Advocacy spurs innovation: promoting synergy between physical and biomedical sciences

Despite dramatic advances in decoding the genes, proteins, and pathways that drive cancer, the disease has evaded the reductionist approaches to defeat it. Recent work has highlighted cancer’s heterogeneity, complexity, and ability to develop resistance as major barriers to progress. To better understand and control the processes that govern the initiation, behavior, and progression of cancer, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) created the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (PS-OC) Network in 2009. As a hub for scientific innovation and as an example of the transdisciplinary research model, the twelve centers within the PS-OC strive for the systematic convergence of the physical sciences with cancer biology. Promoting collaboration between biologists, physicists, mathematicians, chemists, biomedical engineers, and oncologists, the program offers a compelling vision of how new frontiers in physical sciences and oncology will permit the emergence of new scientific principles and opportunities, and of how the benefits of the current convergence revolution would be enhanced by vigorous public/advocacy support

Effect of Deviations from Predicted Lactation Feed Intake on Reproductive Performance in F1 Sows

The objective of this study was to quantify negative deviations from predicted lactation feed intake (LFI) values and the effect of negative deviations on reproductive performance. Daily lactation feed intake values (LFI) were recorded on 10,716 litters farrowed by purebred Yorkshire, Landrace and F1 (Yorkshire x Landrace) sows with an average lactation length of 18.5 days. Daily LFI values were predicted for each litter using the PROC HPMIXED procedure in SAS. An internally studentized residual ≤ -1.71 was characterized as a negative deviation from predicted LFI value (DEV). Total DEV during lactation ranged from 0 occurrences up to 14 negative deviations. However, the occurrence of more than 5 deviations during lactation was rare, and reproductive performance was not statistically affected by additional negative deviations. Twenty-one day litter weaning weight decreased with each additional negative deviation until at least 3 negative deviations occurred in which litter weaning weight remained at a constant value for litters produced by purebred and F1 sows. Wean-to-service interval remained constant when 0, 1, or 2 negative deviations occurred but when the number of negative deviations during lactation reached at least 3, wean-to-service interval began to increase. Limiting the number of DEV during lactation increases the likelihood that a sow will reach her reproductive potential

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements