Rescue with an anti-inflammatory peptide of chickens infected H5N1 avian flu

Chickens suffering from avian flu caused by H5N1 influenza virus are destined to die within 2 days due to a systemic inflammatory response. Since HVJ infection (1,2) and influenza virus infection (3,4) cause infected cells to activate homologous serum complement, the systemic inflammatory response elicited could be attributed to the unlimited generation of C5a anaphylatoxin of the complement system, which is a causative peptide of serious inflammation. In monkeys inoculated with a lethal dose of LPS (4 mg/kg body weight), inhibition of C5a by an inhibitory peptide termed AcPepA (5) rescued these animals from serious septic shock which would have resulted in death within a day (6). Therefore, we tested whether AcPepA could also have a beneficial effect on chickens with bird flu. On another front, enhanced production of endothelin-1 (ET-1) and the activation of mast cells (MCs) have been implicated in granulocyte sequestration (7). An endothelin receptor derived antisense homology box peptide (8) designated ETR-P1/fl was shown to antagonize endothelin A receptor (ET-A receptor) (9) and reduce such inflammatory responses as endotoxin-shock (10) and hemorrhagic shock (11), thereby suppressing histamine release in the circulation (12). Thus, we also administered ETR-P1/fl to bird flu chickens expecting suppression of a systemic inflammatory response

Light wino dark matter in brane world cosmology

The thermal relic density of the wino-like neutralino dark matter in the brane world cosmology is studied. The expansion law at a high energy regime in the brane world cosmology is modified from the one in the standard cosmology, and the resultant relic density can be enhanced if the five dimensional Planck mass $M_5$ is low enough. We calculate the wino-like neutralino relic density in the anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking scenario and show that the allowed region is dramatically modified from the one in the standard cosmology and the wino-like neutralino with mass of order 100 GeV can be a good candidate for the dark matter. Since the allowed region disappears eventually as $M_5$ is decreasing, we can find a lower bound on $M_5 \gtrsim 100$ TeV according to the neutralino dark matter hypothesis, namely the lower bound in order for the allowed region of the neutralino dark matter to exist.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, final versio

Neutralino dark matter in brane world cosmology

The thermal relic density of the neutralino dark matter in the brane world cosmology is studied. Since the expansion law at a high energy regime in the brane world cosmology is modified from the one in the standard cosmology, the resultant relic density can be altered. It has been found that, if the five dimensional Planck mass $M_5$ is lower than $10^4$ TeV, the brane world cosmological effect is significant at the decoupling time and the resultant relic density is enhanced. We calculate the neutralino relic density in the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (CMSSM) and show that the allowed region is dramatically modified from the one in the standard cosmology and eventually disappears as $M_5$ is decreasing. We also find a new lower bound on $M_5 \gtrsim 600$ TeV based on the neutralino dark matter hypothesis, namely the lower bound in order for the allowed region of the neutralino dark matter to exist.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Dark Matter in B-L Extended MSSM Models

We analyze the dark matter problem in the context of supersymmetric U(1)_{B-L} model. In this model, the lightest neutalino can be the B-L gaugino widetilde {Z}_{B-L} or the extra Higgsinos widetilde{chi}_{1,2} dominated. We compute the thermal relic abundance of these particles and show that, unlike the LSP in MSSM, they can account for the observed relic abundance with no conflict with other phenomenological constraints. The prospects for their direct detection, if they are part of our galactic halo, are also discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures. Published versio

Derivation of mA≃MZm_A \simeq M_Z and tan⁡β>3\tan \beta > \sqrt 3 in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model

In the minimal supersymmetric standard model, the Higgs sector has two unknown parameters, usually taken to be $\tan \beta \equiv v_2/v_1$ and $m_A$, the mass of its one physical pseudoscalar particle. By minimizing the minimum of the Higgs potential along a certain direction in parameter space, it is shown that $m_A = M_Z$ + radiative correction, and if one further plausible assumption is made, $\tan \beta > \sqrt 3$.Comment: 7 pages, University of California, Riverside Report No. UCRHEP-T105 (Feb 1993). [Discussion of radiative correction is now included.

Statistical mechanics of lossy compression using multilayer perceptrons

Statistical mechanics is applied to lossy compression using multilayer perceptrons for unbiased Boolean messages. We utilize a tree-like committee machine (committee tree) and tree-like parity machine (parity tree) whose transfer functions are monotonic. For compression using committee tree, a lower bound of achievable distortion becomes small as the number of hidden units K increases. However, it cannot reach the Shannon bound even where K -> infty. For a compression using a parity tree with K >= 2 hidden units, the rate distortion function, which is known as the theoretical limit for compression, is derived where the code length becomes infinity.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Gravitino dark matter from increased thermal relic particles

We investigate the so-called superWIMP scenario with gravitino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) in the context of non-standard cosmology, in particular, brane world cosmology. As a candidate of the next-to-LSP (NLSP), we examine slepton and sneutrino. Brane world cosmological effects dramatically enhance the relic density of the slepton or sneutrino NLSP, so that the NLSP with mass of order 100 GeV can provide the correct abundance of gravitino dark matter through its decay. We find that with an appropriate five dimensional Planck mass, this scenario can be realized consistently with the constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) for both NLSP candidates of slepton and sneutrino. The BBN constraints for slepton NLSP are more stringent than that for sneutrino, as the result, the gravitino must be rather warm in the slepton NLSP case. The energy density of gravitino produced by thermal scattering is highly suppressed and negligible due to the brane world cosmological effects.Comment: 15 pages, discussion and references added, the final versio