Naturalness and Fine Tuning in the NMSSM: Implications of Early LHC Results

We study the fine tuning in the parameter space of the semi-constrained NMSSM, where most soft Susy breaking parameters are universal at the GUT scale. We discuss the dependence of the fine tuning on the soft Susy breaking parameters M_1/2 and m0, and on the Higgs masses in NMSSM specific scenarios involving large singlet-doublet Higgs mixing or dominant Higgs-to-Higgs decays. Whereas these latter scenarios allow a priori for considerably less fine tuning than the constrained MSSM, the early LHC results rule out a large part of the parameter space of the semi-constrained NMSSM corresponding to low values of the fine tuning.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, bounds from Susy searches with ~1/fb include

Ateriovenous subclavia-shunt for head and neck reconstruction

Reconstruction of the facial hard- and soft tissues is of special concern for the rehabilitation of patients especially after ablative tumor surgery has been performed. Impaired soft and hard tissue conditions as a sequelae of extensive surgical resection and/or radiotherapy may impede common reconstruction methodes. Even free flaps may not be used without interposition of a vein graft as recipient vessels are not available as a consequence of radical neck dissection

Evidence for a Pathogenic Role of Different Mutations at Codon 188 of PRNP

Clinical and pathological changes in familial Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) cases may be similar or indistinguishable from sporadic CJD. Therefore determination of novel mutations in PRNP remains of major importance

Evaluating the organisational climate in Italian public healthcare institutions by means of a questionnaire

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>By means of the ICONAS project, the Healthcare Agency of an Italian Region developed, and used a standardised questionnaire to quantify the organisational climate. The aims of the project were (a) to investigate whether the healthcare institutions were interested in measuring climate, (b) to estimate the range of applicability and reliability of the instrument, (c) to analyse the dimensions of climate among healthcare personnel, (d) to assess the differences among employees with different contractual positions.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The anonymous questionnaire containing 50 items, each with a scale from 1 to 10, was offered to the healthcare organisations, to be compiled during ad hoc meetings. The data were sent to the central project coordinator. The differences between highly specialised staff (mostly physicians) and other employees were assessed after descriptive statistical analysis of the single items. Both Principal Component Analysis and Factor Analysis were used.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Ten healthcare organisations agreed to partecipate. The questionnaire was completed by 8691 employees out of 13202. The mean value of organisational climate was 4.79 (range 1–10). There were significant differences among single items and between the 2 groups of employees. Multivariate methods showed: (a) one principal component explained > 40% of the variance, (b) 7 factors summarised the data.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Italian healthcare institutions are interested in assessing organisational phenomena, especially after the reforms of the nineties. The instrument was found to be applicable and suitable for measuring organisational climate. Administration of the questionnaire leads to an acceptable response rate. Climate can be discribed by means of 7 underlying dimensions.</p

Comparison of diagnostic tests for the detection of Brucella spp. in camel sera

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Brucellosis in livestock causes enormous losses for economies of developing countries and poses a severe health risk to consumers of dairy products. Little information is known especially on camel brucellosis and its impact on human health. For surveillance and control of the disease, sensitive and reliable detection methods are needed. Although serological tests are the mainstay of diagnosis in camel brucellosis, these tests have been directly transposed from cattle without adequate validation. To date, little information on application of real-time PCR for detection of <it>Brucella </it>in camel serum is available. Therefore, this study was performed to compare the diagnostic efficiency of different serological tests and real-time PCR in order to identify the most sensitive, rapid and simple combination of tests for detecting <it>Brucella </it>infection in camels.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>A total of 895 serum samples collected from apparently healthy Sudanese camels was investigated. Sudan is a well documented endemic region for brucellosis with cases in humans, ruminants, and camels. Rose Bengal Test (RBT), Complement Fixation Test (CFT), Slow Agglutination Test (SAT), Competitive Enzyme Linked Immunosorbant Assay (cELISA) and Fluorescence Polarization Assay (FPA) as well as real-time PCR were used. Our findings revealed that <it>bcsp31 </it>kDa real-time PCR detected <it>Brucella </it>DNA in 84.8% (759/895) of the examined samples, of which 15.5% (118/759) were serologically negative. Our results show no relevant difference in sensitivity between the different serological tests. FPA detected the highest number of positive cases (79.3%) followed by CFT (71.4%), RBT (70.7%), SAT (70.6%) and cELISA (68.8%). A combination of real-time PCR with one of the used serological tests identified brucellosis in more than 99% of the infected animals. 59.7% of the examined samples were positive in all serological tests and real-time PCR. A subpopulation of 6.8% of animals was positive in all serological tests but negative in real-time PCR assays. The high percentage of positive cases in this study does not necessarily reflect the seroprevalence of the disease in the country but might be caused by the fact that the camels were imported from brucellosis infected herds of Sudan, accidentally. Seroprevalence of brucellosis in camels should be examined in confirmatory studies to evaluate the importance of brucellosis in this animal species.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We suggest combining <it>bcsp31 </it>real-time PCR with either FPA, CFT, RBT or SAT to screen camels for brucellosis.</p

Cardioprotective effects of lixisenatide in rat myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury studies

