Urine peptidomic biomarkers for diagnosis of patients with systematic lupus erythematosus

Background: Systematic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is characterized with various complications which can cause serious organ damage in the human body. Despite the significant improvements in disease management of SLE patients, the non-invasive diagnosis is entirely missing. In this study, we used urinary peptidomic biomarkers for early diagnosis of disease onset to improve patient risk stratification, vital for effective drug treatment. Methods: Urine samples from patients with SLE, lupus nephritis (LN) and healthy controls (HCs) were analyzed using capillary electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry (CE-MS) for state-of-the-art biomarker discovery. Results: A biomarker panel made up of 65 urinary peptides was developed that accurately discriminated SLE without renal involvement from HC patients. The performance of the SLE-specific panel was validated in a multicentric independent cohort consisting of patients without SLE but with different renal disease and LN. This resulted in an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) of 0.80 (p < 0.0001, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.65–0.90) corresponding to a sensitivity and a specificity of 83% and 73%, respectively. Based on the end terminal amino acid sequences of the biomarker peptides, an in silico methodology was used to identify the proteases that were up or down-regulated. This identified matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) as being mainly responsible for the peptides fragmentation. Conclusions: A laboratory-based urine test was successfully established for early diagnosis of SLE patients. Our approach determined the activity of several proteases and provided novel molecular information that could potentially influence treatment efficacy

A thermodynamical fiber bundle model for the fracture of disordered materials

We investigate a disordered version of a thermodynamic fiber bundle model proposed by Selinger, Wang, Gelbart, and Ben-Shaul a few years ago. For simple forms of disorder, the model is analytically tractable and displays some new features. At either constant stress or constant strain, there is a non monotonic increase of the fraction of broken fibers as a function of temperature. Moreover, the same values of some macroscopic quantities as stress and strain may correspond to different microscopic cofigurations, which can be essential for determining the thermal activation time of the fracture. We argue that different microscopic states may be characterized by an experimentally accessible analog of the Edwards-Anderson parameter. At zero temperature, we recover the behavior of the irreversible fiber bundle model.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

Somatostatin agonist pasireotide inhibits exercise stimulated growth in the male Siberian hamster (Phodopus sungorus)

R.Dumbell was supported by a University of Aberdeen PhD studentship and a research visit grant awarded by the British Society of Neuroendocrinology. Further support was provided by the Scottish Government Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (Barrett and the German Research Foundation (DFG; STE 331/8-1; Steinlechner lab). We are grateful for technical assistance from Dana Wilson at RINH and Siegried Hiliken at UVMH, and thank Dr Claus-Dieter Mayer of Biomathematics & Statistics Scotland for valuable advice on statistical analysis.Peer reviewedPostprin

Transparent Perfect Mirror

A mirror that reflects light fully and yet is transparent appears paradoxical. Current so-called transparent or "one-way" mirrors are not perfectly reflective and thus can be distinguished from a standard mirror. Constructing a transparent "perfect" mirror has profound implications for security, privacy, and camouflage. However, such a hypothetical device cannot be implemented in a passive structure. We demonstrate here a transparent perfect mirror in a non-Hermitian configuration: an active optical cavity where a certain prelasing gain extinguishes Poynting's vector at the device entrance. At this threshold, all vestiges of the cavity's structural resonances are eliminated and the device presents spectrally flat unity-reflectivity, thus, becoming indistinguishable from a perfect mirror when probed optically across the gain bandwidth. Nevertheless, the device is rendered transparent by virtue of persisting amplified transmission resonances. We confirm these predictions in two photonic realizations: a compact integrated active waveguide and a macroscopic all-optical-fiber system.Comment: The paper is highlighted in Nature Photonics: http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v11/n6/full/nphoton.2017.90.html The supplementary data is available in: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acsphotonics.7b0005

Exponential torsion growth for random 3-manifolds

We show that a random 3-manifold with positive first Betti number admits a tower of cyclic covers with exponential torsion growth

Epithermal Neutron Beam Interference with Cardiac Pacemakers

Peer reviewe

Dynamical trapping and chaotic scattering of the harmonically driven barrier

A detailed analysis of the classical nonlinear dynamics of a single driven square potential barrier with harmonically oscillating position is performed. The system exhibits dynamical trapping which is associated with the existence of a stable island in phase space. Due to the unstable periodic orbits of the KAM-structure, the driven barrier is a chaotic scatterer and shows stickiness of scattering trajectories in the vicinity of the stable island. The transmission function of a suitably prepared ensemble yields results which are very similar to tunneling resonances in the quantum mechanical regime. However, the origin of these resonances is different in the classical regime.Comment: 14 page

Halogens in pore water of peat bogs – the role of peat decomposition and dissolved organic matter

Halogens are strongly enriched in peat and peatlands and such they are one of their largest active terrestrial reservoir. The enrichment of halogens in peat is mainly attributed to the formation of organohalogens and climatically controlled humification processes. However, little is known about release of halogens from the peat substrate and the distribution of halogens in the peat pore water. In this study we have investigated the distribution of chlorine, bromine and iodine in pore water of three pristine peat bogs located in the Magellanic Moorlands, southern Chile. Peat pore waters were collected using a sipping technique, which allows in situ sampling down to a depth greater than 6m. Halogens and halogen species in pore water were determined by ion-chromatography (IC) (chlorine) and IC-ICP-MS (bromine and iodine). Results show that halogen concentrations in pore water are 15–30 times higher than in rainwater. Mean concentrations of chlorine, bromine and iodine in pore water were 7–15 mg l^−1, 56–123 μg l^−1, and 10–20 μg l^−1, which correspond to mean proportions of 10–15%, 1–2.3% and 0.5–2.2% of total concentrations in peat, respectively. Organobromine and organoiodine were the predominant species in pore waters, whereas chlorine in pore water was mostly chloride. Advection and diffusion of halogens were found to be generally low and halogen concentrations appear to reflect release from the peat substrate. Release of bromine and iodine from peat depend on the degree of peat degradation, whereas this relationship is weak for chlorine. Relatively higher release of bromine and iodine was observed in less degraded peat sections, where the release of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) was also the most intensive. It has been concluded that the release of halogenated dissolved organic matter (DOM) is the predominant mechanism of iodine and bromine release from peat