Evidence Of Chemotaxis By Quantitative Measurement Of The Force Vectors Of Trypanossoma Cruzi In The Vicinity Of The Rhodnius Prolixus Midgut Wall Cell

In this work we used a methodology to study chemotaxis of Trypanossoma cruzi (T. Cruzi) in real time using an Optical Tweezers system. Trapped beads were used as a force transducer for measuring forces of the same order of magnitude as typical forces induced by flagellar motion. Optical Tweezers allowed real time measurements of the force vectors, strength and direction, of living parasites under chemical or other kinds of gradients. This seems to be the ideal tool to perform observations of taxis response of cells and microorganisms with high sensitivity to capture instantaneous responses to a given stimulus. We applied this methodology to investigate the T. cruzi under distinct situations: the parasite alone and in the presence of its insect-vector Rhodnius prolixus (R. prolixus). © 2009 SPIE.7400http://www.who.int/tdr/diseases/chagas/diseaseinfo.htmlAnna, B., Carole, A.P., Eukaryotic chemotaxis at a glance (2008) J. Cell Science, 121, pp. 2621-2624Laszlo, K., Chemotaxis: The proper physiological response to evaluate phylogeny of signal molecules (1999) Acta Biol Hung, 50, pp. 375-394Law, A.M.J., Aitken, M.D., Continuous-flow capillary assay for measuring bacterial chemotaxis (2005) Appl. Environ. Microbiol., 71, pp. 3137-3143Khan, S., Jain, S., Reid, G.P., Trentham, D.R., The fast tumble signal in bacterial chemotaxis (2004) Biophys. J., 86, pp. 4049-4058Neuman, K.C., Chadd, E.H., Liou, G.F., Bergman, K., Block, S.M., Characterization of photodamage to escherichia coli in optical traps (1999) Biophys. J., 77, pp. 2856-2863Bleul, C.C., Farzan, M., Choe, H., Parolin, C., Clark-Lewis, I., Sodroski, J., Springer, T.A., The lymphocyte chemoattractant SDF-1 is a ligand for LESTR/fusin and blocks HIV-1 entry (1996) Nature, 382 (6594), pp. 829-833. , DOI 10.1038/382829a0Nagasawa, T., Hirota, S., Tachibana, K., Takakura, N., Nishikawa, S., Kitamura, Y., Yoshida, N., Kishimoto, T., Defects of B-cell lymphopoiesis and bone-marrow myelopoiesis in mice lacking the CXC chemokine PBSF/SDF- 1 (1996) Nature, 382, pp. 635-638Nelson, R.D., Quie, P.G., Simmons, R.L., Spontaneous migration of human polymorphonuclear leukocytes and monocytes, chemotaxis under agarose-new and simple method for measuring chemotaxis and (1975) J. Immunol., 115, pp. 1650-1656Blair, D.F., How bacteria sense and swim (1999) Annu. Rev. Microbiol, 49, pp. 489-522Rao, C.V., Glekas, G.D., Ordal, G.W., The three adaptation systems of bacillus subtilis chemotaxis (2008) Trends Microbiol, 16, pp. 480-487Barros, V.C., Oliveira, J.S., Melo, M.N., Gontijo, N.F., Leishmania amazonensis: Chemotaxic and osmotaxic responses in promastigotes and their probable role in development in the phlebotomine gut (2006) Exp. Parasitol., 112, pp. 152-157Pfeffer, W., (1888) Unters. Botan. Inst., 2, pp. 582-661. , TubingenAdler, J., A method for measuring chemotaxis and use of the method to determine optimum conditions for chemotaxis by escherichia coli (1973) J. Gen. Microbiol., 74, pp. 77-91Alves, C.R., Albuquerque-Cunha, J.M., Mello, C.B., Nogueira, E.S.G.D.N.F., Bourguingnon, S.C., Souza, W.D., Azambuja, P., Gonzalez, M.S., Trypanosoma cruzi: Attachment to perimicrovillar membrane glycoproteins of rhodnius prolixus (2007) Experimental Parasitology, 116, pp. 44-52Fontes, A., Giorgio, S., De Castro Jr., A.B., Neto, V.M., De Pozzo, L.Y., Marques, G.P., Barbosa, L.C., Cesar, C.L., Determination of Femto Newton forces and fluid viscosity using optical tweezers - Application to Leishmania amazonensis (2005) Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE, 5699, pp. 419-425. , DOI 10.1117/12.586427, 59, Imaging, Manipulation, and Analysis of Biomolecules and Cells: Fundamentals and Applications II

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector during 2011 data taking

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during the 2011 data taking period is described. During 2011 the LHC provided proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and heavy ion collisions with a 2.76 TeV per nucleon–nucleon collision energy. The ATLAS trigger is a three level system designed to reduce the rate of events from the 40 MHz nominal maximum bunch crossing rate to the approximate 400 Hz which can be written to offline storage. The ATLAS jet trigger is the primary means for the online selection of events containing jets. Events are accepted by the trigger if they contain one or more jets above some transverse energy threshold. During 2011 data taking the jet trigger was fully efficient for jets with transverse energy above 25 GeV for triggers seeded randomly at Level 1. For triggers which require a jet to be identified at each of the three trigger levels, full efficiency is reached for offline jets with transverse energy above 60 GeV. Jets reconstructed in the final trigger level and corresponding to offline jets with transverse energy greater than 60 GeV, are reconstructed with a resolution in transverse energy with respect to offline jets, of better than 4 % in the central region and better than 2.5 % in the forward direction

Search for long-lived neutral particles in pp collisions at s√=13 TeV that decay into displaced hadronic jets in the ATLAS calorimeter

This paper describes a search for pairs of neutral, long-lived particles decaying in the ATLAS calorimeter. Long-lived particles occur in many extensions to the Standard Model and may elude searches for new promptly decaying particles. The analysis considers neutral, long-lived scalars with masses between 5 and 400 GeV, produced from decays of heavy bosons with masses between 125 and 1000 GeV, where the long-lived scalars decay into Standard Model fermions. The analysis uses either 10.8 fb−1 or 33.0 fb−1 of data (depending on the trigger) recorded in 2016 at the LHC with the ATLAS detector in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant excess is observed, and limits are reported on the production cross section times branching ratio as a function of the proper decay length of the long-lived particles

Study of Z → llγ decays at √s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents a study of Z → llγ decays with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The analysis uses a proton–proton data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.2 fb−1 collected at a centre-ofmass energy √s = 8 TeV. Integrated fiducial cross-sections together with normalised differential fiducial cross-sections, sensitive to the kinematics of final-state QED radiation, are obtained. The results are found to be in agreement with stateof-the-art predictions for final-state QED radiation. First measurements of Z → llγ γ decays are also reported

Search for leptoquark pair production decaying into te−te¯ + or tμ−t¯μ+ in multi-lepton final states in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for leptoquark pair production decaying into te−te¯ + or tμ−t¯μ+ in final states with multiple leptons is presented. The search is based on a dataset of pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. Four signal regions, with the requirement of at least three light leptons (electron or muon) and at least two jets out of which at least one jet is identified as coming from a b-hadron, are considered based on the number of leptons of a given flavour. The main background processes are estimated using dedicated control regions in a simultaneous fit with the signal regions to data. No excess above the Standard Model background prediction is observed and 95% confidence level limits on the production cross section times branching ratio are derived as a function of the leptoquark mass. Under the assumption of exclusive decays into te− (tμ−), the corresponding lower limit on the scalar mixed-generation leptoquark mass mLQd mix is at 1.58 (1.59) TeV and on the vector leptoquark mass mU˜1 at 1.67 (1.67) TeV in the minimal coupling scenario and at 1.95 (1.95) TeV in the Yang–Mills scenario

Software performance of the ATLAS track reconstruction for LHC run 3

Charged particle reconstruction in the presence of many simultaneous proton–proton (pp) collisions in the LHC is a challenging task for the ATLAS experiment’s reconstruction software due to the combinatorial complexity. This paper describes the major changes made to adapt the software to reconstruct high-activity collisions with an average of 50 or more simultaneous pp interactions per bunch crossing (pileup) promptly using the available computing resources. The performance of the key components of the track reconstruction chain and its dependence on pile-up are evaluated, and the improvement achieved compared to the previous software version is quantified. For events with an average of 60 pp collisions per bunch crossing, the updated track reconstruction is twice as fast as the previous version, without significant reduction in reconstruction efficiency and while reducing the rate of combinatorial fake tracks by more than a factor two

