2,401 research outputs found
Equilibrium currents in a Corbino graphene ring
We address the description of a graphene Corbino disk in the context of a
tight binding approach that includes both kinetic and Rashba spin-orbit
coupling due to an external out-of-plane electric field. Persistent equilibrium
currents are induced by an external magnetic field breaking time reversal
symmetry. By direct diagonalization, we compute the spectrum and focus on the
dispersion near the points at the Fermi level. The dispersion keenly
reproduces that of a continuum model in spite of the complexity of the boundary
conditions. We validate the assumptions of the continuum model in terms of
predominant zig-zag boundaries conditions and weak sub-band coupling. The wave
functions displaying the lowest transverse modes are obtained, showing the
predominance of edge states with charge density at the zig-zag edges. The
persistent charge currents, nevertheless, do not follow the traditional
argument of current cancellation from levels below the Fermi level, and thus
they depart in the tight-binding from those found in the continuum model.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Network perspective of histamine related diseases
Histamine is the most pleiotropic biogenic amine. Produced and stored by a limited set of cells—histaminergic neurons, enterochromaffin-like cells, and mast cells—it broadcasts intercellular communication signals to a wide variety of cell types through its tissue-specific receptors.
The many molecular interactions of these receptors and other mediators result in complex cellular networks whose alteration result in disease. Therefore, complex diseases map to modules of these cellular networks in the diseasomes.
In this communication, we survey the histamine cellular networks to map the histamine diseasome, presenting a network view of the pleiotropy of histamine and its role in several complex diseases.A.A. Moya is a CIBERER fellow. The "CIBER de Enfermedades Raras" is an initiative from the ISCIII (Spain)]. This communication has the support of a travel grant "Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech"
Two electron entanglement enhancement by an inelastic scattering process
In order to assess inelastic effects on two fermion entanglement production,
we address an exactly solvable two-particle scattering problem where the target
is an excitable scatterer. Useful entanglement, as measured by the two particle
concurrence, is obtained from post-selection of oppositely scattered particle
states. The matrix formalism is generalized in order to address non-unitary
evolution in the propagating channels. We find the striking result that
inelasticity can actually increase concurrence as compared to the elastic case
by increasing the uncertainty of the single particle subspace. Concurrence
zeros are controlled by either single particle resonance energies or total
reflection conditions that ascertain precisely one of the electron states.
Concurrence minima also occur and are controlled by entangled resonance
situations were the electron becomes entangled with the scatterer, and thus
does not give up full information of its state. In this model, exciting the
scatterer can never fully destroy phase coherence due to an intrinsic limit to
the probability of inelastic events.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev
Spin superfluidity and spin-orbit gauge symmetry fixing
The Hamiltonian describing 2D electron gas, in a spin-orbit active medium,
can be cast into a consistent non-Abelian gauge field theory leading to a
proper definition of the spin current. The generally advocated gauge symmetric
version of the theory results in current densities that are gauge covariant, a
fact that poses severe concerns on their physical nature. We show that in fact
the problem demands gauge fixing, leaving no room to ambiguity in the
definition of physical spin currents. Gauge fixing also allows for polarized
edge excitations not present in the gauge symmetric case. The scenario here is
analogous to that of superconductivity gauge theory. We develop a variational
formulation that accounts for the constraints between U(1) physical fields and
SU(2) gauge fields and show that gauge fixing renders a physical matter and
radiation currents and derive the particular consequences for the Rashba SO
interaction.Comment: to appear in EP
Chiral molecular films as electron polarizers and polarization modulators
Recent experiments on electron scattering through molecular films have shown
that chiral molecules can be efficient sources of polarized electrons even in
the absence of heavy nuclei as source of a strong spin-orbit interaction. We
show that self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of chiral molecules are strong
electron polarizers due to the high density effect of the monolayers and
explicitly compute the scattering amplitude off a helical molecular model of
carbon atoms. Longitudinal polarization is shown to be the signature of chiral
scattering. For elastic scattering, we find that at least double scattering
events must take place for longitudinal polarization to arise. We predict
energy windows for strong polarization, determined by the energy dependences of
spin-orbit strength and multiple scattering probability. An incoherent
mechanism for polarization amplification is proposed, that increases the
polarization linearly with the number of helix turns, consistent with recent
experiments on DNA SAMs.Comment: 5 Pages, 4 figure
High resistance against clindamycin, metronidazole and amoxicillin in Porphyromonas gingivalis and Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans isolates of periodontal disease
Objectives: To test the antimicrobial sensitivity of two periodontal pathogens to a panel of five orally administrable antibiotics in periodontal disease. Study design: A total of 69 isolates of Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans and Porphyromonas gingivalis were processed using culture and biochemical tests. Selected colonies of A. actinomycetemcomitans and P. gingivalis were used to evaluate the antibacterial activity of clindamycin, metronidazole, amoxicillin, moxifloxacin and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid. Results: Susceptibility testing revealed a sensitivity of 100% of A. actinomycetemcomitans and P. gingivalis to moxifloxacin and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid but moderate susceptibilities were found for the rest of antibiotics agents evaluated. Conclusions: The widespread use of antibiotics is reflected in the level of resistance of A. actinomycetemcomitans and P. gingivalis in patients with periodontal infections. This suggests that antibiotic susceptibility testing is necessary to determine efficacy of antimicrobial agents. Clinical studies with antibiotics should take these differences into account
Mesoscopic rings with Spin-Orbit interactions
A didactic description of charge and spin equilibrium currents on mesoscopic
rings in the presence of Spin-Orbit interaction is presented. Emphasis is made
on the non trivial construction of the correct Hamiltonian in polar
coordinates, the calculation of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions and the
symmetries of the ground state properties. Spin currents are derived following
an intuitive definition and then a more thorough derivation is built upon the
canonical Lagrangian formulation that emphasizes the SU(2) gauge structure of
the transport problem of spin 1/2 fermions in spin-orbit active media. The
quantization conditions that follow from the constraint of single-valued Pauli
spinors are also discussed. The targeted students are those of a graduate
Condensed Matter Physics course
Supply chain integration scales validation and benchmark values
Purpose: The clarification of the constructs of the supply chain integration (clients, suppliers, external and internal), the creation of a measurement instrument based on a list of items taken from earlier papers, the validation of these scales and a preliminary benchmark to interpret the scales by percentiles based on a set of control variables (size of the plant, country, sector and degree of vertical integration).
