Azimuthal anisotropy and correlations at large transverse momenta in p+pp+p and Au+Au collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}= 200 GeV

Results on high transverse momentum charged particle emission with respect to the reaction plane are presented for Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$= 200 GeV. Two- and four-particle correlations results are presented as well as a comparison of azimuthal correlations in Au+Au collisions to those in $p+p$ at the same energy. Elliptic anisotropy, $v_2$, is found to reach its maximum at $p_t \sim 3$ GeV/c, then decrease slowly and remain significant up to $p_t\approx 7$ -- 10 GeV/c. Stronger suppression is found in the back-to-back high-$p_t$ particle correlations for particles emitted out-of-plane compared to those emitted in-plane. The centrality dependence of $v_2$ at intermediate $p_t$ is compared to simple models based on jet quenching.Comment: 4 figures. Published version as PRL 93, 252301 (2004

Azimuthal anisotropy in Au+Au collisions at sqrtsNN = 200 GeV

The results from the STAR Collaboration on directed flow (v_1), elliptic flow (v_2), and the fourth harmonic (v_4) in the anisotropic azimuthal distribution of particles from Au+Au collisions at sqrtsNN = 200 GeV are summarized and compared with results from other experiments and theoretical models. Results for identified particles are presented and fit with a Blast Wave model. Different anisotropic flow analysis methods are compared and nonflow effects are extracted from the data. For v_2, scaling with the number of constituent quarks and parton coalescence is discussed. For v_4, scaling with v_2^2 and quark coalescence is discussed.Comment: 26 pages. As accepted by Phys. Rev. C. Text rearranged, figures modified, but data the same. However, in Fig. 35 the hydro calculations are corrected in this version. The data tables are available at http://www.star.bnl.gov/central/publications/ by searching for "flow" and then this pape

Effective Rheology of Bubbles Moving in a Capillary Tube

We calculate the average volumetric flux versus pressure drop of bubbles moving in a single capillary tube with varying diameter, finding a square-root relation from mapping the flow equations onto that of a driven overdamped pendulum. The calculation is based on a derivation of the equation of motion of a bubble train from considering the capillary forces and the entropy production associated with the viscous flow. We also calculate the configurational probability of the positions of the bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

A Model of Salmonella Colitis with Features of Diarrhea in SLC11A1 Wild-Type Mice

Background: Mice do not get diarrhea when orally infected with S. enterica, but pre-treatment with oral aminoglycosides makes them susceptible to Salmonella colitis. However, genetically susceptible ItyS mice (Nramp1 G169D allele) die from systemic infection before they develop diarrhea, so a new model is needed to study the pathogenesis of diarrhea. We pretreated ItyR mice (Nramp1 G169) with oral kanamycin prior to infecting them with virulent S. Typhimurium strain 14028s in order to study Salmonella-induced diarrhea. We used both a visual scoring system and the measurement of fecal water content to measure diarrhea. BALB/c.D2 Nramp1 congenic started losing weight 5 days post-infection and they began to die from colitis 10–14 days after infection. A SPI-1 (invA) mutant caused cecal, but not colonic inflammation and did not cause diarrhea. A phoP- mutant did not cause manifestations of diarrhea in either normal or NADPHdeficient (gp91 phox) mice. However, strain 14028s caused severe colitis and diarrhea in gp91 phox-deficient mice on an ItyR background. pmr A and F mutants, which are less virulent in orally infected BALB/c mice, were fully virulent in this model of colitis. Conclusions: S. enterica must be able to invade the colonic epithelium and to persist in the colon in order to cause colitis with manifestations of diarrhea. The NADPH oxidase is not required for diarrhea in Salmonella colitis. Furthermore,

In Silico Evidence for Gluconeogenesis from Fatty Acids in Humans

The question whether fatty acids can be converted into glucose in humans has a long standing tradition in biochemistry, and the expected answer is “No”. Using recent advances in Systems Biology in the form of large-scale metabolic reconstructions, we reassessed this question by performing a global investigation of a genome-scale human metabolic network, which had been reconstructed on the basis of experimental results. By elementary flux pattern analysis, we found numerous pathways on which gluconeogenesis from fatty acids is feasible in humans. On these pathways, four moles of acetyl-CoA are converted into one mole of glucose and two moles of CO2. Analyzing the detected pathways in detail we found that their energetic requirements potentially limit their capacity. This study has many other biochemical implications: effect of starvation, sports physiology, practically carbohydrate-free diets of inuit, as well as survival of hibernating animals and embryos of egg-laying animals. Moreover, the energetic loss associated to the usage of gluconeogenesis from fatty acids can help explain the efficiency of carbohydrate reduced and ketogenic diets such as the Atkins diet

Inclusion of maintenance energy improves the intracellular flux predictions of CHO

Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells are the leading platform for the production of biopharmaceuticals with human-like glycosylation. The standard practice for cell line generation relies on trial and error approaches such as adaptive evolution and high-throughput screening, which typically take several months. Metabolic modeling could aid in designing better producer cell lines and thus shorten development times. The genome-scale metabolic model (GSMM) of CHO can accurately predict growth rates. However, in order to predict rational engineering strategies it also needs to accurately predict intracellular fluxes. In this work we evaluated the agreement between the fluxes predicted by parsimonious flux balance analysis (pFBA) using the CHO GSMM and a wide range of 13C metabolic flux data from literature. While glycolytic fluxes were predicted relatively well, the fluxes of tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle were vastly underestimated due to too low energy demand. Inclusion of computationally estimated maintenance energy significantly improved the overall accuracy of intracellular flux predictions. Maintenance energy was therefore determined experimentally by running continuous cultures at different growth rates and evaluating their respective energy consumption. The experimentally and computationally determined maintenance energy were in good agreement. Additionally, we compared alternative objective functions (minimization of uptake rates of seven nonessential metabolites) to the biomass objective. While the predictions of the uptake rates were quite inaccurate for most objectives, the predictions of the intracellular fluxes were comparable to the biomass objective function.COMET center acib: Next Generation Bioproduction, which is funded by BMK, BMDW, SFG, Standortagentur Tirol, Government of Lower Austria and Vienna Business Agency in the framework of COMET - Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies. The COMET-Funding Program is managed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG; D.S., J.S., M.W., M.H., D. E.R. This work has also been supported by the PhD program BioToP of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF Project W1224)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Epilepsy and Psychiatric Comorbidities: Drug Selection.

Purpose of review The pharmacological treatment of patients with epilepsy and psychiatric comorbidities may sometimes represent a therapeutic challenge. This review is focused on the pharmacological management of patients with epilepsy and psychiatric problems in terms of rationalization of the antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment and the pharmacological management of the most clinically relevant psychiatric comorbidities, namely mood and anxiety disorders, psychoses, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Recent findings Up to 8% of patients with drug-resistant epilepsy develop treatment-emergent psychiatric adverse events of AED regardless of the mechanism of action of the drug and this is usually related to an underlying predisposition given by the previous psychiatric history and the involvement of mesolimbic structures. Careful history taking, periodic screening for mood and anxiety disorders, low starting doses, and slow titration schedules can reduce the possibility of AED-related problems. A pragmatic checklist for the pharmacological management of patients with epilepsy and psychiatric disorders is presented. Summary patients should be informed of potential behavioral effects of AEDs but no drugs should be excluded a priori. Any psychiatric comorbidity should be addressed in the appropriate setting and full remission and recovery should always represent the first goal of any therapeutic intervention. Neurologists should be aware of the side effects of major psychotropic drug classes in order to fully counsel their patients and other health professionals involved

Azimuthal Charged-Particle Correlations and Possible Local Strong Parity Violation

Parity-odd domains, corresponding to nontrivial topological solutions of the QCD vacuum, might be created during relativistic heavy-ion collisions. These domains are predicted to lead to charge separation of quarks along the system’s orbital momentum axis. We investigate a three-particle azimuthal correlator which is a P even observable, but directly sensitive to the charge separation effect. We report measurements of charged hadrons near center-of-mass rapidity with this observable in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at √sNN=200  GeV using the STAR detector. A signal consistent with several expectations from the theory is detected. We discuss possible contributions from other effects that are not related to parity violation

Rare and low-frequency coding variants alter human adult height

Height is a highly heritable, classic polygenic trait with ~700 common associated variants identified so far through genome - wide association studies . Here , we report 83 height - associated coding variants with lower minor allele frequenc ies ( range of 0.1 - 4.8% ) and effects of up to 2 16 cm /allele ( e.g. in IHH , STC2 , AR and CRISPLD2 ) , >10 times the average effect of common variants . In functional follow - up studies, rare height - increasing alleles of STC2 (+1 - 2 cm/allele) compromise d proteolytic inhibition of PAPP - A and increased cleavage of IGFBP - 4 in vitro , resulting in higher bioavailability of insulin - like growth factors . The se 83 height - associated variants overlap genes mutated in monogenic growth disorders and highlight new biological candidates ( e.g. ADAMTS3, IL11RA, NOX4 ) and pathways ( e.g . proteoglycan/ glycosaminoglycan synthesis ) involved in growth . Our results demonstrate that sufficiently large sample sizes can uncover rare and low - frequency variants of moderate to large effect associated with polygenic human phenotypes , and that these variants implicate relevant genes and pathways

CASTLEGUARD : anonymised data streams with guaranteed differential privacy

Data streams are commonly used by data controllers to outsource the processing of real-time data to third-party data processors. Data protection legislation and best practice in data management support the view that data controllers are responsible for providing a guarantee of privacy for user data contained within published data streams. Continuously Anonymising STreaming data via adaptive cLustEring (CASTLE) is an established method for anonymising data streams with a guarantee of k-anonymity. However, k-anonymity has been shown to be a weak privacy guarantee that has vulnerabilities in practical applications. In this paper we propose Continuously Anonymising STreaming data via adaptive cLustEring with GUAR-anteed Differential privacy (CASTLEGUARD), a data stream anonymisation algorithm that provides a reliable guarantee of k-anonymity, l-diversity and differential privacy to data subjects. We analyse CASTLEGUARD to show that, through safe k-anonymisation and β-sampling, the proposed approach satisfies differentially private k-anonymity. Further, we demonstrate the efficacy of the approach in the context of machine learning, presenting experimental analysis to demonstrate that it can be used to protect the individual privacy of users whilst maintaining the utility of a data stream