Pseudo-familon dark matter

Motivated by a model of pseudo-Majoron dark matter, we show how the breaking of a global symmetry that acts nontrivially in lepton generation space can lead to a viable pseudo-familon dark matter candidate. Unlike the pseudo-Majoron, the pseudo-familon in our model decays primarily to charged leptons and can account for the excess observed in the cosmic ray electron and positron spectra.     

The statistical significance of selected sense–antisense peptide interactions

Sense and antisense peptides, encoded by sense and corresponding antisense DNA strands, are capable of specific interactions that could be a driving force to mediate protein–protein or protein–peptide binding associations. The complementary residue hypothesis suggests that these interactions are founded upon the sum of pairwise interactions between amino acids encoded by corresponding sense and antisense codons. Despite many successful experimental results obtained with the hypothesis, however, the physicochemical basis for these interactions is poorly understood. We examined the potential of the hypothesis for general identification of protein–protein interaction sites, and the possible role of the hypothesis in determining folding in a broad set of protein structures. In addition, we performed a structural study to investigate the binding of a complementary peptide to IL‐1F2. Our results suggest that complementary residue pairs are no more frequent or conserved than average in protein–protein interfaces, and are statistically under‐represented amongst contacting residue pairs in folded protein structures. Although our structural results matched experimental observations of binding between the peptide and IL‐1F2, complementary residue interactions do not appear to be dominant in the bound structure. Overall, our data do not allow us to conclude that the complementary residue hypothesis accounts for specific sense–antisense peptide interactions. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

An fMRI study of magnitude comparison and exact addition in children

By contrast to the adult literature, in which a consistent parietofrontal network for number processing has been identified, the data from studies of number processing in children have been less consistent, probably due to differences in study design and control conditions. Number processing was examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 18 right-handed children (8–12 years) from the Cape Coloured community in Cape Town, South Africa, using Proximity Judgment and Exact Addition (EA) tasks. The findings were consistent with the hypothesis that, as in adults, the anterior horizontal intraparietal sulcus (HIPS) plays a major role in the representation and manipulation of quantity in children. The posterior medial frontal cortex, believed to be involved in performance monitoring in more complex arithmetic manipulations in adults, was extensively activated even for relatively simple symbolic number processing in the children. Other areas activated to a greater degree in the children included the left precentral sulcus, which may mediate number knowledge and, for EA, the head of the caudate nucleus, which is part of a fronto-subcortical circuit involved in the behavioral execution of sequences. Two regions that have been linked to number processing in adults — the angular gyrus and posterior superior parietal lobule — were not activated in the children. The data are consistent with the inference that although the functional specialization of the anterior HIPS may increase as symbolic number processing becomes increasingly automatic, this region and other elements of the parietofrontal network identified in adults are already reliably and robustly activated by middle childhood.     

Reduced field-of-view diffusion-weighted imaging of the brain at 7 T

Ventral and rostral regions of the brain are of emerging importance for the MRI characterization of early dementia, traumatic brain injury and epilepsy. Unfortunately, standard single-shot echo planar diffusion-weighted imaging of these regions at high fields is contaminated by severe imaging artifacts in the vicinity of air–tissue interfaces. To mitigate these artifacts and improve visualization of the temporal and frontal lobes at 7 T, we applied a reduced field-of-view strategy, enabled by outer volume suppression (OVS) with novel quadratic phase radiofrequency (RF) pulses, combined with partial Fourier and parallel imaging methods. The new acquisition greatly reduced the level of artifacts in six human subjects (including four patients with early symptoms of dementia).