Experimental study of radiatively cooled magnetically driven plasma jets

This thesis presents the results of experiments to study the formation and dynamics of plasma jets in the laboratory, in particular their scaling to astrophysical jets. The experiments were performed on the MAGPIE generator, which delivered a peak current of 1 MA in 250 ns. A variety of plasma diagnostics allowed the dynamics of the jets to be studied and the conditions of the plasma to be determined. Radial wire array experiments were performed in which the mass of the wires and the magnitude of the toroidal magnetic field was varied. These results show that it is possible to control the time of formation and the expansion velocity of the magnetically driven jet that characterizes this configuration. In addition, the experiments allowed the introduction of a poloidal magnetic field into the radial wire array with the aim of studying its effect on the dynamics and stability of the plasma jet. The radial foil is introduced as a novel configuration to produce episodic magnetic-tower jets. Magnetic cavities were observed to emerge in timescales of ~ 30 ns, with increasing expansion velocities reaching ~ 300 km/s. The formation of episodic magnetically driven jets occurs due to reconnection of current at the base of the cavity, allowing 3-4 episodes to be produced per experiment. Results allowed the energy balance, the magnitude of the trapped toroidal magnetic field, and the characteristic temperatures in these outflows to be determined, as well as other plasma parameters. This experimental setup allowed the study of the interaction of episodic jets with an ambient medium by introducing a neutral gas above the foil. The dynamics of the formation of several shock structures at early times was studied, opening new possibilities for laboratory astrophysics experiments in the future

An explicit substructuring method for overlapping domain decomposition based on stochastic calculus

In a recent paper [{\em F. Bernal, J. Mor\'on-Vidal and J.A. Acebr\'on, Comp.$\&$ Math. App. 146:294-308 (2023)}] an hybrid supercomputing algorithm for elliptic equations has been put forward. The idea is that the interfacial nodal solutions solve a linear system, whose coefficients are expectations of functionals of stochastic differential equations confined within patches of about subdomain size. Compared to standard substructuring techniques such as the Schur complement method for the skeleton, the hybrid approach renders an explicit and sparse shrunken matrix -- hence suitable for being substructured again. The ultimate goal is to push strong scalability beyond the state of the art, by leveraging the scope for parallelisation of stochastic calculus. Here, we present a major revamping of that framework, based on the insight of embedding the domain in a cover of overlapping circles (in two dimensions). This allows for efficient Fourier interpolation along the interfaces (now circumferences) and -- crucially -- for the evaluation of most of the interfacial system entries as the solution of small boundary value problems on a circle. This is both extremely efficient (as they can be solved in parallel and by the pseudospectral method) and free of Monte Carlo error. Stochastic numerics are only needed on the relatively few circles intersecting the domain boundary. In sum, the new formulation is significantly faster, simpler and more accurate, while retaining all of the advantageous properties of PDDSparse. Numerical experiments are included for the purpose of illustration

Local Gene Regulation Details a Recognition Code within the LacI Transcriptional Factor Family

The specific binding of regulatory proteins to DNA sequences exhibits no clear patterns of association between amino acids (AAs) and nucleotides (NTs). This complexity of protein-DNA interactions raises the question of whether a simple set of wide-coverage recognition rules can ever be identified. Here, we analyzed this issue using the extensive LacI family of transcriptional factors (TFs). We searched for recognition patterns by introducing a new approach to phylogenetic footprinting, based on the pervasive presence of local regulation in prokaryotic transcriptional networks. We identified a set of specificity correlations –determined by two AAs of the TFs and two NTs in the binding sites– that is conserved throughout a dominant subgroup within the family regardless of the evolutionary distance, and that act as a relatively consistent recognition code. The proposed rules are confirmed with data of previous experimental studies and by events of convergent evolution in the phylogenetic tree. The presence of a code emphasizes the stable structural context of the LacI family, while defining a precise blueprint to reprogram TF specificity with many practical applications.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain (Formación de Profesorado Universitario fellowship)Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain (grant BFU2008-03632/BMC)Madrid (Spain : Region) (grant CCG08-CSIC/SAL-3651

Post-intervention Status in Patients With Refractory Myasthenia Gravis Treated With Eculizumab During REGAIN and Its Open-Label Extension

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether eculizumab helps patients with anti-acetylcholine receptor-positive (AChR+) refractory generalized myasthenia gravis (gMG) achieve the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America (MGFA) post-intervention status of minimal manifestations (MM), we assessed patients' status throughout REGAIN (Safety and Efficacy of Eculizumab in AChR+ Refractory Generalized Myasthenia Gravis) and its open-label extension. METHODS: Patients who completed the REGAIN randomized controlled trial and continued into the open-label extension were included in this tertiary endpoint analysis. Patients were assessed for the MGFA post-intervention status of improved, unchanged, worse, MM, and pharmacologic remission at defined time points during REGAIN and through week 130 of the open-label study. RESULTS: A total of 117 patients completed REGAIN and continued into the open-label study (eculizumab/eculizumab: 56; placebo/eculizumab: 61). At week 26 of REGAIN, more eculizumab-treated patients than placebo-treated patients achieved a status of improved (60.7% vs 41.7%) or MM (25.0% vs 13.3%; common OR: 2.3; 95% CI: 1.1-4.5). After 130 weeks of eculizumab treatment, 88.0% of patients achieved improved status and 57.3% of patients achieved MM status. The safety profile of eculizumab was consistent with its known profile and no new safety signals were detected. CONCLUSION: Eculizumab led to rapid and sustained achievement of MM in patients with AChR+ refractory gMG. These findings support the use of eculizumab in this previously difficult-to-treat patient population. CLINICALTRIALSGOV IDENTIFIER: REGAIN, NCT01997229; REGAIN open-label extension, NCT02301624. CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE: This study provides Class II evidence that, after 26 weeks of eculizumab treatment, 25.0% of adults with AChR+ refractory gMG achieved MM, compared with 13.3% who received placebo

Minimal Symptom Expression' in Patients With Acetylcholine Receptor Antibody-Positive Refractory Generalized Myasthenia Gravis Treated With Eculizumab

The efficacy and tolerability of eculizumab were assessed in REGAIN, a 26-week, phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in anti-acetylcholine receptor antibody-positive (AChR+) refractory generalized myasthenia gravis (gMG), and its open-label extension

Measurement of the W+W- Production Cross Section in ppbar Collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV using Dilepton Events

We present a measurement of the W+W- production cross section using 184/pb of ppbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab. Using the dilepton decay channel W+W- -> l+l-vvbar, where the charged leptons can be either electrons or muons, we find 17 candidate events compared to an expected background of 5.0+2.2-0.8 events. The resulting W+W- production cross section measurement of sigma(ppbar -> W+W-) = 14.6 +5.8 -5.1 (stat) +1.8 -3.0 (syst) +-0.9 (lum) pb agrees well with the Standard Model expectation.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. To be submitted to Physical Review Letter

Search for large extra dimensions in the production of jets and missing transverse energy in p(p)over-bar collisions at root s=1.96 TeV

We present the results of a search for new physics in the jets plus missing transverse energy data sample collected from 368 pb(-1) of p (p) over bar collisions at root s = 1.96 TeV recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. We compare the number of events observed in the data with a data-based estimate of the standard model backgrounds contributing to this signature. We observe no significant excess of events, and we interpret this null result in terms of lower limits on the fundamental Planck scale for a large extra dimensions scenario

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe