Occurrence and a possible mechanism of penetration of natural killer cells into k562 target cells during the cytotoxic interaction

The cytotoxic interaction between cloned human Natural Killer (NK) cells and K562 target cells was studied using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and conventional fluorescence microscopy. We observed, using fixed as well as living cells, the occurrence of (pseudo)emperipolesis during the interaction. About 30% of conjugated NK cells penetrated, partly or completely, into the target cells (in-conjugation). Virtually all in-conjugated target cells exhibited polymerized actin. Killer cells of in-conjugates were frequently seen approaching the target cell nucleus or aligning along it. If the cytotoxic process was inhibited by the absence of calcium neither actin polymerization nor in-conjugation were observed. A kinetic study showed that in-conjugation starts somewhat later than actin polymerization but still within a few minutes after addition of calcium to conjugates previously formed in the absence of calcium. The presence of cytochalasin D (an inhibitor of actin polymerization) completely inhibited in-conjugation and partly reduced the cytotoxic activity. Zinc ions (endonuclease inhibition) inhibited in-conjugation and decreased the total number of target cells with polymerized actin in a concentration dependent manner. Cytotoxic activity was also reduced but not as efficiently as in-conjugation. \ud Our study demonstrates that in-conjugation represents a significant fraction of the cytotoxic interaction. The results indicate that it may be a consequence of an actin polymerization and endonuclease activity dependent part of a cytotoxic mechanism. \u

Symmetry Nonrestoration in a Gross-Neveu Model with Random Chemical Potential

We study the symmetry behavior of the Gross-Neveu model in three and two dimensions with random chemical potential. This is equivalent to a four-fermion model with charge conjugation symmetry as well as Z_2 chiral symmetry. At high temperature the Z_2 chiral symmetry is always restored. In three dimensions the initially broken charge conjugation symmetry is not restored at high temperature, irrespective of the value of the disorder strength. In two dimensions and at zero temperature the charge conjugation symmetry undergoes a quantum phase transition from a symmetric state (for weak disorder) to a broken state (for strong disorder) as the disorder strength is varied. For any given value of disorder strength, the high-temperature behavior of the charge conjugation symmetry is the same as its zero-temperature behavior. Therefore, in two dimensions and for strong disorder strength the charge conjugation symmetry is not restored at high temperature.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

Double phase conjugation

We model the double phase-conjugate mirror (DPCM) as a function of time, the average direction of propagation of the two beams forming the DPCM, and one transverse coordinate. Calculations show that the conjugation fidelity and reflectivity have different dependencies on the photorefractive coupling coefficient times length; the fidelity turns on abruptly with a threshold, whereas the reflectivity increases smoothly. The DPCM behaves as an oscillator at and above threshold: the time required for the reflectivity to reach the steady state dramatically slows down near threshold (like critical slowing down in lasers); above threshold the DPCM is self-sustaining even if the random noise terms used to start the process are set to zero. A decrease in the noise level improves the fidelity but increases the response time. The use of unbalanced input beam ratios results in asymmetric conjugation such that the fidelity obtained on the side of the weaker input beam is significantly reduced. The slowing down diminishes with increasing noise level or unbalanced input intensities

Time-resolved Spectral Analysis Of Phase Conjugation By Four-wave Mixing In Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

Optical phase conjugation provides a mechanism for achieving dispersion compensation in optical fibers. This has been demonstrated by four-wave mixing (FWM) in both fiber and semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). Imperfect phase conjugation will prevent exact reconstruction of a dispersed data stream. Here we use time-resolved spectral analysis (TRSA) to evaluate the performance of FWM in SOAs for phase conjugation

Conjugation in Semigroups

The action of any group on itself by conjugation and the corresponding conjugacy relation play an important role in group theory. There have been several attempts to extend the notion of conjugacy to semigroups. In this paper, we present a new definition of conjugacy that can be applied to an arbitrary semigroup and it does not reduce to the universal relation in semigroups with a zero. We compare the new notion of conjugacy with existing definitions, characterize the conjugacy in various semigroups of transformations on a set, and count the number of conjugacy classes in these semigroups when the set is infinite.Comment: 41 pages, 14 figure

Spectral phase conjugation with cross-phase modulation compensation

Spectral phase conjugation with short pump pulses in a third-order nonlinear material is analyzed in depth. It is shown that if signal amplification is considered, the conversion efficiency can be significantly higher than previously considered, while the spectral phase conjugation operation remains accurate. A novel method of compensating for cross-phase modulation, the main parasitic effect, is also proposed. The validity of our theory and the performance of the spectral phase conjugation scheme are studied numerically