853 research outputs found
Distrofia Miotônica Tipo 1: Frequência Dos Achados Oftalmológicos
The purpose of the study was to evaluate the frequency of ophthalmologic abnormalities in a cohort of myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) patients and to correlate them with motor function. We reviewed the pathophysiology of cataract and low intraocular pressure (IOP). Method: Patients were included after clinical and laboratory diagnosis and after signed informed consent. They were evaluated by Motor Function Measure scale, Portuguese version (MFM-P) and ophthalmic protocol. Results: We evaluated 42 patients aged 17 to 64 years (mean 40.7 ± 12.5), 22 of which were men. IOP (n = 41) was reduced in all but one. We found cataract or positivity for surgery in 38 (90.48%) and ptosis in 23 (54.76%). These signs but not IOP were significantly correlated with severity of motor dysfunction. Abnormalities in ocular motility and stereopsis were observed. Conclusion: Cataract and ptosis are frequent in DM1 and associated to motor dysfunction. Reduced IOP is also common, but appears not to be related with motor impairment. © 2016, Associacao Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria. All rights reserved.74318318
Phenomenological Tests of Supersymmetric A_4 Family Symmetry Model of Neutrino Mass
Recently Babu, Ma and Valle proposed a model of quark and lepton mixing based
on symmetry. Within this model the lepton and slepton mixings are
intimately related. We perform a numerical study in order to derive the slepton
masses and mixings in agreement with present data from neutrino physics. We
show that, starting from three-fold degeneracy of the neutrino masses at a high
energy scale, a viable low energy neutrino mass matrix can indeed be obtained
in agreement with constraints on lepton flavour violating
and decays. The resulting slepton spectrum must necessarily
include at least one mass below 200 GeV which can be produced at the LHC. The
predictions for the absolute Majorana neutrino mass scale eV
ensure that the model will be tested by future cosmological tests and
searches.
Rates for lepton flavour violating processes
in the range of sensitivity of current
experiments are typical in the model, with BR(\mu \to e \gamma) \gsim
10^{-15} and the lower bound BR. To first
approximation, the model leads to maximal leptonic CP violation in neutrino
oscillations.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure
A More Flavored Higgs boson in Supersymmetric models
A More flavored Higgs boson arises when the flavor structure encoded in SUSY
extensions of the SM is transmited to the Higgs sector. The flavor-Higgs
transmition mechanism can have a radiative or mixing origin, as it is
illustrated with several examples, and can produce interesting Higgs signatures
that can be probed at future high-energy colliders. Within the MSSM, the flavor
mediation mechanism can be of radiative type, as it is realized trhough
gaugino-slepton loops, which transmit the flavor structture of the
soft-breaking sector to the Higgs bosons. In particular we focus on evaluating
the contributions from the general trilinear terms to the lepton flavor
violating Higgs (LFV) vertices. On the other hand, as an example of flavor
mediation through mixing, we discuss an E_6 inspired multi-Higgs model, with an
abelian flavor symmetry, where LFV as well as lepton flavor conserving Higgs
effects are found to arise, though in this case at tree-level. We find that
Tevatron and LHC can provide information on the flavor structure of these
models through the detection of the LFV higgs mode h-> tau+mu, while NLC can
perform high-precision measurements of the LFC mode h-> tau tau.Comment: 17 pages, 5 tables, 3 figures; corrected mistake in last section,
results changed but conclusions remmai
Bianchi Type I Cosmology in Generalized Saez-Ballester Theory via Noether Gauge Symmetry
In this paper, we investigate the generalized Saez-Ballester scalar-tensor
theory of gravity via Noether gauge symmetry (NGS) in the background of Bianchi
type I cosmological spacetime. We start with the Lagrangian of our model and
calculate its gauge symmetries and corresponding invariant quantities. We
obtain the potential function for the scalar field in the exponential form. For
all the symmetries obtained, we determine the gauge functions corresponding to
each gauge symmmetry which include constant and dynamic gauge. We discuss
cosmological implications of our model and show that it is compatible with the
observational data.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in 'European Physical
Journal C
Lepton Flavor Violation in the SUSY-GUT Models with Lopsided Mass Matrix
The tiny neutrino masses measured in the neutrino oscillation experiments can
be naturally explained by the supersymmetric see-saw mechanism. If the
supersymmetry breaking is mediated by gravity, the see-saw models may predict
observable lepton flavor violating effects. In this work, we investigate the
lepton flavor violating process in the kind of neutrino mass
models based on the idea of the ``lopsided'' form of the charged lepton mass
matrix. The constraints set by the muon anomalous magnetic moment are taken
into account. We find the present models generally predict a much larger
branching ratio of than the experimental limit. Conversely,
this process may give strong constraint on the lepton flavor structure.
