A crossed vortex bottle beam trap for single-atom qubits

We demonstrate trapping and quantum state control of single Cesium atoms in a 532 nm wavelength bottle beam trap. The three dimensional trap is formed by crossing two unit charge vortex beams. Single atoms are loaded with 50% probability directly from a magneto-optical trap. We achieve a trapping lifetime of up to 6 s, and demonstrate fast Rabi oscillations with a coherence time of $T_2\sim 43 \pm 9\rm ms$.Comment: 5 figures, minor edits to text and figures, to appear opt. let

Numerical solution of Q2Q^2 evolution equations in a brute-force method

We investigate numerical solution of $Q^2$ evolution equations for structure functions in the nucleon and in nuclei. (Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-)Altarelli-Parisi and Mueller-Qiu evolution equations are solved in a brute-force method. Spin-independent flavor-nonsinglet and singlet equations with next-to-leading-order $\alpha_s$ corrections are studied. Dividing the variables $x$ and $Q^2$ into small steps, we simply solve the integrodifferential equations. Numerical results indicate that accuracy is better than 2\% in the region $10^{-4}<x<0.8$ if more than two-hundred $Q^2$ steps and more than one-thousand $x$ steps are taken. The numerical solution is discussed in detail, and evolution results are compared with $Q^2$ dependent data in CDHSW, SLAC, BCDMS, EMC, NMC, Fermilab-E665, ZEUS, and H1 experiments. We provide a FORTRAN program for Q$^2$ evolution (and ``devolution'') of nonsinglet-quark, singlet-quark, $q_i+\bar q_i$, and gluon distributions (and corresponding structure functions) in the nucleon and in nuclei. This is a very useful program for studying spin-independent structure functions.Comment: 48 pages, LATEX, figs. 1-6. Complete postscript file including the figure is available at ftp://ftp.cc.saga-u.ac.jp/pub/paper/riko/quantum1/saga-he-81.ps.gz or at http://www.cc.saga-u.ac.jp/saga-u/riko/physics/quantum1/structure.html (We had a problem in taking a file in WWW, but the problem was fixed recently.) Email: 94sm10 or [email protected]

Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance and risk of infections: a population-based study.

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field.No comprehensive evaluation has been made to assess the risk of viral and bacterial infections among patients with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. Using population-based data from Sweden, we estimated risk of infections among 5,326 monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance patients compared to 20,161 matched controls. Patients with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance had a 2-fold increased risk (P<0.05) of developing any infection at 5- and 10-year follow up. More specifically, patients with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance had an increased risk (P<0.05) of bacterial (pneumonia, osteomyelitis, septicemia, pyelonephritis, cellulitis, endocarditis, and meningitis), and viral (influenza and herpes zoster) infections. Patients with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance with M-protein concentrations over 2.5 g/dL at diagnosis had highest risks of infections. However, the risk was also increased (P<0.05) among those with concentrations below 0.5 g/dL. Patients with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance who developed infections had no excess risk of developing multiple myeloma, Waldenström macroglobulinemia or related malignancy. Our findings provide novel insights into the mechanisms behind infections in patients with plasma cell dyscrasias, and may have clinical implications.Stockholm County Council Karolinska Institutet Cancer Society in Stockholm NIH, NC

Mosaic DNA imports with interspersions of recipient sequence after natural transformation of Helicobacter pylori

Helicobacter pylori colonizes the gastric mucosa of half of the human population, causing gastritis, ulcers, and cancer. H. pylori is naturally competent for transformation by exogenous DNA, and recombination during mixed infections of one stomach with multiple H. pylori strains generates extensive allelic diversity. We developed an in vitro transformation protocol to study genomic imports after natural transformation of H. pylori. The mean length of imported fragments was dependent on the combination of donor and recipient strain and varied between 1294 bp and 3853 bp. In about 10% of recombinant clones, the imported fragments of donor DNA were interrupted by short interspersed sequences of the recipient (ISR) with a mean length of 82 bp. 18 candidate genes were inactivated in order to identify genes involved in the control of import length and generation of ISR. Inactivation of the antimutator glycosylase MutY increased the length of imports, but did not have a significant effect on ISR frequency. Overexpression of mutY strongly increased the frequency of ISR, indicating that MutY, while not indispensable for ISR formation, is part of at least one ISR-generating pathway. The formation of ISR in H. pylori increases allelic diversity, and contributes to the uniquely low linkage disequilibrium characteristic of this pathogen

Identification of a New Cholesterol-Binding Site within the IFN-gamma Receptor that is Required for Signal Transduction

[EN] The cytokine interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) is a master regulator of innate and adaptive immunity involved in a broad array of human diseases that range from atherosclerosis to cancer. IFN-gamma exerts it signaling action by binding to a specific cell surface receptor, the IFN-gamma receptor (IFN-gamma R), whose activation critically depends on its partition into lipid nanodomains. However, little is known about the impact of specific lipids on IFN-gamma R signal transduction activity. Here, a new conserved cholesterol (chol) binding motif localized within its single transmembrane domain is identified. Through direct binding, chol drives the partition of IFN-gamma R2 chains into plasma membrane lipid nanodomains, orchestrating IFN-gamma R oligomerization and transmembrane signaling. Bioinformatics studies show that the signature sequence stands for a conserved chol-binding motif presented in many mammalian membrane proteins. The discovery of chol as the molecular switch governing IFN-gamma R transmembrane signaling represents a significant advance for understanding the mechanism of lipid selectivity by membrane proteins, but also for figuring out the role of lipids in modulating cell surface receptor function. Finally, this study suggests that inhibition of the chol-IFN gamma R2 interaction may represent a potential therapeutic strategy for various IFN-gamma-dependent diseases.This work was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (BFU-2015-68981-P and PID2020-117405GB-I00) and the Basque Government (IT1264-19, IT1625-22) to F.-X.C. and M.L. F.-X.C. acknowledge the generous support of Fundacion Ramon Areces (grant CIVP20S11276). O.T. was supported by a Basque Government grant (IT1270-19) I.R.-B., O.M., J.A.N.-G., and D.C. were supported by the Fundacion Biofisica Bizkaia. The Lamaze laboratory was supported from Agence Nationale de la Recherche grants ANR-11-LABX-0038, ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02, and ANR NanoGammaR-15-CE11-0025-01. The Bernardino de la Serna Lab acknowledges support from Belinda and Bill Gates Foundation and BBSRC (INV-016631 and BB/V019791/1, respectively). This work was supported in part by the Fundacion Biofisica Bizkaia and the Basque Excellence Research Centre (BERC) program of the Basque Government. The authors thank J. M. Gonzalez Manas for helpful comments on the manuscript. The authors thank the technical and human support provided by the analytical and high-resolution microscopy facility (SGIker) of UPV/EHU and European funding (ERDF and ESF)

CD163 versus CD68 in tumor associated macrophages of classical hodgkin lymphoma

Classical Hodgkin lymphoma (CHL) is a B-cell lymphoproliferative disorder with a relatively good prognosis. A small but significant percentage of patients, however, will respond poorly to therapy. A recent gene expression profiling study has identified a macrophage signature which has been correlated with primary treatment failure, and immunohistochemical tissue microarray for CD68 was shown to reflect the gene signature as a potentially clinically useful marker to predict adverse prognosis

Microevolution of Helicobacter pylori during prolonged infection of single hosts and within families

Our understanding of basic evolutionary processes in bacteria is still very limited. For example, multiple recent dating estimates are based on a universal inter-species molecular clock rate, but that rate was calibrated using estimates of geological dates that are no longer accepted. We therefore estimated the short-term rates of mutation and recombination in Helicobacter pylori by sequencing an average of 39,300 bp in 78 gene fragments from 97 isolates. These isolates included 34 pairs of sequential samples, which were sampled at intervals of 0.25 to 10.2 years. They also included single isolates from 29 individuals (average age: 45 years) from 10 families. The accumulation of sequence diversity increased with time of separation in a clock-like manner in the sequential isolates. We used Approximate Bayesian Computation to estimate the rates of mutation, recombination, mean length of recombination tracts, and average diversity in those tracts. The estimates indicate that the short-term mutation rate is 1.4×10−6 (serial isolates) to 4.5×10−6 (family isolates) per nucleotide per year and that three times as many substitutions are introduced by recombination as by mutation. The long-term mutation rate over millennia is 5–17-fold lower, partly due to the removal of non-synonymous mutations due to purifying selection. Comparisons with the recent literature show that short-term mutation rates vary dramatically in different bacterial species and can span a range of several orders of magnitude

Soft X-Ray Projection Lithography Using a 1-1 Ring Field Optical-System

An iridium-coated Offner 1:1 ring field camera has been used to carry out projection lithography using 42 nm light from an undulator in the vacuum ultra violet storage ring at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Near-diffraction-limited resolution has been obtained showing features as small as 0.2-mu-m within a 2 mm x 0.25 mm image field. Images of both transmission and reflection masks have been obtained. The impact of source coherence on imagery has been investigated. Hydrocarbon contamination problems experienced in this photon energy range have been investigated and possible solutions are suggested