1,992 research outputs found
The role of infiltrating immune cells in dysfunctional adipose tissue
Adipose tissue (AT) dysfunction, characterized by loss of its homeostatic functions, is a hallmark of non-communicable diseases. It is characterized by chronic low-grade inflammation and is observed in obesity, metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance and diabetes. While classically it has been identified by increased cytokine or chemokine expression, such as increased MCP-1, RANTES, IL-6, interferon (IFN) gamma or TNFα, mechanistically, immune cell infiltration is a prominent feature of the dysfunctional AT. These immune cells include M1 and M2 macrophages, effector and memory T cells, IL-10 producing FoxP3+âT regulatory cells, natural killer and NKT cells and granulocytes. Immune composition varies, depending on the stage and the type of pathology. Infiltrating immune cells not only produce cytokines but also metalloproteinases, reactive oxygen species, and chemokines that participate in tissue remodelling, cell signalling, and regulation of immunity. The presence of inflammatory cells in AT affects adjacent tissues and organs. In blood vessels, perivascular AT inflammation leads to vascular remodelling, superoxide production, endothelial dysfunction with loss of nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability, contributing to vascular disease, atherosclerosis, and plaque instability. Dysfunctional AT also releases adipokines such as leptin, resistin, and visfatin that promote metabolic dysfunction, alter systemic homeostasis, sympathetic outflow, glucose handling, and insulin sensitivity. Anti-inflammatory and protective adiponectin is reduced. AT may also serve as an important reservoir and possible site of activation in autoimmune-mediated and inflammatory diseases. Thus, reciprocal regulation between immune cell infiltration and AT dysfunction is a promising future therapeutic target
Three-Point Functions of Quarter BPS Operators in N=4 SYM
In a recent paper hep-th/0109064, quarter-BPS chiral primaries were
constructed in the fully interacting four dimensional N=4 Super-Yang-Mills
theory with gauge group SU(N). These operators are annihilated by four
supercharges, and at order g^2 have protected scaling dimension and
normalization. Here, we compute three-point functions involving these
quarter-BPS operators along with half-BPS operators. The combinatorics of the
problem is rather involved, and we consider the following special cases: (1)
correlators of two half-BPS primaries with an arbitrary
chiral primary; (2) certain classes of and < quarter
quarter quarter > three-point functions; (3) three-point functions involving
the Delta
correlators with the special quarter-BPS operator made of single and double
trace operators only. The analysis in cases (1)-(3) is valid for general N,
while (4) is a large N approximation. Order g^2 corrections to all three-point
functions considered in this paper are found to vanish.
In the AdS/CFT correspondence, quarter-BPS chiral primaries are dual to
threshold bound states of elementary supergravity excitations. We present a
supergravity discussion of two- and three-point correlators involving these
bound states.Comment: 44 pages, Latex, eps figures, uses epsfig.sty; references adde
Fundamentals of interface phenomena in advanced bulk nanoscale materials
The review is devoted to a study of interface phenomena influencing advanced properties of nanoscale materials processed by means of severe plastic deformation, high-energy ball milling and their combinations. Interface phenomena include processes of interface defect structure relaxation from a highly nonequilibrium state to an equilibrium condition, grain boundary phase transformations and enhanced grain boundary and triple junction diffusivity. On the basis of an experimental investigation, a theoretical description of the key interfacial phenomena controlling the functional properties of advanced bulk nanoscale materials has been conducted. An interface defect structure investigation has been performed by TEM, high-resolution x-ray diffraction, atomic simulation and modeling. The problem of a transition from highly non-equilibrium state to an equilibrium one, which seems to be responsible for low thermostability of nanoscale materials, was studied. Also enhanced grain boundary diffusivity is addressed. Structure recovery and dislocation emission from grain boundaries in nanocrystalline materials have been investigated by analytical methods and modeling
Heart failure and atrial fibrillation: updates and perspectives
The article discusses modern approaches and features of management, as well as predicting the risk of complications in patients with cardiac arrhythmias, in particular, atrial fibrillation, and the potential of using conservative and interventional treatment methods for heart failure (HF), taking into account updates and achievements in clinical practice. Epidemiological data, algorithms for managing patients with HF and atrial fibrillation, prevention of thromboembolic events, results of studies comparing the effectiveness of different strategies for atrial fibrillation treatment, catheter ablation compared with drug therapy in patients with HF are presented
t' at the LHC: the physics of discovery
A search for a fourth family at the LHC is presently a low priority, but we
argue that an effective search can be conducted early with only a few inverse
femtobarns of data. We discuss a method based on invariant masses of single
jets for identifying the 's originating from heavy quark decays. This can
significantly increase signal to background in the reconstruction of the
mass. We also study the various types of physics that can impact the background
estimate, most notably higher order effects, initial state radiation, and
models of the underlying event.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, small improvements, version to appear in JHE
Predictions for PP-wave string amplitudes from perturbative SYM
The role of general two-impurity multi-trace operators in the BMN
correspondence is explored. Surprisingly, the anomalous dimensions of all
two-impurity multi-trace BMN operators to order g_2^2\lambda' are completely
determined in terms of single-trace anomalous dimensions. This is due to
suppression of connected field theory diagrams in the BMN limit and this fact
has important implications for some string theory processes on the PP-wave
background. We also make gauge theory predictions for the matrix elements of
the light-cone string field theory Hamiltonian in the two string-two string and
one string-three string sectors.Comment: 46 pages, 12 figures. V3:typos correcte
Reconstructing Sparticle Mass Spectra using Hadronic Decays
Most sparticle decay cascades envisaged at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
involve hadronic decays of intermediate particles. We use state-of-the art
techniques based on the \kt jet algorithm to reconstruct the resulting hadronic
final states for simulated LHC events in a number of benchmark supersymmetric
scenarios. In particular, we show that a general method of selecting
preferentially boosted massive particles such as W, Z or Higgs bosons decaying
to jets, using sub-jets found by the \kt algorithm, suppresses QCD backgrounds
and thereby enhances the observability of signals that would otherwise be
indistinct. Consequently, measurements of the supersymmetric mass spectrum at
the per-cent level can be obtained from cascades including the hadronic decays
of such massive intermediate bosons.Comment: 1+29 pages, 12 figure
Topology and Homoclinic Trajectories of Discrete Dynamical Systems
We show that nontrivial homoclinic trajectories of a family of discrete,
nonautonomous, asymptotically hyperbolic systems parametrized by a circle
bifurcate from a stationary solution if the asymptotic stable bundles
Es(+{\infty}) and Es(-{\infty}) of the linearization at the stationary branch
are twisted in different ways.Comment: 19 pages, canceled the appendix (Properties of the index bundle) in
order to avoid any text overlap with arXiv:1005.207
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