Impaired receptor-mediated endocytosis by the asialoglycoprotein receptor in ethanol-fed mice: implications for studying the role of this receptor in alcoholic apoptosis

During receptor-mediated endocytosis (RME), extracellular molecules are internalized after being recognized and bound to specific cell surface receptors. In previous studies of the asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGPR) in rats, we showed that ethanol impairs RME at multiple ASGPR sites. Ethanol administration has been shown to increase apoptosis, and we demonstrated increased sensitization to apoptotic induction in hepatocytes from ethanol-fed rats. Although a physiological role for the ASGPR has not been identified, investigators have shown its involvement in the uptake/clearance of apoptotic cells in vitvo. This suggests a potential role for the ASGPR in the removal of apoptotic cells, and the recent availability of an ASGPR-deficient mouse strain provides an excellent opportunity to examine the role of the ASGPR during ethanol impairment. In this study, we examined ethanol-impaired RME in mice and began the characterization of ASGPR-deficient mice for use in ethanol studies. Similar to our findings with rats, ligand binding, internalization, and degradation were decreased 45-50% in hepatocytes from ethanol-fed wild-type mice. In ASGPR-deficient mice, these parameters did not vary among the chow-fed, pair-fed control, or ethanol groups and were negligible compared with those of wild-type mice. TUNEL analysis of liver sections showed an ethanol-induced increase in apoptotic bodies in all mouse strains with a significant difference in the receptor-deficient mice. Further, the livers of ASGPR-deficient mice had three times more apoptotic bodies, in all feeding groups, compared with wild-type mice. These results support the use of the ASGPR-deficient mouse model for studying ethanol-induced liver injury, specifically ethanol-induced apoptosis

Partial purification of a serum factor that causes necrosis of tumors.

Tumor necrosis can be induced in transplanted mouse methylcholanthrene-induced sarcoma by a tumor necrosis factor in the serum of mice infected with bacillus Calmette-Guérin and given bacterial endotoxin. Sera from normal mice, endotoxin-treated mice, and mice infected with bacillus Calmette-Guérin do not contain this factor. A 20- to 30-fold purification of the serum factor has been achieved by (NH4)2SO4 fractionation, Sephadex G-100 and G-200 gel filtration, and preparative polyacrylamide electrophoresis. Tumor necrosis factor is not bacterial endotoxin. It migrates with alpha-globulins, is made up of at least four subunits, and has a molecular weight of about 150,000. The active factor is a glycoprotein that contains sialic acid and galactosamine

Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) attitude measurements of the Interplanetary Dust Experiment

Analysis of the data from the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) Interplanetary Dust Experiment (IDE) sun sensors has allowed a confirmation of the attitude of LDEF during its first year in orbit. Eight observations of the yaw angle at specific times were made and are tabulated in this paper. These values range from 4.3 to 12.4 deg with maximum uncertainty of plus or minus 2.0 deg and an average of 7.9 deg. No specific measurements of pitch or roll were made but the data indicates that LDEF had an average pitch down attitude of less than 0.7 deg

Wodzicki Residue for Operators on Manifolds with Cylindrical Ends

We define the Wodzicki Residue TR(A) for A in a space of operators with double order (m_1,m_2). Such operators are globally defined initially on R^n and then, more generally, on a class of non-compact manifolds, namely, the manifolds with cylindrical ends. The definition is based on the analysis of the associate zeta function. Using this approach, under suitable ellipticity assumptions, we also compute a two terms leading part of the Weyl formula for a positive selfadjoint operator belonging the mentioned class in the case m_1=m_2.Comment: 24 pages, picture changed, added references, corrected typo

Interaction of Low - Energy Induced Gravity with Quantized Matter -- II. Temperature effects

At the very early Universe the matter fields are described by the GUT models in curved space-time. At high energies these fields are asymptotically free and conformally coupled to external metric. The only possible quantum effect is the appearance of the conformal anomaly, which leads to the propagation of the new degree of freedom - conformal factor. Simultaneously with the expansion of the Universe, the scale of energies decreases and the propagating conformal factor starts to interact with the Higgs field due to the violation of conformal invariance in the matter fields sector. In a previous paper \cite{foo} we have shown that this interaction can lead to special physical effects like the renormalization group flow, which ends in some fixed point. Furthermore in the vicinity of this fixed point there occur the first order phase transitions. In the present paper we consider the same theory of conformal factor coupled to Higgs field and incorporate the temperature effects. We reduce the complicated higher-derivative operator to several ones of the standard second-derivative form and calculate an exact effective potential with temperature on the anti de Sitter (AdS) background.Comment: 12 pages, LaTex - 2 Figure

Equivalence of qq-bosons using the exponential phase operator

Various forms of the $q$-boson are explained and their hidden symmetry revealed by transformations using the exponential phase operator. Both the one-component and the multicomponent $q$-bosons are discussed. As a byproduct, we obtain a new boson algebra having a shifted vacuum structure and define a global operatal $U(1)$ gauge transformation.Comment: 18 pages, LaTex(run twice), To appear in J. PHys.

Quantum spin coverings and statistics

SL_q(2) at odd roots of unity q^l =1 is studied as a quantum cover of the complex rotation group SO(3,C), in terms of the associated Hopf algebras of (quantum) polynomial functions. We work out the irreducible corepresentations, the decomposition of their tensor products and a coquasitriangular structure, with the associated braiding (or statistics). As an example, the case l=3 is discussed in detail.Comment: 15 page

Factorizable ribbon quantum groups in logarithmic conformal field theories

We review the properties of quantum groups occurring as Kazhdan--Lusztig dual to logarithmic conformal field theory models. These quantum groups at even roots of unity are not quasitriangular but are factorizable and have a ribbon structure; the modular group representation on their center coincides with the representation on generalized characters of the chiral algebra in logarithmic conformal field models.Comment: 27pp., amsart++, xy. v2: references added, some other minor addition

Quantum Liouville theory and BTZ black hole entropy

In this paper I give an explicit conformal field theory description of (2+1)-dimensional BTZ black hole entropy. In the boundary Liouville field theory I investigate the reducible Verma modules in the elliptic sector, which correspond to certain irreducible representations of the quantum algebra U_q(sl_2) \odot U_{\hat{q}}(sl_2). I show that there are states that decouple from these reducible Verma modules in a similar fashion to the decoupling of null states in minimal models. Because ofthe nonstandard form of the Ward identity for the two-point correlation functions in quantum Liouville field theory, these decoupling states have positive-definite norms. The explicit counting from these states gives the desired Bekenstein-Hawking entropy in the semi-classical limit when q is a root of unity of odd order.Comment: LaTeX, 33 pages, 4 eps figure

On the Two q-Analogue Logarithmic Functions

There is a simple, multi-sheet Riemann surface associated with e_q(z)'s inverse function ln_q(w) for 0< q < 1. A principal sheet for ln_q(w) can be defined. However, the topology of the Riemann surface for ln_q(w) changes each time "q" increases above the collision point of a pair of the turning points of e_q(x). There is also a power series representation for ln_q(1+w). An infinite-product representation for e_q(z) is used to obtain the ordinary natural logarithm ln{e_q(z)} and the values of sum rules for the zeros "z_i" of e_q(z). For |z|<|z_1|, e_q(z)=exp{b(z)} where b(z) is a simple, explicit power series in terms of values of these sum rules. The values of the sum rules for the q-trigonometric functions, sin_q(z) and cos_q(z), are q-deformations of the usual Bernoulli numbers.Comment: This is the final version to appear in J.Phys.A: Math. & General. Some explict formulas added, and to update the reference