Rapid identification and differentiation of the vaccine strain Rac H from EHV 1 field isolates using a non-radioactive DNA probe

A method for rapid differentiation between the EHV 1 live vaccine strain Rac H and field isolates is described. Total DNA was isolated from virus-infected small scale cell cultures. DNA fragments digested with restriction endonuclease BamHI were separated, transfered and immobilized on filter membranes. A Digoxigenin-labeled probe derived from EHV 1 was used for hybridization. This probe hybridized specifically to sequences of the inverted terminal repeat region which in case of Rac H include a deletion of 0.8 kb. By comparing the different migration patterns after blot hybridization it could be shown that in 65 isolates from cases of abortion the live vaccine strain Rac H was not involve

Requirement of endogenous tumor necrosis factor/cachectin for recovery from experimental peritonitis

By intrasplenic immunization we raised a rat mAb (mAb V1q; IgG2a, kappa) with a potent neutralizing activity against natural mouse TNF (1 microgram/ml mAb V1q/100 U/ml TNF). mAb V1q was used to study the role of endogenous TNF in experimental peritonitis induced by sublethal cecal ligation and puncture. mAb V1q persisted for over 5 days in the serum of mice injected with 100 micrograms of the antibody and, therefore, proved useful for in vivo experiments. As little as 20 micrograms mAb V1q/mouse prevented lethal shock of the animals by 400 micrograms LPS/mouse. In sublethal cecal ligation and puncture i.p. injection of mAb V1q directly and up to 8 h after induction of experimental peritonitis lead to death of the animals within 1 to 3 days. The lethal effect of mAb V1q was compensated by injection of recombinant mouse TNF. Similar mAb V1q effects as in immunocompetent mice were shown in severe combined immune deficiency mice deficient of mature functional B and T cells. Taken together, these data suggest that during the early phase of peritonitis endogenous TNF may stimulate nonlymphoid cells such as granulocytes, macrophages, platelets, and fibroblasts to ingest bacteria and to localize inflammation, respectively. These beneficial effects of TNF may determine survival. Thus, our data may have implications for the therapeutic management of a beginning peritonitis

Equilibrium states and invariant measures for random dynamical systems

Random dynamical systems with countably many maps which admit countable Markov partitions on complete metric spaces such that the resulting Markov systems are uniformly continuous and contractive are considered. A non-degeneracy and a consistency conditions for such systems, which admit some proper Markov partitions of connected spaces, are introduced, and further sufficient conditions for them are provided. It is shown that every uniformly continuous Markov system associated with a continuous random dynamical system is consistent if it has a dominating Markov chain. A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an invariant Borel probability measure for such a non-degenerate system with a dominating Markov chain and a finite (16) is given. The condition is also sufficient if the non-degeneracy is weakened with the consistency condition. A further sufficient condition for the existence of an invariant measure for such a consistent system which involves only the properties of the dominating Markov chain is provided. In particular, it implies that every such a consistent system with a finite Markov partition and a finite (16) has an invariant Borel probability measure. A bijective map between these measures and equilibrium states associated with such a system is established in the non-degenerate case. Some properties of the map and the measures are given.Comment: The article is published in DCDS-A, but without the 3rd paragraph on page 4 (the complete removal of the paragraph became the condition for the publication in the DCDS-A after the reviewer ran out of the citation suggestions collected in the paragraph

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle for simultaneous measurement of positive-operator-valued measures

A limitation on simultaneous measurement of two arbitrary positive operator valued measures is discussed. In general, simultaneous measurement of two noncommutative observables is only approximately possible. Following Werner's formulation, we introduce a distance between observables to quantify an accuracy of measurement. We derive an inequality that relates the achievable accuracy with noncommutativity between two observables. As a byproduct a necessary condition for two positive operator valued measures to be simultaneously measurable is obtained.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Uncertainty Relations for Positive Operator Valued Measures

How much unavoidable randomness is generated by a Positive Operator Valued Measure (POVM)? We address this question using two complementary approaches. First we study the variance of a real variable associated to the POVM outcomes. In this context we introduce an uncertainty operator which measures how much additional noise is introduced by carrying out a POVM rather than a von Neumann measurement. We illustrate this first approach by studying the variances of joint estimates of \sigma_x and \sigma_z for spin 1/2 particles. We show that for unbiased measurements the sum of these variances is lower bounded by 1. In our second approach we study the entropy of the POVM outcomes. In particular we try to establish lower bounds on the entropy of the POVM outcomes. We illustrate this second approach by examples.Comment: 5 pages, minor modifications and clarification

Microcanonical Treatment of Hadronizing the Quark-Gluon Plasma

We recently introduced a completely new way to study ultrarelativistic nuclear scattering by providing a link between the string model approach and a statistical description. A key issue is the microcanonical treatment of hadronizing individual quark matter droplets. In this paper we describe in detail the hadronization of these droplets according to n-body phase space, by using methods of statistical physics, i.e. constructing Markov chains of hadron configurations.Comment: Complete paper enclosed as postscript file (uuencoded

Linking Dynamical and Thermal Models of Ultrarelativistic Nuclear Scattering

To analyse ultrarelativistic nuclear interactions, usually either dynamical models like the string model are employed, or a thermal treatment based on hadrons or quarks is applied. String models encounter problems due to high string densities, thermal approaches are too simplistic considering only average distributions, ignoring fluctuations. We propose a completely new approach, providing a link between the two treatments, and avoiding their main shortcomings: based on the string model, connected regions of high energy density are identified for single events, such regions referred to as quark matter droplets. Each individual droplet hadronizes instantaneously according to the available n-body phase space. Due to the huge number of possible hadron configurations, special Monte Carlo techniques have been developed to calculate this disintegration.Comment: Complete paper enclosed as postscript file (uuencoded