1,435 research outputs found
One-Up On L1: Can X-rays Provide Longer Advanced Warning of Solar Wind Flux Enhancements Than Upstream Monitors?
Observations of strong solar wind proton flux correlations with ROSAT X-ray
rates along with high spectral resolution Chandra observations of X-rays from
the dark Moon show that soft X-ray emission mirrors the behavior of the solar
wind. In this paper, based on an analysis of an X-ray event observed by
XMM-Newton resulting from charge exchange of high charge state solar wind ions
and contemporaneous neutral solar wind data, we argue that X-ray observations
may be able to provide reliable advance warning, perhaps by as much as half a
day, of dramatic increases in solar wind flux at Earth. Like neutral atom
imaging, this provides the capability to monitor the solar wind remotely rather
than in-situ.Comment: in press in Adv. Space Research, 7 pages, 6 eps figures, resolution
reduced for Astro-ph submission, see http://lena.gsfc.nasa.gov for full
versio
The future of pediatric pulmonology: A survey of division directors, assessment of current research funding, and discussion of workforce trends
Adequacy of the US workforce in pediatric pulmonology has been a source of serious concern within the field for some time, as it has been for several pediatric subspecialties. Contributing factors have been thought to include low fill rates of fellowship training programs, aging, and retirement rates of the subspecialist population, and the perception of insufficient numbers of specialists in some regions to meet clinical care needs. Several approaches to assessing workforce needs have already been described, and stakeholder groups are currently working on additional analyses. Although the recent report by Harris et al. captured a broad snapshot of workforce perceptions of 485 pediatric pulmonologists, this study (reporting data collected in 2014) did not address the future scope of practice
Interleukin-7 deficiency in rheumatoid arthritis: consequences for therapy-induced lymphopenia
We previously demonstrated prolonged, profound CD4+ T-lymphopenia in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients following lymphocyte-depleting therapy. Poor reconstitution could result either from reduced de novo T-cell production through the thymus or from poor peripheral expansion of residual T-cells. Interleukin-7 (IL-7) is known to stimulate the thymus to produce new T-cells and to allow circulating mature T-cells to expand, thereby playing a critical role in T-cell homeostasis. In the present study we demonstrated reduced levels of circulating IL-7 in a cross-section of RA patients. IL-7 production by bone marrow stromal cell cultures was also compromised in RA. To investigate whether such an IL-7 deficiency could account for the prolonged lymphopenia observed in RA following therapeutic lymphodepletion, we compared RA patients and patients with solid cancers treated with high-dose chemotherapy and autologous progenitor cell rescue. Chemotherapy rendered all patients similarly lymphopenic, but this was sustained in RA patients at 12 months, as compared with the reconstitution that occurred in cancer patients by 3–4 months. Both cohorts produced naïve T-cells containing T-cell receptor excision circles. The main distinguishing feature between the groups was a failure to expand peripheral T-cells in RA, particularly memory cells during the first 3 months after treatment. Most importantly, there was no increase in serum IL-7 levels in RA, as compared with a fourfold rise in non-RA control individuals at the time of lymphopenia. Our data therefore suggest that RA patients are relatively IL-7 deficient and that this deficiency is likely to be an important contributing factor to poor early T-cell reconstitution in RA following therapeutic lymphodepletion. Furthermore, in RA patients with stable, well controlled disease, IL-7 levels were positively correlated with the T-cell receptor excision circle content of CD4+ T-cells, demonstrating a direct effect of IL-7 on thymic activity in this cohort
Effects of finite arm-length of LISA on analysis of gravitational waves from MBH binaries
Response of an interferometer becomes complicated for gravitational wave
shorter than the arm-length of the detector, as nature of wave appears
strongly. We have studied how parameter estimation for merging massive black
hole binaries are affected by this complicated effect in the case of LISA. It
is shown that three dimensional positions of some binaries might be determined
much better than the past estimations that use the long wave approximation. For
equal mass binaries this improvement is most prominent at \sim 10^5\sol.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys.Rev.
Forward Modeling of Space-borne Gravitational Wave Detectors
Planning is underway for several space-borne gravitational wave observatories
to be built in the next ten to twenty years. Realistic and efficient forward
modeling will play a key role in the design and operation of these
observatories. Space-borne interferometric gravitational wave detectors operate
very differently from their ground based counterparts. Complex orbital motion,
virtual interferometry, and finite size effects complicate the description of
space-based systems, while nonlinear control systems complicate the description
of ground based systems. Here we explore the forward modeling of space-based
gravitational wave detectors and introduce an adiabatic approximation to the
detector response that significantly extends the range of the standard low
frequency approximation. The adiabatic approximation will aid in the
development of data analysis techniques, and improve the modeling of
astrophysical parameter extraction.Comment: 14 Pages, 14 Figures, RevTex
Construction of Field Algebras with Quantum Symmetry from Local Observables
It has been discussed earlier that ( weak quasi-) quantum groups allow for
conventional interpretation as internal symmetries in local quantum theory.