Search for heavy Majorana or Dirac neutrinos and right-handed W gauge bosons in final states with charged leptons and jets in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for heavy right-handed Majorana or Dirac neutrinos NR and heavy right-handed gauge bosons WR is performed in events with energetic electrons or muons, with the same or opposite electric charge, and energetic jets. The search is carried out separately for topologies of clearly separated final-state products (“resolved” channel) and topologies with boosted final states with hadronic and/or leptonic products partially overlapping and reconstructed as a large-radius jet (“boosted” channel). The events are selected from pp collision data at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1 collected by the ATLAS detector at √s = 13 TeV. No significant deviations from the Standard Model predictions are observed. The results are interpreted within the theoretical framework of a left-right symmetric model, and lower limits are set on masses in the heavy righthanded WR boson and NR plane. The excluded region extends to about m(WR) = 6.4 TeV for both Majorana and Dirac NR neutrinos at m(NR) < 1 TeV. NR with masses of less than 3.5 (3.6) TeV are excluded in the electron (muon) channel at m(WR) = 4.8 TeV for the Majorana neutrinos, and limits of m(NR) up to 3.6 TeV for m(WR) = 5.2 (5.0) TeV in the electron (muon) channel are set for the Dirac neutrinos. These constitute the most stringent exclusion limits to date for the model considered

Deep generative models for fast photon shower simulation in ATLAS

The need for large-scale production of highly accurate simulated event samples for the extensive physics programme of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider motivates the development of new simulation techniques. Building on the recent success of deep learning algorithms, variational autoencoders and generative adversarial networks are investigated for modelling the response of the central region of the ATLAS electromagnetic calorimeter to photons of various energies. The properties of synthesised showers are compared with showers from a full detector simulation using geant4. Both variational autoencoders and generative adversarial networks are capable of quickly simulating electromagnetic showers with correct total energies and stochasticity, though the modelling of some shower shape distributions requires more refinement. This feasibility study demonstrates the potential of using such algorithms for ATLAS fast calorimeter simulation in the future and shows a possible way to complement current simulation techniques

Search for doubly charged Higgs boson production in multi-lepton final states using 139 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at s√ = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for pair production of doubly charged Higgs bosons (H±± ), each decaying into a pair of prompt, isolated, and highly energetic leptons with the same electric charge, is presented. The search uses a proton–proton collision data sample at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1 recorded by the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This analysis focuses on same-charge leptonic decays, H±±→ℓ±ℓ′± where ℓ,ℓ′=e,μ,τ, in two-, three-, and four-lepton channels, but only considers final states which include electrons or muons. No evidence of a signal is observed. Corresponding upper limits on the production cross-section of a doubly charged Higgs boson are derived, as a function of its mass m(H±±), at 95% confidence level. Assuming that the branching ratios to each of the possible leptonic final states are equal, B(H±±→e±e±)=B(H±±→e±μ±)=B(H±±→μ±μ±)=B(H±±→e±τ±)=B(H±±→μ±τ±)=B(H±±→τ±τ±)=1/6, the observed (expected) lower limit on the mass of a doubly charged Higgs boson is 1080 GeV (1065 GeV) within the left-right symmetric type-II seesaw model, which is the strongest limit to date produced by the ATLAS Collaboration. Additionally, this paper provides the first direct test of the Zee–Babu neutrino mass model at the LHC, yielding an observed (expected) lower limit of m(H±±) = 900 GeV (880 GeV)

Observation of four-top-quark production in the multilepton final state with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents the observation of four-top-quark (tt¯tt¯) production in proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The analysis is performed using an integrated luminosity of 140 fb−1 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV collected using the ATLAS detector. Events containing two leptons with the same electric charge or at least three leptons (electrons or muons) are selected. Event kinematics are used to separate signal from background through a multivariate discriminant, and dedicated control regions are used to constrain the dominant backgrounds. The observed (expected) significance of the measured tt¯tt¯ signal with respect to the standard model (SM) background-only hypothesis is 6.1 (4.3) standard deviations. The tt¯tt¯ production cross section is measured to be 22.5+6.6−5.5 fb, consistent with the SM prediction of 12.0±2.4 fb within 1.8 standard deviations. Data are also used to set limits on the three-top-quark production cross section, being an irreducible background not measured previously, and to constrain the top-Higgs Yukawa coupling and effective field theory operator coefficients that affect tt¯tt¯ production