Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

Comparative Studies of Gasoline Samples Used in Nigeria

Comparative analysis was carried out on five samples of gasoline in the Nigerian market based on octane number, sulphur content, Reid vapour pressure, specific gravity, boiling point characteristics and chemical content. The result revealed that, Nigerian and Kuwait gasolines have low octane numbers in comparison to others. The Nigerian sample has the least sulphur content while the Holland has the highest. The specific gravities were all within the acceptable range of 0.75-0.85. Likewise the boiling point characteristics of all the samples were within suitable values in favour of Nigerian weather conditions. Chemical composition analysis shows high proportion of aromatics, above acceptable limits and low oxygenated compounds. The findings revealed that the quality of some gasolines being sold in Nigeria is below the international standard

Determination of the antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of enterobacteriaceae in a tertiary health center of Northeastern Nigeria.

Gram negative resistance particularly amongst species of has emerged as a worldwide threat affecting the efficacy of our commonly used antimicrobial agents. These threats affect the quality of care and results in prolonged hospitalization and increase in health care cost. We set out to evaluate the occurrence and profile of antimicrobial resistance from clinical isolates of in a tertiary health center of north-eastern, Nigeria. Method: Confirmed species of isolated from 225 patients that were admitted in various units of University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) Maiduguri were tested for susceptibility to 6 antimicrobial agents; ampicillin (10µg), aztreonam (30µg), gentamicin (10µg), ceftriaxone (30µg), ciprofloxacin (5µg) and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (20/10µg) using the clinical and laboratory standards institute (CLSI) breakpoints. Results: A total of 225 clinical variants of were isolated during the study period. The specie with the highest proportion was with 73(32.4%) and this was followed closely by with 61(27.1%). The result of the susceptibility testing on this species of showed ampicillin (10µg) with the highest resistance of 118(52.4%) while aztreonam(30µg) has the lowest resistance of 58(25.8%). Conclusion: There is the existence of widespread resistance to mostly the beta lactam agents among species of with the exception of Aztreonam. Irrational use of antibiotics must be discouraged so as to reduce this emerging threat. Stringent infection control and antibiotic stewardship programshould be established and sustained in our hospitals nationwide

Genetic variants in novel pathways influence blood pressure and cardiovascular disease risk.

Blood pressure is a heritable trait influenced by several biological pathways and responsive to environmental stimuli. Over one billion people worldwide have hypertension (≥140 mm Hg systolic blood pressure or  ≥90 mm Hg diastolic blood pressure). Even small increments in blood pressure are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events. This genome-wide association study of systolic and diastolic blood pressure, which used a multi-stage design in 200,000 individuals of European descent, identified sixteen novel loci: six of these loci contain genes previously known or suspected to regulate blood pressure (GUCY1A3-GUCY1B3, NPR3-C5orf23, ADM, FURIN-FES, GOSR2, GNAS-EDN3); the other ten provide new clues to blood pressure physiology. A genetic risk score based on 29 genome-wide significant variants was associated with hypertension, left ventricular wall thickness, stroke and coronary artery disease, but not kidney disease or kidney function. We also observed associations with blood pressure in East Asian, South Asian and African ancestry individuals. Our findings provide new insights into the genetics and biology of blood pressure, and suggest potential novel therapeutic pathways for cardiovascular disease prevention

Identification and Filtering of Uncharacteristic Noise in the CMS Hadron Calorimeter

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Improving ductal carcinoma in situ classification by convolutional neural network with exponential linear unit and rank-based weighted pooling

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a pre-cancerous lesion in the ducts of the breast, and early diagnosis is crucial for optimal therapeutic intervention. Thermography imaging is a non-invasive imaging tool that can be utilized for detection of DCIS and although it has high accuracy (~88%), it is sensitivity can still be improved. Hence, we aimed to develop an automated artificial intelligence-based system for improved detection of DCIS in thermographs. This study proposed a novel artificial intelligence based system based on convolutional neural network (CNN) termed CNN-BDER on a multisource dataset containing 240 DCIS images and 240 healthy breast images. Based on CNN, batch normalization, dropout, exponential linear unit and rank-based weighted pooling were integrated, along with L-way data augmentation. Ten runs of tenfold cross validation were chosen to report the unbiased performances. Our proposed method achieved a sensitivity of 94.08±1.22%, a specificity of 93.58±1.49 and an accuracy of 93.83±0.96. The proposed method gives superior performance than eight state-of-theart approaches and manual diagnosis. The trained model could serve as a visual question answering system and improve diagnostic accuracy.British Heart Foundation Accelerator Award, UKRoyal Society International Exchanges Cost Share Award, UK RP202G0230Hope Foundation for Cancer Research, UK RM60G0680Medical Research Council Confidence in Concept Award, UK MC_PC_17171MINECO/FEDER, Spain/Europe RTI2018-098913-B100 A-TIC-080-UGR1

