Pulsar Kicks With Modified URCA and Electrons in Landau Levels

We derive the energy asymmetry given the proto-neutron star during the time when the neutrino sphere is near the surface of the proto-neutron star, using the modified URCA process. The electrons produced with the anti-neutrinos are in Landau levels due to the strong magnetic field, and this leads to asymmetry in the neutrino momentum, and a pulsar kick. The magnetic field must be strong enough for a large fraction of the eletrons to be in the lowest Landau level, however, there is no direct dependence of our pulsar velocity on the strength of the magnetic field. Our main prediction is that the large pulsar kicks start at about 10 s and last for about 10 s, with the corresponding neutrinos correlated in the direction of the magnetic field. We predict a pulsar velocity of 1.03 $\times 10^{-4} (T/10^{10}K)^7$ km/s, which reaches 1000 km/s if T $\simeq 9.96 \times 10^{10}$ K.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Alveolar macrophages and Toll-like receptor 4 mediate ventilated lung ischemia reperfusion injury in mice.

BackgroundIschemia-reperfusion (I-R) injury is a sterile inflammatory process that is commonly associated with diverse clinical situations such as hemorrhage followed by resuscitation, transient embolic events, and organ transplantation. I-R injury can induce lung dysfunction whether the I-R occurs in the lung or in a remote organ. Recently, evidence has emerged that receptors and pathways of the innate immune system are involved in recognizing sterile inflammation and overlap considerably with those involved in the recognition of and response to pathogens.MethodsThe authors used a mouse surgical model of transient unilateral left pulmonary artery occlusion without bronchial involvement to create ventilated lung I-R injury. In addition, they mimicked nutritional I-R injury in vitro by transiently depriving cells of all nutrients.ResultsCompared with sham-operated mice, mice subjected to ventilated lung I-R injury had up-regulated lung expression of inflammatory mediator messenger RNA for interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, and chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand-1 and -2, paralleled by histologic evidence of lung neutrophil recruitment and increased plasma concentrations of interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, and high-mobility group protein B1 proteins. This inflammatory response to I-R required toll-like receptor-4 (TLR4). In addition, the authors demonstrated in vitro cooperativity and cross-talk between human macrophages and endothelial cells, resulting in augmented inflammatory responses to I-R. Remarkably, the authors found that selective depletion of alveolar macrophages rendered mice resistant to ventilated lung I-R injury.ConclusionsThe data reveal that alveolar macrophages and the pattern recognition receptor toll-like receptor-4 are involved in the generation of the early inflammatory response to lung I-R injury

Effect of Muons on the Phase Transition in Magnetised Proto-Neutron Star Matter

We study the effect of inclusion of muons and the muon neutrinos on the phase transition from nuclear to quark matter in a magnetised proto-neutron star and compare our results with those obtained by us without the muons. We find that the inclusion of muons changes slightly the nuclear density at which transition occurs.However the dependence of this transition density on various chemical potentials, temperature and the magnetic field remains quantitatively the same.Comment: LaTex2e file with four postscript figure

Genotoxic effects of culture media on human pluripotent stem cells

Culture conditions play an important role in regulating the genomic integrity of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells (HPSCs). We report that HPSCs cultured in Essential 8 (E8) and mTeSR, two widely used media for feeder-free culturing of HPSCs, had many fold higher levels of ROS and higher mitochondrial potential than cells cultured in Knockout Serum Replacement containing media (KSR). HPSCs also exhibited increased levels of 8-hydroxyguanosine, phospho-histone-H2a.X and p53, as well as increased sensitivity to γ-irradiation in these two media. HPSCs in E8 and mTeSR had increased incidence of changes in their DNA sequence, indicating genotoxic stress, in addition to changes in nucleolar morphology and number. Addition of antioxidants to E8 and mTeSR provided only partial rescue. Our results suggest that it is essential to determine cellular ROS levels in addition to currently used criteria i.e. pluripotency markers, differentiation into all three germ layers and normal karyotype through multiple passages, in designing culture media

Explicit MBR All-Symbol Locality Codes

Node failures are inevitable in distributed storage systems (DSS). To enable efficient repair when faced with such failures, two main techniques are known: Regenerating codes, i.e., codes that minimize the total repair bandwidth; and codes with locality, which minimize the number of nodes participating in the repair process. This paper focuses on regenerating codes with locality, using pre-coding based on Gabidulin codes, and presents constructions that utilize minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) local codes. The constructions achieve maximum resilience (i.e., optimal minimum distance) and have maximum capacity (i.e., maximum rate). Finally, the same pre-coding mechanism can be combined with a subclass of fractional-repetition codes to enable maximum resilience and repair-by-transfer simultaneously

A Method to Identify and Isolate Pluripotent Human Stem Cells and Mouse Epiblast Stem Cells Using Lipid Body-Associated Retinyl Ester Fluorescence.

We describe the use of a characteristic blue fluorescence to identify and isolate pluripotent human embryonic stem cells and human-induced pluripotent stem cells. The blue fluorescence emission (450–500 nm) is readily observed by fluorescence microscopy and correlates with the expression of pluripotency markers (OCT4, SOX2, and NANOG). It allows easy identification and isolation of undifferentiated human pluripotent stem cells, high-throughput fluorescence sorting and subsequent propagation. The fluorescence appears early during somatic reprogramming. We show that the blue fluorescence arises from the sequestration of retinyl esters in cytoplasmic lipid bodies. The retinoid-sequestering lipid bodies are specific to human and mouse pluripotent stem cells of the primed or epiblast-like state and absent in naive mouse embryonic stem cells. Retinol, present in widely used stem cell culture media, is sequestered as retinyl ester specifically by primed pluripotent cells and also can induce the formation of these lipid bodies

Direct Urca Process in a Neutron Star Mantle

We show that the direct Urca process of neutrino emission is allowed in two possible phases of nonspherical nuclei (inverse cylinders and inverse spheres) in the mantle of a neutron star near the crust-core interface. The process is open because neutrons and protons move in a periodic potential created by inhomogeneous nuclear structures. In this way the nucleons acquire large quasimomenta needed to satisfy momentum-conservation in the neutrino reaction. The appropriate neutrino emissivity in a nonsuperfluid matter is about 2--3 orders of magnitude higher than the emissivity of the modified Urca process in the stellar core. The process may noticeably accelerate the cooling of low-mass neutron stars.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to A&