A simple device for in-situ direct shear and sinkage tests

This work introduces a simple device designed to perform in-situ direct shear and sinkage tests on granular materials as sand, clays, or regolith. It consists of a box nested within a larger box. Both have open bottoms, allowing them to be lowered into the material. Afterwards, two rotating plates on opposite sides of the outer box will rotate outwards in order to clear regolith on either side, providing room for the inner box to move relative to the plates and perform a shear test without the resistance of the surrounding soil. From this test, Coulomb parameters, including cohesion and internal friction angle, as well as, Bekker parameters can be inferred. This device has been designed for a laboratory setting, but with few modifications, could be put on the underside of a rover for use in a remote location. The goal behind this work is to ultimately create a compact, but accurate measuring tool to put onto a rover or any kind of exploratory vehicle to test for regolith properties of celestial bodies

Well Water Screening in Suffolk, VA, for Contaminants Affecting Human Health

Purpose: Despite regulations, one area that remains outside the scope of the clean water policies is well water. With the lack of oversight, the millions of home that rely on well water remain susceptible to numerous pollutants and contaminants. To ensure the safety of well water, development of screening and testing protocols is imperative. Many households in Suffolk, VA still use well water making it an apt location to conduct a preliminary study screening for potential water contaminants. Methods: Water samples from kitchen and garden sources were collected from households in Suffolk, VA. These samples assessed for TDS via Milwaukee EC59 pen, pH via Sper Scientific test tube pen, arsenic via Quick Rapid Arsenic Test Kit, E. coli and coliform, and lead via Simpletek Micro Tester Pro self-filling test ampoules. Findings: Four of the thirty kitchen-sourced samples tested positive for coliform contamination. The positive findings may represent hazards for health thus warranting further investigation. Conclusion: Many Suffolk homes rely on well water but lack of regulations can bring risk for contamination. This study indicated a potential coliform problem in Suffolk and more work must be done to evaluate for coliform contamination and its resultant health consequences

The Quest for Orthologs orthology benchmark service in 2022

The Orthology Benchmark Service (https://orthology.benchmarkservice.org) is the gold standard for orthology inference evaluation, supported and maintained by the Quest for Orthologs consortium. It is an essential resource to compare existing and new methods of orthology inference (the bedrock for many comparative genomics and phylogenetic analysis) over a standard dataset and through common procedures. The Quest for Orthologs Consortium is dedicated to maintaining the resource up to date, through regular updates of the Reference Proteomes and increasingly accessible data through the OpenEBench platform. For this update, we have added a new benchmark based on curated orthology assertion from the Vertebrate Gene Nomenclature Committee, and provided an example meta-analysis of the public predictions present on the platform.European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) (core funds to D.J. and M.J.M.); National Institutes of Health [U24HG007822 to D.J. and M.J.M., 75N93019C00077 to D.S.R.]; National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) [U24HG003345 to T.E.M.J, B.Y., E.A.B.]; JSPS KAKENHI [16H06279, 19H05688 to W.I.]; JST CREST [JPMJCR19S2 to W.I.]; MEXT [JPMXD1521474594 to W.I.]; Horizon 2020 [676559 to S.C.-G., 637765] (to D.M.E.), ELIXIR (to S.C.-G.); Wellcome Grant [208349/Z/17/Z to E.A.B.]; National Science Foundation (USA) [1917302 to P.D.T.]; Wellcome Trust [WT-218288, WT-212929 to D.S.R.]; Service and Infrastructure grant from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Swiss National Science Foundation [186397, 205085 to C.D.]. Funding for open access charge: Swiss National Science Foundation [205085].Peer Reviewed"Article signat per 31 autors/es: Yannis Nevers, Tamsin E M Jones, Dushyanth Jyothi, Bethan Yates, Meritxell Ferret, Laura Portell-Silva, Laia Codo, Salvatore Cosentino, Marina Marcet-Houben, Anna Vlasova, Laetitia Poidevin, Arnaud Kress, Mark Hickman, Emma Persson, Ivana Piližota, Cristina Guijarro-Clarke, the OpenEBench team the Quest for Orthologs Consortium , Wataru Iwasaki, Odile Lecompte, Erik Sonnhammer, David S Roos, Toni Gabaldón, David Thybert, Paul D Thomas, Yanhui Hu, David M Emms, Elspeth Bruford, Salvador Capella-Gutierrez, Maria J Martin, Christophe Dessimoz, Adrian Altenhoff"Postprint (published version

InParanoid 7: new algorithms and tools for eukaryotic orthology analysis

The InParanoid project gathers proteomes of completely sequenced eukaryotic species plus Escherichia coli and calculates pairwise ortholog relationships among them. The new release 7.0 of the database has grown by an order of magnitude over the previous version and now includes 100 species and their collective 1.3 million proteins organized into 42.7 million pairwise ortholog groups. The InParanoid algorithm itself has been revised and is now both more specific and sensitive. Based on results from our recent benchmarking of low-complexity filters in homology assignment, a two-pass BLAST approach was developed that makes use of high-precision compositional score matrix adjustment, but avoids the alignment truncation that sometimes follows. We have also updated the InParanoid web site (http://InParanoid.sbc.su.se). Several features have been added, the response times have been improved and the site now sports a new, clearer look. As the number of ortholog databases has grown, it has become difficult to compare among these resources due to a lack of standardized source data and incompatible representations of ortholog relationships. To facilitate data exchange and comparisons among ortholog databases, we have developed and are making available two XML schemas: SeqXML for the input sequences and OrthoXML for the output ortholog clusters

Easy-To-Synthesize Spirocyclic Compounds Possess Remarkable in Vivo Activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Society urgently needs new, effective medicines for the treatment of tuberculosis. To kick-start the required hit-to-lead campaigns, the libraries of pharmaceutical companies have recently been evaluated for starting points. The GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) library yielded many high-quality hits, and the associated data were placed in the public domain to stimulate engagement by the wider community. One such series, the spiro compounds, are described here. The compounds were explored by a combination of traditional in-house research and open source methods. The series benefits from a particularly simple structure and a short associated synthetic chemistry route. Many members of the series displayed striking potency and low toxicity, and highly promising in vivo activity in a mouse model was confirmed with one of the analogues. Ultimately the series was discontinued due to concerns over safety, but the associated data remain public domain, empowering others to resume the series if the perceived deficiencies can be overcome

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Measurement of χ c1 and χ c2 production with s√ = 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for the χ c1 and χ c2 charmonium states are measured in pp collisions at s√ = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using 4.5 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. The χ c states are reconstructed through the radiative decay χ c → J/ψγ (with J/ψ → μ + μ −) where photons are reconstructed from γ → e + e − conversions. The production rate of the χ c2 state relative to the χ c1 state is measured for prompt and non-prompt χ c as a function of J/ψ transverse momentum. The prompt χ c cross-sections are combined with existing measurements of prompt J/ψ production to derive the fraction of prompt J/ψ produced in feed-down from χ c decays. The fractions of χ c1 and χ c2 produced in b-hadron decays are also measured

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011