21,263 research outputs found
Association of serum-soluble heat shock protein 60 with carotid atherosclerosis: clinical significance determined in a follow-up study
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Previous work has shown that soluble heat shock protein 60 (HSP60; sHSP60), present in circulating blood, is associated with carotid atherosclerosis. In the current evaluation, we tested the hypothesis that sHSP60 levels are associated with the progression of carotid arteriosclerosis, prospectively. METHODS: The association of sHSP60 with early atherogenesis (5-year development and progression of nonstenotic carotid plaques) was investigated as part of the population-based prospective Bruneck Study. The current study focused on the follow-up period between 1995 and 2000 and, thus, included 684 subjects. RESULTS: sHSP60 levels measured in 1995 and 2000 were highly correlated (r=0.40; P<0.001), indicating consistency over a 5-year period. Circulating HSP60 levels were significantly correlated with antilipopolysaccharide and anti-HSP60 antibodies. It was also elevated in subjects with chronic infection (top quintile group of HSP60, among subjects with and without chronic infection: 23.8% versus 17.0%; P=0.003 after adjustment for age and sex). HSP60 levels were significantly associated with early atherogenesis, both in the entire population (multivariate odds ratio, for a comparison between quintile group V versus I+II: 2.0 [1.2 to 3.5] and the subgroup free of atherosclerosis at the 1995 baseline: 3.8 [1.6 to 8.9]). The risk of early atherogenesis was additionally amplified when high-sHSP60 and chronic infection were present together. CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides the first prospective data confirming an association between high levels of sHSP60 and early carotid atherosclerosis. This possibly indicates an involvement of sHSP60 in activating proinflammatory processes associated with early vessel pathology
Dynamics of Vortex Core Switching in Ferromagnetic Nanodisks
Dynamics of magnetic vortex core switching in nanometer-scale permalloy disk,
having a single vortex ground state, was investigated by micromagnetic
modeling. When an in-plane magnetic field pulse with an appropriate strength
and duration is applied to the vortex structure, additional two vortices, i.e.,
a circular- and an anti-vortex, are created near the original vortex core.
Sequentially, the vortex-antivortex pair annihilates. A spin wave is created at
the annihilation point and propagated through the entire element; the relaxed
state for the system is the single vortex state with a switched vortex core.Comment: to appear in Appl. Phys. Let
Updated Perspectives On Vascular Cell Specification And Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Vascular Organoids For Studying Vasculopathies.
Vasculopathy is a pathological process occurring in the blood vessel wall, which could affect the haemostasis and physiological functions of all the vital tissues/organs and is one of the main underlying causes for a variety of human diseases including cardiovascular diseases. Current pharmacological interventions aiming to either delay or stop progression of vasculopathies are suboptimal, thus searching novel, targeted, risk-reducing therapeutic agents, or vascular grafts with full regenerative potential for patients with vascular abnormalities are urgently needed. Since first reported, pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), particularly human induced pluripotent stem cells, have open new avenue in all research disciplines including cardiovascular regenerative medicine and disease remodelling. Assisting with recent technological breakthroughs in tissue engineering, in vitro construction of tissue organoid made a tremendous stride in the past decade. In this review, we provide an update of the main signal pathways involved in vascular cell differentiation from human PSCs and an extensive overview of PSC-derived tissue organoids, highlighting the most recent discoveries in the field of blood vessel organoids as well as vascularization of other complex tissue organoids, with the aim of discussing the key cellular and molecular players in generating vascular organoids
Performance of Photosensors in the PandaX-I Experiment
We report the long term performance of the photosensors, 143 one-inch
R8520-406 and 37 three-inch R11410-MOD photomultipliers from Hamamatsu, in the
first phase of the PandaX dual-phase xenon dark matter experiment. This is the
first time that a significant number of R11410 photomultiplier tubes were
operated in liquid xenon for an extended period, providing important guidance
to the future large xenon-based dark matter experiments.Comment: v3 as accepted by JINST with modifications based on reviewers'
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Correlations among superconductivity, structural instability, and band filling in Nb1-xB2 at the critical point x=0.2
We performed an extensive investigation on the correlations among
superconductivity, structural instability and band filling in Nb1-xB2
materials. Structural measurements reveal that a notable phase transformation
occurs at x=0.2, corresponding to the Fermi level (EF) in the pseudogap with
the minimum total density of states (DOS) as demonstrated by the
first-principles calculations. Superconductivity in Nb1-xB2 generally becomes
visible in the Nb-deficient materials with x=0.2. Electron energy-loss
spectroscopy (EELS) measurements on B K-edge directly demonstrated the presence
of a chemical shift arising from the structural transformation. Our
systematical experimental results in combination with theoretical analysis
suggest that the emergence of hole states in the sigma-bands plays an important
role for understanding the superconductivity and structural transition in
Nb1-xB2.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure
Anyon Wave Function for the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect
An anyon wave function (characterized by the statistical factor )
projected onto the lowest Landau level is derived for the fractional quantum
Hall effect states at filling factor ( and are
integers). We study the properties of the anyon wave function by using detailed
Monte Carlo simulations in disk geometry and show that the anyon ground-state
energy is a lower bound to the composite fermion one.Comment: Reference adde
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