NJL model of homogeneous neutral quark matter: Pseudoscalar diquark condensates revisited

We use a Nambu-Jona Lasinio type model to investigate the phase diagram of dense quark matter under neutron star conditions in mean field approximation. The model contains selfconsistently determined quark masses and allows for diquark condensation in the scalar as well as in the pseudoscalar channel. The latter gives rise to the possibility of K^0 condensation in the CFL phase. In agreement with earlier studies we find that this CFLK^0 phase covers large regions of the phase diagram and that the predominant part of this phase is fully gapped. We show, however, that there exists a region at very low temperatures where the CFLK^0 solutions become gapless, possibly indicating an instability towards anisotropic or inhomogeneous phases. The physical significance of solutions with pseudoscalar diquark condensates in the 2SC phase is discussed as well.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures; v2: minor modifications, version accepted for publication in PR

Role of two-flavor color superconductor pairing in a three-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with axial anomaly

The phase diagram of strongly interacting matter is studied within a three-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model, which contains the coupling between chiral and diquark condensates through the axial anomaly. Our results show that it is essential to include the 2SC phase in the analysis. While this is expected for realistic strange quark masses, we find that even for equal up, down, and strange bare quark masses, 2SC pairing can be favored due to spontaneous flavor-symmetry breaking by the axial anomaly. This can lead to a rich phase structure, including BCS- and BEC-like 2SC and CFL phases and new endpoints. On the other hand, the low-temperature critical endpoint, which was found earlier in the same model without 2SC pairing, is almost removed from the phase diagram and cannot be reached from the low-density chirally broken phase without crossing a preceding first-order phase boundary. For physical quark masses no additional critical endpoint is found.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, added appendix clarifying the relation to Ginzburg-Landau results, to appear in PR

WHO analgesic ladder gone astray: wider implications

No abstract available

Gods of the two peoples: how the sacred beliefs in southwest Roman Britannia demonstrate a uniquely blended religion and culture

The Romans practiced many religions in their quest to obtain Pax Deorum throughout the centuries. The Britons came into contact with the Romans and were exposed to many new ideas and concepts. Both groups found a way to coexist, which can be seen most obviously in the religion of the Southwest region of Britain. Gods from both cultures fused together or took on another new form to emerge in this new hybridized Romano-British culture. Sulis Minerva and Mercury often appear as they were quite popular with the denizens of the region. Physical evidence and practices show just how the Southwestern region demonstrated two cultures coming together in the ancient world

The diverse nature of intestinal fibroblasts in development, homeostasis, and disease

Only in recent years have we begun to appreciate the involvement of fibroblasts in intestinal development, tissue homeostasis, and disease. These insights followed the advent of single-cell transcriptomics that allowed researchers to explore the heterogeneity of intestinal fibroblasts in unprecedented detail. Since researchers often defined cell types and their associated function based on the biological process they studied, there are a plethora of partially overlapping markers for different intestinal fibroblast populations. This ambiguity complicates putting different research findings into context. Here, we provide a census on the function and identity of intestinal fibroblasts in mouse and human. We propose a simplified framework consisting of three colonic and four small intestinal fibroblast populations to aid navigating the diversity of intestinal fibroblasts

A universal method for automated gene mapping

Small insertions or deletions (InDels) constitute a ubiquituous class of sequence polymorphisms found in eukaryotic genomes. Here, we present an automated high-throughput genotyping method that relies on the detection of fragment-length polymorphisms (FLPs) caused by InDels. The protocol utilizes standard sequencers and genotyping software. We have established genome-wide FLP maps for both Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster that facilitate genetic mapping with a minimum of manual input and at comparatively low cost

Immunoproteasome Inhibition Impairs T and B Cell Activation by Restraining ERK Signaling and Proteostasis

