Photodynamic Therapy of Necrobiosis Lipoidica - A Multicenter Study of 18 Patients

Background: Necrobiosis lipoidica (NL) is a granulomatous skin disease of unknown origin, and no reliably effective treatment option exists to handle this often disfiguring disease. Recently, a patient with long-lasting NL was reported to be cured by topical photodynamic therapy (PDT). Objective: To evaluate the overall potential of PDT in the treatment of NL on the lower legs. Methods: Retrospective study of 18 patients (aged 16 - 62 years) from 3 European university departments of dermatology treated with PDT for NL. Methyl aminolevulinate or 5-aminolevulinic acid were used as topically applied photosensitizers. Illumination followed with red light-emitting diode light. Results: Complete response was seen in 1/18 patients after 9 PDT cycles, and partial response in 6/18 patients (2 - 14 PDT cycles) giving an overall response rate of 39% (7/18). Conclusion: Although almost 40% of the cases showed some degree of response, PDT cannot currently be recommended as first-line therapy of NL. Subpopulations of therapy-resistant NL patients may, however, benefit from PDT. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Base

Analytic Solution of the Pion-Laser Model

Brooding over bosons, wave packets and Bose - Einstein correlations, we find that a generalization of the pion-laser model for the case of overlapping wave-packets is analytically solvable with complete n-particle symmetrization. The effective radius parameter of the two-particle correlation function is reduced for low values and enlargened for high values of the mean momentum in the rare gas limiting case, as compared to the case when multi-particle symmetrization effects are neglected. These results explicitly depend on the multiplicity, providing a theoretical basis for event-by-event analysis of high energy heavy ion reactions.Comment: LaTeX, ReVTeX 3.1, 7 pages, uses 1 eps figure and epsfig.sty (shortened version

Gauge Singlet Scalars as Cold Dark Matter

In light of recent interest in minimal extensions of the Standard Model and gauge singlet scalar cold dark matter, we provide an arXiv preprint of the paper, published as Phys.Rev. D50 (1994) 3637, which presented the first detailed analysis of gauge singlet scalar cold dark matter.Comment: 37 pages, 11 figures, LaTe

Partition Functions in Statistical Mechanics, Symmetric Functions, and Group Representations

Partition functions for non-interacting particles are known to be symmetric functions. It is shown that powerful group-theoretical techniques can be used not only to derive these relationships, but also to significantly simplify calculation of the partition functions for particles that carry internal quantum numbers. The partition function is shown to be a sum of one or more group characters. The utility of character expansions in calculating the partition functions is explored. Several examples are given to illustrate these techniques.Comment: 16 pages of RevTe

Kinetic Exchange Models for Income and Wealth Distributions

Increasingly, a huge amount of statistics have been gathered which clearly indicates that income and wealth distributions in various countries or societies follow a robust pattern, close to the Gibbs distribution of energy in an ideal gas in equilibrium. However, it also deviates in the low income and more significantly for the high income ranges. Application of physics models provides illuminating ideas and understanding, complementing the observations.Comment: 15 pages, 20 eps figures, EPJ class; To be published as "Colloquium" in Eur Phys J

QCD and models on multiplicities in e+e−e^+e^- and ppˉp\bar p interactions

A brief survey of theoretical approaches to description of multiplicity distributions in high energy processes is given. It is argued that the multicomponent nature of these processes leads to some peculiar characteristics observed experimentally. Predictions for LHC energies are presented. It is shown that similarity of the energy dependence of average multiplicities in different reactions is not enough alone to suggest the universal mechanism of particle production in strongly-interacting systems. Other characteristics of multiplicity distributions depend on the nature of colliding partners.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, Phys. Atom. Nuc

Food additives: Sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, azorubine, and tartrazine modify the expression of NFκB, GADD45α, and MAPK8 genes

It has been reported that some of the food additives may cause sensitization, inflammation of tissues, and potentially risk factors in the development of several chronic diseases. Thus, we hypothesized that expressions of common inflammatory molecules – known to be involved in the development of various inflammatory conditions and cancers – are affected by these food additives. We investigated the effects of commonly used food preservatives and artificial food colorants based on the expressions of NFκB, GADD45α, and MAPK8 (JNK1) from the tissues of liver. RNA was isolated based on Trizol protocol and the activation levels were compared between the treated and the control groups. Tartrazine alone could elicit effects on the expressions of NFκB (p = 0.013) and MAPK8 (p = 0.022). Azorubine also resulted in apoptosis according to MAPK8 expression (p = 0.009). Preservatives were anti-apoptotic in high dose. Sodium benzoate (from low to high doses) dose-dependently silenced MAPK8 expression (p = 0.004 to p = 0.002). Addition of the two preservatives together elicited significantly greater expression of MAPK8 at half-fold dose (p = 0.002) and at fivefold dose (p = 0.008). This study suggests that some of the food preservatives and colorants can contribute to the activation of inflammatory pathways