5,289 research outputs found
Corporate Financing in Great Britain
Background: The antifungal compound ketoconazole has, in addition to its ability to interfere with fungal ergosterol synthesis, effects upon other enzymes including human CYP3A4, CYP17, lipoxygenase and thromboxane synthetase. In the present study, we have investigated whether ketoconazole affects the cellular uptake and hydrolysis of the endogenous cannabinoid receptor ligand anandamide (AEA). Methodology/Principal Findings: The effects of ketoconazole upon endocannabinoid uptake were investigated using HepG2, CaCo2, PC-3 and C6 cell lines. Fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) activity was measured in HepG2 cell lysates and in intact C6 cells. Ketoconazole inhibited the uptake of AEA by HepG2 cells and CaCo2 cells with IC50 values of 17 and 18 mu M, respectively. In contrast, it had modest effects upon AEA uptake in PC-3 cells, which have a low expression of FAAH. In cell-free HepG2 lysates, ketoconazole inhibited FAAH activity with an IC50 value (for the inhibitable component) of 34 mu M. Conclusions/Significance: The present study indicates that ketoconazole can inhibit the cellular uptake of AEA at pharmacologically relevant concentrations, primarily due to its effects upon FAAH. Ketoconazole may be useful as a template for the design of dual-action FAAH/CYP17 inhibitors as a novel strategy for the treatment of prostate cancer
Long-Term Multiwavelength Studies of High-Redshift Blazar 0836+710
Aims. The observation of gamma -ray flares from blazar 0836+710 in 2011,
following a period of quiescence, offered an opportunity to study correlated
activity at different wavelengths for a high-redshift (z=2.218) active galactic
nucleus. Methods. Optical and radio monitoring, plus Fermi-LAT gamma-ray
monitoring provided 2008-2012 coverage, while Swift offered auxiliary optical,
ultraviolet, and X-ray information. Other contemporaneous observations were
used to construct a broad-band spectral energy distribution. Results. There is
evidence of correlation but not a measurable lag between the optical and
gamma-ray flaring emission. On the contrary, there is no clear correlation
between radio and gamma-ray activity, indicating radio emission regions that
are unrelated to the parts of the jet that produce the gamma-rays. The
gamma-ray energy spectrum is unusual in showing a change of shape from a power
law to a curved spectrum when going from the quiescent state to the active
state.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for publication in A&
Correlation-induced conductance suppression at level degeneracy in a quantum dot
The large, level-dependent g-factors in an InSb nanowire quantum dot allow
for the occurrence of a variety of level crossings in the dot. While we observe
the standard conductance enhancement in the Coulomb blockade region for aligned
levels with different spins due to the Kondo effect, a vanishing of the
conductance is found at the alignment of levels with equal spins. This
conductance suppression appears as a canyon cutting through the web of direct
tunneling lines and an enclosed Coulomb blockade region. In the center of the
Coulomb blockade region, we observe the predicted correlation-induced
resonance, which now turns out to be part of a larger scenario. Our findings
are supported by numerical and analytical calculations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
The transition from the adiabatic to the sudden limit in core level photoemission: A model study of a localized system
We consider core electron photoemission in a localized system, where there is
a charge transfer excitation. The system is modelled by three electron levels,
one core level and two outer levels. The model has a Coulomb interaction
between these levels and the continuum states into which the core electron is
emitted. The model is simple enough to allow an exact numerical solution, and
with a separable potential an analytic solution. We calculate the ratio
r(omega) between the weights of the satellite and the main peak as a function
of the photon energy omega. The transition from the adiabatic to the sudden
limit takes place for quite small photoelectron kinetic energies. For such
small energies, the variation of the dipole matrix element is substantial and
described by the energy scale Ed. Without the coupling to the photoelectron,
the corresponding ratio r0(omega) is determined by Ed and the satellite
excitation energy dE. When the interaction potential with the continuum states
is introduced, a new energy scale Es=1/(2Rs^2) enters, where Rs is a length
scale of the interaction potential. At threshold there is typically a (weak)
constructive interference between intrinsic and extrinsic contributions, and
the ratio r(omega)/r0(omega) is larger than its limiting value for large omega.
The interference becomes small or weakly destructive for photoelectron energies
of the order Es. For larger energies r(omega)/r0(omega) therefore typically has
a weak undershoot. If this undershoot is neglected, r(omega)/r0(omega) reaches
its limiting value on the energy scale Es.Comment: 18 pages, latex2e, 13 eps figure
Energy-sensitive imaging detector applied to the dissociative recombination of D2H+
We report on an energy-sensitive imaging detector for studying the
fragmentation of polyatomic molecules in the dissociative recombination of fast
molecular ions with electrons. The system is based on a large area (10 cm x 10
cm) position-sensitive, double-sided Si-strip detector with 128 horizontal and
128 vertical strips, whose pulse height information is read out individually.
