2,593 research outputs found
Differentiation of Murine Embryonic Stem Cells to Thyrocytes Requires Insulin and Insulin-like Growth Factor-1
[Abstract] The mechanisms controlling thyrocyte development during embryonic stem (ES) cell differentiation have only been partially elucidated, although previous studies have suggested the participation of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) in these processes. To further define the role of TSH in this context, we have studied a murine ES cell line in which green fluorescent protein (GFP) cDNA is targeted to the TSH receptor (TSHR) gene, linking the expression of GFP to the transcription of the endogenous TSHR gene. We demonstrate that, in the initial stages of embryoid body formation, activin A and TSH induce the differentiation of definitive endoderm and thyrocyte progenitors expressing Sox17, Foxa2, and TSHR. These thyrocyte progenitors are then converted into cellular aggregates that, in the presence of insulin and IGF-1, further differentiate into mature thyroglobulin-expressing thyrocytes. Our data suggest that, despite the fact that TSH is important for the induction and specification of thyrocytes from ES cells, insulin and IGF-1 are crucial for thyrocyte maturation. Our method provides a powerful in vitro differentiation model for studying the mechanisms of early thyrocyte lineage development.United States. National Institutes of Health; DK06805
Fluctuating Elastic Rings: Statics and Dynamics
We study the effects of thermal fluctuations on elastic rings. Analytical
expressions are derived for correlation functions of Euler angles, mean square
distance between points on the ring contour, radius of gyration, and
probability distribution of writhe fluctuations. Since fluctuation amplitudes
diverge in the limit of vanishing twist rigidity, twist elasticity is essential
for the description of fluctuating rings. We find a crossover from a small
scale regime in which the filament behaves as a straight rod, to a large scale
regime in which spontaneous curvature is important and twist rigidity affects
the spatial configurations of the ring. The fluctuation-dissipation relation
between correlation functions of Euler angles and response functions, is used
to study the deformation of the ring by external forces. The effects of inertia
and dissipation on the relaxation of temporal correlations of writhe
fluctuations, are analyzed using Langevin dynamics.Comment: 43 pages, 9 Figure
Pairwise Force SPH Model for Real-Time Multi-Interaction Applications
In this paper, we present a novel pairwise-force smoothed particle hydrodynamics (PF-SPH) model to allow modeling of various interactions at interfaces in real time. Realistic capture of interactions at interfaces is a challenging problem for SPH-based simulations, especially for scenarios involving multiple interactions at different interfaces. Our PF-SPH model can readily handle multiple kinds of interactions simultaneously in a single simulation; its basis is to use a larger support radius than that used in standard SPH. We adopt a novel anisotropic filtering term to further improve the performance of interaction forces. The proposed model is stable; furthermore, it avoids the particle clustering problem which commonly occurs at the free surface. We show how our model can be used to capture various interactions. We also consider the close connection between droplets and bubbles, and show how to animate bubbles rising in liquid as well as bubbles in air. Our method is versatile, physically plausible and easy-to-implement. Examples are provided to demonstrate the capabilities and effectiveness of our approach
Blow up criterion for compressible nematic liquid crystal flows in dimension three
In this paper, we consider the short time strong solution to a simplified
hydrodynamic flow modeling the compressible, nematic liquid crystal materials
in dimension three. We establish a criterion for possible breakdown of such
solutions at finite time in terms of the temporal integral of both the maximum
norm of the deformation tensor of velocity gradient and the square of maximum
norm of gradient of liquid crystal director field.Comment: 22 page
Modified conjugated gradient method for diagonalising large matrices
We present an iterative method to diagonalise large matrices. The basic idea
is the same as the conjugated gradient (CG) method, i.e, minimizing the
Rayleigh quotient via its gradient and avoiding reintroduce errors to the
directions of previous gradients. Each iteration step is to find lowest
eigenvector of the matrix in a subspace spanned by the current trial vector and
the corresponding gradient of the Rayleigh quotient, as well as some previous
trial vectors. The gradient, together with the previous trail vectors, play a
similar role of the conjugated gradient of the original CG algorithm. Our
numeric tests indicate that this method converges significantly faster than the
original CG method. And the computational cost of one iteration step is about
the same as the original CG method. It is suitably for first principle
calculations.Comment: 6 Pages, 2EPS figures. (To appear in Phys. Rev. E
Well-Posedness of Nematic Liquid Crystal Flow in
In this paper, we establish the local well-posedness for the Cauchy problem
of the simplified version of hydrodynamic flow of nematic liquid crystals
(\ref{LLF}) in for any initial data having small
-norm of . Here is the space of uniformly locally -integrable functions. For any
initial data with small , we show that there exists a unique, global solution
to (\ref{LLF}) which is smooth for and has monotone deceasing
-energy for .Comment: 29 page
Harmonic forcing of an extended oscillatory system: Homogeneous and periodic solutions
In this paper we study the effect of external harmonic forcing on a
one-dimensional oscillatory system described by the complex Ginzburg-Landau
equation (CGLE). For a sufficiently large forcing amplitude, a homogeneous
state with no spatial structure is observed. The state becomes unstable to a
spatially periodic ``stripe'' state via a supercritical bifurcation as the
forcing amplitude decreases. An approximate phase equation is derived, and an
analytic solution for the stripe state is obtained, through which the
asymmetric behavior of the stability border of the state is explained. The
phase equation, in particular the analytic solution, is found to be very useful
in understanding the stability borders of the homogeneous and stripe states of
the forced CGLE.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 2 column revtex format, to be published in Phys.
Rev.
Fast Multiple-Fluid Simulation Using Helmholtz Free Energy
Multiple-fluid interaction is an interesting and common visual phenomenon we often observe. In this paper, we present an energybased Lagrangian method that expands the capability of existing multiple-fluid methods to handle various phenomena, such as extraction, partial dissolution, etc. Based on our user-adjusted Helmholtz free energy functions, the simulated fluid evolves from high-energy states to low-energy states, allowing flexible capture of various mixing and unmixing processes. We also extend the original Cahn-Hilliard equation to be better able to simulate complex fluid-fluid interaction and rich visual phenomena such as motionrelated mixing and position based pattern. Our approach is easily integrated with existing state-of-the-art smooth particle hydrodynamic (SPH) solvers and can be further implemented on top of the position based dynamics (PBD) method, improving the stability and incompressibility of the fluid during Lagrangian simulation under large time steps. Performance analysis shows that our method is at least 4 times faster than the state-of-the-art multiple-fluid method. Examples are provided to demonstrate the new capability and effectiveness of our approach
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