Generalized Einstein or Green-Kubo relations for active biomolecular transport

For driven Markovian dynamics on a network of (biomolecular) states, the generalized mobilities, i.e., the response of any current to changes in an external parameter, are expressed by an integral over an appropriate current-current correlation function and thus related to the generalized diffusion constants. As only input, a local detailed balance condition is required typically even valid for biomolecular systems operating deep in the non-equilibrium regime.Comment: 4 page

Sublattice Asymmetric Reductions of Spin Values on Stacked Triangular Lattice Antiferromagnet CsCoBr3_3

We study the reductions of spin values of the ground state on a stacked triangular antiferromagnet using the spin-wave approach. We find that the spin reductions have sublattice asymmetry due to the cancellation of the molecular field. The sublattice asymmetry qualitatively analyzes the NMR results of CsCoBr$_3$.Comment: 5pages, 5figure

Social disruption stress exacerbates alpha-galactosylceramide-induced hepatitis in mice

Objective: Psychosocial stress has been suggested as a possible aggravating factor in liver diseases, however, the underlying mechanism has yet to be clarified. Recently, our research revealed that electric foot-shock stress aggravated NK1.1 Ag+ T cell-dependent a-galactosylceramide (alpha-GalCer)-induced hepatitis in mice via a mechanism mediated by endogenous glucocorticoids. In this study, we examined whether or not such aggravation could be applied to a psychosocially stressful situation, e.g. social disruption stress. Methods: Male wildtype C57BL/6 (B6) or B6 hepatitis virus type B surface antigen transgenic (HBs-tg) mice, a hepatitis B virus carrier mouse model, were exposed 3 times in 1 week to social disruption stress in which an 8-month-old aggressive male intruder was placed into their home cage (5 mice per group) for 2 h. Twelve hours after the final exposure to the stress, the wild-type and HBs-tg mice were intravenously injected with alpha-GalCer. Results:The stress-exposed wild-type mice exhibited significantly reduced thymus weight loss compared with the control animals. Moreover, this stress regimen led to a significant increase in serum alanine aminotransferase levels in both the wild-type and the HBs-tg mice, although the increase in the HBs-tg mice was higher than that in the wild-type mice. Conclusion: These findings demonstrated that, similar to electric foot-shock stress, social disruption stress exacerbated alpha-GalCer-induced hepatitis. Copyright (C) 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel

The hepatic sympathetic nerve plays a critical role in preventing Fas induced liver injury in mice

Background: Although previous studies have shown that the hepatic sympathetic nerve controls various physiological functions in the liver, the role of this nerve in liver injury has yet to be clarified.Aims: The purpose of this study was to elucidate the role of this nerve, based on our newly developed technique for selectively removing the activities of the hepatic sympathetic nerve.Subjects and methods: Male C57BL/6 mice were operated on for hepatic sympathetic denervation. Thereafter, mice were intravenously administered 0.25 or 0.35 mg/g weight of the Fas agonist antibody, Jo-2, after which mortality by fulminant hepatitis was evaluated. Apoptosis in the liver was also examined by both terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase mediated dUTP nick end labelling and caspase-3 assay.Results: Mortality in sympathectomised mice was significantly higher than that in sham operated mice following administration of Jo-2. This result was also supported by apoptosis data in which sympathectomised livers exhibited a significant elevation in the number of apoptotic hepatocytes and caspase-3 activity after Jo-2 treatment compared with sham operated livers. Moreover, pretreatment with norepinephrine dose dependently inhibited the hepatic sympathectomy induced increase in mortality after Jo-2 injection. Antiapoptotic protein levels of FLICE inhibitory protein, Bcl-xL, and Bcl-2 in the liver were significantly lower in sympathectomised mice at one and two hours following Jo-2 treatment than in sham operated animals. In addition, interleukin 6 supplementation dose dependently suppressed the hepatic sympathectomy induced increase in mortality after Jo-2 treatment.Conclusions: These results suggest that norepinephrine released from the hepatic sympathetic nerve plays a critical role in protecting the liver from Fas mediated fulminant hepatitis, possibly via mechanisms including antiapoptotic proteins and interleukin 6

Electric foot-shock stress drives TNF-alpha production in the liver of IL-6-deficient mice

Objectives: Accumulating evidence has shown that interleukin-6 (IL-6) has pleiotropic effects on a variety of biological functions, including its antiapoptotic potential during liver injury. Our previous work demonstrated that restraint stress-induced elevation of plasma IL-6 negatively regulates plasma tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha). Herein, we further clarified the mechanism underlying the above finding and investigated the effect of IL-6 on liver apoptosis triggered by stress. Methods: Male C57BL/6J and IL-6-deficient C57BL/SV129 mice were exposed to 1 h of electric foot-shock stress. Thereafter, the serum, liver and spleen TNF-alpha levels were measured at several time points. Serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), liver caspase-3 and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling ( TUNEL) activities were analyzed to evaluate the severity of liver injury and apoptosis. Results: The liver, but not the spleen, of the IL-6-deficient mice exhibited a significant increase in TNF-alpha level after stress in parallel with serum TNF-alpha elevation, whereas no such TNF-alpha responses were found in the wild animals. No significant differences in stress-induced elevation of serum ALT levels, liver caspase-3 activities and the number of TUNEL-positive hepatocytes were found between the wild and IL-6-deficient mice. Conclusions: Taken together, these results indicate that IL-6 may play a critical role in suppressing TNF-alpha production in the liver, thereby decreasing the blood TNF-alpha level. In contrast, IL-6 secretion was shown to have no protective effect on stress-triggered liver injury. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

