1,302 research outputs found
Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease with Anti-Homocysteic acid Antibody
Homocysteic acid (HA) may play an important role in Alzhiemer disease (AD) as we previously reported that HA induced accumulation of intraneuronal A[beta]42. In this study, we first analyzed HA levels in a mouse model of AD. 4-month old pre-pathologic 3xTg-AD mice exhibited higher levels of HA in the hippocampus as compared to age-matched nontransgenic, suggesting that HA accumulation may precede both A[beta] and tau pathologies. To further determine the pathogenic role of HA in AD, we treated young 3xTg-AD mice with vitamin B6-deficient food for 3 weeks to induce the production of HA in the brain. Concominantly, mice received either saline or anti-HA antibody intraventricularly using a guide cannula every 3 days. Mice received anti-HA antibody significantly rescued cognitive impairment induced by vitamin B6 deficiency. Pathologically, 3-week treatment with vitamin B-6 deficient food resulted in strong neurodegeneration in the hippocampal CA1 zone and decreased hippocampal volume. In contrast, anti-HA antibody treatment attenuated these pathological changes. Taken together, we conclude that increased brain HA triggers memory impairment whose condition was deteriorated by amyloid and subsequent neurodegeneration and reduction of neurogenesis. Our results indicate a pathogenic role of HA in AD
Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease with Anti-Homocysteic acid Antibody
Homocysteic acid (HA) may play an important role in Alzhiemer disease (AD) as we previously reported that HA induced accumulation of intraneuronal A[beta]42. In this study, we first analyzed HA levels in a mouse model of AD. 4-month old pre-pathologic 3xTg-AD mice exhibited higher levels of HA in the hippocampus as compared to age-matched nontransgenic, suggesting that HA accumulation may precede both A[beta] and tau pathologies. To further determine the pathogenic role of HA in AD, we treated young 3xTg-AD mice with vitamin B6-deficient food for 3 weeks to induce the production of HA in the brain. Concominantly, mice received either saline or anti-HA antibody intraventricularly using a guide cannula every 3 days. Mice received anti-HA antibody significantly rescued cognitive impairment induced by vitamin B6 deficiency. Pathologically, 3-week treatment with vitamin B-6 deficient food resulted in strong neurodegeneration in the hippocampal CA1 zone and decreased hippocampal volume. In contrast, anti-HA antibody treatment attenuated these pathological changes. Taken together, we conclude that increased brain HA triggers memory impairment whose condition was deteriorated by amyloid and subsequent neurodegeneration and reduction of neurogenesis. Our results indicate a pathogenic role of HA in AD
Quantum transport properties of two-dimensional systems in disordered magnetic fields with a fixed sign
Quantum transport in disordered magnetic fields is investigated numerically
in two-dimensional systems. In particular, the case where the mean and the
fluctuation of disordered magnetic fields are of the same order is considered.
It is found that in the limit of weak disorder the conductivity exhibits a
qualitatively different behavior from that in the conventional random magnetic
fields with zero mean. The conductivity is estimated by the equation of motion
method and by the two-terminal Landauer formula. It is demonstrated that the
conductance stays on the order of even in the weak disorder limit. The
present behavior can be interpreted in terms of the Drude formula. The
Shubnikov-de Haas oscillation is also observed in the weak disorder regime.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Rigid Limit in N=2 Supergravity and Weak-Gravity Conjecture
We analyze the coupled N=2 supergravity and Yang-Mills system using
holomorphy, near the rigid limit where the former decouples from the latter. We
find that there appears generically a new mass scale around g M_{pl} where g is
the gauge coupling constant and M_{pl} is the Planck scale. This is in accord
with the weak-gravity conjecture proposed recently. We also study the scale
dependence of the gauge theory prepotential from its embedding into
supergravity.Comment: 17 pages, minor correction
Topologically protected Landau levels in bilayer graphene in finite electric fields
The zero-energy Landau level of bilayer graphene is shown to be anomalously
sharp (delta-function like) against bond disorder as long as the disorder is
correlated over a few lattice constants.The robustness of the zero-mode anomaly
can be attributed to the preserved chiral symmetry. Unexpectedly, even when we
apply a finite potential difference (i.e., an electric field) between the top
and the bottom layers, the valley-split Landau levels remain anomalously
sharp although they are now shifted away from the zero energy, while the
Landau levels exhibit the usual behavior.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease with Anti-Homocysteic Acid Antibody in 3xTg-AD Male Mice
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an age-associated progressive neurodegenerative disorder with dementia, the exact pathogenic mechanisms of which remain unknown. We previously reported that homocysteic acid (HA) may be one of the pathological biomarkers in the brain with AD and that the increased levels of HA may induce the accumulation of intraneuronal amyloid-beta (Aβ) peptides. In this study, we further investigated the pathological role of HA in a mouse model of AD. Four-month-old prepathological 3xTg-AD mice exhibited higher levels of HA in the hippocampus than did age-matched nontransgenic mice, suggesting that HA accumulation may precede both Aβ and tau pathologies. We then fed 3-month-old 3xTg-AD mice with vitamin B6-deficient food for 3 weeks to increase the HA levels in the brain. Concomitantly, mice received either saline or anti-HA antibody intraventricularly via a guide cannula every 3 days during the course of the B6-deficient diet. We found that mice that received anti-HA antibody significantly resisted cognitive impairment induced by vitamin B6 deficiency and that AD-related pathological changes in their brains was attenuated compared with the saline-injected control group. A similar neuroprotective effect was observed in 12-month-old 3xTg-AD mice that received anti-HA antibody injections while receiving the regular diet. We conclude that increased brain HA triggers memory impairment and that this condition deteriorates with amyloid and leads to subsequent neurodegeneration in mouse models of AD
Conductance plateau transitions in quantum Hall wires with spatially correlated random magnetic fields
Quantum transport properties in quantum Hall wires in the presence of
spatially correlated disordered magnetic fields are investigated numerically.
