Retinal S-antigen Th1 cell epitope mapping in patients with Behcet's disease

Background - Retinal S-antigen (S-Ag) is a most characterized autoantigen of autoimmune uveitis. The recognized immunodominant epitope of human S-Ag in patients with uveitis has not been identified. In this study, we selected certain patients with active uveitis to map the Th1 cell epitope spectrum of human S-Ag in Behcet's disease(BD). Methods - Blood samples were taken from eight active BD patients who showed an immune response to 40 mixed overlapping peptides spanning the entire sequence of human S-Ag. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated and stimulated with single S-Ag peptide at 5 mu g/ml or 20 mu g/ml. Single-cell immune responses were measured by IFN-gamma ELIspot assay. Results - BD patients heterogeneously responded to the S-Ag peptides at two concentrations. In general, the responses to 5 mu g/ml peptides were slightly stronger than those to 20 mu g/ml peptides, while the maximum SFC frequency to single peptide at the two concentrations was similar. Several peptides including P31, P35 and P40 induced a prominent response, with the frequency of S-Ag specific cells being about 0.007%. Significant reactivity pattern shift was noted in patients with different disease courses. Conclusions - Certain active BD patients have S-Ag specific Th1 cells with a low frequency. The S-Ag epitope specificity between patients is highly heterogeneous, and varies with the uveitis cours

Spatio-temporal patterns of crab fisheries in the main bays of Guangdong Province, China

Using a semi-balloon otter trawl, crab fisheries in the main bays of Guangdong Province, China, were carried out seasonally . A total of 70 species were found, all belonging to the South China Sea Faunal sub region in the tropical India-West-Pacific Faunal Region. The clustering and nMDS ordination analysis revealed the existence of three groups. Group 1 included Hailing Bay and four bays to its east where typical species were Portunus sanguinolentus, P. pelagicus and Charybdis feriatus. Group 2 included Shuidong Bay and Leizhou Bay where typical species were P. sanguinolentus, P. pelagicus and P. hastatoides. Group 3 was Liusha Bay where typical species were C. feriatus, C. vadorum and C. truncate. The spatial and temporal variations of crab fisheries were mainly associated with characteristics of the sediment, seasonal changes and their own biological characteristics, but not significantly with water depth, temperature, salinity, and the “mid-summer fishing moratorium” conservation measure

Exact solution of the An−1(1)A^{(1)}_{n-1} trigonometric vertex model with non-diagonal open boundaries

The $A^{(1)}_{n-1}$ trigonometric vertex model with {\it generic non-diagonal} boundaries is studied. The double-row transfer matrix of the model is diagonalized by algebraic Bethe ansatz method in terms of the intertwiner and the corresponding face-vertex relation. The eigenvalues and the corresponding Bethe ansatz equations are obtained.Comment: Latex file, 25 pages; V2: minor typos corrected, the version appears in JHE

Collective edge modes in fractional quantum Hall systems

Over the past few years one of us (Murthy) in collaboration with R. Shankar has developed an extended Hamiltonian formalism capable of describing the ground state and low energy excitations in the fractional quantum Hall regime. The Hamiltonian, expressed in terms of Composite Fermion operators, incorporates all the nonperturbative features of the fractional Hall regime, so that conventional many-body approximations such as Hartree-Fock and time-dependent Hartree-Fock are applicable. We apply this formalism to develop a microscopic theory of the collective edge modes in fractional quantum Hall regime. We present the results for edge mode dispersions at principal filling factors $\nu=1/3,1/5$ and $\nu=2/5$ for systems with unreconstructed edges. The primary advantage of the method is that one works in the thermodynamic limit right from the beginning, thus avoiding the finite-size effects which ultimately limit exact diagonalization studies.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, See cond-mat/0303359 for related result

Coulomb Gaps in One-Dimensional Spin-Polarized Electron Systems

We investigate the density of states (DOS) near the Fermi energy of one-dimensional spin-polarized electron systems in the quantum regime where the localization length is comparable to or larger than the inter-particle distance. The Wigner lattice gap of such a system, in the presence of weak disorder, can occur precisely at the Fermi energy, coinciding with the Coulomb gap in position. The interplay between the two is investigated by treating the long-range Coulomb interaction and the random disorder potential in a self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation. The DOS near the Fermi energy is found to be well described by a power law whose exponent decreases with increasing disorder strength.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, 4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. B as a Rapid Communicatio

