298 research outputs found
Wald's entropy is equal to a quarter of the horizon area in units of the effective gravitational coupling
The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of black holes in Einstein's theory of gravity
is equal to a quarter of the horizon area in units of Newton's constant. Wald
has proposed that in general theories of gravity the entropy of stationary
black holes with bifurcate Killing horizons is a Noether charge which is in
general different from the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. We show that the Noether
charge entropy is equal to a quarter of the horizon area in units of the
effective gravitational coupling on the horizon defined by the coefficient of
the kinetic term of specific graviton polarizations on the horizon. We present
several explicit examples of static spherically symmetric black holes.Comment: 20 pages ; added clarifications, explanations, new section on the
choice of polarizations, results unchanged; replaced with published versio
Nicotine strongly activates dendritic cell-mediated adaptive immunity - potential role for progression of atherosclerotic lesions
Background - Antigen-presenting cells (APCs) such as monocytes and dendritic cells (DCs) stimulate T-cell proliferation and activation in the course of adaptive immunity. This cellular interaction plays a role in the growth of atherosclerotic plaques. Nicotine has been shown to increase the growth of atherosclerotic lesions. Therefore, we investigated whether nicotine can stimulate APCs and their T cellâstimulatory capacity using human monocyteâderived DCs and murine bone marrowâderived DCs as APCs. Methods and Results - Nicotine dose-dependently (10-8 to 10-4 mol/L) induced DC expression of costimulatory molecules (ie, CD86, CD40), MHC class II, and adhesion molecules (ie, LFA-1, CD54). Moreover, nicotine induced a 7.0-fold increase in secretion of the proinflammatory TH1 cytokine interleukin-12 by human DCs. These effects were abrogated by the nicotinic receptor antagonist -bungarotoxin and mecamylamine, respectively. The effects of nicotine were mediated in part by the phosphorylation of the PI3 kinase downstream target Akt and the mitogen-activated kinases ERK and p38 MAPK. Nicotine-stimulated APCs had a greater capacity to stimulate T-cell proliferation and cytokine secretion, as documented by mixed lymphocyte reactions and ovalbumin-specific assays with ovalbumin-transgenic DO10.11 mice. In a murine model of atherosclerosis, nicotine significantly enhanced the recruitment of DCs to atherosclerotic lesions in vivo. Conclusions - Nicotine activates DCs and augments their capacity to stimulate T-cell proliferation and cytokine secretion. These effects of nicotine may contribute to its influence on the progression of atherosclerotic lesions
The effects of inhomogeneities on the cosmology of type IIB conifold transitions
In this paper we examine the evolution of the effective field theory
describing a conifold transition in type IIB string theory. Previous studies
have considered such dynamics starting from the cosmological approximation of
homogeneous fields, here we include the effects of inhomogeneities by using a
real-time lattice field theory simulation. By including spatial variations we
are able to simulate the effect of currents and the gauge fields which they
source. We identify two different regimes where the inhomogeneities have
opposite effects, one where they aid the system to complete the conifold
transition and another where they hinder it. The existence of quantized fluxes
in related systems has lead to the speculation that (unstable) string solutions
could exist, using our simulations we give strong evidence that these
string-like defects do not form.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. Published versio
Special Geometry of Euclidean Supersymmetry III: the local r-map, instantons and black holes
We define and study projective special para-Kahler manifolds and show that
they appear as target manifolds when reducing five-dimensional vector
multiplets coupled to supergravity with respect to time. The dimensional
reductions with respect to time and space are carried out in a uniform way
using an epsilon-complex notation. We explain the relation of our formalism to
other formalisms of special geometry used in the literature. In the second part
of the paper we investigate instanton solutions and their dimensional lifting
to black holes. We show that the instanton action, which can be defined after
dualising axions into tensor fields, agrees with the ADM mass of the
corresponding black hole. The relation between actions via Wick rotation, Hodge
dualisation and analytic continuation of axions is discussed.Comment: 72 pages, 2 figure
