Association of Chlamydia pneumoniae with coronary artery disease and its progression is dependent on the modifying effect of mannose-binding lectin

Background— The possible association between coronary artery disease (CAD) and Chlamydia pneumoniae (C pneumoniae) infection is controversial. On the basis of the recent suggestion that mannose-binding lectin (MBL) variant alleles are related to an increased risk of severe atherosclerosis, and on the in vitro interaction of MBL with C pneumoniae, we asked whether MBL might contribute to CAD in conjunction with C pneumoniae. Methods and Results— Antibodies to C pneumoniae were measured by immunofluorescence and MBL alleles were determined by polymerase chain reaction technique in samples from 210 patients with CAD and 257 healthy subjects from Hungary collected between 1995 and 1996. A higher percentage of patients with CAD were anti-C pneumoniae positive as compared with the control group (P=0.058). However, at logistic regression analysis adjusted to age, sex, and serum lipid levels, this difference was confined only to subjects carrying MBL variant alleles (P=0.035, odds ratio 2.63, [95% CI: 1.07 to 6.45]). In contrast, no significant difference was seen in those homozygous for the normal MBL allele (P=0.412). During a 65±5.8-month follow-up period, major outcomes (new myocardial infarction, and/or bypass operation or cardiovascular death) occurred in 11 C pneumoniae positive and 3 C pneumoniae negative patients. In the C pneumoniae positive group, the odds ratio of development of outcomes was 3.27 (95% CI: 1.10 to 9.71, P=0.033) in the carriers of the MBL variant alleles compared with the homozygous carriers of the normal MBL allele. Conclusions— These results indicate that infection with C pneumoniae leads mainly to the development and progression of severe CAD in patients with variation in the MBL gene

Some Witnesses on the Gradual Evolution of the Ivonian Textual Families

Ivo’s intention was to present the canon law of the Church as a whole, so as to promote the role and work of ecclesiastical institutions, especially with regard to the care of souls and salvation as the final goal. This endeavor to apply the entirety of canon law might be realized in a variety of ways, and was to be fundamentally linked to the particular features of specific ecclesiastical institutions. Strict paleographical and codicological analyses of Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipal Ms. 222 (194) and Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College 393 (455) suggests convincingly that the term «textual families» be used in relation to Ivo’s work.El proyecto de Ivo de Chartres pretendía una presentación completa del derecho canónico de la Iglesia como instrumento que facilitase el trabajo y la actividad de las instituciones eclesiásticas, con especial atención a la cura de almas y su salvación eterna como objetivo principal. Este planteamiento se podía realizar de diversas maneras, pero dependía fundamentalmente de las peculiaridades concretas de cada instituto eclesial. Por otra parte, el análisis detallado de los manuscritos de Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale 222 (194) y Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College 393 (455), muestra que en relación con la obra de Ivo, es mejor utilizar la expresión de «familias textuales»

Evaluation of the analgesic effect of 4-anilidopiperidine scaffold containing ureas and carbamates

Fentanyl is a powerful opiate analgesic typically used for the treatment of severe and chronic pain, but its prescription is strongly limited by the well-documented side-effects. Different approaches have been applied to develop strong analgesic drugs with reduced pharmacologic side-effects. One of the most promising is the design of multitarget drugs. In this paper we report the synthesis, characterization and biological evaluation of twelve new 4-anilidopiperidine (fentanyl analogues). In vivo hot-Plate test, shows a moderate antinociceptive activity for compounds OMDM585 and OMDM586, despite the weak binding affinity on both μ and δ-opioid receptors. A strong inverse agonist activity in the GTP-binding assay was revealed suggesting the involvement of alternative systems in the brain. Fatty acid amide hydrolase inhibition was evaluated, together with binding assays of cannabinoid receptors. We can conclude that compounds OMDM585 and 586 are capable to elicit antinociception due to their multitarget activity on different systems involved in pain modulation. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

LOOC UP: Locating and observing optical counterparts to gravitational wave bursts

Gravitational wave (GW) bursts (short duration signals) are expected to be associated with highly energetic astrophysical processes. With such high energies present, it is likely these astrophysical events will have signatures in the EM spectrum as well as in gravitational radiation. We have initiated a program, "Locating and Observing Optical Counterparts to Unmodeled Pulses in Gravitational Waves" (LOOC UP) to promptly search for counterparts to GW burst candidates. The proposed method analyzes near real-time data from the LIGO-Virgo network, and then uses a telescope network to seek optical-transient counterparts to candidate GW signals. We carried out a pilot study using S5/VSR1 data from the LIGO-Virgo network to develop methods and software tools for such a search. We will present the method, with an emphasis on the potential for such a search to be carried out during the next science run of LIGO and Virgo, expected to begin in 2009.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures; v2) added acknowledgments, additional references, and minor text changes v3) added 1 figure, additional references, and minor text changes. v4) Updated references and acknowledgments. To be published in the GWDAW 12 Conf. Proc. by Classical and Quantum Gravit

New H-band Stellar Spectral Libraries for the SDSS-III/APOGEE Survey

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III (SDSS-III) Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) has obtained high-resolution (R ~ 22,500), high signal-to-noise ratio (\gt 100) spectra in the H-band (~1.5--1.7 mum) for about 146,000 stars in the Milky Way galaxy. We have computed spectral libraries with effective temperature ({{T}eff}) ranging from 3500 to 8000 K for the automated chemical analysis of the survey data. The libraries, used to derive stellar parameters and abundances from the APOGEE spectra in the SDSS-III data release 12 (DR12), are based on ATLAS9 model atmospheres and the ASS&epsilon;T spectral synthesis code. We present a second set of libraries based on MARCS model atmospheres and the spectral synthesis code Turbospectrum. The ATLAS9/ASS&epsilon;T ({{T}eff} = 3500--8000 K) and MARCS/Turbospectrum ({{T}eff} = 3500--5500 K) grids cover a wide range of metallicity (-2.5 -1), carbon (-1 <=slant [C/M] <=slant +1 dex), nitrogen (-1 <=slant [N/M] <=slant +1 dex), and alpha-element (-1 <=slant [alpha/M] <=slant +1 dex) variations, having thus seven dimensions. We compare the ATLAS9/ASS&epsilon;T and MARCS/Turbospectrum libraries and apply both of them to the analysis of the observed H-band spectra of the Sun and the K2 giant Arcturus, as well as to a selected sample of well-known giant stars observed at very high resolution. The new APOGEE libraries are publicly available and can be employed for chemical studies in the H-band using other high-resolution spectrographs

Tracing chemical evolution over the extent of the Milky Way's Disk with APOGEE Red Clump Stars

We employ the first two years of data from the near-infrared, high-resolution SDSS-III/APOGEE spectroscopic survey to investigate the distribution of metallicity and alpha-element abundances of stars over a large part of the Milky Way disk. Using a sample of ~10,000 kinematically-unbiased red-clump stars with ~5% distance accuracy as tracers, the [alpha/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] distribution of this sample exhibits a bimodality in [alpha/Fe] at intermediate metallicities, -0.9<[Fe/H]<-0.2, but at higher metallicities ([Fe/H]=+0.2) the two sequences smoothly merge. We investigate the effects of the APOGEE selection function and volume filling fraction and find that these have little qualitative impact on the alpha-element abundance patterns. The described abundance pattern is found throughout the range 5<R<11 kpc and 0<|Z|<2 kpc across the Galaxy. The [alpha/Fe] trend of the high-alpha sequence is surprisingly constant throughout the Galaxy, with little variation from region to region (~10%). Using simple galactic chemical evolution models we derive an average star formation efficiency (SFE) in the high-alpha sequence of ~4.5E-10 1/yr, which is quite close to the nearly-constant value found in molecular-gas-dominated regions of nearby spirals. This result suggests that the early evolution of the Milky Way disk was characterized by stars that shared a similar star formation history and were formed in a well-mixed, turbulent, and molecular-dominated ISM with a gas consumption timescale (1/SFE) of ~2 Gyr. Finally, while the two alpha-element sequences in the inner Galaxy can be explained by a single chemical evolutionary track this cannot hold in the outer Galaxy, requiring instead a mix of two or more populations with distinct enrichment histories.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Adiabatic perturbation theory and geometry of periodically-driven systems

We give a systematic review of the adiabatic theorem and the leading non-adiabatic corrections in periodically-driven (Floquet) systems. These corrections have a two-fold origin: (i) conventional ones originating from the gradually changing Floquet Hamiltonian and (ii) corrections originating from changing the micro-motion operator. These corrections conspire to give a Hall-type linear response for non-stroboscopic (time-averaged) observables allowing one to measure the Berry curvature and the Chern number related to the Floquet Hamiltonian, thus extending these concepts to periodically-driven many-body systems. The non-zero Floquet Chern number allows one to realize a Thouless energy pump, where one can adiabatically add energy to the system in discrete units of the driving frequency. We discuss the validity of Floquet Adiabatic Perturbation Theory (FAPT) using five different models covering linear and non-linear few and many-particle systems. We argue that in interacting systems, even in the stable high-frequency regimes, FAPT breaks down at ultra slow ramp rates due to avoided crossings of photon resonances, not captured by the inverse-frequency expansion, leading to a counter-intuitive stronger heating at slower ramp rates. Nevertheless, large windows in the ramp rate are shown to exist for which the physics of interacting driven systems is well captured by FAPT.The authors would like to thank M. Aidelsburger, M. Atala, E. Dalla Torre, N. Goldman, M. Heyl, D. Huse, G. Jotzu, C. Kennedy, M. Lohse, T. Mori, L. Pollet, M. Rudner, A. Russomanno, and C. Schweizer for fruitful discussions. This work was supported by AFOSR FA9550-16-1-0334, NSF DMR-1506340, ARO W911NF1410540, and the Hungarian research grant OTKA Nos. K101244, K105149. M. K. was supported by Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) funding from Berkeley Lab, provided by the Director, Office of Science, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. The authors are pleased to acknowledge that the computational work reported in this paper was performed on the Shared Computing Cluster which is administered by Boston University's Research Computing Services. The authors also acknowledge the Research Computing Services group for providing consulting support which has contributed to the results reported within this paper. The study of the driven non-integrable transverse-field Ising model was carried out using QuSpin [185] - an open-source state-of-the-art Python package for dynamics and exact diagonalization of quantum many body systems, available to download here. (FA9550-16-1-0334 - AFOSR; DMR-1506340 - NSF; W911NF1410540 - ARO; K101244 - Hungarian research grant OTKA; K105149 - Hungarian research grant OTKA; DE-AC02-05CH11231 - Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) funding from Berkeley Lab)https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.02229.pd