We present optical (B, V, Rc, Ic and y) and near-infrared (J, H, and Ks) photometric and spectroscopic observations of a classical nova V1280 Scorpii for five years from 2007 to 2011. Our photometric ...observations show a declining event in optical bands shortly after the maximum light, which took about 250 days to recover. This event was most probably caused by dust formation. The event was accompanied by a short (~30 days) re-brightening episode (~2.5 mag in V), which suggests that there had been some re-ignition of the surface nuclear burning. After 2008, the y band observations show a very long plateau at around y = 10.5 for more than 1000 days until April 2011 (~1500 days after the maximum light). The nova had taken a very long time (~50 months) to enter the nebular phase, according to a clear detection of both O iii 4959 and 5007 and is still continuing to generate the wind caused by H-burning. This finding suggests that historically V1280 Sco is evolving at its slowest ever measured rate. The interval from the maximum light (2007 February 16) to the beginning of the nebular phase is longer than any previously known slow novae: V723 Cas (18 months), RR Pic (10 months), or HR Del (8 months). It suggests that the mass of a white dwarf in the V1280 Sco system might be 0.6 M⊙ or lower. The distance, based on our measurements of the expansion velocity combined with the directly measured size of the dust shell, is estimated to be 1.1 ± 0.5 kpc.
Summary
Background
Perilla and its constituent rosmarinic acid have been suggested to have anti‐allergic activity. However, few studies have examined the effects on allergic asthma.
Objective
The ...purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of oral administration of perilla leaf extract, which contains high amount of rosmarinic acid, on a murine model of allergic asthma induced by house dust mite allergen.
Methods
C3H/He mice were sensitized by intratracheal administration of Dermatophagoides farinae (Der f). Mice were orally treated with rosmarinic acid in perilla extract (PE) (1.5 mg/mouse/day).
Results
Der f challenge of sensitized mice elicited pulmonary eosinophilic inflammation, accompanied by an increase in lung expression of IL‐4 and IL‐5, and eotaxin. Daily treatment with rosmarinic acid in PE significantly prevented the increases in the numbers of eosinophils in bronchoalveolar lavage fluids and also in those around murine airways. Rosmarinic acid in PE treatment also inhibited the enhanced protein expression of IL‐4 and IL‐5, and eotaxin in the lungs of sensitized mice. Der f challenge also enhanced allergen‐specific IgG1, which were also inhibited by rosmarinic acid in PE.
Conclusion
These results suggest that oral administration of perilla‐derived rosmarinic acid is an effective intervention for allergic asthma, possibly through the amelioration of increases in cytokines, chemokines, and allergen‐specific antibody.
Summary
Background
Diesel exhaust particles (DEP) can enhance various respiratory diseases. However, it is unclear as to which components in DEP are associated with the enhancement. We investigated ...the effects of DEP components on antigen‐related airway inflammation, using residual carbonaceous nuclei of DEP after extraction (washed DEP), extracted organic chemicals (OC) in DEP (DEP–OC), and DEP–OC plus washed DEP (whole DEP) in the presence or absence of ovalbumin (OVA).
Methods
Male ICR mice were intratracheally administrated with OVA and/or DEP components. We examined the cellular profile of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid, histological changes, lung expression of inflammatory molecules, and antigen‐specific production of IgG1 in the serum.
Results
DEP–OC, rather than washed DEP, enhanced infiltration of inflammatory cells into BAL fluid, magnitude of airway inflammation, and proliferation of goblet cells in the airway epithelium in the presence of OVA, which was paralleled by the enhanced lung expression of eotaxin and IL‐5 as well as the elevated concentration of OVA‐specific IgG1. In contrast, washed DEP with OVA showed less change and increased the lung expression of IFN‐γ. The combination of whole DEP and OVA caused the most remarkable changes in the entire enhancement, which was also accompanied by the enhanced expression of IL‐13 and macrophage inflammatory protein‐1α.
Conclusion
DEP–OC, rather than washed DEP, exaggerated allergic airway inflammation through the enhancement of T‐helper type 2 responses. The coexistence of OC with carbonaceous nuclei caused the most remarkable aggravation. DEP components might diversely affect various types of respiratory diseases, while whole DEP might mostly aggravate respiratory diseases.
