Gluino Meets Flavored Naturalness

We study constraints from LHC run I on squark and gluino masses in the presence of squark flavor violation. Inspired by the concept of `flavored naturalness', we focus on the impact of a non-zero stop-scharm mixing and mass splitting in the right-handed sector. To this end, we recast four searches of the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, dedicated either to third generation squarks, to gluino and squarks of the first two generations, or to charm-squarks. In the absence of extra structure, the mass of the gluino provides an additional source of fine tuning and is therefore important to consider within models of flavored naturalness that allow for relatively light squark states. When combining the searches, the resulting constraints in the plane of the lightest squark and gluino masses are rather stable with respect to the presence of flavor-violation, and do not allow for gluino masses of less than 1.2 TeV and squarks lighter than about 550 GeV. While these constraints are stringent, interesting models with sizable stop-scharm mixing and a relatively light squark state are still viable and could be observed in the near future.Comment: 34 pages. v2: clarifying comments and few references added, typos fixed, matches published versio

Network Overload due to Massive Attacks

We study the cascading failure of networks due to overload, using the betweenness centrality of a node as the measure of its load following the Motter and Lai model. We study the fraction of survived nodes at the end of the cascade $p_f$ as function of the strength of the initial attack, measured by the fraction of nodes $p$, which survive the initial attack for different values of tolerance $\alpha$ in random regular and Erd\"os-Renyi graphs. We find the existence of first order phase transition line $p_t(\alpha)$ on a $p-\alpha$ plane, such that if $p <p_t$ the cascade of failures lead to a very small fraction of survived nodes $p_f$ and the giant component of the network disappears, while for $p>p_t$, $p_f$ is large and the giant component of the network is still present. Exactly at $p_t$ the function $p_f(p)$ undergoes a first order discontinuity. We find that the line $p_t(\alpha)$ ends at critical point $(p_c,\alpha_c)$ ,in which the cascading failures are replaced by a second order percolation transition. We analytically find the average betweenness of nodes with different degrees before and after the initial attack, investigate their roles in the cascading failures, and find a lower bound for $p_t(\alpha)$. We also study the difference between a localized and random attacks

The anti-inflammatory effects of the tellurium redox modulating compound, AS101, are associated with regulation of NFκB signaling pathway and nitric oxide induction in macrophages

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>LPS-activated macrophages produce mediators which are involved in inflammation and tissue injury, and especially those associated with endotoxic shock. The non toxic tellurium compound ammonium tri-chloro(dioxoethylene-O,O'-)tellurate, AS101, has been recently shown to exert profound anti-inflammatory properties in animal models, associated with its Te(IV) redox chemistry. This study explores the anti-inflammatory properties of AS101 with respect to modulation of inflammatory cytokines production and regulation of iNOS transcription and expression in activated macrophages via targeting the NFkB complex.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>AS101 decreased production of IL-6 and in parallel down-regulated LPS-induced iNOS expression and NO secretion by macrophages. AS101 reduced IkB phosphorylation and degradation, and reduced NFkB nuclear translocalization, albeit these effects were exerted at different kinetics. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assays showed that AS101 treatment attenuated p50-subunit ability to bind DNA at the NFkB consensus site in the iNOS promotor following LPS induction.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Besides AS101, the investigation of therapeutic activities of other tellurium(IV) compounds is scarce in the literature, although tellurium is the fourth most abundant trace element in the human body. Since IKK and NFkB may be regulated by thiol modifications, we may thus envisage, inview of our integrated results, that Te(IV) compounds, may have important roles in thiol redox biological activity in the human body and represent a new class of anti-inflammatory compounds.</p

Gene expression variability in human and chimpanzee populations share common determinants

Inter-individual variation in gene expression has been shown to be heritable and is often associated with differences in disease susceptibility between individuals. Many studies focused on mapping associations between genetic and gene regulatory variation, yet much less attention has been paid to the evolutionary processes that shape the observed differences in gene regulation between individuals in humans or any other primate. To begin addressing this gap, we performed a comparative analysis of gene expression variability and expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) in humans and chimpanzees, using gene expression data from primary heart samples. We found that expression variability in both species is often determined by non-genetic sources, such as cell-type heterogeneity. However, we also provide evidence that inter-individual variation in gene regulation can be genetically controlled, and that the degree of such variability is generally conserved in humans and chimpanzees. In particular, we found a significant overlap of orthologous genes associated with eQTLs in both species. We conclude that gene expression variability in humans and chimpanzees often evolves under similar evolutionary pressures

AβA\beta alters the connectivity of olfactory neurons in the absence of amyloid plaques in vivo

The amyloid beta peptide aggregates into amyloid plaques at presymptomatic stages of Alzheimer's disease, but the temporal relationship between plaque formation and neuronal dysfunction is poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that the connectivity of the peripheral olfactory neural circuit is perturbed in mice overexpressing human APPsw (Swedish mutation) before the onset of plaques. Expression of human APPsw exclusively in olfactory sensory neurons also perturbs connectivity with associated reductions in odour-evoked gene expression and olfactory acuity. By contrast, olfactory sensory neuron axons project correctly in mice overexpressing wild-type human amyloid precursor protein throughout the brain and in mice overexpressing M671V human APP, a missense mutation that reduces amyloid beta production, exclusively in olfactory sensory neurons. Furthermore, expression of Aβ40 or Aβ42 solely in the olfactory epithelium disrupts the olfactory sensory neuron axon targeting. Our data indicate that altering the structural connectivity and function of highly plastic neural circuits is one of the pleiotropic actions of soluble human amyloid beta

Prime Match: A Privacy-Preserving Inventory Matching System

Inventory matching is a standard mechanism for trading financial stocks by which buyers and sellers can be paired. In the financial world, banks often undertake the task of finding such matches between their clients. The related stocks can be traded without adversely impacting the market price for either client. If matches between clients are found, the bank can offer the trade at advantageous rates. If no match is found, the parties have to buy or sell the stock in the public market, which introduces additional costs. A problem with the process as it is presently conducted is that the involved parties must share their order to buy or sell a particular stock, along with the intended quantity (number of shares), to the bank. Clients worry that if this information were to “leak” somehow, then other market participants would become aware of their intentions and thus cause the price to move adversely against them before their transaction finalizes. We provide a solution, Prime Match, that enables clients to match their orders efficiently with reduced market impact while maintaining privacy. In the case where there are no matches, no information is revealed. Our main cryptographic innovation is a two-round secure linear comparison protocol for computing the minimum between two quantities without preprocessing and with malicious security, which can be of independent interest. We report benchmarks of our Prime Match system, which runs in production and is adopted by a large bank in the US -- J.P. Morgan. The system is designed utilizing a star topology network, which provides clients with a centralized node (the bank) as an alternative to the idealized assumption of point-to-point connections, which would be impractical and undesired for the clients to implement in reality. Prime Match is the first secure multiparty computation solution running live in the traditional financial world

Functional Enhancers at the Gene-Poor 8q24 Cancer-Linked Locus

Multiple discrete regions at 8q24 were recently shown to contain alleles that predispose to many cancers including prostate, breast, and colon. These regions are far from any annotated gene and their biological activities have been unknown. Here we profiled a 5-megabase chromatin segment encompassing all the risk regions for RNA expression, histone modifications, and locations occupied by RNA polymerase II and androgen receptor (AR). This led to the identification of several transcriptional enhancers, which were verified using reporter assays. Two enhancers in one risk region were occupied by AR and responded to androgen treatment; one contained a single nucleotide polymorphism (rs11986220) that resides within a FoxA1 binding site, with the prostate cancer risk allele facilitating both stronger FoxA1 binding and stronger androgen responsiveness. The study reported here exemplifies an approach that may be applied to any risk-associated allele in non-protein coding regions as it emerges from genome-wide association studies to better understand the genetic predisposition of complex diseases

FRET-based dynamic structural biology: Challenges, perspectives and an appeal for open-science practices

Single-molecule FRET (smFRET) has become a mainstream technique for studying biomolecular structural dynamics. The rapid and wide adoption of smFRET experiments by an ever-increasing number of groups has generated significant progress in sample preparation, measurement procedures, data analysis, algorithms and documentation. Several labs that employ smFRET approaches have joined forces to inform the smFRET community about streamlining how to perform experiments and analyze results for obtaining quantitative information on biomolecular structure and dynamics. The recent efforts include blind tests to assess the accuracy and the precision of smFRET experiments among different labs using various procedures. These multi-lab studies have led to the development of smFRET procedures and documentation, which are important when submitting entries into the archiving system for integrative structure models, PDB-Dev. This position paper describes the current ‘state of the art’ from different perspectives, points to unresolved methodological issues for quantitative structural studies, provides a set of ‘soft recommendations’ about which an emerging consensus exists, and lists openly available resources for newcomers and seasoned practitioners. To make further progress, we strongly encourage ‘open science’ practices