Curvature, hybridization, and STM images of carbon nanotubes

The curvature effects in carbon nanotubes are studied analytically as a function of chirality. The pi-orbitals are found to be significantly rehybridized in all tubes, so that they are never normal to the tubes' surface. This results in a curvature induced gap in the electronic band-structure, which turns out to be larger than previous estimates. The tilting of the pi-orbitals should be observable by atomic resolution scanning tunneling microscopy measurements.Comment: Four pages in revtex format including four epsfig-embedded figures. The latest version in PDF format is available from http://fy.chalmers.se/~eggert/papers/hybrid.pd

Photo--assisted current and shot noise in the fractional quantum Hall effect

The effect of an AC perturbation on the shot noise of a fractional quantum Hall fluid is studied both in the weak and the strong backscattering regimes. It is known that the zero-frequency current is linear in the bias voltage, while the noise derivative exhibits steps as a function of bias. In contrast, at Laughlin fractions, the backscattering current and the backscattering noise both exhibit evenly spaced singularities, which are reminiscent of the tunneling density of states singularities for quasiparticles. The spacing is determined by the quasiparticle charge $\nu e$ and the ratio of the DC bias with respect to the drive frequency. Photo--assisted transport can thus be considered as a probe for effective charges at such filling factors, and could be used in the study of more complicated fractions of the Hall effect. A non-perturbative method for studying photo--assisted transport at $\nu=1/2$ is developed, using a refermionization procedure.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Determinant Representations of Correlation Functions for the Supersymmetric t-J Model

Working in the $F$-basis provided by the factorizing $F$-matrix, the scalar products of Bethe states for the supersymmetric t-J model are represented by determinants. By means of these results, we obtain determinant representations of correlation functions for the model.Comment: Latex File, 41 pages, no figure; V2: minor typos corrected, V3: This version will appear in Commun. Math. Phy

Topological Phase Transition and Electrically Tunable Diamagnetism in Silicene

Silicene is a monolayer of silicon atoms forming a honeycomb lattice. The lattice is actually made of two sublattices with a tiny separation. Silicene is a topological insulator, which is characterized by a full insulating gap in the bulk and helical gapless edges. It undergoes a phase transition from a topological insulator to a band insulator by applying external electric field. Analyzing the spin Chern number based on the effective Dirac theory, we find their origin to be a pseudospin meron in the momentum space. The peudospin degree of freedom arises from the two-sublattice structure. Our analysis makes clear the mechanism how a phase transition occurs from a topological insulator to a band insulator under increasing electric field. We propose a method to determine the critical electric field with the aid of diamagnetism of silicene. Diamagnetism is tunable by the external electric field, and exhibits a singular behaviour at the critical electric field. Our result is important also from the viewpoint of cross correlation between electric field and magnetism. Our finding will be important for future electro-magnetic correlated devices.Comment: 4 pages,5 figure

Edge reconstruction in the fractional quantum Hall regime

The interplay of electron-electron interaction and confining potential can lead to the reconstruction of fractional quantum Hall edges. We have performed exact diagonalization studies on microscopic models of fractional quantum Hall liquids, in finite size systems with disk geometry, and found numerical evidence of edge reconstruction under rather general conditions. In the present work we have taken into account effects like layer thickness and Landau level mixing, which are found to be of quantitative importance in edge physics. Due to edge reconstruction, additional nonchiral edge modes arise for both incompressible and compressible states. These additional modes couple to electromagnetic fields and thus can be detected in microwave conductivity measurements. They are also expected to affect the exponent of electron Green's function, which has been measured in tunneling experiments. We have studied in this work the electric dipole spectral function that is directly related to the microwave conductivity measurement. Our results are consistent with the enhanced microwave conductivity observed in experiments performed on samples with an array of antidots at low temperatures, and its suppression at higher temperatures. We also discuss the effects of the edge reconstruction on the single electron spectral function at the edge.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure