1,967 research outputs found
Counting supersymmetric branes
Maximal supergravity solutions are revisited and classified, with particular
emphasis on objects of co-dimension at most two. This class of solutions
includes branes whose tension scales with g_s^{-\sigma} for \sigma>2. We
present a group theory derivation of the counting of these objects based on the
corresponding tensor hierarchies derived from E11 and discrete T- and U-duality
transformations. This provides a rationale for the wrapping rules that were
recently discussed for \sigma<4 in the literature and extends them. Explicit
supergravity solutions that give rise to co-dimension two branes are
constructed and analysed.Comment: 1+33 pages. To the memory of Laurent Houart. v2: Published version
with added reference
Envelope Determinants of Equine Lentiviral Vaccine Protection
Lentiviral envelope (Env) antigenic variation and associated immune evasion present major obstacles to vaccine development. The concept that Env is a critical determinant for vaccine efficacy is well accepted, however defined correlates of protection associated with Env variation have yet to be determined. We reported an attenuated equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) vaccine study that directly examined the effect of lentiviral Env sequence variation on vaccine efficacy. The study identified a significant, inverse, linear correlation between vaccine efficacy and increasing divergence of the challenge virus Env gp90 protein compared to the vaccine virus gp90. The report demonstrated approximately 100% protection of immunized ponies from disease after challenge by virus with a homologous gp90 (EV0), and roughly 40% protection against challenge by virus (EV13) with a gp90 13% divergent from the vaccine strain. In the current study we examine whether the protection observed when challenging with the EV0 strain could be conferred to animals via chimeric challenge viruses between the EV0 and EV13 strains, allowing for mapping of protection to specific Env sequences. Viruses containing the EV13 proviral backbone and selected domains of the EV0 gp90 were constructed and in vitro and in vivo infectivity examined. Vaccine efficacy studies indicated that homology between the vaccine strain gp90 and the N-terminus of the challenge strain gp90 was capable of inducing immunity that resulted in significantly lower levels of post-challenge virus and significantly delayed the onset of disease. However, a homologous N-terminal region alone inserted in the EV13 backbone could not impart the 100% protection observed with the EV0 strain. Data presented here denote the complicated and potentially contradictory relationship between in vitro virulence and in vivo pathogenicity. The study highlights the importance of structural conformation for immunogens and emphasizes the need for antibody binding, not neutralizing, assays that correlate with vaccine protection. © 2013 Craigo et al
The Architectural Design Rules of Solar Systems based on the New Perspective
On the basis of the Lunar Laser Ranging Data released by NASA on the Silver
Jubilee Celebration of Man Landing on Moon on 21st July 1969-1994, theoretical
formulation of Earth-Moon tidal interaction was carried out and Planetary
Satellite Dynamics was established. It was found that this mathematical
analysis could as well be applied to Star and Planets system and since every
star could potentially contain an extra-solar system, hence we have a large
ensemble of exoplanets to test our new perspective on the birth and evolution
of solar systems. Till date 403 exoplanets have been discovered in 390
extra-solar systems. I have taken 12 single planet systems, 4 Brown Dwarf -
Star systems and 2 Brown Dwarf pairs. Following architectural design rules are
corroborated through this study of exoplanets. All planets are born at inner
Clarke Orbit what we refer to as inner geo-synchronous orbit in case of
Earth-Moon System. By any perturbative force such as cosmic particles or
radiation pressure, the planet gets tipped long of aG1 or short of aG1. Here
aG1 is inner Clarke Orbit. The exoplanet can either be launched on death spiral
as CLOSE HOT JUPITERS or can be launched on an expanding spiral path as the
planets in our Solar System are. It was also found that if the exo-planet are
significant fraction of the host star then those exo-planets rapidly migrate
from aG1 to aG2 and have very short Time Constant of Evolution as Brown Dwarfs
have. This vindicates our basic premise that planets are always born at inner
Clarke Orbit. This study vindicates the design rules which had been postulated
at 35th COSPAR Scientific Assembly in 2004 at Paris, France, under the title
,New Perspective on the Birth & Evolution of Solar Systems.Comment: This paper has been reported to Earth,Moon and Planets Journal as
MOON-S-09-0007
Impaired perception of facial motion in autism spectrum disorder
