Antihydrogen studies in ALPHA

he ALPHA experiment studies antihydrogen as a means to investigate the symmetry of matter and antimatter. Spectroscopic studies of the anti-atom hold the promise of the most precise direct comparisons of matter and antimatter possible. ALPHA was the first to trap antihydrogen in a magnetic trap, allowing the first ever detection of atomic transitions in an anti-atom. More recently, through stochastic heating, we have also been able to put a new limit on the charge neutrality of antihydrogen. ALPHA is currently preparing to perform the first laser-spectroscopy of antihydrogen, hoping to excite the 2s state using a two-photon transition from the 1s state. We discuss the recent results as well as the key developments that led to these successes and discuss how we are preparing to perform the first laser-spectroscopy. We will also discuss plans to use our novel technique for gravitational tests on antihydrogen for a direct measurement of the sign of the gravitational force on antihydrogen

Evaluation of the therapeutic potential of ant-TLR4-antibody MTS510 in experimental stroke and significa of different routes of application

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are central sensors for the inflammatory response in ischemia-reperfusion injury. We therefore investigated whether TLR4 inhibition could be used to treat stroke in a standard model of focal cerebral ischemia. Anti-TLR4/MD2-antibody (mAb clone MTS510) blocked TLR4-induced cell activation in vitro, as reported previously. Here, different routes of MTS510 application in vivo were used to study the effects on stroke outcome up to 2d after occlusion of the middle cerebral artery (MCAO) for 45 min in adult male C57Bl/6 wild-type mice. Improved neurological performance, reduced infarct volumes, and reduced brain swelling showed that intravascular application of MTS510 had a protective effect in the model of 45 min MCAO. Evaluation of potential long-term adverse effects of anti-TLR4-mAb-treament revealed no significant deleterious effect on infarct volumes nor neurological deficit after 14d of reperfusion in a mild model of stroke (15 min MCAO). Interestingly, inhibition of TLR4 resulted in an altered adaptive immune response at 48 hours after reperfusion. We conclude that blocking TLR4 by the use of specific mAb is a promising strategy for stroke therapy. However, long-term studies with increased functional sensitivity, larger sampling sizes and use of other species are required before a clinical use could be envisaged

Inequality, material well-being, and subjective well-being: Exploring associations for children across 15 diverse countries

Children's material well-being, and the levels of wealth and inequality in societies within which children live, are important factors in determining outcomes. However, less is known about the extent to which these factors have an impact children's subjective well-being, especially in an internationally comparative context. This study draws on data from the Children's Worlds survey, an international study of child subjective well-being, to explore links between national level indicators of wealth and inequality (GDP and Gini coefficients), individual indicators of material well-being (the material resources children report having access to), and subjective well-being. The survey covers 15 diverse countries covering the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, with samples of at least 3000 per country, ages 8, 10 and 12. Analysis takes the form of a multilevel, varying intercepts and slopes model, examining the association between financial and material resources and inequality and subjective well-being across and between countries. Findings suggest that material resources that children report are significantly associated with subjective well-being, while indicators of financial resources and inequality at the national level are not. While a significant association between material resources and subjective well-being is found across the whole sample, the magnitude of this association, and the association between school- and country-level material resources, varies markedly. Within different countries, the strongest material resources-related predictor of overall subjective well-being may be either at the individual, school or country level

Modeling all alternative solutions for highly renewable energy systems

As the world is transitioning towards highly renewable energy systems, advanced tools are needed to analyze such complex networks. Energy system design is, however, challenged by real-world objective functions consisting of a blurry mix of technical and socioeconomic agendas, with limitations that cannot always be clearly stated. As a result, it is highly likely that solutions which are techno-economically suboptimal will be preferable. Here, we present a method capable of determining the continuum containing all techno-economically near-optimal solutions, moving the field of energy system modeling from discrete solutions to a new era where continuous solution ranges are available. The presented method is applied to study a range of technical and socioeconomic metrics on a model of the European electricity system. The near-optimal region is found to be relatively flat allowing for solutions that are slightly more expensive than the optimum but better in terms of equality, land use, and implementation time.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, also available as preprint at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=368204

Reply to the Comment by B. Andresen

All the comments made by Andresen's comments are replied and are shown not to be pertinent. The original discussions [ABE S., Europhys. Lett. 90 (2010) 50004] about the absence of nonextensive statistical mechanics with q-entropies for classical continuous systems are reinforced.Comment: 5 pages. This is Reply to B. Andresen's Comment on the paper entitled "Essential discreteness in generalized thermostatistics with non-logarithmic entropy", Europhys. Lett. 90 (2010) 5000

A high-resolution hydro power time-series model for energy systems analysis: Validated with Chinese hydro reservoirs

We expand the renewable technology model palette and present a validated high resolution hydro power time series model for energy systems analysis. Among the weather-based renewables, hydroelectricity shows unique storage-like flexibility, which is particularly important given the high variability of wind and solar power. Often limited by data availability or computational performance, a high resolution, globally applicable and validated hydro power time series model has not been available. For a demonstration, we focus on 41 Chinese reservoir- based hydro stations as a demo, determine their upstream basin areas, estimate their inflow based on gridded surface runoff data and validate their daily inflow time series in terms of both flow volume and potential power generation. Furthermore, we showcase an application of these time series with hydro cascades in energy system long term investment planning. Our method\u27s novelty lies in: - it is based on highly resolved spatial-temporal datasets; - both data and algorithms used here are globally applicable; - it includes a hydro cascade model that can be integrated into energy system simulations

Thermodynamic curvature and black holes

I give a relatively broad survey of thermodynamic curvature $R$, one spanning results in fluids and solids, spin systems, and black hole thermodynamics. $R$ results from the thermodynamic information metric giving thermodynamic fluctuations. $R$ has a unique status in thermodynamics as being a geometric invariant, the same for any given thermodynamic state. In fluid and solid systems, the sign of $R$ indicates the character of microscopic interactions, repulsive or attractive. $|R|$ gives the average size of organized mesoscopic fluctuating structures. The broad generality of thermodynamic principles might lead one to believe the same for black hole thermodynamics. This paper explores this issue with a systematic tabulation of results in a number of cases.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, 7 tables, 78 references. Talk presented at the conference Breaking of Supersymmetry and Ultraviolet Divergences in extended Supergravity, in Frascati, Italy, March 27, 2013. v2 corrects some small problem