The blazar OJ 287 has produced two major optical outburst events during the years 2005-2008. These are the latest in a series of outbursts that have occurred repeatedly at 12 year intervals since ...early 1900s. It has been possible to explain the historical light curve fairly well by using a binary black hole model where the secondary black hole impacts the accretion disk of the primary twice during the 12 year orbital cycle. We will ask here how well does the latest light-curve fit with this model. We use a 10 million particle disk to model the accretion disk of the primary black hole. The rate of transfer of particles through the 10 Schwarzschild radius cylinder around the primary is followed. The secondary induces an inward flow through this surface. The inward flow rate is compared with the historical light curve as well as with the most recent observations reported in this paper. The observations have been carried out by using a number of small and medium size telescopes in different locations in order to ensure a dense light-curve coverage. The 'inflow light curve' and the optical light curve of OJ 287 have a close resemblance to each other. It suggests that the tidally induced accretion flow is responsible for the main features of the optical light curve, with the exception of the quasi-periodic double peaks. It implies a close connection between the accretion disk and the jet where the optical synchrotron emission is presumably generated.
The current authors have previously demonstrated that diesel exhaust particles (DEP) enhance antigen-related airway inflammation in mice. Furthermore, a recent study has shown that organic chemicals ...in DEP, rather than their carbonaceous nuclei, are important contributors to the aggravating effects of airway inflammation. However, the components in DEP responsible for the enhancing effects on the model remain to be identified. The current authors investigated the effects of naphthoquinone (NQ), one of the extractable chemical compounds of DEP, on antigen-related airway inflammation, local expression of cytokine proteins, and antigen-specific immunoglobulin (Ig) production in mice. Pulmonary exposure to NQ dose-dependently aggravated antigen-related airway inflammation, as characterised by infiltration of eosinophils and lymphocytes around the airways and an increase in goblet cells in the bronchial epithelium. Combined exposure to NQ and antigen enhanced the local expression of interleukin (IL)-4, IL-5, eotaxin, macrophage chemoattractant protein-1 and keratinocyte chemoattractant, compared with exposure to antigen or NQ alone. Also, NQ exhibited adjuvant activity for the antigen-specific production of IgG(1) and IgG(2a). These results provide the first experimental evidence that naphthoquinone can enhance antigen-related airway inflammation in vivo, and that naphthoquinone can, to some extent, partly play a role in the pathogenesis of diesel exhaust particle toxicity on the condition.
Nano-sized particles are diffusing in the environment with the development of nanotechnology. Polystyrene (PS) nanoparticles are modified industrial products and pharmaceutical agents, however, ...adverse effects of PS nanoparticles remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of PS nanoparticles with different sizes on the atopic dermatitis (AD)-like skin lesions in NC/Nga mice assumed to show the skin barrier defect/dysfunction in the presence or absence of mite allergen. Male NC/Nga mice were injected intradermally with three different-sized PS nanoparticles (25, 50, or 100 nm) and/or mite allergen into their right ears. We evaluated clinical scores, ear thickening, histological findings and the local protein expression of inflammatory molecules in the ear and Ig production in serum. PS nanoparticles aggravated AD-like skin lesions related to mite allergen, which was paralleled by the local protein levels of interleukin-4, CCL2/monocyte chemotactic protein-1, CCL3/macrophage inflammatory protein-1 alpha, and CCL4/macrophage inflammatory protein-1 beta. In contrast, PS nanoparticles decreased interferon-γ expression. Furthermore, exposure to PS nanoparticles induced ear swelling and CC-chemokine expression in the absence of allergen. These effects were greater with the smaller PS nanoparticles than with the larger ones regarding overall trend. These results suggest that exposure to PS nanoparticles under skin barrier defect/dysfunction can exacerbate AD-like skin lesions related to mite allergen in a size-dependent manner. The enhancing effects may be accounted for by T helper 2-biased immune responses. Furthermore, PS nanoparticles can evoke skin inflammation via the overexpression of CC-chemokines even in the absence of allergen in atopic subjects.
Structural alignment has been shown to be an effective computational method to identify structural noncoding RNA (ncRNA) candidates as ncRNAs are known to be conserved in secondary structures. ...However, the complexity of the structural alignment algorithms becomes higher when the structure has pseudoknots. Even for the simplest type of pseudoknots (simple pseudoknots), the fastest algorithm runs in O(mn 3 ) time, where m, n are the length of the query ncRNA (with known structure) and the length of the target sequence (with unknown structure), respectively. In practice, we are usually given a long DNA sequence and we try to locate regions in the sequence for possible candidates of a particular ncRNA. Thus, we need to run the structural alignment algorithm on every possible region in the long sequence. For example, finding candidates for a known ncRNA of length 100 on a sequence of length 50,000, it takes more than one day. In this paper, we provide an efficient algorithm to solve the problem for simple pseudoknots and it is shown to be 10 times faster. The speedup stems from an effective pruning strategy consisting of the computation of a lower bound score for the optimal alignment and an estimation of the maximum score that a candidate can achieve to decide whether to prune the current candidate or not.
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