Editorial: water governance in a climate change world: appraising systemic and adaptive effectiveness

and other research outputs Editorial: water governance in a climate change world: appraising systemic and adaptive effectivenes

Next-to-leading order Calculation of a Fragmentation Function in a Light-Cone Gauge

The short-distance coefficients for the color-octet ^3S_1 term in the fragmentation function for a gluon to split into polarized heavy quarkonium states are re-calculated to order alpha_s^2. The light-cone gauge remarkably simplifies the calculation by eliminating many Feynman diagrams at the expense of introducing spurious poles in loop integrals. We do not use any conventional prescriptions for spurious pole. Instead, we only use gauge invariance with the aid of Collins-Soper definition of the fragmentation function. Our result agrees with a previous calculation of Braaten and Lee in the Feynman gauge, but disagrees with another previous calculation.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, version published in Physical Review

Antibiotic Treatment Expands the Resistance Reservoir and Ecological Network of the Phage Metagenome

The mammalian gut ecosystem has significant influence on host physiology1–4, but the mechanisms that sustain this complex environment in the face of different stresses remain obscure. Perturbations to this ecosystem, such as through antibiotic treatment or diet, are currently interpreted at the level of bacterial phylogeny5–7. Less is known about the contributions of the abundant population of phage to this ecological network. Here, we explore the phageome as a potential genetic reservoir for bacterial adaptation by sequencing murine fecal phage populations following antibiotic perturbation. We show that antibiotic treatment leads to the enrichment of phage-encoded genes that confer resistance via disparate mechanisms to the administered drug as well as genes that confer resistance to antibiotics unrelated to the administered drug, and we demonstrate experimentally that phage from treated mice afford aerobically cultured naïve microbiota increased resistance. Systems-wide analyses uncover post-treatment phage-encoded processes related to host colonization and growth adaptation, indicating that the phageome broadly enriches for functionally beneficial genes under stress-related conditions. We also show that antibiotic treatment expands the interactions between phage and bacterial species, leading to a more highly connected phage-bacterial network for gene exchange. Our work implicates the phageome in the emergence of multidrug resistance and indicates that the adaptive capacity of the phageome may represent a community-based mechanism for protecting the gut microflora, preserving its functional robustness during antibiotic stress

The KLN Theorem and Soft Radiation in Gauge Theories: Abelian Case

We present a covariant formulation of the Kinoshita, Lee, Nauenberg (KLN) theorem for processes involving the radiation of soft particles. The role of the disconnected diagrams is explored and a rearrangement of the perturbation theory is performed such that the purely disconnected diagrams are factored out. The remaining effect of the disconnected diagrams results in a simple modification of the usual Feynman rules for the S-matrix elements. As an application, we show that when combined with the Low theorem, this leads to a proof of the absense of the $1/Q$ corrections to inclusive processes (like the Drell-Yan process). In this paper the abelian case is discussed to all orders in the coupling.Comment: 27 pages, LaTeX, 14 figure

Tailoring the surface charge of dextran-based polymer coated SPIONs for modulated stem cell uptake and MRI contrast

Tracking stem cells in vivo using non-invasive techniques is critical to evaluate the efficacy and safety of stem cell therapies. Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) enable cells to be tracked using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), but to obtain detectable signal cells need to be labelled with a sufficient amount of iron oxide. For the majority of SPIONs, this can only be obtained with the use of transfection agents, which can adversely affect cell health. Here, we have synthesised a library of dextran-based polymer coated SPIONs with varying surface charge from −1.5 mV to +18.2 mV via a co-precipitation approach and investigated their ability to be directly internalised by stem cells without the need for transfection agents. The SPIONs were colloidally stable in physiological solutions. The crystalline phase of the particles was confirmed with powder X-ray diffraction and their magnetic properties were characterised using SQUID magnetometry and magnetic resonance. Increased surface charge led to six-fold increase in uptake of particles into stem cells and higher MRI contrast, with negligible change in cell viability. Cell tracking velocimetry was shown to be a more accurate method for predicting MRI contrast of stem cells compared to measuring iron oxide uptake through conventional bulk iron quantification

Unconventional spin fluctuations in the hexagonal antiferromagnet YMnO3_3

We used inelastic neutron scattering to show that well below its N\'{e}el temperature, $T_{\rm N}$, the two-dimensional (2D) XY nearly-triangular antiferromagnet YMnO$_{3}$ has a prominent {\it central peak} associated with 2D antiferromagnetic fluctuations with a characteristic life time of 0.55(5) ps, coexisting with the conventional long-lived spin-waves. Existence of the two time scales suggests competition between the N\'{e}el phase favored by weak interplane interactions, and the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase intrinsic to the 2D XY spin system.Comment: 4pages, 5figure

Renormalization Group Analysis of \rho-Meson Properties at Finite Density

We calculate the density dependence of the $\rho$-meson mass and coupling constant($g_{\rho NN}$) for $\rho$-nucleon-nucleon vertex at one loop using the lagrangian where the $\rho$-meson is included as a dynamical gauge boson of a hidden local symmetry. From the condition that thermodynamic potential should not depend on the arbitrary energy scale, renormalization scale, one can construct a renormalization group equation for the thermodynamic potential and argue that the various renormalization group coefficients are functions of the density or temperature. We calculate the $\beta$-function for $\rho$-nucleon-nucleon coupling constant ($g_{\rho NN}$) and $\gamma$-function for $\rho$-meson mass ($\gamma_{m_\rho}$). We found that the $\rho$-meson mass and the coupling constant for $g_{\rho NN}$ drop as density increases in the low energy limit.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, revised versio

The effect of active immunization against adrenocorticotropic hormone on cortisol, beta-endorphin, vocalization, and growth in pigs

Because the poor growth performance of intensively housed pigs is associated with increased circulating glucocorticoid concentrations, we investigated the effects of glucocorticoid suppression by inducing a humoral immune response to ACTH on physiological and production variables in growing pigs. Grower pigs (28.6 0.9 kg) were immunized with amino acids 1 through 24 of ACTH conjugated to ovalbumin and suspended in diethylaminoethyl (DEAE) dextran-adjuvant or adjuvant alone (control) on d 1, 28, and 56. The ACTH-specific antibody titers generated suppressed increases in cortisol concentrations on d 63 in response to an acute stressor (P = 0.002; control = 71 +/- 8.2 ng/ mL; ACTH-immune = 43 +/- 4.9 ng/mL) without altering basal concentrations. Plasma beta-endorphin concentrations were also increased (P < 0.001) on d 63 (control = 18 +/- 2.1 ng/mL; ACTH-immune = 63 +/- 7.3 ng/mL), presumably because of a release from negative feedback on the expression of proopiomelanocortin in pituitary corticotropes. Immunization against ACTH did not alter ADG (P = 0.120; control = 1,077 25; ACTH-immune = 1,143 25 g) or ADFI (P = 0.64; control = 2,719 42; ACTH-immune = 2,749 42 g) and did not modify behavior (P = 0.681) assessed by measuring vocalization in response to acute restraint. In summary, suppression of stress-induced cortisol responses through ACTH immunization increased beta-endorphin concentrations, but it did not modify ADG, ADFI, or restraint vocalization score in growing pigs