The role of toll-like receptors (TLRs) in bacteria-induced maturation of murine dendritic cells (DCs) - Peptidoglycan and lipoteichoic acid are inducers of DC maturation and require TLR2
Toll-like receptors (TLRs) have been found to be key elements in pathogen recognition by the host immune system. Dendritic cells (DCs) are crucial for both innate immune responses and initiation of acquired immunity. Here we focus on the potential involvement of TLR ligand interaction in DC maturation. TLR2 knockout mice and mice carrying a TLR4 mutation (C3H/HeJ) were investigated for DC maturation induced by peptidoglycan (PGN), lipopolysaccharide (LPS), or lipoteichoic acids (LTAs). All stimuli induced maturation of murine bone marrow-derived DCs in control mice. TLR2â /â mice lacked maturation upon stimulation with PGN, as assessed by expression of major histocompatibility complex class II, CD86, cytokine, and chemokine production, fluorescein isothiocyanate-dextran uptake, and mixed lymphocyte reactions, while being completely responsive to LPS. A similar lack of maturation was observed in C3H/HeJ mice upon stimulation with LPS. DC maturation induced by LTAs from two different types of bacteria was severely impaired in TLR2â /â, whereas C3H/HeJ mice responded to LTAs in a manner similar to wild-type mice. We demonstrate that DC maturation is induced by stimuli from Gram-positive microorganisms, such as PGN and LTA, with similar efficiency as by LPS. Finally, we provide evidence that TLR2 and TLR4 interaction with the appropriate ligand is essential for bacteria-induced maturation of DCs
Non-extremal black holes from the generalised r-map
We review the timelike dimensional reduction of a class of five-dimensional
theories that generalises 5D, N = 2 supergravity coupled to vector multiplets.
As an application we construct instanton solutions to the four-dimensional
Euclidean theory, and investigate the criteria for solutions to lift to static
non-extremal black holes in five dimensions.
We focus specifically on two classes of models: STU-like models, and models
with a block diagonal target space metric. For STU-like models the second order
equations of motion of the four-dimensional theory can be solved explicitly,
and we obtain the general solution. For block diagonal models we find a
restricted class of solutions, where the number of independent scalar fields
depends on the number of blocks. When lifting these solutions to five
dimensions we show, by explicit calculation, that one obtains static
non-extremal black holes with scalar fields that take finite values on the
horizon only if the number of integration constants reduces by exactly half.Comment: 22 pages. Based on talk by OV at "Black Objects in Supergravity
School" (BOSS2011), INFN, Frascati, Italy, 9-13 May, 201
Experimental study on the detection of frozen diffused ammonia blockage in the inactive section of a variable conductance heat pipe
Non-extremal Black Holes, Harmonic Functions, and Attractor Equations
We present a method which allows to deform extremal black hole solutions into
non-extremal solutions, for a large class of supersymmetric and
non-supersymmetric Einstein-Vector-Scalar type theories. The deformation is
shown to be largely independent of the details of the matter sector. While the
line element is dressed with an additional harmonic function, the attractor
equations for the scalars remain unmodified in suitable coordinates, and the
values of the scalar fields on the outer and inner horizon are obtained from
their fixed point values by making specific substitutions for the charges. For
a subclass of models, which includes the five-dimensional STU-model, we find
explicit solutions.Comment: 33 page
Black holes and black strings of N=2, d=5 supergravity in the H-FGK formalism
We study general classes and properties of extremal and non-extremal static
black-hole solutions of N=2, d=5 supergravity coupled to vector multiplets
using the recently proposed H-FGK formalism, which we also extend to static
black strings. We explain how to determine the integration constants and
physical parameters of the black-hole and black-string solutions. We derive
some model-independent statements, including the transformation of non-extremal
flow equations to the form of those for the extremal flow. We apply our methods
to the construction of example solutions (among others a new extremal string
solution of heterotic string theory on K_3 \times S^1). In the cases where we
have calculated it explicitly, the product of areas of the inner and outer
horizon of a non-extremal solution coincides with the square of the
moduli-independent area of the horizon of the extremal solution with the same
charges.Comment: 33 pages. Revised version: references added. No other change
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