KTAG: The Kaon Identification Detector for CERN experiment NA62

In the study of ultra-rare kaon decays, CERN experiment NA62 exploits an unseparated monochromatic (75 GeV/ c ) beam of charged particles of flux 800 MHz, of which 50 MHz are K+ . Kaons are identified with more than 95% efficiency, a time resolution of better than 100 ps, and misidentification of less than 10 −4 using KTAG, a differential, ring-focussed, Cherenkov detector. KTAG utilises 8 sets of 48 Hamamatsu PMTs, of which 32 are of type 9880 and 16 of type 7400, with signals fed directly to the differential inputs of NINO front-end boards and then to TDC cards within the TEL62 system. Leading and trailing edges of the PMT signal are digitised, enabling slewing corrections to be made, and a mean hit rate of 5 MHz per PMT is supported. The electronics is housed within a cooled and insulated Faraday cage with environmental monitoring capabilities

Anxiety Associated With Increased Risk for Emergency Department Recidivism in Patients With Low-Risk Chest Pain

Anxiety contributes to the chest pain symptom complex in 30% to 40% of patients with low-risk chest pain seen in the emergency department (ED). The validated Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale-Anxiety subscale (HADS-A) has been used as an anxiety screening tool in this population. The objective was to determine the prevalence of abnormal HADS-A scores in a cohort of low-risk chest pain patients and test the association of HADS-A score with subsequent healthcare utilization and symptom recurrence. In a single-center, prospective, observational cohort study of adult ED subjects with low-risk chest pain, the HADS-A was used to stratify participants into 2 groups: low anxiety (score <8) and high anxiety (score ≥8). At 45-day follow-up, chest pain recurrence was assessed by patient report, whereas ED utilization was assessed through chart review. Of the 167 subjects enrolled, 78 (47%) were stratified to high anxiety. The relative risk for high anxiety being associated with at least one 30-day ED return visit was 2.6 (95% confidence interval 1.4 to 4.7) and this relative risk increased to 9.1 (95% confidence interval 2.18 to 38.6) for 2 or more ED return visits. Occasional chest pain recurrence was reported by more subjects in the high anxiety group, 68% vs 47% (p = 0.029). In conclusion, 47% of low-risk chest pain cohort had abnormal levels of anxiety. These patients were more likely to have occasional recurrence of their chest pain and had an increased risk multiple ED return visits

Animals who think and love : law, identification and the moral psychology of guilt

How does the human animal who thinks and loves relate to criminal justice? This essay takes up the idea of a moral psychology of guilt promoted by Bernard Williams and Herbert Morris. Against modern liberal society’s ‘peculiar’ legal morality of voluntary responsibility (Williams), it pursues Morris’s ethical account of guilt as involving atonement and identification with others. Thinking of guilt in line with Morris, and linking it with the idea of moral psychology, takes the essay to Freud’s metapsychology in Civilization and Its Discontents. Two conflicting routes to guilt are noted in Freud, one involving internalisation of external anger to suppress destructive instincts, the other loving identification with others in the process of self-formation. This second route is developed through the psychoanalytic thought of Hans Loewald and Jonathan Lear. Following Loewald, the moral psychology of self-formation makes loving identification with others the root of responsibility, guilt and atonement. Following Lear, the moral psychology of guilt developed on these lines renders psychoanalysis part of a broadly understood philosophical project following Aristotelian and Socratic principles. Underlying Morris’s account of guilt is the possibility of ‘prospective identification’, understood as the moral and psychological ground of guilt and reconciliation. This is the rational core of criminal justice, which maintains an uneasy relationship with law’s ‘peculiar’ morality

Bioterrorism and U.S. domestic preparedness: Bureaucratic fragmentation and American vulnerability

This article takes a closer look at the United States’ domestic preparedness program. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the domestic preparedness program has served as the United States’ disaster response and management option in the case of a biological or chemical weapons attack. In its early years, the program focused solely on chemical weapons, but eventually expanded to cover the threat of biological weapons as well. The program, however, is fragmented, leaving authority in the hands of over a dozen different agencies. This leaves the authorities, capabilities, and resources needed to effectively implement the program divided across multiple bureaucracies. In addition, the program is essentially made up of a series of legislative initiatives, causing it to be desperately uncoordinated. Given this organizational fragmentation, we ask: does the domestic preparedness program really prepare the United States for a biological weapons attack

Foot-operated cell-counter

Cell-counter for cell indices consists of a footboard with four pressure sensitive switches and an enclosure for the components and circuitry. This device increases the operators efficiency by reducing the number of required hand movements

The client-binding domain of the cochaperone Sgt2 has a helical-hand structure that binds a short hydrophobic helix

The targeting and insertion of tail-anchored (TA) integral membrane proteins (IMP) into the correct membrane is critical for cellular homeostasis. The fungal protein Sgt2, and its human homolog SGTA, binds hydrophobic clients and is the entry point for targeting of ER-bound TA IMPs. Here we reveal molecular details that underlie the mechanism of Sgt2 binding to TA IMP clients. We establish that the Sgt2 C-terminal region is flexible but conserved and sufficient for client binding. A molecular model for this domain reveals a helical hand forming a hydrophobic groove, consistent with a higher affinity for TA IMP clients with hydrophobic faces and a minimal length of 11 residues. This work places Sgt2 into a broader family of TPR-containing co-chaperone proteins

Plant host and sugar alcohol induced exopolysaccharide biosynthesis in the Burkholderia cepacia complex.