Virological and clinical characteristics of hepatitis delta virus in South Asia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background & Aims</p> <p>There is a paucity of data on the impact of hepatitis D virus (HDV) in patients with hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection from South Asia. We studied the impact of HDV co-infection on virological and clinical characteristics.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We collected data of 480 patients with HBsAg positive and a detectable HBV DNA PCR, who presented to the Aga Khan University, Karachi and Isra University in Hyderabad, Pakistan in the last 5 years. HDV co-infection was diagnosed on the basis of anti-HDV. ALT, HBeAg, HBeAb and HBV DNA PCR quantitative levels were checked in all patients. We divided all patients into two groups based on anti-HDV, and compared their biochemical, serological & virological labs and clinical spectrum. Clinical spectrum of disease included asymptomatic carrier (AC), chronic active hepatitis (CAH), immuno-tolerant phase (IP), and compensated cirrhosis (CC).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>HDV co-infection was found in 169 (35.2%). There were 164 (34.6%) HBeAg positive and 316 (65.4%) HBeAg negative patients. Mean ALT level was 66 ± 73 IU. 233 (48.5%) had raised ALT. HBV DNA level was ≥ 10e5 in 103(21.5%) patients. Overall, among HBV/HDV co-infection, 146/169 (86.4%) had suppressed HBV DNA PCR as compared to 231/311 (74.3%) patients with HBV mono-infection; p-value = 0.002. Among HBeAg negative patients 71/128(55.5%) had raised ALT levels among HBV/HDV co-infection as compared to 71/188 (37.8%) with HBV mono-infection (p-value = 0.002); levels of HBV DNA were equal in two groups; there were 27/128 (21%) patients with CC among HBV/HDV co-infection as compared to 23 (12%) in HBV mono-infection (p-value = 0.009); there were less AC (p-value = 0.009) and more CAH (p-value = 0.009) among HBV/HDV co-infection patients. Among HBeAg positive patients, serum ALT, HBV DNA levels and the spectrum of HBV were similar in the two groups.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>HBV/HDV co-infection results in the suppression of HBV DNA. A fair proportion of HBV/HDV co-infected patients with HBeAg negative have active hepatitis B infection and cirrhosis as compared to those with mono-infection.</p

Differences in the ability to suppress interferon β production between allele A and allele B NS1 proteins from H10 influenza A viruses

BACKGROUND: In our previous study concerning the genetic relationship among H10 avian influenza viruses with different pathogenicity in mink (Mustela vison), we found that these differences were related to amino acid variations in the NS1 protein. In this study, we extend our previous work to further investigate the effect of the NS1 from different gene pools on type I IFN promoter activity, the production of IFN-β, as well as the expression of the IFN-β mRNA in response to poly I:C. RESULTS: Using a model system, we first demonstrated that NS1 from A/mink/Sweden/84 (H10N4) (allele A) could suppress an interferon-stimulated response element (ISRE) reporter system to about 85%. The other NS1 (allele B), from A/chicken/Germany/N/49 (H10N7), was also able to suppress the reporter system, but only to about 20%. The differences in the abilities of the two NS1s from different alleles to suppress the ISRE reporter system were clearly reflected by the protein and mRNA expressions of IFN-β as shown by ELISA and RT-PCR assays. CONCLUSIONS: These studies reveal that different non-structural protein 1 (NS1) of influenza viruses, one from allele A and another from allele B, show different abilities to suppress the type I interferon β expression. It has been hypothesised that some of the differences in the different abilities of the alleles to suppress ISRE were because of the interactions and inhibitions at later stages from the IFN receptor, such as the JAK/STAT pathway. This might reflect the additional effects of the immune evasion potential of different NS1s

RAGE does not contribute to renal injury and damage upon ischemia/reperfusion-induced injury.

Item does not contain fulltextThe receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) mediates a variety of inflammatory responses in renal diseases, but its role in renal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is unknown. We showed that during renal I/R, RAGE ligands HMGB1 and S100B are expressed. However, RAGE deficiency does not affect renal injury and function upon I/R-induced injury