13 research outputs found
Simultaneous Comparison of Many Triphasic Defibrillation Waveforms
Biphasic defibrillation waveforms are now accepted as being more effective at terminating ventricular fibrillation (VF) than monophasic waveforms. If two phases are better than one, this naturally leads to the hypothesis that additional phases improve efficacy. This study tests the hypothesis by adding one additional phase. We examined the efficacy of 18 different triphasic waveforms simultaneously
Suppressing the and neutrino masses by a superconformal force
The idea of Nelson and Strassler to obtain a power law suppression of
parameters by a superconformal force is applied to understand the smallness of
the parameter and neutrino masses in R-parity violating supersymmetric
standard models. We find that the low-energy sector should contain at least
another pair of Higgs doublets, and that a suppression of \lsim O(10^{-13})
for the parameter and neutrino masses can be achieved generically. The
superpotential of the low-energy sector happens to possess an anomaly-free
discrete R-symmetry, either or , which naturally suppresses certain
lepton-flavor violating processes, the neutrinoless double beta decays and also
the electron electric dipole moment. We expect that the escape energy of the
superconformal sector is \lsim O(10) TeV so that this sector will be
observable at LHC. Our models can accommodate to a large mixing among neutrinos
and give the same upper bound of the lightest Higgs mass as the minimal
supersymmetric standard model.Comment: 24 page
Fatal COVID-19 outcomes are associated with an antibody response targeting epitopes shared with endemic coronaviruses
The role of immune responses to previously seen endemic coronavirus epitopes in severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and disease progression has not yet been determined. Here, we show that a key characteristic of fatal outcomes with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is that the immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is enriched for antibodies directed against epitopes shared with endemic beta-coronaviruses and has a lower proportion of antibodies targeting the more protective variable regions of the spike. The magnitude of antibody responses to the SARS-CoV-2 full-length spike protein, its domains and subunits, and the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid also correlated strongly with responses to the endemic beta-coronavirus spike proteins in individuals admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) with fatal COVID-19 outcomes, but not in individuals with nonfatal outcomes. This correlation was found to be due to the antibody response directed at the S2 subunit of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which has the highest degree of conservation between the beta-coronavirus spike proteins. Intriguingly, antibody responses to the less cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid were not significantly different in individuals who were admitted to an ICU with fatal and nonfatal outcomes, suggesting an antibody profile in individuals with fatal outcomes consistent with an “original antigenic sin” type response