Biological role of miR-204 and miR-211 in melanoma

In this short report, we pinpoint some technical and conceptual flaws that we found in the article entitled "miR-204-5p and miR-211-5p contribute to BRAF inhibitor resistance in melanoma" (Díaz-Martínez et al., Cancer Research 2018). We also discuss how, in our opinion, these flaws led Díaz-Martínez and colleagues to incorrect conclusions about the biological role that miR-204 and miR-211 play in melanoma and about the terms of their involvement in the phenomenon of resistance to BRAF inhibitors

Flavor states of mixed neutrinos

By resorting to previous results on flavor mixing in Quantum Field Theory, we show how to consistently define flavor states of mixed neutrinos as eigenstates of the flavor charge operators.Comment: 4 pages, presented at 13th International Symposium on Particles, Strings and Cosmology, PASCOS-07, 2-7 July 2007, Imperial College Londo

Zero-point Divacancy Concentration in the Shadow Wave-Function Model for Solid 4He

We address the issue of interaction between zero-point vacancies in solid 4He as described within the shadow wave-function model. Applying the reversible-work method and taking into account finite-size effects, we obtain a zero-point monovacancy concentration of (2.03 +- 0.02) 10^{-3}, which is slightly higher than the result due to Reatto et al. for the same model. Utilizing the same methodology, we then consider the divacancy, taking into account both the in-plane as well as out-of-plane configurations with respect to the basal plane. We find no significant anisotropy between both conformation. Furthermore, although there is a small binding tendency, the expected divacancy concentration is only ~4-5 times larger than the value expected in the absence of any clustering propensity, 2.5 10^{-5}. This result suggests that, within the employed model description, no vacancy aggregation leading to phase separation is to be expected in the ground state.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Quantized vortices in two dimensional solid 4He

Diagonal and off-diagonal properties of 2D solid 4He systems doped with a quantized vortex have been investigated via the Shadow Path Integral Ground State method using the fixed-phase approach. The chosen approximate phase induces the standard Onsager-Feynman flow field. In this approximation the vortex acts as a static external potential and the resulting Hamiltonian can be treated exactly with Quantum Monte Carlo methods. The vortex core is found to sit in an interstitial site and a very weak relaxation of the lattice positions away from the vortex core position has been observed. Also other properties like Bragg peaks in the static structure factor or the behavior of vacancies are very little affected by the presence of the vortex. We have computed also the one-body density matrix in perfect and defected 4He crystals finding that the vortex has no sensible effect on the off-diagonal long range tail of the density matrix. Within the assumed Onsager Feynman phase, we find that a quantized vortex cannot auto-sustain itself unless a condensate is already present like when dislocations are present. It remains to be investigated if backflow can change this conclusion.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, LT26 proceedings, accepted for publication in Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Zero-range Fermi gas along the BCS-BEC crossover

FAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULOFAPEG - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE GOIÁSProperties of the ground state of an unpolarized ultracold Fermi gas along the BCS-BEC crossover are investigated by the variational and diffusion Monte Carlo methods. We apply the Wigner-Bethe-Peierls boundary condition in our calculations to avoid any bias from using an interatomic potential with finite effective range. Properties for several values of the scattering length are studied in the range -8 <= 1/ak(F) <= 4, including the unitary limit. The contact parameters as a function of scattering length are obtained by fitting the pair distribution functions for particles with different spins. The energies and contact parameters are in very good agreement with experimental data reported in the literature.100515FAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULOFAPEG - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE GOIÁSFAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULOFAPEG - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE GOIÁS2016/17612-7Sem informaçãoThe authors acknowledge financial support from the Brazilian agencies Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo project (Proc. No. 2016/17612-7). Part of the computations was performed at the Centro Nacional de Processamento de Alto Desempenho em Sao Paulo. R.P. acknowledges the Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Goias and the computer resources of the Laboratorio de Computacao Cientifica - Universidade Federal de Goias. K.E.S. was supported by NSF Grant No. PHY-1404405

Quantum noise induced entanglement and chaos in the dissipative quantum model of brain

We discuss some features of the dissipative quantum model of brain in the frame of the formalism of quantum dissipation. Such a formalism is based on the doubling of the system degrees of freedom. We show that the doubled modes account for the quantum noise in the fluctuating random force in the system-environment coupling. Remarkably, such a noise manifests itself through the coherent structure of the system ground state. The entanglement of the system modes with the doubled modes is shown to be permanent in the infinite volume limit. In such a limit the trajectories in the memory space are classical chaotic trajectories.Comment: 14 page