Copyright: © 2014 O’Brien et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Facial motion is a special type of biological motion that transmits cues for socio-emotional communication and enables the discrimination of properties such as gender and identity. We used animated average faces to examine the ability of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to perceive facial motion. Participants completed increasingly difficult tasks involving the discrimination of (1) sequences of facial motion, (2) the identity of individuals based on their facial motion and (3) the gender of individuals. Stimuli were presented in both upright and upside-down orientations to test for the difference in inversion effects often found when comparing ASD with controls in face perception. The ASD group’s performance was impaired relative to the control group in all three tasks and unlike the control group, the individuals with ASD failed to show an inversion effect. These results point to a deficit in facial biological motion processing in people with autism, which we suggest is linked to deficits in lower level motion processing we have previously reported
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Attribution-based motivation treatment efficacy in an online learning environment for students who differ in cognitive elaboration
Attribution-based motivation treatments can boost performance in competitive achievement settings (Perry and Hamm 2017), yet their efficacy relative to mediating processes and affect-based treatments remains largely unexamined. In a two-semester, pre-post, randomized treatment study (n = 806), attributional retraining (AR) and stress-reduction (SR) treatments were administered in an online learning environment to first-year college students who differed in cognitive elaboration (low, high). Low elaborators who received AR outperformed their SR peers by nearly a letter grade on a class test assessed 5 months post-treatment. Path analysis revealed this AR-performance linkage was mediated by causal attributions, perceived control, and positive and negative achievement emotions in a hypothesized causal sequence. Results advance the literature by showing AR (vs. SR) improved performance indirectly via cognitive and affective process variables specified by Weiner’s (1985a, 2012) attribution theory of motivation and emotion
Circulating gluten-specific FOXP3<sup>+</sup>CD39<sup>+</sup> regulatory T cells have impaired suppressive function in patients with celiac disease
Background Celiac disease is a chronic immune-mediated inflammatory disorder of the gut triggered by dietary gluten. Although the effector T-cell response in patients with celiac disease has been well characterized, the role of regulatory T (Treg) cells in the loss of tolerance to gluten remains poorly understood. Objective We sought to define whether patients with celiac disease have a dysfunction or lack of gluten-specific forkhead box protein 3 (FOXP3)+ Treg cells. Methods Treated patients with celiac disease underwent oral wheat challenge to stimulate recirculation of gluten-specific T cells. Peripheral blood was collected before and after challenge. To comprehensively measure the gluten-specific CD4+ T-cell response, we paired traditional IFN-γ ELISpot with an assay to detect antigen-specific CD4+ T cells that does not rely on tetramers, antigen-stimulated cytokine production, or proliferation but rather on antigen-induced coexpression of CD25 and OX40 (CD134). Results Numbers of circulating gluten-specific Treg cells and effector T cells both increased significantly after oral wheat challenge, peaking at day 6. Surprisingly, we found that approximately 80% of the ex vivo circulating gluten-specific CD4+ T cells were FOXP3+CD39+ Treg cells, which reside within the pool of memory CD4+CD25+CD127lowCD45RO+ Treg cells. Although we observed normal suppressive function in peripheral polyclonal Treg cells from patients with celiac disease, after a short in vitro expansion, the gluten-specific FOXP3+CD39+ Treg cells exhibited significantly reduced suppressive function compared with polyclonal Treg cells. Conclusion This study provides the first estimation of FOXP3+CD39+ Treg cell frequency within circulating gluten-specific CD4+ T cells after oral gluten challenge of patients with celiac disease. FOXP3+CD39+ Treg cells comprised a major proportion of all circulating gluten-specific CD4+ T cells but had impaired suppressive function, indicating that Treg cell dysfunction might be a key contributor to disease pathogenesis
Comparison of SPECT bone scintigraphy with MRI for diagnosis of meniscal tears
