616 research outputs found
Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of A Rotating Massive Star Collapsing to A Black Hole
We perform two-dimensional, axisymmetric, magnetohydrodynamic simulations of
the collapse of a rotating star of 40 Msun and in the light of the collapsar
model of gamma-ray burst. Considering two distributions of angular momentum, up
to \sim 10^{17} cm^2/s, and the uniform vertical magnetic field, we investigate
the formation of an accretion disk around a black hole and the jet production
near the hole. After material reaches to the black hole with the high angular
momentum, the disk is formed inside a surface of weak shock. The disk becomes
in a quasi-steady state for stars whose magnetic field is less than 10^{10} G
before the collapse. We find that the jet can be driven by the magnetic fields
even if the central core does not rotate as rapidly as previously assumed and
outer layers of the star has sufficiently high angular momentum. The magnetic
fields are chiefly amplified inside the disk due to the compression and the
wrapping of the field. The fields inside the disk propagate to the polar region
along the inner boundary near the black hole through the Alfv{\'e}n wave, and
eventually drive the jet. The quasi-steady disk is not an advection-dominated
disk but a neutrino cooling-dominated one. Mass accretion rates in the disks
are greater than 0.01 Msun/sec with large fluctuations. The disk is transparent
for neutrinos. The dense part of the disk, which locates near the hole, emits
neutrino efficiently at a constant rate of < 8 \times 10^{51} erg/s. The
neutrino luminosity is much smaller than those from supernovae after the
neutrino burst.Comment: 42 pages, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. A
paper with higher-resolution figures available at
http://www.ec.knct.ac.jp/~fujimoto/collapsar/mhd-color.pd
Light Curves and Event Rates of Axion Instability Supernovae
It was recently proposed that exotic particles can trigger a new stellar
instability which is analogous to the e-e+ pair instability if they are
produced and reach equilibrium in the stellar plasma. In this study, we
construct axion instability supernova (AISN) models caused by the new
instability to predict their observational signatures. We focus on heavy
axion-like particles (ALPs) with masses of ~400 keV--2 MeV and coupling with
photons of g_{ag}~10^{-5} GeV^{-1}. It is found that the 56Ni mass and the
explosion energy are significantly increased by ALPs for a fixed stellar mass.
As a result, the peak times of the light curves of AISNe occur earlier than
those of standard pair-instability supernovae by 10--20 days when the ALP mass
is equal to the electron mass. Also, the event rate of AISNe is 1.7--2.6 times
higher than that of pair-instability supernovae, depending on the high mass
cutoff of the initial mass function.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, submitted to Ap
Equilibrium Configurations of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars with Realistic Equations of State
We investigate equilibrium sequences of magnetized rotating stars with four
kinds of realistic equations of state (EOSs) of SLy (Douchin et al.), FPS
(Pandharipande et al.), Shen (Shen et al.), and LS (Lattimer & Swesty).
Employing the Tomimura-Eriguchi scheme to construct the equilibrium
configurations. we study the basic physical properties of the sequences in the
framework of Newton gravity. In addition we newly take into account a general
relativistic effect to the magnetized rotating configurations. With these
computations, we find that the properties of the Newtonian magnetized stars,
e.g., structure of magnetic field, highly depends on the EOSs.
The toroidal magnetic fields concentrate rather near the surface for Shen and
LS EOSs than those for SLy and FPS EOSs. The poloidal fields are also affected
by the toroidal configurations. Paying attention to the stiffness of the EOSs,
we analyze this tendency in detail. In the general relativistic stars, we find
that the difference due to the EOSs becomes small because all the employed EOSs
become sufficiently stiff for the large maximum density, typically greater than
. The maximum baryon mass of the magnetized stars
with axis ratio increases about up to twenty percents for that of
spherical stars. We furthermore compute equilibrium sequences at finite
temperature, which should serve as an initial condition for the hydrodynamic
study of newly-born magnetars. Our results suggest that we may obtain
information about the EOSs from the observation of the masses of magnetars.Comment: submitted to MNRA
A Synthetic Glycan Microarray Enables Epitope Mapping of Plant Cell Wall Glycan-Directed Antibodies
In the last three decades, more than 200 monoclonal antibodies have been raised against most classes of plant cell wall polysaccharides by different laboratories worldwide. These antibodies are widely used to identify differences in plant cell wall components in mutants, organ and tissue types, and developmental stages. Despite their importance and broad use, the precise binding epitope has been determined for only a few of these antibodies. Here, we use a plant glycan microarray equipped with 88 synthetic oligosaccharides to comprehensively map the epitopes of plant cell wall glycan-directed antibodies. Our results reveal the binding epitopes for 78 arabinogalactan-, rhamnogalacturonan-, xylan-, and xyloglucan-directed antibodies. We demonstrate that, with knowledge of the exact epitopes recognized by individual antibodies, specific glycosyl hydrolases can be implemented into immunological cell wall analyses, providing a framework to obtain structural information on plant cell wall glycans with unprecedented molecular precision
The Amelioration of Renal Damage in Skp2-Deficient Mice Canceled by p27 Kip1 Deficiency in Skp2â/â p27â/â Mice
