Self-assembled monolayers on gold for the fabrication of radioactive stents

An innovative and easily applicable method for the fabrication of radioactive stents, to be used for the treatment of restenosis, is presented. By incorporating the b-emitting radioisotopes 186Re, 188Re, 90Y, or 32P into sulfur-containing adsorbates, it becomes possible to cover a gold surface with a radioactive self-assembled monolayer (SAM). Two methods have been investigated. In the first, SAMs consisting of potentially radioactive rhenium-, yttrium-, and phosphorus-containing adsorbates have been assembled on 2D gold substrates, after which they have been studied by wettability measurements, electrochemistry, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The stability of these SAMs under simulated physiological conditions (phosphate buffered saline, PBS solution) for periods up to two months has been demonstrated. Alternatively, potentially radioactive monolayers have been prepared by exposure of SAMs of mono-, bi-, and tridentate ligands to a solution containing a radiometal (rhenium) in order to bind the metal to the monolayer. The polydentate ligands exhibit excellent binding capacity, leading to SAMs containing over 10±10 mol/cm2 of the radiometal, which is more than sufficient to make this system viable for the delivery of therapeutical dosages of radiation

Threat-Related Selective Attention Predicts Treatment Success in Childhood Anxiety Disorders

Abstract OBJECTIVE: The present study examined whether threat-related selective attention was predictive of treatment success in children with anxiety disorders and whether age moderated this association. Specific components of selective attention were examined in treatment responders and nonresponders. METHOD: Participants consisted of 131 children with anxiety disorders (aged 8-16 years), who received standardized cognitive-behavioral therapy. At pretreatment, a pictorial dot-probe task was administered to assess selective attention. Both at pretreatment and posttreatment, diagnostic status of the children was evaluated with a semistructured clinical interview (the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for Children). RESULTS: Selective attention for severely threatening pictures at pretreatment assessment was predictive of treatment success. Examination of the specific components of selective attention revealed that nonresponders showed difficulties to disengage their attention away from severe threat. Treatment responders showed a tendency not to engage their attention toward severe threat. Age was not associated with selective attention and treatment success. CONCLUSIONS: Threat-related selective attention is a significant predictor of treatment success in children with anxiety disorders. Clinically anxious children with difficulties disengaging their attention away from severe threat profit less from cognitive-behavioral therapy. For these children, additional training focused on learning to disengage attention away from anxiety-arousing stimuli may be beneficial

b -> s gamma in the left-right supersymmetric model

The rare decay $b \to s \gamma$ is studied in the left-right supersymmetric model. We give explicit expressions for all the amplitudes associated with the supersymmetric contributions coming from gluinos, charginos and neutralinos in the model to one-loop level. The branching ratio is enhanced significantly compared to the standard model and minimal supersymmetric standard model values by contributions from the right-handed gaugino and squark sector. We give numerical results coming from the leading order contributions. If the only source of flavor violation comes from the CKM matrix, we constrain the scalar fermion-gaugino sector. If intergenerational mixings are allowed in the squark mass matrix, we constrain such supersymmetric sources of flavor violation. The decay $b \to s \gamma$ sets constraints on the parameters of the model and provides distinguishing signs from other supersymmetric scenarios.Comment: 12 figure

Back to the basics of ovarian aging: A population-based study on longitudinal anti-Müllerian hormone decline

Background: Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) is currently used as an ovarian reserve marker for individualized fertility counseling, but very little is known of individual AMH decline in women. This study assessed whether the decline trajectory of AMH is uniform for all women, and whether baseline age-specific AMH levels remain consistently high or low during this trajectory. Methods: A total of 3326 female participants from the population-based Doetinchem Cohort Study were followed with five visits over a 20-year period. Baseline age was 40±10years with a range of 20-59 years. AMH was measured in 12,929 stored plasma samples using the picoAMH assay (AnshLabs). Decline trajectories of AMH were studied with both chronological age and reproductive age, i.e., time to menopause. Multivariable linear mixed effects models characterized the individual AMH decline trajectories. Results: The overall rate of AMH decline accelerated after 40years of age. Mixed models with varying age-specific AMH levels and decline rates provided the significantly best fit to the data, indicating that the fall in AMH levels over time does not follow a fixed pattern for individual women. AMH levels remained consistent along individual trajectories of age, with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.87. The ICC of 0.32 for AMH trajectories with time to menopause expressed the large variation in AMH levels at a given time before the menopause. The differences between low and high age-specific AMH levels remained distinguishable, but became increasingly smaller with increasing chronological and reproductive age. Conclusions: This is the first study to characterize individual AMH decline over a long time period and broad age range. The varying AMH decline rates do not support the premise of a uniform AMH decline trajectory. Although age-specific AMH levels remain consistently high or low with increasing age, the converging trajectories and variance of AMH levels at a given time before menopause shed doubt on the added value of AMH to represent individualized reproductive age