BACKGROUND: Lixisenatide is a glucagon-like peptide-1 analog which stimulates insulin secretion and inhibits glucagon secretion and gastric emptying. We investigated cardioprotective effects of lixisenatide in rodent models reflecting the clinical situation. METHODS: The acute cardiac effects of lixisenatide were investigated in isolated rat hearts subjected to brief ischemia and reperfusion. Effects of chronic treatment with lixisenatide on cardiac function were assessed in a modified rat heart failure model after only transient coronary occlusion followed by long-term reperfusion. Freshly isolated cardiomyocytes were used to investigate cell-type specific mechanisms of lixisenatide action. RESULTS: In the acute setting of ischemia-reperfusion, lixisenatide reduced the infarct-size/area at risk by 36% ratio without changes on coronary flow, left-ventricular pressure and heart rate. Treatment with lixisenatide for 10 weeks, starting after cardiac ischemia and reperfusion, improved left ventricular end-diastolic pressure and relaxation time and prevented lung congestion in comparison to placebo. No anti-fibrotic effect was observed. Gene expression analysis revealed a change in remodeling genes comparable to the ACE inhibitor ramipril. In isolated cardiomyocytes lixisenatide reduced apoptosis and increased fractional shortening. Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP1R) mRNA expression could not be detected in rat heart samples or isolated cardiomyocytes. Surprisingly, cardiomyocytes isolated from GLP-1 receptor knockout mice still responded to lixisenatide. CONCLUSIONS: In rodent models, lixisenatide reduced in an acute setting infarct-size and improved cardiac function when administered long-term after ischemia-reperfusion injury. GLP-1 receptor independent mechanisms contribute to the described cardioprotective effect of lixisenatide. Based in part on these preclinical findings patients with cardiac dysfunction are currently being recruited for a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter study with lixisenatide. TRIAL REGISTRATION: (ELIXA, ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01147250

Impact of Rituximab on Immunoglobulin Concentrations and B Cell Numbers after Cyclophosphamide Treatment in Patients with ANCA-Associated Vasculitides

OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of immunosuppressive therapy with cyclophosphamide (CYC) and rituximab (RTX) on serum immunoglobulin (Ig) concentrations and B lymphocyte counts in patients with ANCA-associated vasculitides (AAVs). METHODS: Retrospective analysis of Ig concentrations and peripheral B cell counts in 55 AAV patients. RESULTS: CYC treatment resulted in a decrease in Ig levels (median; interquartile range IQR) from IgG 12.8 g/L (8.15-15.45) to 9.17 g/L (8.04-9.90) (p = 0.002), IgM 1.05 g/L (0.70-1.41) to 0.83 g/L (0.60-1.17) (p = 0.046) and IgA 2.58 g/L (1.71-3.48) to 1.58 g/L (1-31-2.39) (p = 0.056) at a median follow-up time of 4 months. IgG remained significantly below the initial value at 14.5 months and 30 months analyses. Subsequent RTX treatment in patients that had previously received CYC resulted in a further decline in Ig levels from pre RTX IgG 9.84 g/L (8.71-11.60) to 7.11 g/L (5.75-8.77; p = 0.007), from pre RTX IgM 0.84 g/L (0.63-1.18) to 0.35 g/L (0.23-0.48; p<0.001) and from pre RTX IgA 2.03 g/L (1.37-2.50) to IgA 1.62 g/L (IQR 0.84-2.43; p = 0.365) 14 months after RTX. Treatment with RTX induced a complete depletion of B cells in all patients. After a median observation time of 20 months median B lymphocyte counts remained severely suppressed (4 B-cells/µl, 1.25-9.5, p<0.001). Seven patients (21%) that had been treated with CYC followed by RTX were started on Ig replacement because of severe bronchopulmonary infections and serum IgG concentrations below 5 g/L. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with AAVs, treatment with CYC leads to a decline in immunoglobulin concentrations. A subsequent RTX therapy aggravates the decline in serum immunoglobulin concentrations and results in a profoundly delayed B cell repopulation. Surveying patients with AAVs post CYC and RTX treatment for serum immunoglobulin concentrations and persisting hypogammaglobulinemia is warranted

Effective Rheology of Bubbles Moving in a Capillary Tube

We calculate the average volumetric flux versus pressure drop of bubbles moving in a single capillary tube with varying diameter, finding a square-root relation from mapping the flow equations onto that of a driven overdamped pendulum. The calculation is based on a derivation of the equation of motion of a bubble train from considering the capillary forces and the entropy production associated with the viscous flow. We also calculate the configurational probability of the positions of the bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Functional Reconstitution of a Tunable E3-Dependent Sumoylation Pathway in Escherichia coli

SUMO (small ubiquitin-related modifier) is a reversible post-translational protein modifier that alters the localization, activity, or stability of proteins to which it is attached. Many enzymes participate in regulated SUMO-conjugation and SUMO-deconjugation pathways. Hundreds of SUMO targets are currently known, with the majority being nuclear proteins. However, the dynamic and reversible nature of this modification and the large number of natively sumoylated proteins in eukaryotic proteomes makes molecular dissection of sumoylation in eukaryotic cells challenging. Here, we have reconstituted a complete mammalian SUMO-conjugation cascade in Escherichia coli cells that involves a functional SUMO E3 ligase, which effectively biases the sumoylation of both native and engineered substrate proteins. Our sumo-engineered E. coli cells have several advantages including efficient protein conjugation and physiologically relevant sumoylation patterns. Overall, this system provides a rapid and controllable platform for studying the enzymology of the entire sumoylation cascade directly in living cells

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO