14,831 research outputs found
Tuberculosis vaccine strain _Mycobacterium bovis_ BCG Russia is a natural _recA_ mutant
The current tuberculosis vaccine is a live vaccine derived from _Mycobacterium bovis_ and attenuated by serial _in vitro_ passaging. All vaccine substrains in use stem from one source, strain Bacille Calmette-Guérin. However, they differ in regions of genomic deletions, antigen expression levels, immunogenicity, and protective efficacy. As a RecA phenotype increases genetic stability and may contribute restricting the ongoing evolution of the various BCG substrains, we aimed to inactivate _recA_ by allelic replacement in BCG vaccine strains representing different phylogenetic lineages (Pasteur, Frappier, Denmark, Russia). Homologous gene replacement was successful in three out of four strains. However, only illegitimate recombination was observed in BCG substrain Russia. Sequence analyses of _recA_ revealed that a single nucleotide insertion in the 5' part of _recA_ led to a translational frameshift with an early stop codon making BCG Russia a natural _recA_ mutant. At the protein level BCG Russia failed to express RecA. According to phylogenetic analyses BCG Russia is an ancient vaccine strain most closely related to the parental _M. bovis_. Our data suggest that _recA_ inactivation in BCG Russia occurred early and is in part responsible for its high degree of genomic stability, resulting in a substrain that has less genetic alterations than other vaccine substrains with respect to _M. bovis_ AF2122/97 wild type
Modelling with measures: Approximation of a mass-emitting object by a point source
We consider a linear diffusion equation on
, where
is a bounded domain. The time-dependent flux on the
boundary is prescribed. The aim of the
paper is to approximate the dynamics by the solution of the diffusion equation
on the whole of with a measure-valued point source in the origin
and provide estimates for the quality of approximation. For all time , we
derive an -bound on the difference in flux on the
boundary. Moreover, we derive for all an -bound and an
-bound for the difference of the solutions to the two
models
Nivat's conjecture holds for sums of two periodic configurations
Nivat's conjecture is a long-standing open combinatorial problem. It concerns
two-dimensional configurations, that is, maps where is a finite set of symbols. Such configurations are often
understood as colorings of a two-dimensional square grid. Let denote
the number of distinct block patterns occurring in a configuration
. Configurations satisfying for some
are said to have low rectangular complexity. Nivat conjectured that such
configurations are necessarily periodic.
Recently, Kari and the author showed that low complexity configurations can
be decomposed into a sum of periodic configurations. In this paper we show that
if there are at most two components, Nivat's conjecture holds. As a corollary
we obtain an alternative proof of a result of Cyr and Kra: If there exist such that , then is periodic. The
technique used in this paper combines the algebraic approach of Kari and the
author with balanced sets of Cyr and Kra.Comment: Accepted for SOFSEM 2018. This version includes an appendix with
proofs. 12 pages + references + appendi
Paratexts, Printers, and Publishers: Book Production in Social Context
Paratexts, such as dedication letters or epigrams, in early modern printed books can be used by historians to situate a book’s production in its institutional and social context. We depart from the general assumption that two publishers or printers were in a relation of awareness of each other if they printed and put on the market two different editions that contain at least one identical paratext. In this paper, we analyze the circulation of the paratexts among the 359 editions of the “Sphaera corpus.” First, we discuss the available data, the conditions to build a social network, and the latter’s characteristics. Second, we interpret the results—potential relationships among printers and publishers—from a historical point of view and, at the same time, discuss the sorts of potential relationships that this method can disclose. Third, we corroborate the historical results among different approaches, namely by using editions’ fingerprints and by investigating the book production of those printers and publishers tangentially involved in relevant relationships, but who fall outside the “Sphaera corpus.” Finally, we identify local communities of printers and publishers and, on a transregional level, printers, and publishers who were observing and influencing each other
Surface stress of Ni adlayers on W(110): the critical role of the surface atomic structure
Puzzling trends in surface stress were reported experimentally for Ni/W(110)
as a function of Ni coverage. In order to explain this behavior, we have
performed a density-functional-theory study of the surface stress and atomic
structure of the pseudomorphic and of several different possible 1x7
configurations for this system. For the 1x7 phase, we predict a different, more
regular atomic structure than previously proposed based on surface x-ray
diffraction. At the same time, we reproduce the unexpected experimental change
of surface stress between the pseudomorphic and 1x7 configuration along the
crystallographic surface direction which does not undergo density changes. We
show that the observed behavior in the surface stress is dominated by the
effect of a change in Ni adsorption/coordination sites on the W(110) surface.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures Published in J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 24 (2012)
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A gobal fit to the anomalous magnetic moment, Higgs limit and b->s gamma in the constrained MSSM
New data on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon together with the b->s
gamma decay rate and Higgs limits are considered within the supergravity
inspired constrained minimal supersymmetric model. We perform a global
statistical chi2 analysis of these data and show that the allowed region of
parameter space is bounded from below by the Higgs limit, which depends on the
trilinear coupling and from above by the anomalous magnetic moment.Comment: 3 pages, To appear in Proc. of SUSY01, Dubna (Russia
Near-Infrared Kinetic Spectroscopy of the HO_2 and C_2H_5O_2 Self-Reactions and Cross Reactions
The self-reactions and cross reactions of the peroxy radicals HO_2 and C_2H_5O_2 and HO_2 were monitored using simultaneous independent spectroscopic probes to observe each radical species. Wavelength modulation (WM) near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was used to detect HO_2, and UV absorption monitored HO_2 and C_2H_5O_2. The temperature dependences of these reactions were investigated over a range of interest to tropospheric chemistry, 221−296 K. The Arrhenius expression determined for the cross reaction, k_2(T) = (6.01^(+1.95)_(−1.47)) × 10^(−13) exp((638 ± 73)/T) cm^3 molecules^(−1) s^(−1) is in agreement with other work from the literature. The measurements of the HO_2 self-reaction agreed with previous work from this lab and were not further refined.(1) The C_2H_5O_2 self-reaction is complicated by secondary production of HO_2. This experiment performed the first direct measurement of the self-reaction rate constant, as well as the branching fraction to the radical channel, in part by measurement of the secondary HO_2. The Arrhenius expression for the self-reaction rate constant is k_3(T) = (1.29^(+0.34)_(−0.27)) × 10^(−13)exp((−23 ± 61)/T) cm^3 molecules^(−1) s^(−1), and the branching fraction value is α = 0.28 ± 0.06, independent of temperature. These values are in disagreement with previous measurements based on end product studies of the branching fraction. The results suggest that better characterization of the products from RO_2 self-reactions are required
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