Phase-shift analysis of low-energy π±p\pi^{\pm}p elastic-scattering data

Using electromagnetic corrections previously calculated by means of a potential model, we have made a phase-shift analysis of the $\pi^\pm p$ elastic-scattering data up to a pion laboratory kinetic energy of 100 MeV. The hadronic interaction was assumed to be isospin invariant. We found that it was possible to obtain self-consistent databases by removing very few measurements. A pion-nucleon model was fitted to the elastic-scattering database obtained after the removal of the outliers. The model-parameter values showed an impressive stability when the database was subjected to different criteria for the rejection of experiments. Our result for the pseudovector $\pi N N$ coupling constant (in the standard form) is $0.0733 \pm 0.0014$. The six hadronic phase shifts up to 100 MeV are given in tabulated form. We also give the values of the s-wave scattering lengths and the p-wave scattering volumes. Big differences in the s-wave part of the interaction were observed when comparing our hadronic phase shifts with those of the current GWU solution. We demonstrate that the hadronic phase shifts obtained from the analysis of the elastic-scattering data cannot reproduce the measurements of the $\pi^- p$ charge-exchange reaction, thus corroborating past evidence that the hadronic interaction violates isospin invariance. Assuming the validity of the result obtained within the framework of chiral perturbation theory, that the mass difference between the $u$- and the $d$-quark has only a very small effect on the isospin invariance of the purely hadronic interaction, the isospin-invariance violation revealed by the data must arise from the fact that we are dealing with a hadronic interaction which still contains residual effects of electromagnetic origin.Comment: 43 pages, 6 figure

Pre-conception maternal helminth infection transfers via nursing long-lasting cellular immunity against helminths to offspring

Maternal immune transfer is the most significant source of protection from early-life infection, but whether maternal transfer of immunity by nursing permanently alters offspring immunity is poorly understood. Here, we identify maternal immune imprinting of offspring nursed by mothers who had a pre-conception helminth infection. Nursing of pups by helminth-exposed mothers transferred protective cellular immunity to these offspring against helminth infection. Enhanced control of infection was not dependent on maternal antibody. Protection associated with systemic development of protective type 2 immunity in T helper 2 (TH2) impaired IL-4R-/- offspring. This maternally acquired immunity was maintained into maturity and required transfer (via nursing) to the offspring of maternally derived TH2-competent CD4 T cells. Our data therefore reveal that maternal exposure to a globally prevalent source of infection before pregnancy provides long-term nursing-acquired immune benefits to offspring mediated by maternally derived pathogen-experienced lymphocytes. © 2019 by the Authors

Higgs and neutrino sector, EDM and epsilon_K in a spontaneously CP and R-parity breaking supersymmetric model

We construct an extension of the supersymmetric standard model where both CP symmetry and R-parity are spontaneously broken. We study the electroweak symmetry breaking sector of the model and find minima consistent with the experimental bounds on Higgs boson masses. Neutrino masses and mixing angles are generated through both seesaw and bilinear R-parity violation. We show that the hierarchical mass pattern is obtained, and mixings are consistent with measured values. Due to the spontaneous CP and R-parity violation, the neutrino sector is CP violating, and we calculate the corresponding phase. We further restrict the parameter space to agree with the limits on the electric dipole moment of the neutron. Finally, we study the CP violation parameter epsilon_K in the kaon system and show that we obtain results consistent with the experimental value.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, submitted to EPJ

Super AutoDipole

The publicly available package for an automated dipole subtraction, AutoDipole, is extended to include the SUSY dipoles in the MSSM. All fields in the SM and the MSSM are available. The code is checked against the analytical expressions for a simple process. The extended package makes it possible to compute the QCD NLO corrections to SUSY multi-parton processes like the stop pair production plus jets at the LHC.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, v2: a few typos to match the published version in Eur. Phys. J.

Psychiatric Polygenic Risk Scores as Predictor for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder in a Clinical Child and Adolescent Sample

Neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are highly heritable and influenced by many single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). SNPs can be used to calculate individual polygenic risk scores (PRS) for a disorder. We aim to explore the association between the PRS for ADHD, ASD and for Schizophrenia (SCZ), and ADHD and ASD diagnoses in a clinical child and adolescent population. Based on the most recent genome wide association studies of ADHD, ASD and SCZ, PRS of each disorder were calculated for individuals of a clinical child and adolescent target sample (N = 688) and for adult controls (N = 943). We tested with logistic regression analyses for an association with (1) a single diagnosis of ADHD (N = 280), (2) a single diagnosis of ASD (N = 295), and (3) combining the two diagnoses, thus subjects with either ASD, ADHD or both (N = 688). Our results showed a significant association of the ADHD PRS with ADHD status (OR 1.6, P = 1.39 × 10−07) and with the combined ADHD/ASD status (OR 1.36, P = 1.211 × 10−05), but not with ASD status (OR 1.14, P = 1). No associations for the ASD and SCZ PRS were observed. In sum, the PRS of ADHD is significantly associated with the combined ADHD/ASD status. Yet, this association is primarily driven by ADHD status, suggesting disorder specific genetic effects of the ADHD PRS

Bd0−Bˉd0B^0_d-{\bar B}^0_d mixing in the left-right supersymmetric model

We analyze $B^0_d-{\bar B}^0_d$ mixing in a fully left-right supersymmetric model. We give explicit expressions for all the chargino, gluino, gluino-neutralino and neutralino amplitudes involved in the process. We calculate the mass difference $\Delta m_d$ and CP asymmetry $a_{J/\psi K_s}$ in both the constrained case (where the only flavor violation comes from the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix) and the unconstrained case (including soft supersymmetry breaking terms). The constrained case does not contain any new information beyond the supergravity-inspired MSSM. In the unconstrained case, the main contribution to $B^0_d-{\bar B}^0_d$ and the CP asymmetry is due to either gluino diagrams, if the dominating flavor mixing arises in the down squark sector, or chargino diagrams, if the dominant flavor mixing comes from the up squark sector. We include numerical results and compare this analysis with the ones performed in other models.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure