600 research outputs found
Artificial antibodies based potentiometric sensors for monitoring diabetic ketoacidosis
Diabetic ketoacidosis is a pathological condition characterized for the complex disordered metabolic state (as hyperglycemia, metabolic acidosis, dehydration or ketosis), caused by the total failing of insulin production for beta cells in the islets of Langerhans (type 1 diabetes) or abnormalities in the peripheral insulin action and insulin secretion (type 2 diabetes). This pathogenesis can be also associated with the increase of counter-regulation hormones, leading to an increase in the hepatic glucose synthesis and a decrease in the peripheral tissues, resulting in hyperglycemia and hyperosmolarity. The effect of lipolysis increase leads to an increase in the production of free fatty acids, which are oxidized in the hepatic microsomal system and converted to acetyl-CoA. When acetyl-CoA production exceeds hepatic utilization capacity, this substance acts as a substrate for the production of ketone bodies (β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), acetoacetate and acetone), causing ketonemia and metabolic acidosis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Topological defects: A problem for cyclic universes?
We study the behaviour of cosmic string networks in contracting universes,
and discuss some of their possible consequences. We note that there is a
fundamental time asymmetry between defect network evolution for an expanding
universe and a contracting universe. A string network with negligible loop
production and small-scale structure will asymptotically behave during the
collapse phase as a radiation fluid. In realistic networks these two effects
are important, making this solution only approximate. We derive new scaling
solutions describing this effect, and test them against high-resolution
numerical simulations. A string network in a contracting universe, together
with the gravitational radiation background it has generated, can significantly
affect the dynamics of the universe both locally and globally. The network can
be an important source of radiation, entropy and inhomogeneity. We discuss the
possible implications of these findings for bouncing and cyclic cosmological
models.Comment: 11 RevTeX 4 pages, 6 figures; version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Lagrangian evolution of global strings
We establish a method to trace the Lagrangian evolution of extended objects
consisting of a multicomponent scalar field in terms of a numerical calculation
of field equations in three dimensional Eulerian meshes. We apply our method to
the cosmological evolution of global strings and evaluate the energy density,
peculiar velocity, Lorentz factor, formation rate of loops, and emission rate
of Nambu-Goldstone (NG) bosons. We confirm the scaling behavior with a number
of long strings per horizon volume smaller than the case of local strings by a
factor of 10. The strategy and the method established here are
applicable to a variety of fields in physics.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Quasiparticles as composite objects in the RVB superconductor
We study the nature of the superconducting state, the origin of d-wave
pairing, and elementary excitations of a resonating valence bond (RVB)
superconductor. We show that the phase string formulation of the t-J model
leads to confinement of bare spinon and holon excitations in the
superconducting state, though the vacuum is described by the RVB state. Nodal
quasiparticles are obtained as composite excitations of spinon and holon
excitations. The d-wave pairing symmetry is shown to arise from short range
antiferromagnetic correlations
Spin-orbital gapped phase with least symmetry breaking in the one-dimensional symmetrically coupled spin-orbital model
To describe the spin-orbital energy gap formation in the one-dimensional
symmetrically coupled spin-orbital model, we propose a simple mean field theory
based on an SU(4) constraint fermion representation of spins and orbitals. A
spin-orbital gapped phase is formed due to a marginally relevant spin-orbital
valence bond pairing interaction. The energy gap of the spin and orbital
excitations grows extremely slowly from the SU(4) symmetric point up to a
maximum value and then decreases rapidly. By calculating the spin, orbital, and
spin-orbital tensor static susceptibilities at zero temperature, we find a
crossover from coherent to incoherent magnetic excitations as the spin-orbital
coupling decreasing from large to small values.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex file, 5 figure
Single Nucleotide Variants And Indels Identified From Whole-genome Re-sequencing Of Guzerat, Gyr, Girolando And Holstein Cattle Breeds
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Whole-genome re-sequencing, alignment and annotation analyses were undertaken for 12 sires representing four important cattle breeds in Brazil: Guzerat (multi-purpose), Gyr, Girolando and Holstein (dairy production). A total of approximately 4.3 billion reads from an Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencer generated for each animal 10.7 to 16.4-fold genome coverage. A total of 27,441,279 single nucleotide variations (SNVs) and 3,828,041 insertions/deletions (InDels) were detected in the samples, of which 2,557,670 SNVs and 883,219 InDels were novel. The submission of these genetic variants to the dbSNP database significantly increased the number of known variants, particularly for the indicine genome. The concordance rate between genotypes obtained using the Bovine HD BeadChip array and the same variants identified by sequencing was about 99.05%. The annotation of variants identified numerous non-synonymous SNVs and frameshift InDels which could affect phenotypic variation. Functional enrichment analysis was performed and revealed that variants in the olfactory transduction pathway was over represented in all four cattle breeds, while the ECM-receptor interaction pathway was over represented in Girolando and Guzerat breeds, the ABC transporters pathway was over represented only in Holstein breed, and the metabolic pathways was over represented only in Gyr breed. The genetic variants discovered here provide a rich resource to help identify potential genomic markers and their associated molecular mechanisms that impact economically important traits for Gyr, Girolando, Guzerat and Holstein breeding programs. © 2017 Stafuzza et al.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.123Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e TecnológicoCAPES, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível SuperiorFAPEMIG, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas GeraisConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES
Percolation on two- and three-dimensional lattices
In this work we apply a highly efficient Monte Carlo algorithm recently
proposed by Newman and Ziff to treat percolation problems. The site and bond
percolation are studied on a number of lattices in two and three dimensions.
Quite good results for the wrapping probabilities, correlation length critical
exponent and critical concentration are obtained for the square, simple cubic,
HCP and hexagonal lattices by using relatively small systems. We also confirm
the universal aspect of the wrapping probabilities regarding site and bond
dilution.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 3 table
Spin-charge separation in the single hole doped Mott antiferromagnet
The motion of a single hole in a Mott antiferromagnet is investigated based
on the t-J model. An exact expression of the energy spectrum is obtained, in
which the irreparable phase string effect [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 5102 (1996)] is
explicitly present. By identifying the phase string effect with spin backflow,
we point out that spin-charge separation must exist in such a system: the doped
hole has to decay into a neutral spinon and a spinless holon, together with the
phase string. We show that while the spinon remains coherent, the holon motion
is deterred by the phase string, resulting in its localization in space. We
calculate the electron spectral function which explains the line shape of the
spectral function as well as the ``quasiparticle'' spectrum observed in
angle-resolved photoemission experiments. Other analytic and numerical
approaches are discussed based on the present framework.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures; references updated; to appear in Phys. Rev.
Secondary forest fragments offer important carbon‐biodiversity co‐benefits
Tropical forests store large amounts of carbon and high biodiversity, but are being degraded at alarming rates. The emerging global Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) agenda seeks to limit global climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the growth of trees. In doing so, it may also protect biodiversity as a free co‐benefit, which is vital given the massive shortfall in funding for biodiversity conservation. We investigated whether natural forest regeneration on abandoned pastureland offers such co‐benefits, focusing for the first time on the recovery of taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity of trees, including the recovery of threatened and endemic species richness, within isolated secondary forest fragments. We focused on the globally threatened Brazilian Atlantic Forest, where commitments have been made to restore one million hectares under FLR. Three decades after land abandonment, regenerating forests had recovered ~20% (72 Mg/ha−1) of the above‐ground carbon stocks of a primary forest, with cattle pasture containing just 3% of stocks relative to primary forests. Over this period, secondary forest recovered ~76% of taxonomic, 84% of phylogenetic and 96% of functional diversity found within primary forests. In addition, secondary forests had on average recovered 65% of threatened and ~30% of endemic species richness of primary Atlantic forest. Finally, we find positive relationships between carbon stock and tree diversity recovery. Our results emphasize that secondary forest fragments offer co‐benefits under FLR and other carbon‐based payments for ecosystem service schemes (e.g. carbon enhancements under REDD +). They also indicate that even isolated patches of secondary forest could help to mitigate climate change and the biodiversity extinction crisis by recovering species of high conservation concern and improving landscape connectivity
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