© Society for General Microbiology, 2008. This is an author manuscript that has been accepted for publication in Microbiology, copyright Society for General Microbiology, but has not been copy-edited, formatted or proofed. Cite this article as appearing in Microbiology. This version of the manuscript may not be duplicated or reproduced, other than for personal use or within the rule of 'Fair Use of Copyrighted Materials' (section 17, Title 17, US Code), without permission from the copyright owner, Society for General Microbiology. The Society for General Microbiology disclaims any responsibility or liability for errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or in any version derived from it by any other parties. The final copy-edited, published article, which is the version of record, can be found at http://mic.sgmjournals.org, and is freely available without a subscription 12 months after publication.The species that presently constitute the Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) have multiple roles; they include soil and water saprophytes, bioremediators, and plant, animal and human pathogens. Since the first description of pathogenicity in the Bcc was based on sour skin rot of onion bulbs, this study returned to this plant host to investigate the onion-associated phenotype of the Bcc. Many Bcc isolates, which were previously considered to be non-mucoid, produced copious amounts of exopolysaccharide (EPS) when onion tissue was provided as the sole nutrient. EPS production was not species-specific, was observed in isolates from both clinical and environmental sources, and did not correlate with the ability to cause maceration of onion tissue. Chemical analysis suggested that the onion components responsible for EPS induction were primarily the carbohydrates sucrose, fructose and fructans. Additional sugars were investigated, and all alcohol sugars tested were able to induce EPS production, in particular mannitol and glucitol. To investigate the molecular basis for EPS biosynthesis, we focused on the highly conserved bce gene cluster thought to be involved in cepacian biosynthesis. We demonstrated induction of the bce gene cluster by mannitol, and found a clear correlation between the inability of representatives of the Burkholderia cenocepacia ET12 lineage to produce EPS and the presence of an 11 bp deletion within the bceB gene, which encodes a glycosyltransferase. Insertional inactivation of bceB in Burkholderia ambifaria AMMD results in loss of EPS production on sugar alcohol media. These novel and surprising insights into EPS biosynthesis highlight the metabolic potential of the Bcc and show that a potential virulence factor may not be detected by routine laboratory culture. Our results also highlight a potential hazard in the use of inhaled mannitol as an osmolyte to improve mucociliary clearance in individuals with cystic fibrosis

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm experiment with relativistic massive particles

The EPRB experiment with massive partcles can be formulated if one defines spin in a relativistic way. Two versions are discussed: The one using the spin operator defined via the relativistic center-of-mass operator, and the one using the Pauli-Lubanski vector. Both are shown to lead to the SAME prediction for the EPRB experiment: The degree of violation of the Bell inequality DECREASES with growing velocity of the EPR pair of spin-1/2 particles. The phenomenon can be physically understood as a combined effect of the Lorentz contraction and the Moller shift of the relativistic center of mass. The effect is therefore stronger than standard relativistic phenomena such as the Lorentz contraction or time dilatation. The fact that the Bell inequality is in general less violated than in the nonrelativistic case will have to be taken into account in tests for eavesdropping if massive particles will be used for a key transfer.Comment: Figures added as appeared in PRA, two typos corrected (one important in the formula for eigenvector in Sec. IV); link to the unpublished 1984 paper containing the results (without typos!) of Sec. IV is adde

Stable isotope analysis provides new information on winter habitat use of declining avian migrants that is relevant to their conservation

Winter habitat use and the magnitude of migratory connectivity are important parameters when assessing drivers of the marked declines in avian migrants. Such information is unavailable for most species. We use a stable isotope approach to assess these factors for three declining African-Eurasian migrants whose winter ecology is poorly known: wood warbler Phylloscopus sibilatrix, house martin Delichon urbicum and common swift Apus apus. Spatially segregated breeding wood warbler populations (sampled across a 800 km transect), house martins and common swifts (sampled across a 3,500 km transect) exhibited statistically identical intra-specific carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in winter grown feathers. Such patterns are compatible with a high degree of migratory connectivity, but could arise if species use isotopically similar resources at different locations. Wood warbler carbon isotope ratios are more depleted than typical for African-Eurasian migrants and are compatible with use of moist lowland forest. The very limited variance in these ratios indicates specialisation on isotopically restricted resources, which may drive the similarity in wood warbler populations' stable isotope ratios and increase susceptibility to environmental change within its wintering grounds. House martins were previously considered to primarily use moist montane forest during the winter, but this seems unlikely given the enriched nature of their carbon isotope ratios. House martins use a narrower isotopic range of resources than the common swift, indicative of increased specialisation or a relatively limited wintering range; both factors could increase house martins' vulnerability to environmental change. The marked variance in isotope ratios within each common swift population contributes to the lack of population specific signatures and indicates that the species is less vulnerable to environmental change in sub-Saharan Africa than our other focal species. Our findings demonstrate how stable isotope research can contribute to understanding avian migrants' winter ecology and conservation status