14-3-3 proteins are known to play a pivotal role in a diverse array of cellular events such as cell survival, apoptosis, and signal transduction. Numerous 14-3-3 ζ have been cloned and characterized from a host of eukaryotic organisms including human, plants, yeast, fruit fly and silkworm. However, no study on Spodoptera exigua 14-3-3ζ in conjunction with virus infection has so far been reported in insects. It appears that expression of Se14-3-3ζ was decreased starting 24 h post-SeNPV infection as SeNPV titers seemed to increase as evidenced by intense bands of SeNPV IAP3. Interestingly, confocal microscopic analysis revealed that Se14-3-3ζ is expressed at the apical side of the NPV-uninfected gut cells, whereas it was detected mainly in the nucleus of the NPV-infected cells. Thus, despite the biological significance of Se14-3-3ζ in S. exigua in conjunction with molecular interactions between SeNPV and S. exigua is unclear now, our data suggest that Se14-3-3 ζ protein plays a role to protect S. exigua from the infection or inhibit replication of SeNPV.

From the HCN observations of dense molecular cloud L694-2, Lee et al.(2007) determined internal distributions of density and velocity for the cloud. The density profile collaborates roughly with the Bonnor- Ebert gas sphere, but the velocity field departs significantly from the result of numerical simulations that are started from the BE sphere. Taking L694-2 as an example of collapsing clouds, we have performed a series of collapse simulations and determined initial configurations for the cloud in such a way that the resulting density and velocity profiles both match with the empirically deduced ones. Among many trial configurations the cloud which is initially uniform in density and bound by an expanding envelop depicts most closely the empirically obtained profiles of both density and velocity.

Here we present a linear stability analysis and an MHD 2D model for the Parker-Jeans instability in the Galactic gaseous disk. The magnetic field is assumed parallel to a Galactic spiral arm, and the gaseous disk is modelled as a multi-component, magnetized, and isothermal gas layer. The model employs the observed vertical stratifications for the gas density and the gravitational acceleration in the Solar neighborhood, and the self-gravity of the gas is also included. By solving Poisson's equation for the gas density stratification, we determine the vertical acceleration due to self-gravity as a function of z. Subtracting it from the observed gravitational acceleration, we separate the total acceleration into self and external gravities. The linear stability analysis provides the corresponding dispersion relations. The time and length scales of the fastest growing mode of the Parker-Jeans instability are about 40 Myr and 3.3 kpc, respectively. In order to confirm the linear stability analysis, we have performed two-dimensional MHD simulations. These show that the Parker-Jeans instability under the self and external gravities evolves into a quasi-equilibrium state, creating condensations on the northern and southern sides of the plane, in an alternate manner.

We have developed a wide-field imaging camera system, called WICZO, to monitor light of the night sky over extended period. Such monitoring is necessary for studying the morphology of interplanetary dust cloud and also the time and spatial variations of airglow emission. The system consists of an electric cooler a CCD camera with 60% quantum efficiency at 500nm, and a fish-eye lens with 180 ̊ field of view. Wide field imaging is highly desired in light of the night sky observations in general, because the zodiacal light and the airglow emission extend over the entire sky. This paper illustrates the design of WICZO, reports the result of its laboratory performance test, and presents the first night sky image, which was taken, under collaboration with Byulmaro Observatory, on top of Mt. Bongrae at Yongweol in January, 2004.

This is a proposal to probe local part of the interplanetary dust (IPD) cloud complex and retrieve mean volume emissivity of the local IPDs at mid-infrared wavelengths. This will be done by monitoring, with Infrared Camera (IRC) aboard the ASTRO-F, the annual modulation of the zodiacal emission. In pointing mode of the ASTRO-F mission the spacecraft can make attitude maneuvering over approximately ±1 ̊ range centered at solar elongation 90 ̊ in the ecliptic plane. The attitude maneuvering combined with high sensitivity of the IRC will provide us with a unique opportunity observationally to take derivatives of the zodiacal emission brightness with respect to the solar elongation. From the resulting differential of the brightness over the ±1̊ range, one can directly determine the mean volume emissivity of the local IPDs with a sufficient accuracy to de-modulate the annual emissivity variations due to the Earth's elliptical motion and the dis-alignment of the maximum IPD density plane with respect to the ecliptic. The non-zero eccentricity (e⊕= 0.0167) of the Earth's orbit combined with the sensitive temperature dependence of the Planck function would bring modulations of amplitude at least 3.34% to the zodiacal emission brightness at mid-infrared wavelengths, with which one may determine the IPD temperature T(r) and mean number density n(r) as functions of heliocentric distance r. This will in turn fix the power-law exponent δ in the relation T(r) = T_o(r/r_o)-δ for the dust temperature and v in n(r) = n_o(r/r_o)-v for the density. We discuss how one may de-couple the notorious degeneracy of cross-section, density, reference temperature To and exponent δ.

We have written a code called QDM_sca, which numerically solves the problem of radiative transfer in an anisotropically scattering, spherical atmosphere. First we formulate the problem as a second order differential equation of a quasi-diffusion type. We then apply a three-point finite differencing to the resulting differential equation and transform it to a tri-diagonal system of simultaneous linear equations. After boundary conditions are implemented in the tri-diagonal system, the QDM_sca radiative code fixes the field of specific intensity at every point in the atmosphere. As an application example, we used the code to calculate the brightness of atmospheric diffuse light(ADL) as a function of zenith distance, which plays a pivotal role in reducing the zodiacal light brightness from night sky observations. On the basis of this ADL calculation, frequent uses of effective extinction optical depth have been fully justified in correcting the atmospheric extinction for such extended sources as zodiacal light, integrated starlight and diffuse galactic light. The code will be available on request.

As a companion to an adiabatic version developed by Ryu and his coworkers, we have built an isothermal magnetohydrodynamic code for astrophysical flows. It is suited for the dynamical simulations of flows where cooling timescale is much shorter than dynamical timescale, as well as for turbulence and dynamo simulations in which detailed energetics are unimportant. Since a simple isothermal equation of state substitutes the energy conservation equation, the numerical schemes for isothermal flows are simpler (no contact discontinuity) than those for adiabatic flows and the resulting code is faster. Tests for shock tubes and Alfven wave decay have shown that our isothermal code has not only a good shock capturing ability, but also numerical dissipation smaller than its adiabatic analogue. As a real astrophysical application of the code, we have simulated the nonlinear three-dimensional evolution of the Parker instability. A factor of two enhancement in vertical column density has been achieved at most, and the main structures formed are sheet-like and aligned with the mean field direction. We conclude that the Parker instability alone is not a viable formation mechanism of the giant molecular clouds.