Rayleigh-Taylor instability and mushroom-pattern formation in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate

The Rayleigh-Taylor instability at the interface in an immiscible two-component Bose-Einstein condensate is investigated using the mean-field and Bogoliubov theories. Rayleigh-Taylor fingers are found to grow from the interface and mushroom patterns are formed. Quantized vortex rings and vortex lines are then generated around the mushrooms. The Rayleigh-Taylor instability and mushroom-pattern formation can be observed in a trapped system.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Differential gene expression profiles in neurons generated from lymphoblastoid B-cell line-derived iPS cells from monozygotic twin cases with treatment-resistant schizophrenia and discordant responses to clozapine

Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric disorder with complex genetic and environmental origins. While many antipsychotics have been demonstrated as effective in the treatment of schizophrenia, a substantial number of schizophrenia patients are partially or fully unresponsive to the treatment. Clozapine is the most effective antipsychotic drug for treatment-resistant schizophrenia; however, clozapine has rare but serious side-effects. Furthermore, there is inter-individual variability in the drug response to clozapine treatment. Therefore, the identification of the molecular mechanisms underlying the action of clozapine and drug response predictors is imperative. In the present study, we focused on a pair of monozygotic twin cases with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, in which one twin responded well to clozapine treatment and the other twin did not. Using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell-based technology, we generated neurons from iPS cells derived from these patients and subsequently performed RNA-sequencing to compare the transcriptome profiles of the mock or clozapine-treated neurons. Although, these iPS cells similarly differentiated into neurons, several genes encoding homophilic cell adhesion molecules, such as protocadherin genes, showed differential expression patterns between these two patients. These results, which contribute to the current understanding of the molecular mechanisms of clozapine action, establish a new strategy for the use of monozygotic twin studies in schizophrenia research

A Genome-Wide Association Study Identified AFF1 as a Susceptibility Locus for Systemic Lupus Eyrthematosus in Japanese

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that causes multiple organ damage. Although recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have contributed to discovery of SLE susceptibility genes, few studies has been performed in Asian populations. Here, we report a GWAS for SLE examining 891 SLE cases and 3,384 controls and multi-stage replication studies examining 1,387 SLE cases and 28,564 controls in Japanese subjects. Considering that expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) have been implicated in genetic risks for autoimmune diseases, we integrated an eQTL study into the results of the GWAS. We observed enrichments of cis-eQTL positive loci among the known SLE susceptibility loci (30.8%) compared to the genome-wide SNPs (6.9%). In addition, we identified a novel association of a variant in the AF4/FMR2 family, member 1 (AFF1) gene at 4q21 with SLE susceptibility (rs340630; P = 8.3×10−9, odds ratio = 1.21). The risk A allele of rs340630 demonstrated a cis-eQTL effect on the AFF1 transcript with enhanced expression levels (P<0.05). As AFF1 transcripts were prominently expressed in CD4+ and CD19+ peripheral blood lymphocytes, up-regulation of AFF1 may cause the abnormality in these lymphocytes, leading to disease onset

Primary soot particle distributions in a combustion field of 4 kW pulverized coal jet burner measured by time resolved laser induced incandescence (TiRe-LII)

To develop accurate models for the numerical simulation of coal combustion field, detailed experimental data using laser techniques, which can figure out the basic phenomena in a coal flame, are necessary. In particular, soot is one of the important intermediate substances in a coal flame. This paper is the first paper in the world reporting soot particle size distributions in a coal flame. The spatial distribution of the primary soot particle diameter were measured by the combination of the time-resolved laser induced incandescence (TiRe-LII) method and the thermophoretic sampling (TS) method. The primary soot particle diameter distribution was expressed by the log normal function based on the particle diameter measurement using SEM images obtained from the TS samples. The relative function between the signal decay ratio obtained by TiRe-LII and the primary soot particle diameter was defined based on the log normal function. Using the relative function, the spatial distributions of the primary soot particle diameter with the soot volume fraction were obtained. The results show that the small isolated soot regions instantaneously exist in the entire combustion field. This characteristics is different from spray combustion field. From the ensemble-averaged TiRe-LII images, it was found that the soot volume fraction and the primary soot particle diameter increases with increasing the height above the burner in any radial distance. It was also found that the volumetric ratio of small particles decreases with increasing radial distance at the region close to the burner exit. However, the variation of the soot particle diameter distribution along the radial direction becomes small in the downstream region. This tendency is caused by the turbulent mixing effect. It is expected that the accurate soot formation model will be developed in the near future by using the data reported in this paper