Replicase mediated resistance against Potato Leafroll Virus in potato Desirée plants.

Potato leafroll virus (PLRV) is a major menace for the potato production all over the world. PLRV is transmitted by aphids, and until now, the only strategy available to control this pest has been to use large amounts of insecticides. Transgenic approaches involving the expression of viral replicases are being developed to provide protection for plants against viral diseases. The purpose of this study was to compare the protection afforded by the differential expression of PLRV replicase transgene in potato plants cv. Desirée. Plants were genetically modified to express the complete sense PLRV replicase gene. Two constructions were used, one containing the constitutive 35SCaMV promoter and the other the phloem-specific RolA promoter from Agrobacterium rhizogenes. Transgenic plants were infected with PLRV in vitro, using infested aphids. In plants in which 35SCaMV controlled the expression of the PLRV replicase gene, signs of infection were initially detected, although most plants later developed a recovery phenotype showing undetectable virus levels 40 days after infection. In turn, those plants with the RolA promoter displayed an initial resistance that was later overcome. Different molecular mechanisms are likely to participate in the response to PLRV infection of these two types of transgenic plants

A Smartphone-based Decision Support Tool Improves Test Performance Concerning Application of the Guidelines for Managing Regional Anesthesia in the Patient Receiving Antithrombotic or Thrombolytic Therapy

BACKGROUND: The American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRA) consensus statement on regional anesthesia in the patient receiving antithrombotic or thrombolytic therapy is the standard for evaluation and management of these patients. The authors hypothesized that an electronic decision support tool (eDST) would improve test performance compared with native physician behavior concerning the application of this guideline. METHODS: Anesthesiology trainees and faculty at 8 institutions participated in a prospective, randomized trial in which they completed a 20-question test involving clinical scenarios related to the ASRA guidelines. The eDST group completed the test using an iOS app programmed to contain decision logic and content of the ASRA guidelines. The control group completed the test by using any resource in addition to the app. A generalized linear mixed-effects model was used to examine the effect of the intervention. RESULTS: After obtaining institutional review board's approval and informed consent, 259 participants were enrolled and randomized (eDST = 122; control = 137). The mean score was 92.4 ± 6.6% in the eDST group and 68.0 ± 15.8% in the control group (P < 0.001). eDST use increased the odds of selecting correct answers (7.8; 95% CI, 5.7 to 10.7). Most control group participants (63%) used some cognitive aid during the test, and they scored higher than those who tested from memory alone (76 ± 15% vs. 57 ± 18%, P < 0.001). There was no difference in time to completion of the test (P = 0.15) and no effect of training level (P = 0.56). CONCLUSIONS: eDST use improved application of the ASRA guidelines compared with the native clinician behavior in a testing environment

Conceptualising sustainability in UK urban Regeneration: a discursive Formation

Despite the wide usage and popular appeal of the concept of sustainability in UK policy, it does not appear to have challenged the status quo in urban regeneration because policy is not leading in its conceptualisation and therefore implementation. This paper investigates how sustainability has been conceptualised in a case-based research study of the regeneration of Eastside in Birmingham, UK, through policy and other documents, and finds that conceptualisations of sustainability are fundamentally limited. The conceptualisation of sustainability operating within urban regeneration schemes should powerfully shape how they make manifest (or do not) the principles of sustainable development. Documents guide, but people implement regeneration—and the disparate conceptualisations of stakeholders demonstrate even less coherence than policy. The actions towards achieving sustainability have become a policy ‘fix’ in Eastside: a necessary feature of urban policy discourse that is limited to solutions within market-based constraints

Spin and Chirality Effects in Antler-Topology Processes at High Energy e+e−e^+e^- Colliders

We perform a model-independent investigation of spin and chirality correlation effects in the antler-topology processes $e^+e^-\to\mathcal{P}^+\mathcal{P}^-\to (\ell^+ \mathcal{D}^0) (\ell^-\mathcal{\bar{D}}^0)$ at high energy $e^+e^-$ colliders with polarized beams. Generally the production process $e^+e^-\to\mathcal{P}^+\mathcal{P}^-$ can occur not only through the $s$-channel exchange of vector bosons, $\mathcal{V}^0$, including the neutral Standard Model (SM) gauge bosons, $\gamma$ and $Z$, but also through the $s$- and $t$-channel exchanges of new neutral states, $\mathcal{S}^0$ and $\mathcal{T}^0$, and the $u$-channel exchange of new doubly-charged states, $\mathcal{U}^{--}$. The general set of (non-chiral) three-point couplings of the new particles and leptons allowed in a renormalizable quantum field theory is considered. The general spin and chirality analysis is based on the threshold behavior of the excitation curves for $\mathcal{P}^+\mathcal{P}^-$ pair production in $e^+e^-$ collisions with longitudinal and transverse polarized beams, the angular distributions in the production process and also the production-decay angular correlations. In the first step, we present the observables in the helicity formalism. Subsequently, we show how a set of observables can be designed for determining the spins and chiral structures of the new particles without any model assumptions. Finally, taking into account a typical set of approximately chiral invariant scenarios, we demonstrate how the spin and chirality effects can be probed experimentally at a high energy $e^+e^-$ collider.Comment: 50 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables, matches version published in EPJ

Search for Higgs bosons of the Universal Extra Dimensions at the Large Hadron Collider

The Higgs sector of the Universal Extra Dimensions (UED) has a rather involved setup. With one extra space dimension, the main ingredients to the construct are the higher Kaluza-Klein (KK) excitations of the Standard Model Higgs boson and the fifth components of the gauge fields which on compactification appear as scalar degrees of freedom and can mix with the former thus leading to physical KK-Higgs states of the scenario. In this work, we explore in detail the phenomenology of such a Higgs sector of the UED with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in focus. We work out relevant decay branching fractions involving the KK-Higgs excitations. Possible production modes of the KK-Higgs bosons are then discussed with an emphasis on their associated production with the third generation KK-quarks and that under the cascade decays of strongly interacting UED excitations which turn out to be the only phenomenologically significant modes. It is pointed out that the collider searches of such Higgs bosons face generic hardship due to soft end-products which result from severe degeneracies in the masses of the involved excitations in the minimal version of the UED (MUED). Generic implications of either observing some or all of the KK-Higgs bosons at the LHC are discussed.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures and 1 tabl

Effect of a Cognitive Aid on Adherence to Perioperative Assessment and Management Guidelines for the Cardiac Evaluation of Noncardiac Surgical Patients

The 2007 American College of Cardiologists/American Heart Association Guidelines on Perioperative Cardiac Evaluation and Care for Noncardiac Surgery is the standard for perioperative cardiac evaluation. Recent work has shown residents and anesthesiologists do not apply these guidelines when tested. This research hypothesized that a decision support tool would improve adherence to this consensus guideline

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

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30