It is found that the correlation drastically changes the transport properties
associated with the edge state, in contrast to the naive expectation that the
correlation simply reduces the effect of disorder. In the presence of
correlation, the separation between the successive conductance plateau
transitions becomes larger than the bulk Landau level separation determined by
the mean value of the disordered magnetic fields. The transition energies
coincide with the Landau levels in an effective magnetic field stronger than
the mean value of the disordered magnetic field. For a long wire, the strength
of this effective magnetic field is of the order of the maximum value of the
magnetic fields in the system. It is shown that the effective field is
determined by a part where the stronger magnetic field region connects both
edges of the wire.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figure
Effects of a burst of formation of first-generation stars on the evolution of galaxies
First-generation (Population III) stars in the universe play an important
role inearly enrichment of heavy elements in galaxies and intergalactic medium
and thus affect the history of galaxies. The physical and chemical properties
of primordial gas clouds are significantly different from those of present-day
gas clouds observed in the nearby universe because the primordial gas clouds do
not contain any heavy elements which are important coolants in the gas.
Previous theoretical considerations have suggested that typical masses of the
first-generation stars are between several and
although it has been argued that the formation of very massive stars (e.g., ) is also likely. If stars with several are most popular
ones at the epoch of galaxy formation, most stars will evolve to hot (e.g.,
K), luminous () stars with gaseous and dusty
envelope prior to going to die as white dwarf stars. Although the duration of
this phase is short (e.g., yr), such evolved stars could contribute
both to the ionization of gas in galaxies and to the production of a lot of
dust grains if the formation of intermediate-mass stars is highly enhanced. We
compare gaseous emission-line properties of such nebulae with some interesting
high-redshift galaxies such asIRAS F10214+4724 and powerful radio galaxies.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, ApJ, in pres
Anti-correlation between the mass of a supermassive black hole and the mass accretion rate in type I ultraluminous infrared galaxies and nearby QSOs
We discovered a significant anti-correlation between the mass of a
supermassive black hole (SMBH), , and the luminosity ratio of
infrared to active galactic nuclei (AGN) Eddington luminosity, , over four orders of magnitude for ultraluminous infrared
galaxies with type I Seyfert nuclei (type I ULIRGs) and nearby QSOs. This
anti-correlation ( vs. ) can be interpreted
as the anti-correlation between the mass of a SMBH and the rate of mass
accretion onto a SMBH normalized by the AGN Eddington rate, . In other words, the mass accretion rate is not proportional to that of the central BH mass. Thus, this
anti-correlation indicates that BH growth is determined by the external mass
supply process, and not the AGN Eddington-limited mechanism. Moreover, we found
an interesting tendency for type I ULIRGs to favor a super-Eddington accretion
flow, whereas QSOs tended to show a sub-Eddington flow. On the basis of our
findings, we suggest that a central SMBH grows by changing its mass accretion
rate from super-Eddington to sub-Eddington. According to a coevolution scenario
of ULIRGs and QSOs based on the radiation drag process, it has been predicted
that a self-gravitating massive torus, whose mass is larger than a central BH,
exists in the early phase of BH growth (type I ULIRG phase) but not in the
final phase of BH growth (QSO phase). At the same time, if one considers the
mass accretion rate onto a central SMBH via a turbulent viscosity, the
anti-correlation ( vs. ) is well explained
by the positive correlation between the mass accretion rate
and the mass ratio of a massive torus to a SMBH.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
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