BACKGROUND: Scintigraphy has been considered as competitive to MRI, but limited data are available on the accuracy of single photon emission tomography (SPECT) compared with MRI for the assessment of meniscal tears. Our objective was to assess the value of SPECT in comparison to MRI. METHODS: Between January 2003 and March 2004, sixteen patients were studied with both modalities and the accuracy rates of SPECT scan results, and MRI findings in the diagnosis of meniscal tears were compared. Arthroscopy was the gold standard. RESULTS: The respective sensitivity rate, specificity rate, and positive and negative predictive accuracies of MRI were 89%, 94%, 93%, and 79% and for SPECT those were 78%, 94%, 94%, and 88%. There was good agreement on the presence or absence of tears between two modalities (κ statistic = 0.699). CONCLUSION: SPECT and MRI are both valuable imaging techniques. SPECT is a useful alternative when MRI is unavailable or unsuitable and it is beneficial when more possible accuracy is desired (such as when MRI results are either inconclusive or conflict with other clinical data)
Limited effect of patient and disease characteristics on compliance with hospital antimicrobial guidelines
Objective: Physicians frequently deviate from guidelines that promote prudent use of antimicrobials. We explored to what extent patient and disease characteristics were associated with compliance with guideline recommendations for three common infections. Methods: In a 1-year prospective observational study, 1,125 antimicrobial prescriptions were analysed for compliance with university hospital guidelines. Results: Compliance varied significantly between and within the groups of infections studied. Compliance was much higher for lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs; 79%) than for sepsis (53%) and urinary tract infections (UTIs; 40%). Only predisposing illnesses and active malignancies were associated with more compliant prescribing, whereas alcohol/ intravenous drug abuse and serum creatinine levels > 130 mu mol/l were associated with less compliant prescribing. Availability of culture results had no impact on compliance with guidelines for sepsis but was associated with more compliance in UTIs and less in LRTIs. Narrowing initial broad-spectrum antimicrobial therapy to cultured pathogens was seldom practised. Most noncompliant prescribing concerned a too broad spectrum of activity when compared with guideline-recommended therapy. Conclusion: Patient characteristics had only a limited impact on compliant prescribing for a variety of reasons. Physicians seemed to practise defensive prescribing behaviour, favouring treatment success in current patients over loss of effectiveness due to resistance in future patients
Risk factors for high anti-HHV-8 antibody titers (≥1:51,200) in black, HIV-1 negative South African cancer patients: a case control study
Background: Infection with human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) is the necessary causal agent in the
development of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). Infection with HIV-1, male gender and older age all increase
risk for KS. However, the geographic distribution of HHV-8 and KS both prior to the HIV/AIDS
epidemic and with HIV/AIDS suggest the presence of an additional co-factor in the development of
KS.
Methods: Between January 1994 and October 1997, we interviewed 2576 black in-patients with
cancer in Johannesburg and Soweto, South Africa. Blood was tested for antibodies against HIV-1
and HHV-8 and the study was restricted to 2191 HIV-1 negative patients. Antibodies against the
latent nuclear antigen of HHV-8 encoded by orf73 were detected with an indirect
immunofluorescence assay. We examined the relationship between high anti-HHV-8 antibody
titers (≥1:51,200) and sociodemographic and behavioral factors using unconditional logistic
regression models. Variables that were significant at p = 0.10 were included in multivariate analysis.
Results: Of the 2191 HIV-1 negative patients who did not have Kaposi's sarcoma, 854 (39.0%)
were positive for antibodies against HHV-8 according to the immunofluorescent assay. Among
those seropositive for HHV-8, 530 (62.1%) had low titers (1:200), 227 (26.6%) had medium titers
(1:51,200) and 97 (11.4%) had highest titers (1:204,800). Among the 2191 HIV-1 negative patients,
the prevalence of high anti-HHV-8 antibody titers (≥1:51,200) was independently associated with
increasing age (ptrend = 0.04), having a marital status of separated or divorced (p = 0.003), using
wood, coal or charcoal as fuel for cooking 20 years ago instead of electricity (p = 0.02) and
consuming traditional maize beer more than one time a week (p = 0.02; p-trend for increasing
consumption = 0.05) although this may be due to chance given the large number of predictors
considered in this analysis.
Conclusions: Among HIV-negative subjects, patients with high anti-HHV-8 antibody titers are
characterized by older age. Other associations that may be factors in the development of high anti-
HHV-8 titers include exposure to poverty or a low socioeconomic status environment and
consumption of traditional maize beer. The relationship between these variables and high anti-
HHV-8 titers requires further, prospective study
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