Review of the "Bottom-Up" scenario

Thermalization of a longitudinally expanding color glass condensate with Bjorken boost invariant geometry is investigated within parton cascade BAMPS. Our main focus lies on the detailed comparison of thermalization, observed in BAMPS with that suggested in the Bottom-Up scenario. We demonstrate that the tremendous production of soft gluons via $gg \to ggg$, which is shown in the Bottom-Up picture as the dominant process during the early preequilibration, will not occur in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies, because the back reaction $ggg\to gg$ hinders the absolute particle multiplication. Moreover, contrary to the Bottom-Up scenario, soft and hard gluons thermalize at the same time. The time scale of thermal equilibration in BAMPS calculations is of order \as^{-2} (\ln \as)^{-2} Q_s^{-1}. After this time the gluon system exhibits nearly hydrodynamic behavior. The shear viscosity to entropy density ratio has a weak dependence on $Q_s$ and lies close to the lower bound of the AdS/CFT conjecture.Comment: Quark Matter 2008 Proceeding

Vacuolar ATPase depletion contributes to dysregulation of endocytosis in bloodstream forms of Trypanosoma brucei

BACKGROUND Vacuolar H-ATPase (V-ATPase) is a highly conserved protein complex which hydrolyzes ATP and pumps protons to acidify vacuolar vesicles. Beyond its role in pH maintenance, the involvement of V-ATPase in endocytosis is well documented in mammals and plants but is less clear in Trypanosoma brucei. METHODS In this study, the subcellular localization of V-ATPase subunit B (TbVAB) of T. brucei was assessed via in situ N-terminal YFP-tagging and immunofluorescence assays. Transgenic bloodstream forms (BSF) of T. brucei were generated which comprised either a V-ATPase subunit B (TbVAB) conditional knockout or a V-ATPase subunit A (TbVAA) knockdown. Acridine orange and BCECF-AM were employed to assess the roles of V-ATPase in the pH regulation of BSF T. brucei. The endocytic activities of three markers were also characterized by flow cytometry analyses. Furthermore, trypanosomes were counted from trypanolysis treatment groups (either containing 1% or 5% NHS) and endocytosed trypanosome lytic factor (TLF) was also analyzed by an immunoblotting assay. RESULTS TbVAB was found to localize to acidocalcisomes, lysosomes and probably also to endosomes of BSF of T. brucei and was demonstrated to be essential for cell growth. TbVAB depletion neutralized acidic organelles at 24 hours post-tetracycline depletion (hpd), meanwhile the steady state intracellular pH increased from 7.016 ± 0.013 to 7.422 ± 0.058. Trypanosomes with TbVAB depletion at 24 hpd were found to take up more transferrin (2.068 ± 0.277 fold) but less tomato lectin (49.31 ± 22.57%) by endocytosis, while no significant change was detected in dextran uptake. Similar endocytic dysregulated phenotypes were also observed in TbVAA knockdown cells. In addition, TbVAB depleted trypanosomes showed a low uptake of TLF and exhibited less sensitive to lysis in both 1% and 5% NHS treatments. CONCLUSIONS TbVAB is a key component of V-ATPase and was found to play a key function in endocytosis as well as exhibiting different effects in a receptor/cargo dependent manner in BSF of T. brucei. Besides vacuolar alkalinization, the dysregulation of endocytosis in TbVAB depleted T. brucei is considered to contribute to the reduced sensitivity to lysis by normal human serum

Brueckner-Hartree-Fock and its renormalized calculations for finite nuclei

We have performed self-consistent Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (BHF) and its renormalized theory to the structure calculations of finite nuclei. The $G$-matrix is calculated within the BHF basis, and the exact Pauli exclusion operator is determined by the BHF spectrum. Self-consistent occupation probabilities are included in the renormalized Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (RBHF). Various systematics and convergences are studies. Good results are obtained for the ground-state energy and radius. RBHF can give a more reasonable single-particle spectrum and radius. We present a first benchmark calculation with other {\it ab initio} methods using the same effective Hamiltonian. We find that the BHF and RBHF results are in good agreement with other $\it{ab}$ $\it{initio}$ methods