8,702 research outputs found
Antidepressant drugs and the response in the placebo group: the real problem lies in our understanding of the issue
In a recent paper, Horder and colleagues (Horder et al., 2010, J Psychopharmacol 25: 1277–1288) have suggested that the mainproblem in the Kirsch analysis is methodological. We argue that the results are similar irrespective of the method used. In our opinion the data suggest that placebo and drug effects are non-additive: antidepressants act independently of depression severity, while the placebo effect is present only in milder cases. While the response in the placebo group is due to unstable ‘noise’ and ‘artefacts’, the medication effect is reliable, valid and stable
From Poincare to affine invariance: How does the Dirac equation generalize?
A generalization of the Dirac equation to the case of affine symmetry, with
SL(4,R) replacing SO(1,3), is considered. A detailed analysis of a Dirac-type
Poincare-covariant equation for any spin j is carried out, and the related
general interlocking scheme fulfilling all physical requirements is
established. Embedding of the corresponding Lorentz fields into
infinite-component SL(4,R) fermionic fields, the constraints on the SL(4,R)
vector-operator generalizing Dirac's gamma matrices, as well as the minimal
coupling to (Metric-)Affine gravity are studied. Finally, a symmetry breaking
scenario for SA(4,R) is presented which preserves the Poincare symmetry.Comment: 34 pages, LaTeX2e, 8 figures, revised introduction, typos correcte
Inverse Scattering for Gratings and Wave Guides
We consider the problem of unique identification of dielectric coefficients
for gratings and sound speeds for wave guides from scattering data. We prove
that the "propagating modes" given for all frequencies uniquely determine these
coefficients. The gratings may contain conductors as well as dielectrics and
the boundaries of the conductors are also determined by the propagating modes.Comment: 12 page
Melanoma-associated adhesion molecule MUC18/MCAM (CD146) and transcriptional regulator Mader in normal human CNS
The proteins MUC18 and Mader have been identified as markers of tumor progression in melanoma cells, MUC18, also known as MCAM (melanoma cell adhesion molecule) and as CD146 (endothelial antigen), is a cell adhesion molecule belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily, Mader is a transcriptional regulator shown to negatively regulate EGR-1. As it is known that neoplastic cells of neuroectodermal origin frequently express neuron-specific molecules, we studied whether these melanoma-associated antigens are found in normal CNS tissue. We investigated the expression of MUC18/MCAM and Mader in adult human post mortem CNS tissue by immunohistochemistry, immunoblot and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Our results show that Mader is preferentially expressed on neurons and glial cells and that the adhesion protein MUC18/MCAM is mainly expressed on vasculature within the CNS. These observations may have important implications for further studies investigating their possible roles in cell adhesion and proliferation control within the CNS
Wetting and particle adsorption in nanoflows
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the behavior of
closely-fitting spherical and ellipsoidal particles moving through a
fluid-filled cylinder at nanometer scales. The particle, the cylinder wall and
the fluid solvent are all treated as atomic systems, and special attention is
given to the effects of varying the wetting properties of the fluid. Although
the modification of the solid-fluid interaction leads to significant changes in
the microstructure of the fluid, its transport properties are found to be the
same as in bulk. Independently of the shape and relative size of the particle,
we find two distinct regimes as a function of the degree of wetting, with a
sharp transition between them. In the case of a highly-wetting suspending
fluid, the particle moves through the cylinder with an average axial velocity
in agreement with that obtained from the solution of the continuum Stokes
equations. In contrast, in the case of less-wetting fluids, only the early-time
motion of the particle is consistent with continuum dynamics. At later times,
the particle is eventually adsorbed onto the wall and subsequently executes an
intermittent stick-slip motion.We show that van der Walls forces are the
dominant contribution to the particle adsorption phenomenon and that depletion
forces are weak enough to allow, in the highly-wetting situation, an initially
adsorbed particle to spontaneously desorb
The weak localization for the alloy-type Anderson model on a cubic lattice
We consider alloy type random Schr\"odinger operators on a cubic lattice
whose randomness is generated by the sign-indefinite single-site potential. We
derive Anderson localization for this class of models in the Lifshitz tails
regime, i.e. when the coupling parameter is small, for the energies
.Comment: 45 pages, 2 figures. To appear in J. Stat. Phy
Spectra of Discrete Schr\"odinger Operators with Primitive Invertible Substitution Potentials
We study the spectral properties of discrete Schr\"odinger operators with
potentials given by primitive invertible substitution sequences (or by Sturmian
sequences whose rotation angle has an eventually periodic continued fraction
expansion, a strictly larger class than primitive invertible substitution
sequences). It is known that operators from this family have spectra which are
Cantor sets of zero Lebesgue measure. We show that the Hausdorff dimension of
this set tends to as coupling constant tends to . Moreover, we
also show that at small coupling constant, all gaps allowed by the gap labeling
theorem are open and furthermore open linearly with respect to .
Additionally, we show that, in the small coupling regime, the density of states
measure for an operator in this family is exact dimensional. The dimension of
the density of states measure is strictly smaller than the Hausdorff dimension
of the spectrum and tends to as tends to
Intense emission of cluster anions from gold targets under impact of keV/u gold clusters
CAS, BIASPas de résum
Activation dependent clustering of the erbB2 receptor tyrosine kinase detected by scanning near-field optical microscopy
ErbB2 (HER2, Neu), a member of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor tyrosine kinase family, is often overexpressed in breast cancer and other malignancies, ErbB2 homodimerizes but also presents as a common auxiliary subunit of the EGF and heregulin receptors (erbB1 or EGFR; and erbB3-4, respectively), with which it heteroassociates, ErbB2 is generally regarded as an orphan (ligand-less) receptor with a very potent kinase domain activated either via its associated partners or constitutively as a consequence of discrete mutations. It follows that the extent and regulation of its cell surface interactions are of central importance. We have studied the large-scale association pattern of erbB2 in quiescent and activated cells labeled with fluorescent anti-erbB2 monoclonal antibodies using scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM), ErbB2 was found to be concentrated in irregular membrane patches with a mean diameter of approx. 0.5 mu m in nonactivated SKBR3 and MDA453 human breast tumor cells. The average number of erbB2 proteins in a single cluster on nonactivated SKBR3 cells was about 10(3). Activation of SKBR3 cells with EGF, heregulin as well as a partially agonistic anti-erbB2 monoclonal antibody led to an increase in the mean cluster diameter to 0.6-0.9 mu m, irrespective of the ligand, The EGF-induced increase in the erbB2 cluster size was inhibited by the EGFR-specific tyrosine kinase inhibitor PD153035, The average size of erbB2 clusters on the erbB2-transfected line of CHO cells (CB2) was similar to that of activated SKBR3 cells, a finding correlated with the increased base-line tyrosine phosphorylation of erbB2 in cells expressing only erbB2, We conclude that an increase in cluster size may constitute a general phenomenon in the activation of erbB2
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