504 research outputs found
Endogenous production and detoxification of a potent cytotoxin, nitric oxide, in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and Escherichia coli
Salmonella serovars are harmful enteric pathogens of economical and clinical
importance that possess sophisticated strategies to rapidly adapt to various
host (human and animal) and non-host (soil, water and industrial) environments.
Nitrosative stress, in the form of RNS such as the potent cytotoxin NO, is an
important stress in the Salmonella lifecycle. Salmonella is exposed to
exogenous NO, produced by activated macrophages as part of the host
immune response and to endogenous NO, produced during anaerobic nitrate
respiration. Salmonella employs three known enzymes (HmpA, NrfA and
NorVW) to detoxify NO to less toxic compounds, including the
neuropharmacological agent and greenhouse gas N2O. The production of
endogenous NO and N2O have been predominantly studied in denitrifying soil
bacteria and have been widely neglected in enteric bacteria.
Here, the physiological and molecular mechanisms involved in endogenous NO
production and detoxification were examined in the pathogenic Salmonella
enterica serovar Typhimurium and laboratory Escherichia coli (E. coli) strains.
Significant differences in N2O production were observed between the two
genera and between the tested E. coli strains, although they possess identical
nitrate respiration systems. The reason for this was found to be transcriptional,
with narG expression having the major impact. In addition, our results indicate
that a weak nitrous oxide reductase exists in Salmonella; a process that was
believed to be restricted to certain soil bacteria, archaea and fungi that possess
the enzyme NosZ. Furthermore, the contribution of selected NsrR regulon
genes, to endogenous N2O production of Salmonella was determined and
revealed that HmpA and the Hcp-Hcr operon are both crucial for high N2O
levels. These findings provide new insights into host-pathogen interactions,
which could potentially lead to new treatment strategies for Salmonella
infections, help to increase food safety and provide new mitigation strategies to
reduce global warming
Defect flows in minimal models
In this paper we study a simple example of a two-parameter space of
renormalisation group flows of defects in Virasoro minimal models. We use a
combination of exact results, perturbation theory and the truncated conformal
space approach to search for fixed points and investigate their nature. For the
Ising model, we confirm the recent results of Fendley et al. In the case of
central charge close to one, we find six fixed points, five of which we can
identify in terms of known defects and one of which we conjecture is a new
non-trivial conformal defect. We also include several new results on exact
properties of perturbed defects and on the renormalisation group in the
truncated conformal space approach.Comment: 35 pages, 21 figures. 1 reference adde
EinfĂĽhrung: Die ungeheuerliche Raumphilosophie von Peter Sloterdijk
This article serves as introduction for a themed issue on
Peter Sloterdijk's enormous philosophy of space. It invites scholars from
various disciplines to critically engage with Sloterdijk's thought and
discusses briefly the contributions made in this special issue. The paper
gives some orientation on the anthropological and social philosophy
Sloterdijk deploys within his oeuvre, and illuminates the various fields of
social and cultural research his ideas have informed so far. The editorial
identifies four possible fields of interest within human geography that
could gain by engaging with Sloterdijk's thought, namely urban and
architectural theory, new technologies, political geographies and critical
social geography. The article also discusses the necessity of a critical
distance to the philosophical premises on which Sloterdijk grounds his
philosophy as well as his role as notorious commentator on political issues
in Germany.</p
Twisted boundary states in c=1 coset conformal field theories
We study the mutual consistency of twisted boundary conditions in the coset
conformal field theory G/H. We calculate the overlap of the twisted boundary
states of G/H with the untwisted ones, and show that the twisted boundary
states are consistently defined in the diagonal modular invariant. The overlap
of the twisted boundary states is expressed by the branching functions of a
twisted affine Lie algebra. As a check of our argument, we study the diagonal
coset theory so(2n)_1 \oplus so(2n)_1/so(2n)_2, which is equivalent with the
orbifold S^1/\Z_2. We construct the boundary states twisted by the
automorphisms of the unextended Dynkin diagram of so(2n), and show their mutual
consistency by identifying their counterpart in the orbifold. For the triality
of so(8), the twisted states of the coset theory correspond to neither the
Neumann nor the Dirichlet boundary states of the orbifold and yield the
conformal boundary states that preserve only the Virasoro algebra.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figure; (v2) minor change in section 2.3, references
adde
Height variables in the Abelian sandpile model: scaling fields and correlations
We compute the lattice 1-site probabilities, on the upper half-plane, of the
four height variables in the two-dimensional Abelian sandpile model. We find
their exact scaling form when the insertion point is far from the boundary, and
when the boundary is either open or closed. Comparing with the predictions of a
logarithmic conformal theory with central charge c=-2, we find a full
compatibility with the following field assignments: the heights 2, 3 and 4
behave like (an unusual realization of) the logarithmic partner of a primary
field with scaling dimension 2, the primary field itself being associated with
the height 1 variable. Finite size corrections are also computed and
successfully compared with numerical simulations. Relying on these field
assignments, we formulate a conjecture for the scaling form of the lattice
2-point correlations of the height variables on the plane, which remain as yet
unknown. The way conformal invariance is realized in this system points to a
local field theory with c=-2 which is different from the triplet theory.Comment: 68 pages, 17 figures; v2: published version (minor corrections, one
comment added
Time Resolved Experiments at the Frankfurt 14 GHz ECR Ion Source
To investigate the basic production processes of highly charged ions and combined phenomena of an ECRIS plasma (e. g. influence of secondary electrons and plasma instabilities) time resolved experiments have been carried out at the Frankfurt 14 GHz ECRIS [1] (see also the contributions to this workshop by O. Hohn et al. and V. Mironov et al.). We report time resolved measurements of the extracted ion currents by pulsing the biased disk voltage [2]. The measurements have shown that the extracted ion currents respond too fast to explain the "biased disk effect" (i. e. the intensity increase of highly charged ions) by enhanced ion breeding. Furthermore the influence of the pulsed biased disk on plasma instabilities has been investigated. It has also been shown that this method can be used to extract pulsed ion beams from an ECRIS
Status of the Frankfurt 14 GHz-ECRIS-(ve)RFQ Facility
The accelerator facility installed at the Institut fuer Kernphysik (IKF) combines a 14 GHz electron cyclotron resonance ion source (ECRIS) and a variable energy radio frequency quadrupole accelerator (ve-RFQ)[1,2]. The provided highly charged ions have an energy range between a few keV - using the beam delivered from the source - up to 200 keV/u by using the post acceleration of the ve-RFQ. The setup is designed to deliver a wide spectrum of ions in sufficiently high charged states for atomic physics and materials research. Besides this the ion source is used for studies of the production of highly charged ions with the intention to improve quality and intensity of ion beams. In addition to these activities there are some special topics which deal with the investigation of phenomena on the ECRIS plasma and the production of metal ions by laser ablation technique (see also contributions to this workshop S. Runkel et al. And V. Mironov et. al). The present status and further activities of the facility and a view of the different projects will be reported
Influence of damping on the excitation of the double giant resonance
We study the effect of the spreading widths on the excitation probabilities
of the double giant dipole resonance. We solve the coupled-channels equations
for the excitation of the giant dipole resonance and the double giant dipole
resonance. Taking Pb+Pb collisions as example, we study the resulting effect on
the excitation amplitudes, and cross sections as a function of the width of the
states and of the bombarding energy.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, corrected typo
Energy Quantisation in Bulk Bouncing Tachyon
We argue that the closed string energy in the bulk bouncing tachyon
background is to be quantised in a simple manner as if strings were trapped in
a finite time interval. We discuss it from three different viewpoints; (1) the
timelike continuation of the sinh-Gordon model, (2) the dual matrix model
description of the (1+1)-dimensional string theory with the bulk bouncing
tachyon condensate, (3) the c_L=1 limit of the timelike Liouville theory with
the dual Liouville potential turned on. There appears to be a parallel between
the bulk bouncing tachyon and the full S-brane of D-brane decay. We find the
critical value \lambda_c of the bulk bouncing tachyon coupling which is
analogous to \lambda_o=1/2 of the full S-brane coupling, at which the system is
thought to be at the bottom of the tachyon potential.Comment: 25 pages, minor changes, one reference adde
- …