Publications by authors named "Assaad F"

Until recently, the lack of three-dimensional visualisation of whole cells at the electron microscopic (EM) level has led to a significant gap in our understanding of the interaction of cellular organelles and their interconnection. This is particularly true with regard to the role of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In this study, we perform three-dimensional reconstructions of serial FIB/SEM stacks and anaglyphs derived from volume rendering, cryo-scanning electron microscopy (cryo-SEM) and state-of-the-art electron microscopy immobilisation and imaging techniques.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Endometriosis is a chronic, complex, systemic inflammatory condition that impacts approximately 190 million girls and women worldwide, significantly impacting their quality of life. The effective management of endometriosis requires a multi-disciplinary and holistic approach, one that includes surgical and medical management, such as a laparoscopy and a chronic medical management plan, as well as dietary, nutritional, and lifestyle adjunct interventions, such as pelvic pain physiotherapy and acupuncture. There is growing evidence to support the role of dietary and nutritional interventions in the adjunct management of endometriosis-related pain and gastrointestinal symptoms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Endometriosis is a chronic, inflammatory, oestrogen-dependent disorder that is defined by the presence of endometrium-like tissue in the extra-uterine environment. It is estimated to affect approximately 10% of women of reproductive age, and the cause is still largely unknown. The heterogenous nature and complex pathophysiology of the disease results in diagnostic and therapeutic challenges.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A pilot study aimed to identify a microbial signature for endometriosis as a non-invasive diagnostic tool was conducted in Australia, involving 64 participants divided into three groups: healthy controls, non-endometriosis patients, and those with confirmed endometriosis.
  • Self-collected samples from the oral cavity, stool, and vagina were analyzed using advanced sequencing techniques to uncover differences in microbial composition among the groups, with significant findings from both oral and stool microbiota.
  • Results revealed distinct microbiota profiles, particularly highlighting that Fusobacterium was more abundant in the oral samples of patients with moderate to severe endometriosis, suggesting the potential of using microbiome analysis for diagnosis and treatment strategies in endometriosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

While altermagnetic materials are characterized by a vanishing net magnetic moment, their symmetry in principle allows for the existence of an anomalous Hall effect. Here, we introduce a model with altermagnetism in which the emergence of an anomalous Hall effect is driven by interactions. This model is grounded in a modified Kane-Mele framework with antiferromagnetic spin-spin correlations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The "symmetric mass generation" (SMG) quantum phase transition discovered in recent years has attracted great interest from both condensed matter and high energy theory communities. Here, interacting Dirac fermions acquire a gap without condensing any fermion bilinear mass term or any concomitant spontaneous symmetry breaking. It is hence beyond the conventional Gross-Neveu-Yukawa-Higgs paradigm.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Plants adapt to stress through differential growth, with the trans-Golgi network (TGN) playing a role in these responses.
  • This study investigates the TGN's function by examining its interactions with the TRAPPII complex and shaggy-like kinases (GSK3/AtSKs), suggesting that these connections influence how plants react to environmental stress.
  • The findings indicate that the interaction between AtSKs and the TRAPPII complex allows plants to efficiently manage resources for growth and survival in challenging conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Vaginal estrogen is a treatment for genitourinary symptoms of menopause (GSM), which comprises vaginal atrophy and urinary dysfunction, including incontinence. Previous studies show that estrogen therapy promotes lactobacilli abundance and is associated with reduced GSM symptoms, including reduction of stress incontinence. However, detailed longitudinal studies that characterize how the microbiome changes in response to estrogen are scarce.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Plants often adapt to adverse or stress conditions via differential growth. The trans-Golgi Network (TGN) has been implicated in stress responses, but it is not clear in what capacity it mediates adaptive growth decisions. In this study, we assess the role of the TGN in stress responses by exploring the interactome of the Transport Protein Particle II (TRAPPII) complex, required for TGN structure and function.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the connection between the microbiome and adverse perinatal health outcomes, aiming to understand how dysbiosis affects pregnancy and postpartum health.
  • To achieve this, 2000 Australian women will be recruited and monitored over a span of 7 years, with samples collected regularly before, during, and after pregnancy.
  • Data will include multiple biological samples and assessments on health, lifestyle, and environmental factors, allowing for comprehensive analysis of the microbiome's influence on maternal and child health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The fermion disorder operator has been shown to reveal the entanglement information in 1D Luttinger liquids and 2D free and interacting Fermi and non-Fermi liquids emerging at quantum critical points (QCPs) [W. Jiang et al., arXiv:2209.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Endometriosis has been described by many different theories of pathogenesis over the years. It is now also appreciated to be a state of chronic inflammation, and the role of immune dysfunction in its development has been proven. There is increasing evidence to support the role of the microbiome in the formation and progression of endometriosis inflammatory pathways.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Plants often adapt to adverse conditions via differential growth, whereby limited resources are discriminately allocated to optimize the growth of one organ at the expense of another. Little is known about the decision-making processes that underly differential growth. In this study, we developed a screen to identify decision making mutants by deploying two tools that have been used in decision theory: a well-defined yet limited budget, as well as conflict-of-interest scenarios.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bacterial cells communicate with host cells and other bacteria through the release of membrane vesicles known as bacterial extracellular vesicles (BEV). BEV are established mediators of intracellular signaling, stress tolerance, horizontal gene transfer, immune stimulation and pathogenicity. Both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria produce extracellular vesicles through different mechanisms based on cell structure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The microbiome has been implicated in the development of metabolic conditions which occur at high rates in people with schizophrenia and related psychoses. This exploratory proof-of-concept study aimed to: (i) characterize the gut microbiota in antipsychotic naïve or quasi-naïve people with first-episode psychosis, and people with established schizophrenia receiving clozapine therapy; (ii) test for microbiome changes following a lifestyle intervention which included diet and exercise education and physical activity. Participants were recruited from the Eastern Suburbs Mental Health Service, Sydney, Australia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We propose a method to mitigate heavy-tailed distributions in fermion quantum Monte Carlo simulations originating from zeros of the fermion determinant. In this case, the second moment of the observables might not be well defined, and we show that by merely changing the synchronization between local updates and computation of observables, one can reduce the prefactor of the heavy-tailed distribution, thus substantially suppressing statistical fluctuations of observables. We also show that the average, or the first moment, is well defined and hence is independent on our measuring scheme.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We consider an S=1/2 antiferromagnetic quantum Heisenberg chain where each site is coupled to an independent bosonic bath with ohmic dissipation. The coupling to the bath preserves the global SO(3) spin symmetry. Using large-scale, approximation-free quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we show that any finite coupling to the bath suffices to stabilize long-range antiferromagnetic order.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Kefir, a traditional, fermented-milk beverage, has increasingly been promoted for various health benefits. The evidence from systematic reviews, however, is limited.

Objective: Evidence from randomized controlled trials testing oral consumption of fermented-milk kefir on any outcome of human health or disease.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We investigate nematic quantum phase transitions in two different Dirac fermion models. The models feature twofold and fourfold, respectively, lattice rotational symmetries that are spontaneously broken in the ordered phase. Using negative-sign-free quantum Monte Carlo simulations and an ε-expansion renormalization group analysis, we show that both models exhibit continuous phase transitions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Motivated by the physics of spin-orbital liquids, we study a model of interacting Dirac fermions on a bilayer honeycomb lattice at half filling, featuring an explicit global SO(3)×U(1) symmetry. Using large-scale auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations, we locate two zero-temperature phase transitions as function of increasing interaction strength. First, we observe a continuous transition from the weakly interacting semimetal to a different semimetallic phase in which the SO(3) symmetry is spontaneously broken and where two out of three Dirac cones acquire a mass gap.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A quantum spin Hall insulating state that arises from spontaneous symmetry breaking has remarkable properties: skyrmion textures of the SO(3) order parameter carry charge 2e. Doping this state of matter opens a new route to superconductivity via the condensation of skyrmions. We define a model amenable to large-scale negative sign free quantum Monte Carlo simulations that allows us to study this transition.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We use the half-filled zeroth Landau level in graphene as a regularization scheme to study the physics of the SO(5) nonlinear sigma model subject to a Wess-Zumino-Witten topological term in 2+1 dimensions. As shown by Ippoliti et al. [Phys.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We consider a spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain coupled via a Kondo interaction to two-dimensional Dirac fermions. The Kondo interaction is irrelevant at the decoupled fixed point, leading to the existence of a Kondo-breakdown phase and a Kondo-breakdown critical point separating such a phase from a heavy Fermi liquid. We reach this conclusion on the basis of a renormalization group analysis, large-N calculations as well as extensive auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo simulations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In conventional quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnets with quantum spins, magnetic excitations are carried by either magnons or spinons in different energy regimes: they do not coexist independently, nor could they interact with each other. In this Letter, by combining inelastic neutron scattering, quantum Monte Carlo simulations, and random phase approximation calculations, we report the discovery and discuss the physics of the coexistence of magnons and spinons and their interactions in Botallackite-Cu_{2}(OH)_{3}Br. This is a unique quantum antiferromagnet consisting of alternating ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 chains with weak interchain couplings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF