Advances in tenascin-C biology

Tenascin-C is an extracellular matrix glycoprotein that is specifically and transiently expressed upon tissue injury. Upon tissue damage, tenascin-C plays a multitude of different roles that mediate both inflammatory and fibrotic processes to enable effective tissue repair. In the last decade, emerging evidence has demonstrated a vital role for tenascin-C in cardiac and arterial injury, tumor angiogenesis and metastasis, as well as in modulating stem cell behavior. Here we highlight the molecular mechanisms by which tenascin-C mediates these effects and discuss the implications of mis-regulated tenascin-C expression in driving disease pathology

Rotating Stars in Relativity

Rotating relativistic stars have been studied extensively in recent years, both theoretically and observationally, because of the information one could obtain about the equation of state of matter at extremely high densities and because they are considered to be promising sources of gravitational waves. The latest theoretical understanding of rotating stars in relativity is reviewed in this updated article. The sections on the equilibrium properties and on the nonaxisymmetric instabilities in f-modes and r-modes have been updated and several new sections have been added on analytic solutions for the exterior spacetime, rotating stars in LMXBs, rotating strange stars, and on rotating stars in numerical relativity.Comment: 101 pages, 18 figures. The full online-readable version of this article, including several animations, will be published in Living Reviews in Relativity at http://www.livingreviews.org

Hematopoietic Stem Cell Heterogeneity

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) maintain lifelong production of mature blood cells and regenerate the hematopoietic system after cytotoxic injury. Use of expanding cell surface marker panels and advanced functional analyses have revealed the presence of several immunophenotypically different HSC subsets with distinct self-renewal and repopulating capacity and bias toward selective lineage differentiation. This chapter summarizes current understanding of the phenotypic and functional heterogeneity within the HSC pool, with emphasis on the immunophenotypes and functional features of several known HSC subsets, and their roles in steady-state and emergency hematopoiesis, and in aging. The chapter also highlights some of the future research directions to elucidate further the biology and function of different HSC subsets in health and disease states

Carrot floral development and reproductive biology

The defining characteristic of the botanical family of Apiaceae (former Umbelliferae) is the inflorescence. The flowers aggregate in terminal umbels that may be commonly compound, often umbelliform cymes. Likewise, flowers of the carrot are clustered in flat, dense umbels, partially with zygomorphic petals at the edges. Carrot producers and consumers mainly consider the vegetative phase namely the storage root as vegetable. Nevertheless, the reproductive phase is an important topic for genetic research, for breeding new cultivars and seed production. Hence, an improved knowledge on the genetic control mechanisms of reproduction such as flowering time, flower development and architecture, pollen fertility and male sterility as well as seed set are of essential importance. The chapter reviews key steps on carrot floral development and reproductive biology especially under consideration of the comprehensive genomic data set recently obtained from carrot.Fil: Linke, Betina. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; AlemaniaFil: Alessandro, Maria Soledad. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Mendoza-San Juan. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria La Consulta; ArgentinaFil: Galmarini, Claudio Romulo. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Mendoza-San Juan. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria La Consulta; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; ArgentinaFil: Nothnagel, Thomas. Institute for Breeding Research on Horticultural Crops; Alemani

Precision Electroweak Measurements on the Z resonance.

We report on the final electroweak measurements performed with data taken at the Z resonance by the experiments operating at the electron–positron colliders SLC and LEP. The data consist of 17 million Z decays accumulated by the ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL experiments at LEP, and 600 thousand Z decays by the SLD experiment using a polarised beam at SLC. The measurements include cross-sections, forward–backward asymmetries and polarised asymmetries. The mass and width of the Z boson, mZ and ΓZ, and its couplings to fermions, for example the ρ parameter and the effective electroweak mixing angle for leptons, are precisely measured: The number of light neutrino species is determined to be 2.9840±0.0082, in agreement with the three observed generations of fundamental fermions. The results are compared to the predictions of the Standard Model (SM). At the Z-pole, electroweak radiative corrections beyond the running of the QED and QCD coupling constants are observed with a significance of five standard deviations, and in agreement with the Standard Model. Of the many Z-pole measurements, the forward–backward asymmetry in b-quark production shows the largest difference with respect to its SM expectation, at the level of 2.8 standard deviations. Through radiative corrections evaluated in the framework of the Standard Model, the Z-pole data are also used to predict the mass of the top quark, , and the mass of the W boson, . These indirect constraints are compared to the direct measurements, providing a stringent test of the SM. Using in addition the direct measurements of mt and mW, the mass of the as yet unobserved SM Higgs boson is predicted with a relative uncertainty of about 50% and found to be less than at 95% confidence level