Aging in the Relaxor Ferroelectric PMN/PT

The relaxor ferroelectric (PbMn$_{1/3}$Nb$_{2/3}$O$_3$)$_{1-x}$(PbTiO$_3$)$_{x}$, $x=0.1$, (PMN/PT(90/10)) is found to exhibit several regimes of complicated aging behavior. Just below the susceptibility peak there is a regime exhibiting rejuvenation but little memory. At lower temperature, there is a regime with mainly cumulative aging, expected for simple domain-growth. At still lower temperature, there is a regime with both rejuvenation and memory, reminiscent of spin glasses. PMN/PT (88/12) is also found to exhibit some of these aging regimes. This qualitative aging behavior is reminiscent of that seen in reentrant ferromagnets, which exhibit a crossover from a domain-growth ferromagnetic regime into a reentrant spin glass regime at lower temperatures. These striking parallels suggest a picture of competition in PMN/PT (90/10) between ferroelectric correlations formed in the domain-growth regime with glassy correlations formed in the spin glass regime. PMN/PT (90/10) is also found to exhibit frequency-aging time scaling of the time-dependent part of the out-of-phase susceptibility for temperatures 260 K and below. The stability of aging effects to thermal cycles and field perturbations is also reported.Comment: 8 pages RevTeX4, 11 figures; submitted to Phys. Rev.

Identification of a lineage of multipotent hematopoietic progenitors

All multipotent hematopoietic progenitors in C57BL-Thy-1.1 bone marrow are divided among three subpopulations of Thy-1.1^(lo) Sca-1^+ Lin^(-/lo) c-kit^+ cells: long-term reconstituting Mac-1^-CD4^-c-kit^+ cells and transiently reconstituting Mac-1^(lo)CD4^-or Mac-1^(lo) CD4^(lo) cells. This study shows that the same populations, with similar functional activities, exist in mice whose hematopoietic systems were reconstituted by hematopoietic stem cells after lethal irradiation. We demonstrate that these populations form a lineage of multipotent progenitors from long-term self-renewing stem cells to the most mature multipotent progenitor population. In reconstituted mice, Mac-1- CD4^-c-kit^+ cells gave rise to Mac-1^(lo)CD4^- cells, which gave rise to Mac-1^(lo)CD4^(lo) cells. Mac-1^- CD4^-c-kit^+ cells had long-term self-renewal potential, with each cell being capable of giving rise to more than 10^4 functionally similar Mac-1^-CD4^-c-kit^+ cells. At least half of Mac-1^(lo)CD4^- cells had transient self-renewal potential, detected in the spleen 7 days after reconstitution. Mac-1^(lo)CD4^(lo) cells did not have detectable self-renewal potential. The identification of a lineage of multipotent progenitors provides an important tool for identifying genes that regulate self-renewal and lineage commitment

An interstellar precursor mission

A mission out of the planetary system, with launch about the year 2000, could provide valuable scientific data as well as test some of the technology for a later mission to another star. Primary scientific objectives for the precursor mission concern characteristics of the heliopause, the interstellar medium, stellar distances (by parallax measurements), low energy cosmic rays, interplanetary gas distribution, and mass of the solar system. Secondary objectives include investigation of Pluto. Candidate science instruments are suggested. Individual spacecraft systems for the mission were considered, technology requirements and problem areas noted, and a number of recommendations made for technology study and advanced development. The most critical technology needs include attainment of 50-yr spacecraft lifetime and development of a long-life NEP system

On the existence of exotic and non-exotic multiquark meson states

To obtain an exact solution of a four-body system containing two quarks and two antiquarks interacting through two-body terms is a cumbersome task that has been tackled with more or less success during the last decades. We present an exact method for the study of four-quark systems based on the hyperspherical harmonics formalism that allows us to solve it without resorting to further approximations, like for instance the existence of diquark components. We apply it to systems containing two heavy and two light quarks using different quark-quark potentials. While $QQ\bar n \bar n$ states may be stable in nature, the stability of $Q\bar Qn \bar n$ states would imply the existence of quark correlations not taken into account by simple quark dynamical models.Comment: 3 pages. Contribution to the 20th European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Pisa, Italy. To be published in Few-Body system

Circulation and Chemotaxis of Fetal Hematopoietic Stem Cells

The major site of hematopoiesis transitions from the fetal liver to the spleen and bone marrow late in fetal development. To date, experiments have not been performed to evaluate functionally the migration and seeding of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) during this period in ontogeny. It has been proposed that developmentally timed waves of HSCs enter the bloodstream only during distinct windows to seed the newly forming hematopoietic organs. Using competitive reconstitution assays to measure HSC activity, we determined the localization of HSCs in the mid-to-late gestation fetus. We found that multilineage reconstituting HSCs are present at low numbers in the blood at all timepoints measured. Seeding of fetal bone marrow and spleen occurred over several days, possibly while stem cell niches formed. In addition, using dual-chamber migration assays, we determined that like bone marrow HSCs, fetal liver HSCs migrate in response to stromal cell-derived factor-1α (SDF-1α); however, unlike bone marrow HSCs, the migratory response of fetal liver HSCs to SDF-1α is greatly increased in the presence of Steel factor (SLF), suggesting an important role for SLF in HSC homing to and seeding of the fetal hematopoietic tissues. Together, these data demonstrate that seeding of fetal organs by fetal liver HSCs does not require large fluxes of HSCs entering the fetal bloodstream, and that HSCs constitutively circulate at low levels during the gestational period from 12 to 17 days postconception. Newly forming hematopoietic tissues are seeded gradually by HSCs, suggesting initial seeding is occurring as hematopoietic niches in the spleen and bone marrow form and become capable of supporting HSC self-renewal. We demonstrate that fetal and adult HSCs exhibit specific differences in chemotactic behavior. While both migrate in response to SDF-1α, fetal HSCs also respond significantly to the cytokine SLF. In addition, the combination of SDF-1α and SLF results in substantially enhanced migration of fetal HSCs, leading to migration of nearly all fetal HSCs in this assay. This finding indicates the importance of the combined effects of SLF and SDF-1α in the migration of fetal HSCs, and is, to our knowledge, the first demonstration of a synergistic effect of two chemoattractive agents on HSCs

Gene Expression Commons: an open platform for absolute gene expression profiling.

Gene expression profiling using microarrays has been limited to comparisons of gene expression between small numbers of samples within individual experiments. However, the unknown and variable sensitivities of each probeset have rendered the absolute expression of any given gene nearly impossible to estimate. We have overcome this limitation by using a very large number (>10,000) of varied microarray data as a common reference, so that statistical attributes of each probeset, such as the dynamic range and threshold between low and high expression, can be reliably discovered through meta-analysis. This strategy is implemented in a web-based platform named "Gene Expression Commons" (https://gexc.stanford.edu/) which contains data of 39 distinct highly purified mouse hematopoietic stem/progenitor/differentiated cell populations covering almost the entire hematopoietic system. Since the Gene Expression Commons is designed as an open platform, investigators can explore the expression level of any gene, search by expression patterns of interest, submit their own microarray data, and design their own working models representing biological relationship among samples

Functional kernel estimators of conditional extreme quantiles

We address the estimation of "extreme" conditional quantiles i.e. when their order converges to one as the sample size increases. Conditions on the rate of convergence of their order to one are provided to obtain asymptotically Gaussian distributed kernel estimators. A Weissman-type estimator and kernel estimators of the conditional tail-index are derived, permitting to estimate extreme conditional quantiles of arbitrary order.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1107.226