SCF-Skp2 E3 ubiquitin ligase (Skp2 hereafter) targets several cell cycle regulatory proteins for degradation via the ubiquitin-dependent pathway. However, the target-specific physiological functions of Skp2 have not been fully elucidated in kidney diseases. We previously reported an increase in Skp2 in progressive nephropathy and amelioration of unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) renal injury associated with renal accumulation of p27 in Skp2â/â mice. However, it remains unclear whether the amelioration of renal injury in Skp2â/â mice is solely caused by p27 accumulation, since Skp2 targets several other proteins. Using Skp2â/âp27â/â mice, we investigated whether Skp2 specifically targets p27 in the progressive nephropathy mediated by UUO. In contrast to the marked suppression of UUO renal injury in Skp2â/â mice, progression of tubular dilatation associated with tubular epithelial cell proliferation and tubulointerstitial fibrosis with increased expression of collagen and α-smooth muscle actin were observed in the obstructed kidneys in Skp2â/âp27â/â mice. No significant increases in other Skp2 target proteins including p57, p130, TOB1, cyclin A and cyclin D1 were noted in the UUO kidney in Skp2â/â mice, while p21, c-Myc, b-Myb and cyclin E were slightly increased. Contrary to the ameliorated UUO renal injure by Skp2-deficiency, the amelioration was canceled by the additional p27-deficiency in Skp2â/âp27â/â mice. These findings suggest a pathogenic role of the reduction in p27 targeted by Skp2 in the progression of nephropathy in UUO mice
Telomerase inhibition, Telomere attrition and proliferation arrest of cancer cells induced by Phosphorothioate ASO-NLS conjugates targeting hTERC and siRNAs targeting hTERT
Telomerase activity has been regarded as a critical step in cellular immortalization and carcinogenesis and because of this, regulation of telomerase represents an attractive target for anti-tumor specific therapeutics. Recently, one avenue of cancer research focuses on antisense strategy to target the oncogenes or cancer driver genes, in a sequence specific fashion to down-regulate the expression of the target gene. The protein catalytic subunit, human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and the template RNA component (hTERC) are essential for telomerase function, thus theoretically, inhibition of telomerase activity can be achieved by interfering with either the gene expression of hTERT or the hTERC of the telomerase enzymatic complex. The present study showed that phosphorothioate antisense oligonucleotide (sASO)-nuclear localization signal (NLS) peptide conjugates targeting hTERC could inhibit telomerase activity very efficiently at 5âÎŒM concentration but less efficiently at 1âÎŒM concentration. On the other hand, siRNA targeting hTERT mRNA could strongly suppress hTERT expression at 200ânM concentration. It was also revealed that siRNA targeting hTERT could induce telomere attrition and then irreversible arrest of proliferation of cancer cells
Searching for prompt signatures of nearby core-collapse supernovae by a joint analysis of neutrino and gravitational-wave data
We discuss the science motivations and prospects for a joint analysis of
gravitational-wave (GW) and low-energy neutrino data to search for prompt
signals from nearby supernovae (SNe). Both gravitational-wave and low-energy
neutrinos are expected to be produced in the innermost region of a
core-collapse supernova, and a search for coincident signals would probe the
processes which power a supernova explosion. It is estimated that the current
generation of neutrino and gravitational-wave detectors would be sensitive to
Galactic core-collapse supernovae, and would also be able to detect
electromagnetically dark SNe. A joint GW-neutrino search would enable
improvements to searches by way of lower detection thresholds, larger distance
range, better live-time coverage by a network of GW and neutrino detectors, and
increased significance of candidate detections. A close collaboration between
the GW and neutrino communities for such a search will thus go far toward
realizing a much sought-after astrophysics goal of detecting the next nearby
supernova.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. To appear in Class. Quantum Gra
Damping of supernova neutrino transitions in stochastic shock-wave density profiles
Supernova neutrino flavor transitions during the shock wave propagation are
known to encode relevant information not only about the matter density profile
but also about unknown neutrino properties, such as the mass hierarchy (normal
or inverted) and the mixing angle theta_13. While previous studies have
focussed on "deterministic" density profiles, we investigate the effect of
possible stochastic matter density fluctuations in the wake of supernova shock
waves. In particular, we study the impact of small-scale fluctuations on the
electron (anti)neutrino survival probability, and on the observable spectra of
inverse-beta-decay events in future water-Cherenkov detectors. We find that
such fluctuations, even with relatively small amplitudes, can have significant
damping effects on the flavor transition pattern, and can partly erase the
shock-wave imprint on the observable time spectra, especially for
sin^2(theta_13) > O(10^-3).Comment: v2 (23 pages, including 6 eps figures). Typos removed, references
updated, matches the published versio
Gravitational Waves from Gravitational Collapse
Gravitational wave emission from the gravitational collapse of massive stars
has been studied for more than three decades. Current state of the art
numerical investigations of collapse include those that use progenitors with
realistic angular momentum profiles, properly treat microphysics issues,
account for general relativity, and examine non--axisymmetric effects in three
dimensions. Such simulations predict that gravitational waves from various
phenomena associated with gravitational collapse could be detectable with
advanced ground--based and future space--based interferometric observatories.Comment: 68 pages including 13 figures; revised version accepted for
publication in Living Reviews in Relativity (http://www.livingreviews.org
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