507 research outputs found
Mechanisms of action of hESC-secreted proteins that enhance human and mouse myogenesis.
Adult stem cells grow poorly in vitro compared to embryonic stem cells, and in vivo stem cell maintenance and proliferation by tissue niches progressively deteriorates with age. We previously reported that factors produced by human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) support a robust regenerative capacity for adult and old mouse muscle stem/progenitor cells. Here we extend these findings to human muscle progenitors and investigate underlying molecular mechanisms. Our results demonstrate that hESC-conditioned medium enhanced the proliferation of mouse and human muscle progenitors. Furthermore, hESC-produced factors activated MAPK and Notch signaling in human myogenic progenitors, and Delta/Notch-1 activation was dependent on MAPK/pERK. The Wnt, TGF-β and BMP/pSmad1,5,8 pathways were unresponsive to hESC-produced factors, but BMP signaling was dependent on intact MAPK/pERK. c-Myc, p57, and p18 were key effectors of the enhanced myogenesis promoted by the hECS factors. To define some of the active ingredients of the hESC-secretome which may have therapeutic potential, a comparative proteomic antibody array analysis was performed and identified several putative proteins, including FGF2, 6 and 19 which as ligands for MAPK signaling, were investigated in more detail. These studies emphasize that a youthful signaling of multiple signaling pathways is responsible for the pro-regenerative activity of the hESC factors
River Dike Failure in Japan by Earthquakes in 1993
Hokkaido, Japan was attacked by earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 twice in January and July, 1993. One is the Kushiro-Oki Earthquake and the other the Hokkaido Nansei-Oki Earthquake. River dikes were severely damaged by liquefaction of sand. The former caused liquefaction of subsided dike materials and the latter caused liquefaction of sand of the foundation bed. Relations between dimensional elements of dike and peat bed and stress relaxation within dike were analyzed. Old channels recently filled with sandy materials were distinguished from pointbar zones in ancient river bed covered with silty sediment, based on degree of damage due to liquefaction. Repairing works were completed by the end of the year precedent the snow season
Non-equilibrium dynamics in an interacting nanoparticle system
Non-equilibrium dynamics in an interacting Fe-C nanoparticle sample,
exhibiting a low temperature spin glass like phase, has been studied by low
frequency ac-susceptibility and magnetic relaxation experiments. The
non-equilibrium behavior shows characteristic spin glass features, but some
qualitative differences exist. The nature of these differences is discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figure
Spin Driven Jahn-Teller Distortion in a Pyrochlore system
The ground-state properties of the spin-1 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model
on the corner-sharing tetrahedra, pyrochlore lattice, is investigated. By
breaking up each spin into a pair of 1/2-spins, the problem is reduced to the
equivalent one of the spin-1/2 tetrahedral network in analogy with the valence
bond solid state in one dimension. The twofold degeneracy of the spin-singlets
of a tetrahedron is lifted by a Jahn-Teller mechanism, leading to a cubic to
tetragonal structural transition. It is proposed that the present mechanism is
responsible for the phase transition observed in the spin-1 spinel compounds
ZnVO and MgVO.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figures, REVTeX, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Metal-insulator Crossover Behavior at the Surface of NiS_2
We have performed a detailed high-resolution electron spectroscopic
investigation of NiS and related Se-substituted compounds
NiSSe, which are known to be gapped insulators in the bulk at all
temperatures. A large spectral weight at the Fermi energy of the room
temperature spectrum, in conjunction with the extreme surface sensitivity of
the experimental probe, however, suggests that the surface layer is metallic at
300 K. Interestingly, the evolution of the spectral function with decreasing
temperature is characterized by a continuous depletion of the single-particle
spectral weight at the Fermi energy and the development of a gap-like structure
below a characteristic temperature, providing evidence for a metal-insulator
crossover behavior at the surfaces of NiS and of related compounds. These
results provide a consistent description of the unusual transport properties
observed in these systems.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure
Soft x-ray magnetic circular dichroism study of weakly ferromagnetic ZnVO thin film
We performed a soft x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) study of a
ZnVO thin film which showed small ferromagnetic moment. Field and
temperature dependences of V 2 XMCD signals indicated the coexistence of
Curie-Weiss paramagnetic, antiferromagnetic, and possibly ferromagnetic V ions,
quantitatively consistent with the magnetization measurements. We attribute the
paramagnetic signal to V ions substituting Zn sites which are somewhat
elongated along the c-axis
Scaling behavior of the dipole coupling energy in two-dimensional disordered magnetic nanostructures
Numerical calculations of the average dipole-coupling energy in two-dimensional disordered magnetic nanostructures are
performed as function of the particle coverage . We observe that scales as with an
unusually small exponent --1.0 for coverages
. This behavior is shown to be primarly given by the
contributions of particle pairs at short distances, which is intrinsically
related to the presence of an appreciable degree of disorder. The value of
is found to be sensitive to the magnetic arrangement within the
nanostructure and to the degree of disorder. For large coverages
we obtain with , in agreement
with the straighforward scaling of the dipole coupling as in a periodic
particle setup. Taking into account the effect of single-particle anisotropies,
we show that the scaling exponent can be used as a criterion to distinguish
between weakly interacting () and strongly interacting
() particle ensembles as function of coverage.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.
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