HDL plasma concentrations decline with age in prospective studies. Decline in HDL concentration and function may occur secondary because of hormonal changes, inflammatory processes, and diabetes ...mellitus. Beyond these effects specific aging processes may be involved. Replicative aging, the telomere-driven loss of divisional capacity, is a species-specific aging mechanism that may decrease HDL concentration and function. Cross-sectionally, by contrast, HDL levels do not change much or even slightly increase with age, suggesting that only people with still high HDL concentrations survive. A selection bias by HDL lowering genetic variation may explain why HDL deficiency is extremely rare among centenarians. Vice versa, HDL may modulate the aging process, not only by its well-known antiatherogenic effects, eg, its ability to remove cellular lipids and by antiatherogenic pleiotropic effects on cell survival, but possibly also by direct interfering with aging signaling or survival factor KLOTHO. Most of the current findings, however, are based on cell culture and selected animal experiments and await further confirmation by appropriate in vivo models.
Mutations in PITX2 have been implicated in several genetic disorders, particularly Axenfeld-Rieger syndrome. In order to determine the most reliable bioinformatics tools to assess the likely ...pathogenicity of PITX2 variants, the results of bioinformatics predictions were compared to the impact of variants on PITX2 structure and function. The MutPred, Provean, and PMUT bioinformatic tools were found to have the highest performance in predicting the pathogenicity effects of all 18 characterized missense variants in PITX2, all with sensitivity and specificity >93%. Applying these three programs to assess the likely pathogenicity of 13 previously uncharacterized PITX2 missense variants predicted 12/13 variants as deleterious, except A30V which was predicted as benign variant for all programs. Molecular modeling of the PITX2 homoedomain predicts that of the 31 known PITX2 variants, L54Q, F58L, V83F, V83L, W86C, W86S, and R91P alter PITX2's structure. In contrast, the remaining 24 variants are not predicted to change PITX2's structure. The results of molecular modeling, performed on all the PITX2 missense mutations located in the homeodomain, were compared with the findings of eight protein stability programs. CUPSAT was found to be the most reliable in predicting the effect of missense mutations on PITX2 stability. Our results showed that for PITX2, and likely other members of this homeodomain transcription factor family, MutPred, Provean, PMUT, molecular modeling, and CUPSAT can reliably be used to predict PITX2 missense variants pathogenicity.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This review focuses on plant carotenoids, but it also includes progress made on microbial and animal carotenoid metabolism to better understand the functions and the evolution of these structurally ...diverse compounds with a common backbone. Plants have evolved isogenes for specific key steps of carotenoid biosynthesis with differential expression profiles, whose characteristic features will be compared. Perhaps the most exciting progress has been made in studies of carotenoid cleavage products (apocarotenoids) with an ever-expanding variety of novel functions being discovered. This review therefore covers structural, molecular genetic and functional aspects of carotenoids and apocarotenoids alike. Apocarotenoids are specifically tailored from carotenoids by a family of oxidative cleavage enzymes, but whether there are contributions to their generation from chemical oxidation, photooxidation or other mechanisms is largely unknown. Control of carotenoid homeostasis is discussed in the context of biosynthetic and degradative reactions but also in the context of subcellular environments for deposition and sequestration within and outside of plastids. Other aspects of carotenoid research, including metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches, will only be covered briefly.
Epoxy resins are widely used polymers in the automotive and aerospace fields. Different blends of novel biodegradable resins have been studied in the last years in order to provide sustainability ...while maintaining the same properties of epoxy resins. Bio-based thermoset resins made with acrylated epoxidized soybean oil are well-studied in different vat polymerization techniques. The present work compares a bio-based resin and a petroleum-based resin. A benchmark with different features was designed and manufactured by a VAT photopolymerization process using both materials; measured with an optical scanning device; thus, the dimensional deviations were analyzed through inspection software. Tensile and flexural specimens were manufactured with the same procedure and tested with a dynamometer machine. Therefore, the comparison between a biodegradable resin and a petroleum-based resin is discussed in terms of the quality and mechanical performances of manufactured parts, considering the use of identical printing conditions. Some parts are required to satisfy both the requirements at the same time, such as the gears. Therefore, dimensional accuracy and mechanical strength need to be controlled and evaluated in a unique final quantification. This work proposes a novelty performance index to quantify dimensional accuracy and mechanical strength simultaneously. By combining the two aspects it is possible to define the overall performance obtained with the used material, optimizing the manufacturing process by choosing the proper material for each purpose.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Mechanochromic polymers are intriguing materials that allow to sense force of specimens under load. Most mechanochromic systems rely on covalent bond scission and hence are two-state systems with ...optically distinct "on" and "off" states where correlating force with wavelength is usually not possible. Translating force of different magnitude with gradually different wavelength of absorption or emission would open up new possibilities to map and understand force distributions in polymeric materials. Here, we present a mechanochromic donor-acceptor (DA) torsional spring that undergoes force-induced planarization during uniaxial elongation leading to red-shifted absorption and emission spectra. The DA spring is based on ortho-substituted diketopyrrolopyrrole (o-DPP). Covalent incorporation of o-DPP into a rigid yet ductile polyphenylene matrix allows to transduce sufficiently large stress to the DA spring. The mechanically induced deflection from equilibrium geometry of the DA spring is theoretically predicted, in agreement with experiments, and is fully reversible upon stress release.
Interactions between crustal and mantle reservoirs dominate the surface inventory of volatile elements over geological time, moderating atmospheric composition and maintaining a life-supporting ...planet. While volcanoes expel volatile components into surface reservoirs, subduction of oceanic crust is responsible for replenishment of mantle reservoirs. Many natural, 'superdeep' diamonds originating in the deep upper mantle and transition zone host mineral inclusions, indicating an affinity to subducted oceanic crust. Here we show that the majority of slab geotherms will intersect a deep depression along the melting curve of carbonated oceanic crust at depths of approximately 300 to 700 kilometres, creating a barrier to direct carbonate recycling into the deep mantle. Low-degree partial melts are alkaline carbonatites that are highly reactive with reduced ambient mantle, producing diamond. Many inclusions in superdeep diamonds are best explained by carbonate melt-peridotite reaction. A deep carbon barrier may dominate the recycling of carbon in the mantle and contribute to chemical and isotopic heterogeneity of the mantle reservoir.
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IJS, KISLJ, NUK, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
In the context of quantum theories of spacetime, one overarching question is how quantum information in the bulk spacetime is encoded holographically in boundary degrees of freedom. It is ...particularly interesting to understand the correspondence between bulk subregions and boundary subregions in order to address the emergence of locality in the bulk quantum spacetime. For the AdS/CFT correspondence, it is known that this bulk information is encoded redundantly on the boundary in the form of an error-correcting code. Having access only to a subregion of the boundary is as if part of the holographic code has been damaged by noise and rendered inaccessible. In quantum-information science, the problem of recovering information from a damaged code is addressed by the theory of universal recovery channels. We apply and extend this theory to address the problem of relating bulk and boundary subregions in AdS/CFT, focusing on a conjecture known as entanglement wedge reconstruction. Existing work relies on the exact equivalence between bulk and boundary relative entropies, but these are only approximately equal in bulk effective field theory, and in similar situations it is known that predictions from exact entropic equalities can be qualitatively incorrect. We show that the framework of universal recovery channels provides a robust demonstration of the entanglement wedge reconstruction conjecture as well as new physical insights. Most notably, we find that a bulk operator acting in a given boundary region’s entanglement wedge can be expressed as the response of the boundary region’s modular Hamiltonian to a perturbation of the bulk state in the direction of the bulk operator. This formula can be interpreted as a noncommutative version of Bayes’s rule that attempts to undo the noise induced by restricting to only a portion of the boundary. To reach these conclusions, we extend the theory of universal recovery channels to finite-dimensional operator algebras and demonstrate that recovery channels approximately preserve the multiplicative structure of the operator algebra.
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CMK, CTK, FMFMET, IJS, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
A
bstract
Tensor networks provide a natural framework for exploring holographic duality because they obey entanglement area laws. They have been used to construct explicit toy models realizing many ...of the interesting structural features of the AdS/CFT correspondence, including the non-uniqueness of bulk operator reconstruction in the boundary theory. In this article, we explore the holographic properties of networks of random tensors. We find that our models naturally incorporate many features that are analogous to those of the AdS/CFT correspondence. When the bond dimension of the tensors is large, we show that the entanglement entropy of all boundary regions, whether connected or not, obey the Ryu-Takayanagi entropy formula, a fact closely related to known properties of the multipartite entanglement of assistance. We also discuss the behavior of Rényi entropies in our models and contrast it with AdS/CFT. Moreover, we find that each boundary region faithfully encodes the physics of the entire bulk entanglement wedge,
i.e.,
the bulk region enclosed by the boundary region and the minimal surface. Our method is to interpret the average over random tensors as the partition function of a classical ferromagnetic Ising model, so that the minimal surfaces of Ryu-Takayanagi appear as domain walls. Upon including the analog of a bulk field, we find that our model reproduces the expected corrections to the Ryu-Takayanagi formula: the bulk minimal surface is displaced and the entropy is augmented by the entanglement of the bulk field. Increasing the entanglement of the bulk field ultimately changes the minimal surface behavior topologically, in a way similar to the effect of creating a black hole. Extrapolating bulk correlation functions to the boundary permits the calculation of the scaling dimensions of boundary operators, which exhibit a large gap between a small number of low-dimension operators and the rest. While we are primarily motivated by the AdS/CFT duality, the main results of the article define a more general form of bulk-boundary correspondence which could be useful for extending holography to other spacetimes.
Monolithic zirconia has become widely used for single crowns, with the advantages of minimal tooth reduction and good esthetics. However, clinical studies evaluating the performance of and patient ...satisfaction with posterior monolithic zirconia crowns are sparse.
The purpose of this clinical study was to evaluate the clinical performance of and patient satisfaction with posterior monolithic zirconia crowns.
Within a prospective cohort study design, participants were recruited from a university dental clinic if they required 1 posterior monolithic zirconia crown. The clinical performance was evaluated at follow-up appointments 1, 2, and 3 years after insertion. Bleeding on probing and pocket probing depths for the crowned teeth were recorded. Overall patient satisfaction was measured by using a visual analog scale (VAS), and quality of life was measured by using the validated German version of the Oral Health Impact Profile 14 (OHIP-G14). Descriptive statistical methods were applied. Mean values were calculated and compared by using the paired t test (α=.05).
Thirty participants received a monolithic zirconia crown (14 premolars, 16 molars). One biologic complication (vertical root fracture) was identified at the 1-year follow-up. Three years after insertion, 22 participants could be examined, and the crowns were still in function. The gingival and the periodontal status of the crowned teeth had not changed significantly over the 3 years. After insertion, a significant improvement in patient satisfaction was measured up to 3 years
Posterior monolithic zirconia crowns led to enhanced patient satisfaction up to 3 years after insertion. They provided good middle-term success and offered a promising alternative to conventional metal-ceramic crowns.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
A
bstract
Since the work of Ryu and Takayanagi, deep connections between quantum entanglement and spacetime geometry have been revealed. The negative eigenvalues of the partial transpose of a ...bipartite density operator is a useful diagnostic of entanglement. In this paper, we discuss the properties of the associated
entanglement negativity
and its Rényi generalizations in holographic duality. We first review the definition of the Rényi negativities, which contain the familiar logarithmic negativity as a special case. We then study these quantities in the random tensor network model and rigorously derive their large bond dimension asymptotics. Finally, we study entanglement negativity in holographic theories with a gravity dual, where we find that Rényi negativities are often dominated by bulk solutions that break the replica symmetry. From these replica symmetry breaking solutions, we derive general expressions for Rényi negativities and their special limits including the logarithmic negativity. In fixed-area states, these general expressions simplify dramatically and agree precisely with our results in the random tensor network model. This provides a concrete setting for further studying the implications of replica symmetry breaking in holography.