Collective fluorescence and decoherence of a few nearly identical quantum dots

We study the collective interaction of excitons in closely spaced artificial molecules and arrays of nearly identical quantum dots with the electromagnetic modes. We discuss how collective fluorescence builds up in the presence of a small mismatch of the transition energy. We show that a superradiant state of a single exciton in a molecule of two dots with realistic energy mismatch undergoes a two-rate decay. We analyze also the stability of subdecoherent states for non-identical systems.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Manipulating ionization path in a Stark map: Stringent schemes for the selective field ionization in highly excited Rb Rydberg atoms

We have developed a quite stringent method in selectivity to ionize the low angular- momentum ($\ell$) states which lie below and above the adjacent manifold in highly excited Rb Rydberg atoms. The method fully exploits the pulsed field-ionization characteristics of the manifold states in high slew-rate regime: Specifically the low $\ell$ state below (above) the adjacent manifold is firstly transferred to the lowest (highest) state in the manifold via the adiabatic transition at the first avoided crossing in low slew-rate regime, and then the atoms are driven to a high electric field for ionization in high slew-rate regime. These extreme states of the manifold are ionized at quite different fields due to the tunneling process, resulting in thus the stringent selectivity. Two manipulation schemes to realize this method actually are demonstrated here experimentally.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Immunogenicity of a Prime-Boost Vaccine Containing the Circumsporozoite Proteins of Plasmodium vivax in Rodents

Plasmodium vivax is the most widespread and the second most prevalent malaria-causing species in the world. Current measures used to control the transmission of this disease would benefit from the development of an efficacious vaccine. in the case of the deadly parasite P. falciparum, the recombinant RTS,S vaccine containing the circumsporozoite antigen (CSP) consistently protects 30 to 50% of human volunteers against infection and is undergoing phase III clinical trials in Africa with similar efficacy. These findings encouraged us to develop a P. vivax vaccine containing the three circulating allelic forms of P. vivax CSP. Toward this goal, we generated three recombinant bacterial proteins representing the CSP alleles, as well as a hybrid polypeptide called PvCSP-All-CSP-epitopes. This hybrid contains the conserved N and C termini of P. vivax CSP and the three variant repeat domains in tandem. We also generated simian and human recombinant replication-defective adenovirus vectors expressing PvCSP-All-CSP-epitopes. Mice immunized with the mixture of recombinant proteins in a formulation containing the adjuvant poly(I.C) developed high and long-lasting serum IgG titers comparable to those elicited by proteins emulsified in complete Freund's adjuvant. Antibody titers were similar in mice immunized with homologous (protein-protein) and heterologous (adenovirus- protein) vaccine regimens. the antibodies recognized the three allelic forms of CSP, reacted to the repeated and nonrepeated regions of CSP, and recognized sporozoites expressing the alleles VK210 and VK247. the vaccine formulations described in this work should be useful for the further development of an anti-P. vivax vaccine.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)PNPDCoordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Ctr Terapia Celular & Mol CTCMol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Dept Microbiol Imunol & Parasitol, São Paulo, BrazilWistar Inst Anat & Biol, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USAMalaria Vaccine & Drug Dev Ctr, Cali, ColombiaUniv Fed Santa Catarina, Dept Microbiol Imunol & Parasitol, Florianopolis, SC, BrazilUniv São Paulo, Fac Ciencias Farmaceut, Dept Anal Clin & Toxicol, São Paulo, BrazilNYU, Sch Med, Dept Pathol, Michael Heidelberger Div, New York, NY USAUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Ctr Terapia Celular & Mol CTCMol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Dept Microbiol Imunol & Parasitol, São Paulo, BrazilFAPESP: 2009/15432-4FAPESP: 2012/13032-5CNPq: 471087/2013-0Web of Scienc

Time as an operator/observable in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics

The nonrelativistic Schroedinger equation for motion of a structureless particle in four-dimensional space-time entails a well-known expression for the conserved four-vector field of local probability density and current that are associated with a quantum state solution to the equation. Under the physical assumption that each spatial, as well as the temporal, component of this current is observable, the position in time becomes an operator and an observable in that the weighted average value of the time of the particle's crossing of a complete hyperplane can be simply defined: ... When the space-time coordinates are (t,x,y,z), the paper analyzes in detail the case that the hyperplane is of the type z=constant. Particles can cross such a hyperplane in either direction, so it proves convenient to introduce an indefinite metric, and correspondingly a sesquilinear inner product with non-Hilbert space structure, for the space of quantum states on such a surface. >... A detailed formalism for computing average crossing times on a z=constant hyperplane, and average dwell times and delay times for a zone of interaction between a pair of z=constant hyperplanes, is presented.Comment: 31 pages, no figures. Differs from published version by minor corrections and additions, and two citation

Extreme CD8 T Cell Requirements for Anti-Malarial Liver-Stage Immunity following Immunization with Radiation Attenuated Sporozoites

