5,881 research outputs found
The hypertoric intersection cohomology ring
We present a functorial computation of the equivariant intersection
cohomology of a hypertoric variety, and endow it with a natural ring structure.
When the hyperplane arrangement associated with the hypertoric variety is
unimodular, we show that this ring structure is induced by a ring structure on
the equivariant intersection cohomology sheaf in the equivariant derived
category. The computation is given in terms of a localization functor which
takes equivariant sheaves on a sufficiently nice stratified space to sheaves on
a poset.Comment: Significant revisions in Section 5, with several corrected proof
Exploitation status of infralittoral abalone (Haliotis midae) and alikreukel (Turbo sarmaticus) in the southern section of the Eastern Cape coast, South Africa
Intertidal size-frequency distributions and densities for Haliotis midae and Turbo sarmaticus were examined at 10 sites experiencing varying pressure of human exploitation along the southern section of the Eastern Cape coast, South Africa. Target species' densities and maximum sizes were related both to the numbers of collectors on the shore and to indirect indicators of exploitation such as number of households in the vicinity and distance to the nearest beach access point. For both species, there was variation in density (P < 0.05) and size (P < 0.05) among sites, with densities ranging between 0.03-2.23 m^(-2) and 0.07-4.93 m^(-2) for H. midae and T. sarmaticus, respectively. Maximum sizes ranged between 49.4-153.5 mm (H. midae) and 28.3-104.4 mm (T. sarmaticus) shell length. Population parameters such as mean maximum size and total density were significantly negatively related to exploitation indicators for both species. In addition, densities of sexually mature and legal-size individuals of T. sarmaticus were significantly negatively related to the number of households. However, only for H. midae were densities of subadults significantly negatively related to the number of collectors, suggesting that reproduction of abalone may be suppressed at the most exploited sites. Exploitation of T. sarmaticus tends to be localized near population centres, whereas H. midae is collected over a larger range of sites. Overall, T. sarmaticus is less affected by exploitation than H. midae
In vivo evaluation of pathogenicity and transmissibility of influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 hemagglutinin receptor binding domain 222 intrahost variants isolated from a single immunocompromised patient
AbstractThe influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 virus has circulated worldwide and continued to cause complicated infections and deaths. Reports have identified an increased prevalence of the hemagglutinin receptor binding domain D222G mutation in viruses isolated from individuals who have suffered such severe infections, but this association is still unclear. Virus isolated from a nasopharyngeal wash of a severely ill immunocompromised patient at the time of diagnosis contained the D222, but isolates collected later in his course from a bronchoalveolar lavage contained primarily the G222 mutation and was mixed with a minor population of D222. These clinical isolates were compared to a G222 plaque purified virus in the ferret model. The G222 predominant clinical isolate was the most pathogenic in ferrets and developed the most diversity at the 222 amino acid position during infection, suggesting that increased diversity and not a specific polymorphism at HA 222 may be important in predicting pathogenic potential
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Proteomic analyses of Urine Exosomes reveal New Biomarkers of Diabetes in Pregnancy.
ObjectiveTo evaluate 24 hour urine exosome protein content changes among pregnant US subjects with diabetes and obesity during early pregnancy.MethodsThe exosome proteome content from 24 hour urine samples of pregnant subjects with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM, N=8) and pre-gestational Type 2 diabetes (PGD, N = 10) were compared with control samples (CTRL, N = 10) obtained at week 20 of pregnancy. Differences in exosome protein load between groups was identified by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry, analyzed by linear regression in negative binomial distribution, visualized in MetaboAnalyst (version 3.0), and validated by western immunoblotting.ResultsAt the 20th week of pregnancy, we identified 646, 734 and 856 proteins in exosomes from 24 hour urine samples of patients from the CTRL, GDM and PGD groups, respectively. S100 calcium binding protein A9, damage associated molecular pattern (DAMP) signal, was found to be significantly increased in both GDM and PGD subjects. In GDM subjects the peptide counts for S100A9 protein independently correlated with maternal obesity and macrosomia of the newborn infants. Early to late pregnancy developmental changes in the GDM group were shown to utilize pathways and protein expression levels differently from those in PGD or CTRL groups.ConclusionsUrinary exosome proteomic analysis non-invasively provides insights into maternal changes during diabetic pregnancy. Exosome biomarkers early in pregnancy can be potentially used to better understand pathophysiologic mechanisms of diabetes at a cellular level, and to distinguish between gestational and pre-gestational diabetes at the pathway level. This information can aid intervention efforts to improve pregnancy outcomes in women with diabetes
Effects of acute lying and sleep deprivation on metabolic and inflammatory responses of lactating dairy cows
