2,092 research outputs found
Influence of GABA and GABA-producing Lactobacillus brevis DPC 6108 on the development of diabetes in a streptozotocin rat model
peer-reviewedThe aim of this study was to investigate if dietary administration of Îł-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-producing Lactobacillus brevis DPC 6108 and pure GABA exert protective effects against the development of diabetes in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic Sprague Dawley rats. In a first experiment, healthy rats were divided in 3 groups (n=10/group) receiving placebo, 2.6 mg/kg body weight (bw) pure GABA or L. brevis DPC 6108 (~109microorganisms). In a second experiment, rats (n=15/group) were randomised to five groups and four of these received an injection of STZ to induce type 1 diabetes. Diabetic and non-diabetic controls received placebo [4% (w/v) yeast extract in dH2O], while the other three diabetic groups received one of the following dietary supplements: 2.6 mg/kg bw GABA (low GABA), 200 mg/kg bw GABA (high GABA) or ~109 L. brevis DPC 6108. L. brevis DPC 6108 supplementation was associated with increased serum insulin levels (P0.05), compared with non-diabetic controls while all other diabetic groups displayed reduced diversity (P<0.05). L. brevis DPC 6108 attenuated hyperglycaemia induced by diabetes but additional studies are needed to understand the mechanisms involved in this reduction.The authors and their work were supported
by the APC Microbiome Institute. The APC Microbiome Institute is funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).
This publication has emanated from research supported by a research grant from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under Grant Number SFI/12/RC/2273
Characteristics of EGRET Blazars in the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS)
We examine the radio properties of EGRET-detected blazars observed as part of
the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS). VIPS has a flux limit roughly
an order of magnitude below the MOJAVE survey and most other samples that have
been used to study the properties of EGRET blazars. At lower flux levels, radio
flux density does not directly correlate with gamma-ray flux density. We do
find that the EGRET-detected blazars tend to have higher brightness
temperatures, greater core fractions, and possibly larger than average jet
opening angles. A weak correlation is also found with jet length and with
polarization. All of the well-established trends can be explained by
systematically larger Doppler factors in the gamma-ray loud blazars, consistent
with the measurements of higher apparent velocities found in monitoring
programs carried out at radio frequencies above 10 GHz.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, accepted to Ap
Besov priors for Bayesian inverse problems
We consider the inverse problem of estimating a function from noisy,
possibly nonlinear, observations. We adopt a Bayesian approach to the problem.
This approach has a long history for inversion, dating back to 1970, and has,
over the last decade, gained importance as a practical tool. However most of
the existing theory has been developed for Gaussian prior measures. Recently
Lassas, Saksman and Siltanen (Inv. Prob. Imag. 2009) showed how to construct
Besov prior measures, based on wavelet expansions with random coefficients, and
used these prior measures to study linear inverse problems. In this paper we
build on this development of Besov priors to include the case of nonlinear
measurements. In doing so a key technical tool, established here, is a
Fernique-like theorem for Besov measures. This theorem enables us to identify
appropriate conditions on the forward solution operator which, when matched to
properties of the prior Besov measure, imply the well-definedness and
well-posedness of the posterior measure. We then consider the application of
these results to the inverse problem of finding the diffusion coefficient of an
elliptic partial differential equation, given noisy measurements of its
solution.Comment: 18 page
Detection of somatic changes in human cancer DNA by DNA fingerprint analysis.
Minisatellite DNA probes which can detect a large number of autosomal loci dispersed throughout the human genome were used to examine the constitutional and tumour DNA of 35 patients with a variety of cancers of which eight were of gastrointestinal origin. Somatic changes were seen in the tumour DNA in ten of the 35 cases. The changes included alterations in the relative intensities of hybridising DNA fragments, and, in three cases of cancers of gastrointestinal origin, the appearance of novel minisatellite fragments not seen in the corresponding constitutional DNA. The results of this preliminary study suggests that DNA fingerprint analysis provides a useful technique for identifying somatic changes in cancers
Fast algorithm for calculating two-photon absorption spectra
We report a numerical calculation of the two-photon absorption coefficient of
electrons in a binding potential using the real-time real-space higher-order
difference method. By introducing random vector averaging for the intermediate
state, the task of evaluating the two-dimensional time integral is reduced to
calculating two one-dimensional integrals. This allows the reduction of the
computation load down to the same order as that for the linear response
function. The relative advantage of the method compared to the straightforward
multi-dimensional time integration is greater for the calculation of non-linear
response functions of higher order at higher energy resolution.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. It will be published in Phys. Rev. E on 1, March,
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Surface plasmon polaritons on thin-slab metal gratings
Ian R. Hooper and J. Roy Sambles, Physical Review B, Vol. 67, article 235404 (2003). "Copyright © 2003 by the American Physical Society."In a recently published paper [U. Schröter and D. Heitmann, Phys. Rev. B 60, 4992 (1999)] an unexpected result occurred when light was incident upon a periodically corrugated thin metal film when the corrugations on the two interfaces were identical and in phase with each other. It was observed that it was not possible to excite the surface plasmon polariton on the metal surface facing away from the incoming light, and they ascribed this to the lack of a thickness variation within the metal. In this paper a somewhat different interpretation of their results is presented, which shows that the surface plasmon polariton (SSP) is in fact very weakly excited on the transmission side of such structures. It is explained why this coupling is so weak in terms of the cancellation of the evanescent diffracted orders from the two diffractive surfaces and how, by changing the phase between the grating on either surface, this coupling becomes much stronger. An explanation for the observation that SPP excitation on such structures may lead to either transmission maxima or minima is also presented
Surface plasmon polaritons on narrow-ridged short-pitch metal gratings
Ian R. Hooper and J. Roy Sambles, Physical Review B, Vol. 66, article 205408 (2002). "Copyright © 2002 by the American Physical Society."The reflectivity of short pitch metal gratings consisting of a series of narrow Gaussian ridges in the classical mount has been modeled as a function of frequency and in-plane wave vector (the plane of incidence containing the grating vector) for various ridge heights. Surface plasmon polaritons (SPP’s) are found to be excited even in the zero-order region of the spectrum. These may result in strong absorption of radiation polarized with its electric field in the plane of incidence (transverse magnetic). For zero in-plane wave vector the SPP modes consist of a symmetric charge distribution on either side of the grating ridges, a family of these modes existing with different numbers of field maxima per grating period. Because of the charge symmetry these modes may only be coupled to at angles away from normal incidence where strong resonant absorption may then occur. The dispersion of these SPP modes as a function of the in-plane wave vector is found to be complex arising from the formation of very large band gaps due to the harmonic content of the grating profile, the creation of a pseudo high-energy mode, and through strong interactions between different SPP bands
A surface-patterned chip as a strong source of ultracold atoms for quantum technologies
Laser-cooled atoms are central to modern precision measurements. They are also increasingly important as an enabling technology for experimental cavity quantum electrodynamics, quantum information processing and matter–wave interferometry. Although significant progress has been made in miniaturizing atomic metrological devices, these are limited in accuracy by their use of hot atomic ensembles and buffer gases. Advances have also been made in producing portable apparatus that benefits from the advantages of atoms in the microkelvin regime. However, simplifying atomic cooling and loading using microfabrication technology has proved difficult. In this Letter we address this problem, realizing an atom chip that enables the integration of laser cooling and trapping into a compact apparatus. Our source delivers ten thousand times more atoms than previous magneto-optical traps with microfabricated optics and, for the first time, can reach sub-Doppler temperatures. Moreover, the same chip design offers a simple way to form stable optical lattices. These features, combined with simplicity of fabrication and ease of operation, make these new traps a key advance in the development of cold-atom technology for high-accuracy, portable measurement devices
Effects of Noise on Ecological Invasion Processes: Bacteriophage-mediated Competition in Bacteria
Pathogen-mediated competition, through which an invasive species carrying and
transmitting a pathogen can be a superior competitor to a more vulnerable
resident species, is one of the principle driving forces influencing
biodiversity in nature. Using an experimental system of bacteriophage-mediated
competition in bacterial populations and a deterministic model, we have shown
in [Joo et al 2005] that the competitive advantage conferred by the phage
depends only on the relative phage pathology and is independent of the initial
phage concentration and other phage and host parameters such as the
infection-causing contact rate, the spontaneous and infection-induced lysis
rates, and the phage burst size. Here we investigate the effects of stochastic
fluctuations on bacterial invasion facilitated by bacteriophage, and examine
the validity of the deterministic approach. We use both numerical and
analytical methods of stochastic processes to identify the source of noise and
assess its magnitude. We show that the conclusions obtained from the
deterministic model are robust against stochastic fluctuations, yet deviations
become prominently large when the phage are more pathological to the invading
bacterial strain.Comment: 39 pages, 7 figure
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