Design/methodology/approach: Our empirical analysis is based on the HPM project database (2005-2007 timeframe). The international sample is made up of 266 plants across ten countries: Austria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, Sweden and the USA. In each country. We analized the descriptive statistics, internal consistency testing to purify the items (inter-item correlations, Cronbach’s alpha, squared multiple correlation, corrected item-total correlation), exploratory factor analysis, and finally, a confirmatory factor analysis to check the convergent and discriminant validity of the scales. The analyses will be done with the SPSS and EQS programme using the maximum likelihood parameter estimation method.
Findings: The four proposed scales show excellent psychometric properties.
Research limitations/implications: with a clearer and more concise designation of the supply chain integration measurement scales more reliable and accurate data could be taken to analyse the relations between these constructs with other variables of interest to the academic l fields.
Practical implications: providing scales that are valid as a diagnostic tool for best practices, as well as providing a benchmark with which to compare the score for each individual plant against a collection of industrial companies from the machinery, electronics and transportation sectors.
Originality/value: supply chain integration may be a major factor in explaining the performance of companies. The results are nevertheless inconclusive, the vast range of results obtained are due, amongst other things, to the fact that there is no exactness to the group of scales used, no-one has yet published an analysis of the measurement models nor clear benchmarks as to the variety of the scales used.Peer Reviewe
Survival of foodborne pathogens in natural cracked olive brines
This work reports the survival (challenge tests) of foodborne pathogen species (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella enterica) in Aloreña de Málaga table olive brines. The inhibitions were fit using a log-linear model with tail implemented in GInaFIT excel software. The olive brine had a considerable inhibitory effect on the pathogens. The residual (final) populations (Fp) after 24 h was below detection limit (<1.30 log cfu/mL) for all species assayed. The maximum death rate (k) was 9.98, 51.37, 38.35 and 53.01 h, while the time for 4 log reductions (4D) was 0.96, 0.36, 0.36 and 0.24 h for E. coli, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and S. enterica, respectively. Brine dilutions increased Fp and 4Dr, while decreased k. A cluster analysis showed that E. coli had an overall quite different behaviour being the most resistant species, but the others bacteria behaved similarly, especially S. aureus and S. enterica. Partial Least Squares regression showed that the most influential phenols on microbial survival were EDA (dialdehydic form of decarboxymethyl elenolic acid), HyEDA (EDA linked to hydroxytyrosol), hydroxytyrosol 4-glucoside, tyrosol, and oleoside 11-methyl ester. Results confirm the adverse habitats of table olives for foodborne pathogenic microorganisms.The research leading to these results has received funding from the Junta de Andalucía through PrediAlo Project (AGR7755: www.predialo.science.com.es) and FEDER European funds. Thanks to Copusan S.C.A (Alozaina, Málaga, Spain) for supplying the fruits and facilities for the development of experiments. FNAL wishes to thank the Spanish Government and CSIC for his Ramón y Cajal postdoctoral research contract, while VRG thanks the AgriFood Campus of International Excellence (ceiA3), Bank of Santander, Spanish Government and ‘Aloreña de Málaga’ Olive Manufacturing Association, for her pre-doctoral fellowship (training program of Ph.D. in companies). Authors also express their gratitude to F. Rodríguez-Gómez, M. Brenes, and C. Romero from Instituto de la Grasa (CSIC, Seville) for their invaluable help during HPLC analyses.Peer Reviewe
Systematic identification of phenotypically enriched loci using a patient network of genomic disorders
Background
Network medicine is a promising new discipline that combines systems biology approaches and network science to understand the complexity of pathological phenotypes. Given the growing availability of personalized genomic and phenotypic profiles, network models offer a robust integrative framework for the analysis of "omics" data, allowing the characterization of the molecular aetiology of pathological processes underpinning genetic diseases.
Methods
Here we make use of patient genomic data to exploit different network-based analyses to study genetic and phenotypic relationships between individuals. For this method, we analyzed a dataset of structural variants and phenotypes for 6,564 patients from the DECIPHER database, which encompasses one of the most comprehensive collections of pathogenic Copy Number Variations (CNVs) and their associated ontology-controlled phenotypes. We developed a computational strategy that identifies clusters of patients in a synthetic patient network according to their genetic overlap and phenotype enrichments.
Results
Many of these clusters of patients represent new genotype-phenotype associations, suggesting the identification of newly discovered phenotypically enriched loci (indicative of potential novel syndromes) that are currently absent from reference genomic disorder databases such as ClinVar, OMIM or DECIPHER itself.
Conclusions
We provide a high-resolution map of pathogenic phenotypes associated with their respective significant genomic regions and a new powerful tool for diagnosis of currently uncharacterized mutations leading to deleterious phenotypes and syndromes
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