Carrier States and Ferromagnetism in Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors

Applying the dynamical coherent potential approximation to a simple model, we have systematically studied the carrier states in $A_{1-x}$Mn$_xB$-type diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS's). The model calculation was performed for three typical cases of DMS's: The cases with strong and moderate exchange interactions in the absence of nonmagnetic potentials, and the case with strong attractive nonmagnetic potentials in addition to moderate exchange interaction. When the exchange interaction is sufficiently strong, magnetic impurity bands split from the host band. Carriers in the magnetic impurity band mainly stay at magnetic sites, and coupling between the carrier spin and the localized spin is very strong. The hopping of the carriers among the magnetic sites causes ferromagnetism through a {\it double-exchange (DE)-like} mechanism. We have investigated the condition for the DE-like mechanism to operate in DMS's. The result reveals that the nonmagnetic attractive potential at the magnetic site assists the formation of the magnetic impurity band and makes the DE-like mechanism operative by substantially enhancing the effect of the exchange interaction. Using conventional parameters we have studied the carrier states in Ga$_{1-x}$Mn$_x$As. The result shows that the ferromagnetism is caused through the DE-like mechanism by the carriers in the bandtail originating from the impurity states.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure

Electronic structure and resistivity of the double exchange model

The double exchange (DE) model with quantum local spins S is studied; an equation of motion approach is used and decoupling approximations analogous to Hubbard's are made. Our approximate one-electron Green function G is exact in the atomic limit of zero bandwidth for all S and band filling n, and as n->0 reduces to a dynamical coherent potential approximation (CPA) due to Kubo; we regard our approximation as a many-body generalisation of Kubo's CPA. G is calculated self-consistently for general S in the paramagnetic state and for S=1/2 in a state of arbitrary magnetization. The electronic structure is investigated and four bands per spin are obtained centred on the atomic limit peaks of the spectral function. A resistivity formula appropriate to the model is derived from the Kubo formula and the paramagnetic state resistivity rho is calculated; insulating states are correctly obtained at n=0 and n=1 for strong Hund coupling. Our prediction for rho is much too small to be consistent with experiments on manganites so we agree with Millis et al that the bare DE model is inadequate. We show that the agreement with experiment obtained by Furukawa is due to his use of an unphysical density of states.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, submitted to J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Super and Sub-Poissonian photon statistics for single molecule spectroscopy

We investigate the distribution of the number of photons emitted by a single molecule undergoing a spectral diffusion process and interacting with a continuous wave laser field. The spectral diffusion is modeled based on a stochastic approach, in the spirit of the Anderson-Kubo line shape theory. Using a generating function formalism we solve the generalized optical Bloch equations, and obtain an exact analytical formula for the line shape and Mandel's Q parameter. The line shape exhibits well known behaviors, including motional narrowing when the stochastic modulation is fast, and power broadening. The Mandel parameter, describing the line shape fluctuations, exhibits a transition from a Quantum sub-Poissonian behavior in the fast modulation limit, to a classical super-Poissonian behavior found in the slow modulation limit. Our result is applicable for weak and strong laser field, namely for arbitrary Rabi frequency. We show how to choose the Rabi frequency in such a way that the Quantum sub-Poissonian nature of the emission process becomes strongest. A lower bound on $Q$ is found, and simple limiting behaviors are investigated. A non-trivial behavior is obtained in the intermediate modulation limit, when the time scales for spectral diffusion and the life time of the excited state, become similar. A comparison is made between our results, and previous ones derived based on the semi-classical generalized Wiener--Khintchine theorem.Comment: 14 Phys. Rev style pages, 10 figure

Classical orbital paramagnetism in non-equilibrium steady state

We report the results of our numerical simulation of classical-dissipative dynamics of a charged particle subjected to a non-markovian stochastic forcing. We find that the system develops a steady-state orbital magnetic moment in the presence of a static magnetic field. Very significantly, the sign of the orbital magnetic moment turns out to be {\it paramagnetic} for our choice of parameters, varied over a wide range. This is shown specifically for the case of classical dynamics driven by a Kubo-Anderson type non-markovian noise. Natural spatial boundary condition was imposed through (1) a soft (harmonic) confining potential, and (2) a hard potential, approximating a reflecting wall. There was no noticeable qualitative difference. What appears to be crucial to the orbital magnetic effect noticed here is the non-markovian property of the driving noise chosen. Experimental realization of this effect on the laboratory scale, and its possible implications are briefly discussed. We would like to emphasize that the above steady-state classical orbital paramagnetic moment complements, rather than contradicts the Bohr-van Leeuwen (BvL) theorem on the absence of classical orbital diamagnetism in thermodynamic equilibrium.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Has appeared in Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy special issue on 'Physics of Neutron Stars and Related Objects', celebrating the 75th birth-year of G. Srinivasa

An expression for stationary distribution in nonequilibrium steady state

We study the nonequilibrium steady state realized in a general stochastic system attached to multiple heat baths and/or driven by an external force. Starting from the detailed fluctuation theorem we derive concise and suggestive expressions for the corresponding stationary distribution which are correct up to the second order in thermodynamic forces. The probability of a microstate $\eta$ is proportional to $\exp[{\Phi}(\eta)]$ where ${\Phi}(\eta)=-\sum_k\beta_k\mathcal{E}_k(\eta)$ is the excess entropy change. Here $\mathcal{E}_k(\eta)$ is the difference between two kinds of conditioned path ensemble averages of excess heat transfer from the $k$-th heat bath whose inverse temperature is $\beta_k$. Our expression may be verified experimentally in nonequilibrium states realized, for example, in mesoscopic systems.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure