IL-15 promotes human myogenesis and mitigates the detrimental effects of TNFα on myotube development

Studies in murine cell lines and in mouse models suggest that IL-15 promotes myogenesis and may protect against the inflammation-mediated skeletal muscle atrophy which occurs in sarcopenia and cachexia. The effects of IL-15 on human skeletal muscle growth and development remain largely uncharacterised. Myogenic cultures were isolated from the skeletal muscle of young and elderly subjects. Myoblasts were differentiated for 8 d, with or without the addition of recombinant cytokines (rIL-15, rTNFα) and an IL-15 receptor neutralising antibody. Although myotubes were 19% thinner in cultures derived from elderly subjects, rIL-15 increased the thickness of myotubes (MTT) from both age groups to a similar extent. Neutralisation of the high-affinity IL-15 receptor binding subunit, IL-15rα in elderly myotubes confirmed that autocrine concentrations of IL-15 also support myogenesis. Co-incubation of differentiating myoblasts with rIL-15 and rTNFα, limited the reduction in MTT and nuclear fusion index (NFI) associated with rTNFα stimulation alone. IL-15rα neutralisation and rTNFα decreased MTT and NFI further. This, coupled with our observation that myotubes secrete IL-15 in response to TNFα stimulation supports the notion that IL-15 serves to mitigate inflammatory skeletal muscle loss. IL-15 may be an effective therapeutic target for the attenuation of inflammation-mediated skeletal muscle atrophy

Cerebral Blood Velocity Increases during Face Cooling in Symptomatic Concussed Athletes

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Grazing Cow Behavior’s Association with Mild and Moderate Lameness

peer-reviewedAccelerometer-based mobility scoring has focused on cow behaviors such as lying and walking. Accuracy levels as high as 91% have been previously reported. However, there has been limited replication of results. Here, measures previously identified as indicative of mobility, such as lying bouts and walking time, were examined. On a research farm and a commercial farm, 63 grazing cows’ behavior was monitored in four trials (16, 16, 16, and 15 cows) using leg-worn accelerometers. Seventeen good mobility (score 0), 23 imperfect mobility (score 1), and 22 mildly impaired mobility (score 2) cows were monitored. Only modest associations with activity, standing, and lying events were found. Thus, behavior monitoring appears to be insufficient to discern mildly and moderately impaired mobility of grazing cows

Seasonal changes in water quality and Sargassum biomass in southwest Australia

Sargassum C. Agardh is one of the most diverse genera of marine macro-algae and commonly inhabits shallow tropical and sub-tropical waters. This study aimed to investigate the effect of seasonality and the associated water quality changes on the distribution, canopy cover, mean thallus length and the biomass of Sargassum beds around Point Peron, Shoalwater Islands Marine Park, Southwest Australia. Samples of Sargassum and seawater were collected every three months from summer 2012 to summer 2014 from four different reef zones. A combination of in situ observations and WorldView-2 satellite remote-sensing images were used to map the spatial distribution of Sargassum beds and other associated benthic habitats. The results demonstrated a strong seasonal variation in the environmental parameters, canopy cover, mean thallus length, and biomass of Sargassum, which were significantly (P < 0.05) influenced by the nutrient concentration (PO43-, NO3-, NH4+) and rainfall. However, no variation in any studied parameter was observed among the four reef zones. The highest Sargassum biomass peaks occurred between late spring and early summer (from September to January). The results provide essential information to guide effective conservation and management, as well as sustainable utilisation of this coastal marine renewable resource

Proposal for generalised Supersymmetry Les Houches Accord for see-saw models and PDG numbering scheme

The SUSY Les Houches Accord (SLHA) 2 extended the first SLHA to include various generalisations of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) as well as its simplest next-to-minimal version. Here, we propose further extensions to it, to include the most general and well-established see-saw descriptions (types I/II/III, inverse, and linear) in both an effective and a simple gauged extension of the MSSM framework. In addition, we generalise the PDG numbering scheme to reflect the properties of the particles.Comment: 44 pages. Changed titl

Passive sorting of asteroid material using solar radiation pressure

Understanding dust dynamics in asteroid environments is key for future science missions to asteroids and, in the long-term, also for asteroid exploitation. This paper proposes a novel way of manipulating asteroid material by means of solar radiation pressure (SRP). We envisage a method for passively sorting material as a function of its grain size where SRP is used as a passive in-situ ‘mass spec-trometer’. The analysis shows that this novel method allows an effective sorting of regolith material. This has immediate applications for sample return, and in-situ resource utilisation to separate different regolith particle sizes

SUSY parameter determination at the LHC using cross sections and kinematic edges

We study the determination of supersymmetric parameters at the LHC from a global fit including cross sections and edges of kinematic distributions. For illustration, we focus on a minimal supergravity scenario and discuss how well it can be constrained at the LHC operating at 7 and 14 TeV collision energy, respectively. We find that the inclusion of cross sections greatly improves the accuracy of the SUSY parameter determination, and allows to reliably extract model parameters even in the initial phase of LHC data taking with 7 TeV collision energy and 1/fb integrated luminosity. Moreover, cross section information may be essential to study more general scenarios, such as those with non-universal gaugino masses, and distinguish them from minimal, universal, models.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure

Dark matter scenarios in the minimal SUSY B-L model

We perform a study of the dark matter candidates of a constrained version of the minimal R-parity-conserving supersymmetric model with a gauged $U(1)_{B-L}$. It turns out that there are four additional candidates for dark matter in comparison to the MSSM: two kinds of neutralino, which either correspond to the gaugino of the $U(1)_{B-L}$ or to a fermionic bilepton, as well as "right-handed" CP-even and -odd sneutrinos. The correct dark matter relic density of the neutralinos can be obtained due to different mechanisms including new co-annihilation regions and resonances. The large additional Yukawa couplings required to break the $U(1)_{B-L}$ radiatively often lead to large annihilation cross sections for the sneutrinos. The correct treatment of gauge kinetic mixing is crucial to the success of some scenarios. All candidates are consistent with the exclusion limits of Xenon100.Comment: 45 pages, 22 figures; v2: extended discussion of direct detection cross section, matches published versio

Quadratic fermionic interactions yield effective Hamiltonians for adiabatic quantum computing

Polynomially-large ground-state energy gaps are rare in many-body quantum systems, but useful for adiabatic quantum computing. We show analytically that the gap is generically polynomially-large for quadratic fermionic Hamiltonians. We then prove that adiabatic quantum computing can realize the ground states of Hamiltonians with certain random interactions, as well as the ground states of one, two, and three-dimensional fermionic interaction lattices, in polynomial time. Finally, we use the Jordan-Wigner transformation and a related transformation for spin-3/2 particles to show that our results can be restated using spin operators in a surprisingly simple manner. A direct consequence is that the one-dimensional cluster state can be found in polynomial time using adiabatic quantum computing.Comment: 14 page

Drawing the Line: How African, Caribbean and White British Women Live Out Psychologically Abusive Experiences

The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Violence Against Women, 19 (9):1104-32, Sept 2013 by SAGE Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. © The Author(s) 2013. The online version of this article can be found at: http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/19/9/110