Dairy cows that are restricted from lying down have a reduced ability to sleep. In other species, sleep loss is a key risk factor for disease, mediated by changes in metabolic and inflammatory responses. The cumulative effect of lying and sleep deprivation on cow health is unknown. The objective was to determine the effects of lying and sleep deprivation on metabolic and inflammatory responses of dairy cows. Data were collected from 8 multiparous and 4 primiparous lactating cows (199 +/- 44 d in milk, 77 +/- 30 d pregnant; mean +/- standard deviation) enrolled in a study using a crossover design. Each cow was exposed to 2 treatments meant to induce sleep loss: (1) human disturbance (imposed by researchers making noise or physical contact when the cow's posture suggested sleep) and (2) lying deprivation (imposed by a wooden grid placed on the pen floor). Cows experienced a 24-h baseline period (d - 1) followed by a 24-h treatment period (d 0), with a 12-d washout period between treatments. Baseline and treatment periods were imposed from 2100 to 2059 h. Cows were housed in individual pens during the acclimation period (d - 3 and - 2), d - 1, and d 0. Nonesterified fatty acid and glucose concentrations were measured at 0300, 0900, 1500, and 2059 h on d - 1 and 0. Proinflammatory cytokine mRNA [tumor necrosis factor (TNF), interleukin-1B (IL1B), and interleukin-6 (IL6)] abundance in whole-blood leukocytes, both nonstimulated and stimulated with lipopolysaccharide, were assessed at 2059 h on d -1 (end of baseline) and d 0 (end of treatment). Nonesterified fatty acids and glucose varied by time of day but were not affected by treatment or day. The abundances of TNF and IL1B from both stimulated and nonstimulated cells were higher following 24 h of lying deprivation (d 0) compared with baseline (d -1). Abundance of IL6 was increased in nonstimulated cells after lying deprivation compared with baseline. In contrast, human disturbance for 24 h did not alter TNF, IL1B, or IL6 abundance relative to baseline levels. These results suggest that a short period of lying deprivation generally increases inflammatory responses but not metabolic responses.Peer reviewe
Development of FTK architecture: a fast hardware track trigger for the ATLAS detector
The Fast Tracker (FTK) is a proposed upgrade to the ATLAS trigger system that
will operate at full Level-1 output rates and provide high quality tracks
reconstructed over the entire detector by the start of processing in Level-2.
FTK solves the combinatorial challenge inherent to tracking by exploiting the
massive parallelism of Associative Memories (AM) that can compare inner
detector hits to millions of pre-calculated patterns simultaneously. The
tracking problem within matched patterns is further simplified by using
pre-computed linearized fitting constants and leveraging fast DSP's in modern
commercial FPGA's. Overall, FTK is able to compute the helix parameters for all
tracks in an event and apply quality cuts in approximately one millisecond. By
employing a pipelined architecture, FTK is able to continuously operate at
Level-1 rates without deadtime. The system design is defined and studied using
ATLAS full simulation. Reconstruction quality is evaluated for single muon
events with zero pileup, as well as WH events at the LHC design luminosity. FTK
results are compared with the tracking capability of an offline algorithm.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of DPF-2009, Detroit, MI, July
2009, eConf C09072
A New Scintillator Tile/Fiber Preshower Detector for the CDF Central Calorimeter
A detector designed to measure early particle showers has been installed in
front of the central CDF calorimeter at the Tevatron. This new preshower
detector is based on scintillator tiles coupled to wavelength-shifting fibers
read out by multi-anode photomultipliers and has a total of 3,072 readout
channels. The replacement of the old gas detector was required due to an
expected increase in instantaneous luminosity of the Tevatron collider in the
next few years. Calorimeter coverage, jet energy resolution, and electron and
photon identification are among the expected improvements. The final detector
design, together with the R&D studies that led to the choice of scintillator
and fiber, mechanical assembly, and quality control are presented. The detector
was installed in the fall 2004 Tevatron shutdown and started collecting
colliding beam data by the end of the same year. First measurements indicate a
light yield of 12 photoelectrons/MIP, a more than two-fold increase over the
design goals.Comment: 5 pages, 10 figures (changes are minor; this is the final version
published in IEEE-Trans.Nucl.Sci.
The Evolution of FTK, a Real-Time Tracker for Hadron Collider Experiments
We describe the architecture evolution of the highly-parallel dedicated
processor FTK, which is driven by the simulation of LHC events at high
luminosity (1034 cm-2 s-1). FTK is able to provide precise on-line track
reconstruction for future hadronic collider experiments. The processor,
organized in a two-tiered pipelined architecture, execute very fast algorithms
based on the use of a large bank of pre-stored patterns of trajectory points
(first tier) in combination with full resolution track fitting to refine
pattern recognition and to determine off-line quality track parameters. We
describe here how the high luminosity simulation results have produced a new
organization of the hardware inside the FTK processor core.Comment: 11th ICATPP conferenc
Tevatron-for-LHC Report of the QCD Working Group
The experiments at Run 2 of the Tevatron have each accumulated over 1 inverse
femtobarn of high-transverse momentum data. Such a dataset allows for the first
precision (i.e. comparisons between theory and experiment at the few percent
level) tests of QCD at a hadron collider. While the Large Hadron Collider has
been designed as a discovery machine, basic QCD analyses will still need to be
performed to understand the working environment. The Tevatron-for-LHC workshop
was conceived as a communication link to pass on the expertise of the Tevatron
and to test new analysis ideas coming from the LHC community. The TeV4LHC QCD
Working Group focussed on important aspects of QCD at hadron colliders: jet
definitions, extraction and use of Parton Distribution Functions, the
underlying event, Monte Carlo tunes, and diffractive physics. This report
summarizes some of the results achieved during this workshop.Comment: 156 pages, Tevatron-for-LHC Conference Report of the QCD Working
Grou
Treatment with the CC chemokine-binding protein Evasin-4 improves post-infarction myocardial injury and survival in mice
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