From general arguments and explicit examples their consistency with (braid-)
statistics and locality was established. This work addresses to the
reconstruction of quantum symmetries and algebras of field operators. For every
algebra \A of observables satisfying certain standard assumptions, an
appropriate quantum symmetry is found. Field operators are obtained which act
on a positive definite Hilbert space of states and transform covariantly under
the quantum symmetry. As a substitute for Bose/Fermi (anti-) commutation
relations, these fields are demonstrated to obey local braid relation.Comment: 50 pages, HUTMP 93-B33
M-CSF instructs myeloid lineage fate in single haematopoietic stem cells
Under stress conditions such as infection or inflammation the body rapidly needs to generate new blood cells that are adapted to the challenge. Haematopoietic cytokines are known to increase output of specific mature cells by affecting survival, expansion and differentiation of lineage-committed progenitors, but it has been debated whether long-term haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are susceptible to direct lineage-specifying effects of cytokines. Although genetic changes in transcription factor balance can sensitize HSCs to cytokine instruction, the initiation of HSC commitment is generally thought to be triggered by stochastic fluctuation in cell-intrinsic regulators such as lineage-specific transcription factors, leaving cytokines to ensure survival and proliferation of the progeny cells. Here we show that macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF, also called CSF1), a myeloid cytokine released during infection and inflammation, can directly induce the myeloid master regulator PU.1 and instruct myeloid cell-fate change in mouse HSCs, independently of selective survival or proliferation. Video imaging and single-cell gene expression analysis revealed that stimulation of highly purified HSCs with M-CSF in culture resulted in activation of the PU.1 promoter and an increased number of PU.1(+) cells with myeloid gene signature and differentiation potential. In vivo, high systemic levels of M-CSF directly stimulated M-CSF-receptor-dependent activation of endogenous PU.1 protein in single HSCs and induced a PU.1-dependent myeloid differentiation preference. Our data demonstrate that lineage-specific cytokines can act directly on HSCs in vitro and in vivo to instruct a change of cell identity. This fundamentally changes the current view of how HSCs respond to environmental challenge and implicates stress-induced cytokines as direct instructors of HSC fate
Quantum Hall Bilayers and the Chiral Sine-Gordon Equation
The edge state theory of a class of symmetric double-layer quantum Hall
systems with interlayer electron tunneling reduces to the sum of a free field
theory and a field theory of a chiral Bose field with a self-interaction of the
sine-Gordon form. We argue that the perturbative renormalization group flow of
this chiral sine-Gordon theory is distinct from the standard (non-chiral)
sine-Gordon theory, contrary to a previous assertion by Renn, and that the
theory is manifestly sensible only at a discrete set of values of the inverse
period of the cosine interaction (beta). We obtain exact solutions for the
spectra and correlation functions of the chiral sine-Gordon theory at the two
values of beta at which the electron tunneling in bilayers is not irrelevant.
Of these, the marginal case (beta^2=4) is of greatest interest: the spectrum of
the interacting theory is that of two Majorana fermions with different,
dynamically generated, velocities. For the experimentally observed bilayer 331
state at filling factor 1/2, this implies the trifurcation of electrons added
to the edge. We also present a method for fermionizing the theory at the
discrete points (integer beta^2) by the introduction of auxiliary degrees of
freedom that could prove useful in other problems involving quantum Hall
multilayers.Comment: revtex, epsf; 39 p., 4 figs; corrections to three equations; two-up
postscript at http://www.sns.ias.edu/~leonid/csg-2up.p
Gravitational Lorentz Violations from M-Theory
In an attempt to bridge the gap between M-theory and braneworld
phenomenology, we present various gravitational Lorentz-violating braneworlds
which arise from p-brane systems. Lorentz invariance is still preserved locally
on the braneworld. For certain p-brane intersections, the massless graviton is
quasi-localized. This also results from an M5-brane in a C-field. In the case
of a p-brane perturbed from extremality, the quasi-localized graviton is
massive. For a braneworld arising from global AdS_5, gravitons travel faster
when further in the bulk, thereby apparently traversing distances faster than
light.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX, references added, minor corrections and
addition
Generation of atom-photon entangled states in atomic Bose-Einstein condensate via electromagnetically induced transparency
In this paper, we present a method to generate continuous-variable-type
entangled states between photons and atoms in atomic Bose-Einstein condensate
(BEC). The proposed method involves an atomic BEC with three internal states, a
weak quantized probe laser and a strong classical coupling laser, which form a
three-level Lambda-shaped BEC system. We consider a situation where the BEC is
in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with the coupling laser being
much stronger than the probe laser. In this case, the upper and intermediate
levels are unpopulated, so that their adiabatic elimination enables an
effective two-mode model involving only the atomic field at the lowest internal
level and the quantized probe laser field. Atom-photon quantum entanglement is
created through laser-atom and inter-atomic interactions, and two-photon
detuning. We show how to generate atom-photon entangled coherent states and
entangled states between photon (atom) coherent states and atom-(photon-)
macroscopic quantum superposition (MQS) states, and between photon-MQS and
atom-MQS states.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur
- …