Radiation-attenuated Plasmodium sporozoites (RAS) are the only vaccine shown to induce sterilizing protection against malaria in both humans and rodents. Importantly, these “whole-parasite” vaccines are currently under evaluation in human clinical trials. Studies with inbred mice reveal that RAS-induced CD8 T cells targeting liver-stage parasites are critical for protection. However, the paucity of defined T cell epitopes for these parasites has precluded precise understanding of the specific characteristics of RAS-induced protective CD8 T cell responses. Thus, it is not known whether quantitative or qualitative differences in RAS-induced CD8 T cell responses underlie the relative resistance or susceptibility of immune inbred mice to sporozoite challenge. Moreover, whether extraordinarily large CD8 T cell responses are generated and required for protection following RAS immunization, as has been described for CD8 T cell responses following single-antigen subunit vaccination, remains unknown. Here, we used surrogate T cell activation markers to identify and track whole-parasite, RAS-vaccine-induced effector and memory CD8 T cell responses. Our data show that the differential susceptibility of RAS-immune inbred mouse strains to Plasmodium berghei or P. yoelii sporozoite challenge does not result from host- or parasite-specific decreases in the CD8 T cell response. Moreover, the surrogate activation marker approach allowed us for the first time to evaluate CD8 T cell responses and protective immunity following RAS-immunization in outbred hosts. Importantly, we show that compared to a protective subunit vaccine that elicits a CD8 T cell response to a single epitope, diversifying the targeted antigens through whole-parasite RAS immunization only minimally, if at all, reduced the numerical requirements for memory CD8 T cell-mediated protection. Thus, our studies reveal that extremely high frequencies of RAS-induced memory CD8 T cells are required, but may not suffice, for sterilizing anti-Plasmodial immunity. These data provide new insights into protective CD8 T cell responses elicited by RAS-immunization in genetically diverse hosts, information with relevance to developing attenuated whole-parasite vaccines

Radiation-hypersensitive cancer patients do not manifest protein expression abnormalities in components of the nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathway

Radiation therapy (RT) is utilised for the treatment of around half of all oncology patients during the course of their illness. Despite great clinical progress in the rational deployment of RT, the underlying molecular basis for its efficacy and toxicity are currently imperfectly understood. In this study, we took a biochemical approach to evaluate the potential role of key ionising radiation repair proteins in the treatment outcomes of patients with severe acute or late RT side effects. Lymphoblastoid cell lines were established from blood samples from 36 radiosensitive cases and a number of controls (the latter had had RT but did not develop significant toxicity). The expression level and migration of key proteins from the nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathway was evaluated by Western blot analysis on cases and controls. We did not observe any abnormalities in expression level or migration pattern of the following NHEJ proteins in radiosensitive cancer cases: Ku70, Ku80, XRCC4, DNA Ligase IV. These important negative results provide evidence that mutations that affect protein expression of these NHEJ components are unlikely to underlie clinical radiation sensitivity

Protein phosphatase beta, a putative type-2A protein phosphatase from the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.

Protein phosphatases play a critical role in the regulation of the eukaryotic cell cycle and signal transduction. A putative protein serine/threonine phosphatase gene has been isolated from the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. The gene has an unusual intron that contains four repeats of 32 nucleotides and displays a high degree of size polymorphism among different strains of P. falciparum. The open reading frame reconstituted by removal of the intron encodes a protein of 466 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of approximately 53.7 kDa. The encoded protein, termed protein phosphatase beta (PP-beta), is composed of two distinct domains. The C-terminal domain comprises 315 amino acids and exhibits a striking similarity to the catalytic subunits of the type-2A protein phosphatases. Database searches revealed that the catalytic domain has the highest similarity to Schizosaccharomyces pombe Ppa1 (58% identity and 73% similarity). However, it contains a hydrophilic insert consisting of five amino acids. The N-terminal domain comprises 151 amino acid residues and exhibits several striking features, including high levels of charged amino acids and asparagine, and multiple consensus phosphorylation sites for a number of protein kinases. An overall structural comparison of PP-beta with other members of the protein phosphatase 2A group revealed that PP-beta is more closely related to Saccharomyces cerevisiae PPH22. Southern blots of genomic DNA digests and chromosomal separations showed that PP-beta is a single-copy gene and is located on chromosome 9. A 2800-nucleotide transcript of this gene is expressed specifically in the sexual erythrocytic stage (gametocytes). The results indicate that PP-beta may be involved in sexual stage development

Drift of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein gp120 toward increased neutralization resistance over the course of the epidemic: a comprehensive study using the most potent and broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies

Extending our previous analyses to the most recently described broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (bNAbs) we confirm a drift of HIV-1 clade B variants over two decades toward higher resistance to bNAbs targeting almost all the identified gp120 neutralizing epitopes. In contrast, the sensitivity to bNAbs targeting the gp41 MPER remained stable, suggesting a selective pressure on gp120 preferentially. Despite this evolution, selected combinations of bNAbs remain capable to neutralize efficiently most of the circulating variants

Feshbach projection-operator formalism to resonance scattering on Bargmann-type potentials

The projection-operator formalism of Feshbach is applied to resonance scattering in a single-channel case. The method is based on the division of the full function space into two segments, internal (localized) and external (infinitely extended). The spectroscopic information on the resonances is obtained from the non-Hermitian effective Hamilton operator $H_{\rm eff}$ appearing in the internal part due to the coupling to the external part. As well known, additional so-called cut-off poles of the $S$-matrix appear, generally, due to the truncation of the potential. We study the question of spurious $S$ matrix poles in the framework of the Feshbach formalism. The numerical analysis is performed for exactly solvable potentials with a finite number of resonance states. These potentials represent a generalization of Bargmann-type potentials to accept resonance states. Our calculations demonstrate that the poles of the $S$ matrix obtained by using the Feshbach projection-operator formalism coincide with both the complex energies of the physical resonances and the cut-off poles of the $S$-matrix.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure