RESUMEN
In a tokamak plasma, sawtooth oscillations in the central temperature, caused by a magnetohydrodynamic instability, can be partially stabilized by fast ions. The resulting less frequent sawtooth crashes can trigger unwanted magnetohydrodynamic activity. This Letter reports on experiments showing that modest electron-cyclotron current drive power, with the deposition positioned by feedback control of the injection angle, can reliably shorten the sawtooth period in the presence of ions with energies >or=0.5 MeV. Certain surprising elements of the results are evaluated qualitatively in terms of existing theory.
RESUMEN
Improvement (up to a factor of approximately 4) of the electron-cyclotron (EC) current drive efficiency in plasmas sustained by lower-hybrid (LH) current drive has been demonstrated in stationary conditions on the Tore Supra tokamak. This was made possible by feedback controlled discharges at zero loop voltage, constant plasma current, and constant density. This effect, predicted by kinetic theory, results from a favorable interplay of the velocity space diffusions induced by the two waves: the EC wave pulling low-energy electrons out of the Maxwellian bulk, and the LH wave driving them to high parallel velocities.
RESUMEN
The induction of anti-influenza cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) in vivo by immunizing mice with liposomes containing messenger RNA (mRNA) encoding the influenza virus nucleoprotein (NP) is described. NP mRNA, obtained by in vitro transcription, was encapsulated into simple cholesterol/phosphatidylcholine/phosphatidylserine liposomes by the detergent removal technique. The dependence of the route of mRNA-liposomes delivery on CTL induction was studied. The CTL induced were identical to those obtained in vivo with infectious virus in terms of specificity, lysing both peptide-sensitized and virus-infected targets. Furthermore, with the same mRNA-liposome preparation, virus-specific CTL responses could be also elicited in mice of three different haplotypes each of them known to present a distinct NP peptide in an MHC-restricted fashion. The relevance of these results in the context of vaccine development is discussed.