17,025 research outputs found
Translocating the blood-brain barrier using electrostatics
Copyright © 2012 Ribeiro,Domingues,
Freire,Santos and Castanho. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.Mammalian cell membranes regulate homeostasis, protein activity, and cell signaling. The charge at the membrane surface has been correlated with these key events. Although mammalian cells are known to be slightly anionic, quantitative information on the membrane charge and the importance of electrostatic interactions in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics remain elusive. Recently, we reported for the first time that brain endothelial cells (EC) are more negatively charged than human umbilical cord cells, using zeta-potential measurements by dynamic light scattering. Here, we hypothesize that anionicity is a key feature of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and contributes to select which compounds cross into the brain. For the sake of comparison, we also studied the membrane surface charge of blood components—red blood cells (RBC), platelets, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC).To further quantitatively correlate the negative zeta-potential values with membrane charge density, model membranes with different percentages of anionic lipids were also evaluated. From all the cells tested, brain cell membranes are the most anionic and those having their lipids mostly exposed, which explains why lipophilic cationic compounds are more prone to cross the blood-brain barrier.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia — Ministério da Educação e Ciência (FCT-MEC, Portugal) is acknowledged for funding (including fellowships SFRH/BD/42158/2007 to Marta M.B. Ribeiro, SFRH/BD/41750/2007 to Marco M. Domingues and SFRH/BD/70423/2010 to João M. Freire) and project PTDC/QUI-BIQ/119509/2010. Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (European Commission) is also acknowledged for funding (FP7-PEOPLE-2007-3-1-IAPP, Project 230654)
Entropy and holography constraints for inhomogeneous universes
We calculated the entropy of a class of inhomogeneous dust universes.
Allowing spherical symmetry, we proposed a holographic principle by reflecting
all physical freedoms on the surface of the apparent horizon. In contrast to
flat homogeneous counterparts, the principle may break down in some models,
though these models are not quite realistic. We refined fractal parabolic
solutions to have a reasonable entropy value for the present observable
universe and found that the holographic principle always holds in the realistic
cases.Comment: 4 pages, revtex style, 3 figures in 8 eps-file
The Apparent Fractal Conjecture: Scaling Features in Standard Cosmologies
This paper presents an analysis of the smoothness problem in cosmology by
focussing on the ambiguities originated in the simplifying hypotheses aimed at
observationally verifying if the large-scale distribution of galaxies is
homogeneous, and conjecturing that this distribution should follow a fractal
pattern in perturbed standard cosmologies. This is due to a geometrical effect,
appearing when certain types of average densities are calculated along the past
light cone. The paper starts reviewing the argument concerning the possibility
that the galaxy distribution follows such a scaling pattern, and the premises
behind the assumption that the spatial homogeneity of standard cosmology can be
observable. Next, it is argued that to discuss observable homogeneity one needs
to make a clear distinction between local and average relativistic densities,
and showing how the different distance definitions strongly affect them,
leading the various average densities to display asymptotically opposite
behaviours. Then the paper revisits Ribeiro's (1995: astro-ph/9910145) results,
showing that in a fully relativistic treatment some observational average
densities of the flat Friedmann model are not well defined at z ~ 0.1, implying
that at this range average densities behave in a fundamentally different manner
as compared to the linearity of the Hubble law, well valid for z < 1. This
conclusion brings into question the widespread assumption that relativistic
corrections can always be neglected at low z. It is also shown how some key
features of fractal cosmologies can be found in the Friedmann models. In view
of those findings, it is suggested that the so-called contradiction between the
cosmological principle, and the galaxy distribution forming an unlimited
fractal structure, may not exist.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX. This paper is a follow-up to
gr-qc/9909093. Accepted for publication in "General Relativity and
Gravitation
Dynamical analysis of the cluster pair: A3407 + A3408
We carried out a dynamical study of the galaxy cluster pair A3407 \& A3408
based on a spectroscopic survey obtained with the 4 meter Blanco telescope at
the CTIO, plus 6dF data, and ROSAT All-Sky-Survey. The sample consists of 122
member galaxies brighter than . Our main goal is to probe the galaxy
dynamics in this field and verify if the sample constitutes a single galaxy
system or corresponds to an ongoing merging process. Statistical tests were
applied to clusters members showing that both the composite system A3407 +
A3408 as well as each individual cluster have Gaussian velocity distribution. A
velocity gradient of was identified around
the principal axis of the projected distribution of galaxies, indicating that
the global field may be rotating. Applying the KMM algorithm to the
distribution of galaxies we found that the solution with two clusters is better
than the single unit solution at the 99\% c.l. This is consistent with the
X-ray distribution around this field, which shows no common X-ray halo
involving A3407 and A3408. We also estimated virial masses and applied a
two-body model to probe the dynamics of the pair. The more likely scenario is
that in which the pair is gravitationally bound and probably experiences a
collapse phase, with the cluster cores crossing in less than 1
Gyr, a pre-merger scenario. The complex X-ray morphology, the gas temperature,
and some signs of galaxy evolution in A3408 suggests a post-merger scenario,
with cores having crossed each other Gyr ago, as an
alternative solution.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, submitted to MNRAS, accepted 2016 May 9.
