11,411 research outputs found
Decreased myocardial injury and improved contractility after administration of a peptide derived against the alpha-interacting domain of the L-type calcium channel.
BackgroundMyocardial infarction remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality associated with coronary artery disease. The L-type calcium channel (IC a-L) is critical to excitation and contraction. Activation of the channel also alters mitochondrial function. Here, we investigated whether application of a alpha-interacting domain/transactivator of transcription (AID-TAT) peptide, which immobilizes the auxiliary β2 subunit of the channel and decreases metabolic demand, could alter mitochondrial function and myocardial injury.Methods and resultsTreatment with AID-TAT peptide decreased ischemia-reperfusion injury in guinea-pig hearts ex vivo (n=11) and in rats in vivo (n=9) assessed with uptake of nitroblue tetrazolium, release of creatine kinase, and lactate dehydrogenase. Contractility (assessed with catheterization of the left ventricle) was improved after application of AID-TAT peptide in hearts ex vivo (n=6) and in vivo (n=8) up to 12 weeks before sacrifice. In search of the mechanism for the effect, we found that intracellular calcium ([Ca(2+)]i, Fura-2), superoxide production (dihydroethidium fluorescence), mitochondrial membrane potential (Ψm, JC-1 fluorescence), reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide production, and flavoprotein oxidation (autofluorescence) are decreased after application of AID-TAT peptide.ConclusionsApplication of AID-TAT peptide significantly decreased infarct size and supported contractility up to 12 weeks postcoronary artery occlusion as a result of a decrease in metabolic demand during reperfusion
Investigation of high energy radiation from a plasma focus
Included are seventeen topics covering the experimental setup, diagnostics, analyses and various applications of the plasma focus. An invention, a hypocycloidal-pinch apparatus, is also included
Entanglement growth in quench dynamics with variable range interactions
Studying entanglement growth in quantum dynamics provides both insight into
the underlying microscopic processes and information about the complexity of
the quantum states, which is related to the efficiency of simulations on
classical computers. Recently, experiments with trapped ions, polar molecules,
and Rydberg excitations have provided new opportunities to observe dynamics
with long-range interactions. We explore nonequilibrium coherent dynamics after
a quantum quench in such systems, identifying qualitatively different behavior
as the exponent of algebraically decaying spin-spin interactions in a
transverse Ising chain is varied. Computing the build-up of bipartite
entanglement as well as mutual information between distant spins, we identify
linear growth of entanglement entropy corresponding to propagation of
quasiparticles for shorter range interactions, with the maximum rate of growth
occurring when the Hamiltonian parameters match those for the quantum phase
transition. Counter-intuitively, the growth of bipartite entanglement for
long-range interactions is only logarithmic for most regimes, i.e.,
substantially slower than for shorter range interactions. Experiments with
trapped ions allow for the realization of this system with a tunable
interaction range, and we show that the different phenomena are robust for
finite system sizes and in the presence of noise. These results can act as a
direct guide for the generation of large-scale entanglement in such
experiments, towards a regime where the entanglement growth can render existing
classical simulations inefficient.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure
Revealing quantum statistics with a pair of distant atoms
Quantum statistics have a profound impact on the properties of systems
composed of identical particles. In this Letter, we demonstrate that the
quantum statistics of a pair of identical massive particles can be probed by a
direct measurement of the exchange symmetry of their wave function even in
conditions where the particles always remain spatially well separated and thus
the exchange contribution to their interaction energy is negligible. We present
two protocols revealing the bosonic or fermionic nature of a pair of particles
and discuss possible implementations with a pair of trapped atoms or ions.Comment: 4+13 pages, v2 corresponds to the version published by PR
Loading of a cold atomic beam into a magnetic guide
We demonstrate experimentally the continuous and pulsed loading of a slow and
cold atomic beam into a magnetic guide. The slow beam is produced using a vapor
loaded laser trap, which ensures two-dimensional magneto-optical trapping, as
well as cooling by a moving molasses along the third direction. It provides a
continuous flux larger than atoms/s with an adjustable mean velocity
ranging from 0.3 to 3 m/s, and with longitudinal and transverse temperatures
smaller than K. Up to atoms/s are injected into the magnetic
guide and subsequently guided over a distance of 40 cm.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication to EPJ
EIT ground-state cooling of long ion strings
Electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) cooling is a ground-state
cooling technique for trapped particles. EIT offers a broader cooling range in
frequency space compared to more established methods. In this work, we
experimentally investigate EIT cooling in strings of trapped atomic ions. In
strings of up to 18 ions, we demonstrate simultaneous ground state cooling of
all radial modes in under 1 ms. This is a particularly important capability in
view of emerging quantum simulation experiments with large numbers of trapped
ions. Our analysis of the EIT cooling dynamics is based on a novel technique
enabling single-shot measurements of phonon numbers, by rapid adiabatic passage
on a vibrational sideband of a narrow transition
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