Following this constraint we then find a new kind of the charged lepton mass
matrix. The feature of the structure is that both the elements between the 2-3
and 1-3 generations are ``lopsided''. This structure produces a very small 1-3
mixing and a large 1-2 mixing in the charged lepton sector, which naturally
leads to small and the LMA solution for the solar neutrino
problem.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure
Inflation Physics from the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure
Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of CMB and large-scale structure (LSS) experiments are poised to test the leading paradigm for these earliest moments---the theory of cosmic inflation---and to detect the imprints of the inflationary epoch, thereby dramatically increasing our understanding of fundamental physics and the early universe. A future CMB experiment with sufficient angular resolution and frequency coverage that surveys at least 1 of the sky to a depth of 1 uK-arcmin can deliver a constraint on the tensor-to-scalar ratio that will either result in a 5-sigma measurement of the energy scale of inflation or rule out all large-field inflation models, even in the presence of foregrounds and the gravitational lensing B-mode signal. LSS experiments, particularly spectroscopic surveys such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, will complement the CMB effort by improving current constraints on running of the spectral index by up to a factor of four, improving constraints on curvature by a factor of ten, and providing non-Gaussianity constraints that are competitive with the current CMB bounds
Genome sequence and effectorome of Moniliophthora perniciosa and Moniliophthora roreri subpopulations
Background: The hemibiotrophic pathogens Moniliophthora perniciosa (witches' broom disease) and Moniliophthora roreri (frosty pod rot disease) are among the most important pathogens of cacao. Moniliophthora perniciosa has a broad host range and infects a variety of meristematic tissues in cacao plants, whereas M. roreri infects only pods of Theobroma and Herrania genera. Comparative pathogenomics of these fungi is essential to understand Moniliophthora infection strategies, therefore the detection and in silico functional characterization of effector candidates are important steps to gain insight on their pathogenicity. Results: Candidate secreted effector proteins repertoire were predicted using the genomes of five representative isolates of M. perniciosa subpopulations (three from cacao and two from solanaceous hosts), and one representative isolate of M. roreri from Peru. Many putative effectors candidates were identified in M. perniciosa: 157 and 134 in cacao isolates from Bahia, Brazil; 109 in cacao isolate from Ecuador, 92 and 80 in wild solanaceous isolates from Minas Gerais (Lobeira) and Bahia (Caiçara), Brazil; respectively. Moniliophthora roreri showed the highest number of effector candidates, a total of 243. A set of eight core effectors were shared among all Moniliophthora isolates, while others were shared either between the wild solanaceous isolates or among cacao isolates. Mostly, candidate effectors of M. perniciosa were shared among the isolates, whereas in M. roreri nearly 50% were exclusive to the specie. In addition, a large number of cell wall-degrading enzymes characteristic of hemibiotrophic fungi were found. From these, we highlighted the proteins involved in cell wall modification, an enzymatic arsenal that allows the plant pathogens to inhabit environments with oxidative stress, which promotes degradation of plant compounds and facilitates infection. Conclusions: The present work reports six genomes and provides a database of the putative effectorome of Moniliophthora, a first step towards the understanding of the functional basis of fungal pathogenicity. © 2018 The Author(s).This work was done in the frame of the International Consortium in Advanced Biology (CIBA; https://www.ciba-network.org). The authors thank the Molecular Plant Pathology Laboratory and the Plant Pathology Laboratory at INIAP personnel for their assistance in obtaining the DNAs, Dr Carmen Suarez Capello for her kind assistance in Ecuador, and the Núcleo de Biologia Computacional e Gestão de Informações Biotecnológicas - UESC (NBCGIB), and Copenhague University for providing bioinformatics facility. Data sets were processed in sagarana HPC cluster, CPAD-ICB-UFMG. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Claudia Fortes Ferreira (Embrapa CNPMF, Brazil) and Dr. Raul Renné Valle (CEPLAC/CEPEC, Brazil) for English language revision. We are also grateful to Ivanna Michelle Meraz Pérez for helping translating an early version of this manuscript and to the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments to our work. KPG, FM and CPP were supported by research fellowship Pq-1 from CNPq.
National Council for Scientific Development (CNPq) n° 311759/2014–9. CSB acknowledges FAPESB (Foundation for Research Support of the State of Bahia) for supporting her with a research assistantship during her Master’s Programme
Evidence of Color Coherence Effects in W+jets Events from ppbar Collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV
We report the results of a study of color coherence effects in ppbar
collisions based on data collected by the D0 detector during the 1994-1995 run
of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, at a center of mass energy sqrt(s) = 1.8
TeV. Initial-to-final state color interference effects are studied by examining
particle distribution patterns in events with a W boson and at least one jet.
The data are compared to Monte Carlo simulations with different color coherence
implementations and to an analytic modified-leading-logarithm perturbative
calculation based on the local parton-hadron duality hypothesis.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Physics Letters
Anisotropy studies around the galactic centre at EeV energies with the Auger Observatory
Data from the Pierre Auger Observatory are analyzed to search for
anisotropies near the direction of the Galactic Centre at EeV energies. The
exposure of the surface array in this part of the sky is already significantly
larger than that of the fore-runner experiments. Our results do not support
previous findings of localized excesses in the AGASA and SUGAR data. We set an
upper bound on a point-like flux of cosmic rays arriving from the Galactic
Centre which excludes several scenarios predicting sources of EeV neutrons from
Sagittarius . Also the events detected simultaneously by the surface and
fluorescence detectors (the `hybrid' data set), which have better pointing
accuracy but are less numerous than those of the surface array alone, do not
show any significant localized excess from this direction.Comment: Matches published versio
Update on the correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic matter
Data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory through 31 August 2007 showed
evidence for anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above the
Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min energy threshold, \nobreak{eV}. The
anisotropy was measured by the fraction of arrival directions that are less
than from the position of an active galactic nucleus within 75 Mpc
(using the V\'eron-Cetty and V\'eron catalog). An updated
measurement of this fraction is reported here using the arrival directions of
cosmic rays recorded above the same energy threshold through 31 December 2009.
The number of arrival directions has increased from 27 to 69, allowing a more
precise measurement. The correlating fraction is , compared
with expected for isotropic cosmic rays. This is down from the early
estimate of . The enlarged set of arrival directions is
examined also in relation to other populations of nearby extragalactic objects:
galaxies in the 2 Microns All Sky Survey and active galactic nuclei detected in
hard X-rays by the Swift Burst Alert Telescope. A celestial region around the
position of the radiogalaxy Cen A has the largest excess of arrival directions
relative to isotropic expectations. The 2-point autocorrelation function is
shown for the enlarged set of arrival directions and compared to the isotropic
expectation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics on 31 August 201
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