The setup allows to uniquely identify fragment masses and is thus capable of
measuring branching ratios between different fragmentation channels, kinetic
energy releases, as well as breakup geometries, as a function of the relative
ion-electron energy. The properties of the detection system, which has been
installed at the TSR storage ring facility of the Max-Planck Institute for
Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, is illustrated by an investigation of the
dissociative recombination of the deuterated triatomic hydrogen cation D2H+. A
huge isotope effect is observed when comparing the relative branching ratio
between the D2+H and the HD+D channel; the ratio 2B(D2+H)/B(HD+D), which is
measured to be 1.27 +/- 0.05 at relative electron-ion energies around 0 eV, is
found to increase to 3.7 +/- 0.5 at ~5 eV.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Physical Review
Light-like noncommutativity and duality from open strings/branes
In this paper we perform some non-trivial tests for the recently obtained
open membrane/D-brane metrics and `generalized' noncommutativity parameters
using Dp/NS5/M5-branes which have been deformed by light-like fields. The
results obtained give further evidence that these open membrane/D-brane metrics
and `generalized' noncommutativity parameters are correct. Further, we use the
open brane data and supergravity duals to obtain more information about
non-gravitational theories with light-like noncommutativity, or `generalized'
light-like noncommutativity. In particular, we investigate various duality
relations (strong coupling limits). In the light-like case we also comment on
the relation between open membrane data (open membrane metric etc.) in six
dimensions and open string data in five dimensions. Finally, we investigate the
strong coupling limit (high energy limit) of five dimensional NCYM with
\Theta^{12}=\Theta^{34}. In particular, we find that this NCYM theory can be UV
completed by a DLCQ compactification of M-theory.Comment: 24 pages, Latex. v2:Comments and references added. v3:Version
published in JHE
Load-Balancing for Parallel Delaunay Triangulations
Computing the Delaunay triangulation (DT) of a given point set in
is one of the fundamental operations in computational geometry.
Recently, Funke and Sanders (2017) presented a divide-and-conquer DT algorithm
that merges two partial triangulations by re-triangulating a small subset of
their vertices - the border vertices - and combining the three triangulations
efficiently via parallel hash table lookups. The input point division should
therefore yield roughly equal-sized partitions for good load-balancing and also
result in a small number of border vertices for fast merging. In this paper, we
present a novel divide-step based on partitioning the triangulation of a small
sample of the input points. In experiments on synthetic and real-world data
sets, we achieve nearly perfectly balanced partitions and small border
triangulations. This almost cuts running time in half compared to
non-data-sensitive division schemes on inputs exhibiting an exploitable
underlying structure.Comment: Short version submitted to EuroPar 201
Temperature dependence of binary and ternary recombination of H3+ ions with electron
We study binary and the recently discovered process of ternary He-assisted
recombination of H3+ ions with electrons in a low temperature afterglow plasma.
The experiments are carried out over a broad range of pressures and
temperatures of an afterglow plasma in a helium buffer gas. Binary and
He-assisted ternary recombination are observed and the corresponding
recombination rate coefficients are extracted for temperatures from 77 K to 330
K. We describe the observed ternary recombination as a two-step mechanism:
First, a rotationally-excited long-lived neutral molecule H3* is formed in
electron-H3+ collisions. Second, the H3* molecule collides with a helium atom
that leads to the formation of a very long-lived Rydberg state with high
orbital momentum. We present calculations of the lifetimes of H3* and of the
ternary recombination rate coefficients for para and ortho-H3+. The
calculations show a large difference between the ternary recombination rate
coefficients of ortho- and para-H3+ at temperatures below 300 K. The measured
binary and ternary rate coefficients are in reasonable agreement with the
calculated values.Comment: 15 page
OH far-infrared emission from low- and intermediate-mass protostars surveyed with Herschel-PACS
OH is a key species in the water chemistry of star-forming regions, because
its presence is tightly related to the formation and destruction of water. This
paper presents OH observations from 23 low- and intermediate-mass young stellar
objects obtained with the PACS integral field spectrometer on-board Herschel in
the context of the Water In Star-forming Regions with Herschel (WISH) key
program. Most low-mass sources have compact OH emission (< 5000 AU scale),
whereas the OH lines in most intermediate-mass sources are extended over the
whole PACS detector field-of-view (> 20000 AU). The strength of the OH emission
is correlated with various source properties such as the bolometric luminosity
and the envelope mass, but also with the OI and H2O emission. Rotational
diagrams for sources with many OH lines show that the level populations of OH
can be approximated by a Boltzmann distribution with an excitation temperature
at around 70 K. Radiative transfer models of spherically symmetric envelopes
cannot reproduce the OH emission fluxes nor their broad line widths, strongly
suggesting an outflow origin. Slab excitation models indicate that the observed
excitation temperature can either be reached if the OH molecules are exposed to
a strong far-infrared continuum radiation field or if the gas temperature and
density are sufficiently high. Using realistic source parameters and radiation
fields, it is shown for the case of Ser SMM1 that radiative pumping plays an
important role in transitions arising from upper level energies higher than 300
K. The compact emission in the low-mass sources and the required presence of a
strong radiation field and/or a high density to excite the OH molecules points
towards an origin in shocks in the inner envelope close to the protostar.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Abstract
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