Received 2016 May 9; in original form 2016 April 1
Matching LTB and FRW spacetimes through a null hypersurface
Matching of a LTB metric representing dust matter to a background FRW
universe across a null hypersurface is studied. In general, an unrestricted
matching is possible only if the background FRW is flat or open. There is in
general no gravitational impulsive wave present on the null hypersurface which
is shear-free and expanding. Special cases of the vanishing pressure or energy
density on the hypersurface is discussed. In the case of vanishing energy
momentum tensor of the null hypersurface, i.e. in the case of a null boundary,
it turns out that all possible definitions of the Hubble parameter on the null
hypersurface, being those of LTB or that of FRW, are equivalent, and that a
flat FRW can only be joined smoothly to a flat LTB.Comment: 9 page
Differential Density Statistics of Galaxy Distribution and the Luminosity Function
This paper uses data obtained from the galaxy luminosity function (LF) to
calculate two types of radial number densities statistics of the galaxy
distribution as discussed in Ribeiro (2005), namely the differential density
and the integral differential density . By applying the
theory advanced by Ribeiro and Stoeger (2003), which connects the relativistic
cosmology number counts with the astronomically derived LF, the differential
number counts are extracted from the LF and used to calculate both
and with various cosmological distance definitions,
namely the area distance, luminosity distance, galaxy area distance and
redshift distance. LF data are taken from the CNOC2 galaxy redshift survey and
and are calculated for two cosmological models:
Einstein-de Sitter and an , standard
cosmology. The results confirm the strong dependency of both statistics on the
distance definition, as predicted in Ribeiro (2005), as well as showing that
plots of and against the luminosity and redshift
distances indicate that the CNOC2 galaxy distribution follows a power law
pattern for redshifts higher than 0.1. These findings bring support to
Ribeiro's (2005) theoretical proposition that using different cosmological
distance measures in statistical analyses of galaxy surveys can lead to
significant ambiguity in drawing conclusions about the behavior of the observed
large scale distribution of galaxies.Comment: LaTeX, 37 pages, 6 tables, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in
"The Astrophysical Journal
Adequação do leite produzido no Rio Grande do Sul à instrução normativa 51 do MAPA.
bitstream/item/31104/1/COMUNICADO-143.pd
Confining potential in a color dielectric medium with parallel domain walls
We study quark confinement in a system of two parallel domain walls
interpolating different color dielectric media. We use the phenomenological
approach in which the confinement of quarks appears considering the QCD vacuum
as a color dielectric medium. We explore this phenomenon in QCD_2, where the
confinement of the color flux between the domain walls manifests, in a scenario
where two 0-branes (representing external quark and antiquark) are connected by
a QCD string. We obtain solutions of the equations of motion via first-order
differential equations. We find a new color confining potential that increases
monotonically with the distance between the domain walls.Comment: RevTex4, 5 pages, 1 figure; version to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys.
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