function due to the presence of a statistically significant upturn at the faint-end. The amplitude of this upturn ($\alpha_{f} = -1.58^{+0.19}_{-0.15}$), however, is much smaller than that of the SDSS composite photometric cluster LF by Popesso et al. 2006, $\alpha_{f} \sim$ -2. The faint-end slope of the LF in A85 is consistent, within the uncertainties, with that of the field. The red galaxy population dominates the LF at low luminosities, and is the main responsible for the upturn. The fact that the slopes of the spectroscopic LFs in the field and in a cluster as massive as A85 are similar suggests that the cluster environment does not play a major role in determining the abundance of low-mass galaxies.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted at MNRAS lette

The relation between bar formation, galaxy luminosity, and environment

We derive the bar fraction in three different environments ranging from the field to Virgo and Coma clusters, covering an unprecedentedly large range of galaxy luminosities (or, equivalently, stellar masses). We confirm that the fraction of barred galaxies strongly depends on galaxy luminosity. We also show that the difference between the bar fraction distributions as a function of galaxy luminosity (and mass) in the field and Coma cluster are statistically significant, with Virgo being an intermediate case. We interpret this result as a variation of the effect of environment on bar formation depending on galaxy luminosity. We speculate that brighter disk galaxies are stable enough against interactions to keep their cold structure, thus, the interactions are able to trigger bar formation. For fainter galaxies the interactions become strong enough to heat up the disks inhibiting bar formation and even destroying the disks. Finally, we point out that the controversy regarding whether the bar fraction depends on environment could be resolved by taking into account the different luminosity ranges of the galaxy samples studied so far.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of EWASS 2012 Special Session 4, Structure of galaxy disks shaped by secular evolution and environmental processes, ed. P. Di Matteo and C. Jog, Memorie della Societ\`a Astronomica Italiana Supplement Serie

On Critical Exponents and the Renormalization of the Coupling Constant in Growth Models with Surface Diffusion

It is shown by the method of renormalized field theory that in contrast to a statement based on a mathematically ill-defined invariance transformation and found in most of the recent publications on growth models with surface diffusion, the coupling constant of these models renormalizes nontrivially. This implies that the widely accepted supposedly exact scaling exponents are to be corrected. A two-loop calculation shows that the corrections are small and these exponents seem to be very good approximations.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, 2 postscript figures, to appear in Phys.Rev.Let

Photon noise limited radiation detection with lens-antenna coupled Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors

Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) have shown great potential for sub-mm instrumentation because of the high scalability of the technology. Here we demonstrate for the first time in the sub-mm band (0.1...2 mm) a photon noise limited performance of a small antenna coupled MKID detector array and we describe the relation between photon noise and MKID intrinsic generation-recombination noise. Additionally we use the observed photon noise to measure the optical efficiency of detectors to be 0.8+-0.2.Comment: The following article has been submitted to AP

Disordered Electrons in a Strong Magnetic Field: Transfer Matrix Approaches to the Statistics of the Local Density of States

We present two novel approaches to establish the local density of states as an order parameter field for the Anderson transition problem. We first demonstrate for 2D quantum Hall systems the validity of conformal scaling relations which are characteristic of order parameter fields. Second we show the equivalence between the critical statistics of eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian and of the transfer matrix, respectively. Based on this equivalence we obtain the order parameter exponent $\alpha_0\approx 3.4$ for 3D quantum Hall systems.Comment: 4 pages, 3 Postscript figures, corrected scale in Fig.

Performance of Hybrid NbTiN-Al Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors as Direct Detectors for Sub-millimeter Astronomy

In the next decades millimeter and sub-mm astronomy requires large format imaging arrays and broad-band spectrometers to complement the high spatial and spectral resolution of the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array. The desired sensors for these instruments should have a background limited sensitivity and a high optical efficiency and enable arrays thousands of pixels in size. Hybrid microwave kinetic inductance detectors consisting of NbTiN and Al have shown to satisfy these requirements. We present the second generation hybrid NbTiN-Al MKIDs, which are photon noise limited in both phase and amplitude readout for loading levels $P_{850GHz} \geq 10$ fW. Thanks to the increased responsivity, the photon noise level achieved in phase allows us to simultaneously read out approximately 8000 pixels using state-of-the-art electronics. In addition, the choice of superconducting materials and the use of a Si lens in combination with a planar antenna gives these resonators the flexibility to operate within the frequency range $0.09 < \nu < 1.1$ THz. Given these specifications, hybrid NbTiN-Al MKIDs will enable astronomically usable kilopixel arrays for sub-mm imaging and moderate resolution spectroscopy.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014: Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy VI

Fermionic field theory for directed percolation in (1+1) dimensions

We formulate directed percolation in (1+1) dimensions in the language of a reaction-diffusion process with exclusion taking place in one space dimension. We map the master equation that describes the dynamics of the system onto a quantum spin chain problem. From there we build an interacting fermionic field theory of a new type. We study the resulting theory using renormalization group techniques. This yields numerical estimates for the critical exponents and provides a new alternative analytic systematic procedure to study low-dimensional directed percolation.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure