254 research outputs found
Spatial structure increases the waiting time for cancer
Cancer results from a sequence of genetic and epigenetic changes which lead
to a variety of abnormal phenotypes including increased proliferation and
survival of somatic cells, and thus, to a selective advantage of pre-cancerous
cells. The notion of cancer progression as an evolutionary process has been
experiencing increasing interest in recent years. Many efforts have been made
to better understand and predict the progression to cancer using mathematical
models; these mostly consider the evolution of a well-mixed cell population,
even though pre-cancerous cells often evolve in highly structured epithelial
tissues. We propose a novel model of cancer progression that considers a
spatially structured cell population where clones expand via adaptive waves.
This model is used to asses two different paradigms of asexual evolution that
have been suggested to delineate the process of cancer progression. The
standard scenario of periodic selection assumes that driver mutations are
accumulated strictly sequentially over time. However, when the mutation supply
is sufficiently high, clones may arise simultaneously on distinct genetic
backgrounds, and clonal adaptation waves interfere with each other. We find
that in the presence of clonal interference, spatial structure increases the
waiting time for cancer, leads to a patchwork structure of non-uniformly sized
clones, decreases the survival probability of virtually neutral (passenger)
mutations, and that genetic distance begins to increase over a characteristic
length scale, determined here. These characteristic features of clonal
interference may help to predict the onset of cancers with pronounced spatial
structure and to interpret spatially-sampled genetic data obtained from
biopsies. Our estimates suggest that clonal interference likely occurs in the
progressing colon cancer, and possibly other cancers where spatial structure
matters.Comment: 21 page
Interlayer Quasiparticle Transport in the Vortex State of Josephson Coupled Superconductors
We calculate the dependence of the interlayer quasiparticle conductivity,
, in a Josephson coupled d-wave superconductor on the magnetic field
B||c and the temperature T. We consider a clean superconductor with resonant
impurity scattering and a dominant coherent interlayer tunneling. When pancake
vortices in adjacent layers are weakly correlated at low T the conductivity
increases sharply with B before reaching an extended region of slow linear
growth, while at high T it initially decreases and then reaches the same linear
regime. For correlated pancakes increases much more strongly with
the applied field.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Search for CP Violation in the Decay Z -> b (b bar) g
About three million hadronic decays of the Z collected by ALEPH in the years
1991-1994 are used to search for anomalous CP violation beyond the Standard
Model in the decay Z -> b \bar{b} g. The study is performed by analyzing
angular correlations between the two quarks and the gluon in three-jet events
and by measuring the differential two-jet rate. No signal of CP violation is
found. For the combinations of anomalous CP violating couplings, and , limits of \hat{h}_b < 0.59h^{\ast}_{b} < 3.02$ are given at 95\% CL.Comment: 8 pages, 1 postscript figure, uses here.sty, epsfig.st
Search for supersymmetry with a dominant R-parity violating LQDbar couplings in e+e- collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 130GeV to 172 GeV
A search for pair-production of supersymmetric particles under the assumption
that R-parity is violated via a dominant LQDbar coupling has been performed
using the data collected by ALEPH at centre-of-mass energies of 130-172 GeV.
The observed candidate events in the data are in agreement with the Standard
Model expectation. This result is translated into lower limits on the masses of
charginos, neutralinos, sleptons, sneutrinos and squarks. For instance, for
m_0=500 GeV/c^2 and tan(beta)=sqrt(2) charginos with masses smaller than 81
GeV/c^2 and neutralinos with masses smaller than 29 GeV/c^2 are excluded at the
95% confidence level for any generation structure of the LQDbar coupling.Comment: 32 pages, 30 figure
The new ALEPH Silicon Vertex Detector
The ALEPH collaboration, in view of the importance of effective vertex detection for the Higgs boson search at LEP 2, decided to upgrade the previous vertex detector. Main changes were an increased length (±20 cm), a higher granularity for rφ view (50 µm), a new preamplifier (MX7 rad hard chip), a polymide (upilex) fan-out on z side to carry the signals from the strips to the front-end electronics outside the fiducial region reducing consequently the passive material in the central region by a factor of two. The detector, the running experience and its performance will be described
The new ALEPH Silicon Vertex Detector
The ALEPH collaboration, in view of the importance of effective vertex detection for the Higgs boson search at LEP 2, decided to upgrade the previous vertex detector. Main changes were an increased length (±20 cm), a higher granularity for rφ view (50 µm), a new preamplifier (MX7 rad hard chip), a polymide (upilex) fan-out on z side to carry the signals from the strips to the front-end electronics outside the fiducial region reducing consequently the passive material in the central region by a factor of two. The detector, the running experience and its performance will be described
Measurement of the W-pair cross section in collisions at 172 GeV
The e+e- --> W+W- cross section is measured in a data sample collected by ALEPH at a mean centre--of--mass energy of 172.09 GEV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.65 pb-1. Cross sections are given for the three topologies, fully leptonic, semi-leptonic and hadronic of a W-pair decay. Under the assumption that no other decay modes are present, the W-pair cross section is measured to be 11.7 +- 1.2 (stat.) +- 0.3 (syst.) pb. The existence of the triple gauge boson vertex of the Standard Model is clearly preferred by the data. The decay branching ratio of the W boson into hadrons is measured to be B(W --> hadrons) = 67.7 +- 3.1 (stat.) +- 0.7 (syst.)%, allowing a determination of the CKM matrix element |Vcs|= 0.98 +- 0.14 (stat.) +- 0.03 (syst.)
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