Immunoproteasome (IP) inhibition holds potential as a novel treatment option for various immune-mediated pathologies. The IP inhibitor ONX 0914 reduced T cell cytokine secretion and Th17 polarization and showed pre-clinical efficacy in a range of autoimmune disorders, transplant-allograft rejection, virus-mediated tissue damage, and colon cancer progression. However, the molecular basis of these effects has remained largely elusive. Here, we have analyzed the effects of ONX 0914 in primary human and mouse lymphocytes. ONX 0914-treatment impaired primary T cell activation in vitro and in vivo. IP inhibition reduced ERK-phosphorylation sustainment, while leaving NF-κB and other signaling pathways unaffected. Naïve T and B cells expressed nearly exclusively immuno- or mixed proteasomes but no standard proteasomes and IP inhibition but not IP-deficiency induced mild proteostasis stress, reduced DUSP5 expression and enhanced DUSP6 protein levels due to impaired degradation. However, accumulation of DUSP6 did not cause the reduced ERK-phosphorylation in a non-redundant manner. We show that broad-spectrum proteasome inhibition and immunoproteasome inhibition have distinct effects on T cell activation at the molecular level. Notably, ONX 0914-treated T cells recovered from proteostasis stress without apoptosis induction, apparently via Nrf1-mediated up-regulation of standard proteasomes. In contrast, B cells were more susceptible to apoptosis after ONX 0914-treatment. Our data thus provide mechanistic insights how IP inhibition functionally impedes T and B cells likely accounting for its therapeutic benefits

The « Intelligent Wardrobe »

In an ageing society technical systems that support the residents at home are becoming increasingly important. Many of the technologies available today focus on detecting falls or monitoring the health of residents. There are a few projects that focus the « smart home for the elderly » and offer support for the daily activities. The Institute of Medical Informatics of the Bern University of Applied Sciences has developed a prototype of an intelligent wardrobe. Based on sensor data from the apartment like inside temperature, weather forecast and todays events suggestions for appropriate clothes are generated and shown on a display. To facilitate the search, the garments are marked in the closet with colored LEDs

reComBat: Batch effect removal in large-scale, multi-source omics data integration

With the steadily increasing abundance of omics data produced all over the world, some-times decades apart and under vastly different experimental conditions residing in public databases, a crucial step in many data-driven bioinformatics applications is that of data integration. The challenge of batch effect removal for entire databases lies in the large number and coincide of both batches and desired, biological variation resulting in design matrix singularity. This problem currently cannot be solved by any common batch correction algorithm. In this study, we present reComBat , a regularised version of the empirical Bayes method to overcome this limitation. We demonstrate our approach for the harmonisation of public gene expression data of the human opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa and study a several metrics to empirically demonstrate that batch effects are successfully mitigated while biologically meaningful gene expression variation is retained. reComBat fills the gap in batch correction approaches applicable to large scale, public omics databases and opens up new avenues for data driven analysis of complex biological processes beyond the scope of a single study

reComBat: batch-effect removal in large-scale multi-source gene-expression data integration

With the steadily increasing abundance of omics data produced all over the world under vastly different experimental conditions residing in public databases, a crucial step in many data-driven bioinformatics applications is that of data integration. The challenge of batch-effect removal for entire databases lies in the large number of batches and biological variation, which can result in design matrix singularity. This problem can currently not be solved satisfactorily by any common batch-correction algorithm.; We present; reComBat; , a regularized version of the empirical Bayes method to overcome this limitation and benchmark it against popular approaches for the harmonization of public gene-expression data (both microarray and bulkRNAsq) of the human opportunistic pathogen; Pseudomonas aeruginosa; . Batch-effects are successfully mitigated while biologically meaningful gene-expression variation is retained.; reComBat; fills the gap in batch-correction approaches applicable to large-scale, public omics databases and opens up new avenues for data-driven analysis of complex biological processes beyond the scope of a single study.; The code is available at https://github.com/BorgwardtLab/reComBat, all data and evaluation code can be found at https://github.com/BorgwardtLab/batchCorrectionPublicData.; Supplementary data are available at; Bioinformatics Advances; online