GEANT4 : a simulation toolkit

Abstract Geant4 is a toolkit for simulating the passage of particles through matter. It includes a complete range of functionality including tracking, geometry, physics models and hits. The physics processes offered cover a comprehensive range, including electromagnetic, hadronic and optical processes, a large set of long-lived particles, materials and elements, over a wide energy range starting, in some cases, from 250 eV and extending in others to the TeV energy range. It has been designed and constructed to expose the physics models utilised, to handle complex geometries, and to enable its easy adaptation for optimal use in different sets of applications. The toolkit is the result of a worldwide collaboration of physicists and software engineers. It has been created exploiting software engineering and object-oriented technology and implemented in the C++ programming language. It has been used in applications in particle physics, nuclear physics, accelerator design, space engineering and medical physics. PACS: 07.05.Tp; 13; 2

<i>Gaia</i> Data Release 1. Summary of the astrometric, photometric, and survey properties

Context. At about 1000 days after the launch of Gaia we present the first Gaia data release, Gaia DR1, consisting of astrometry and photometry for over 1 billion sources brighter than magnitude 20.7. Aims. A summary of Gaia DR1 is presented along with illustrations of the scientific quality of the data, followed by a discussion of the limitations due to the preliminary nature of this release. Methods. The raw data collected by Gaia during the first 14 months of the mission have been processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) and turned into an astrometric and photometric catalogue. Results. Gaia DR1 consists of three components: a primary astrometric data set which contains the positions, parallaxes, and mean proper motions for about 2 million of the brightest stars in common with the HIPPARCOS and Tycho-2 catalogues – a realisation of the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) – and a secondary astrometric data set containing the positions for an additional 1.1 billion sources. The second component is the photometric data set, consisting of mean G-band magnitudes for all sources. The G-band light curves and the characteristics of ∼3000 Cepheid and RR-Lyrae stars, observed at high cadence around the south ecliptic pole, form the third component. For the primary astrometric data set the typical uncertainty is about 0.3 mas for the positions and parallaxes, and about 1 mas yr−1 for the proper motions. A systematic component of ∼0.3 mas should be added to the parallax uncertainties. For the subset of ∼94 000 HIPPARCOS stars in the primary data set, the proper motions are much more precise at about 0.06 mas yr−1. For the secondary astrometric data set, the typical uncertainty of the positions is ∼10 mas. The median uncertainties on the mean G-band magnitudes range from the mmag level to ∼0.03 mag over the magnitude range 5 to 20.7. Conclusions. Gaia DR1 is an important milestone ahead of the next Gaia data release, which will feature five-parameter astrometry for all sources. Extensive validation shows that Gaia DR1 represents a major advance in the mapping of the heavens and the availability of basic stellar data that underpin observational astrophysics. Nevertheless, the very preliminary nature of this first Gaia data release does lead to a number of important limitations to the data quality which should be carefully considered before drawing conclusions from the data

Cigarette Smoking and p16INK4α Gene Promoter Hypermethylation in Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma Patients: A Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND:Aberrant methylation of promoter DNA and transcriptional repression of specific tumor suppressor genes play an important role in carcinogenesis. Recently, many studies have investigated the association between cigarette smoking and p16(INK4α) gene hypermethylation in lung cancer, but could not reach a unanimous conclusion. METHODS AND FINDINGS:Nineteen cross-sectional studies on the association between cigarette smoking and p16(INK4α) methylation in surgically resected tumor tissues from non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) patients were identified in PubMed database until June 2011. For each study, a 2×2 cross-table was extracted. In total, 2,037 smoker and 765 nonsmoker patients were pooled with a fixed-effects model weighting for the inverse of the variance. Overall, the frequency of p16(INK4α) hypermethylation was higher in NSCLC patients with smoking habits than that in non-smoking patients (OR = 2.25, 95% CI = 1.81-2.80). The positive association between cigarette smoking and p16(INK4α) hypermethylation was similar in adenocarcinoma and squamous-cell carcinoma. In the stratified analyses, the association was stronger in Asian patients and in the studies with larger sample sizes. CONCLUSION:Cigarette smoking is positively correlated to p16(INK4α) gene hypermethylation in NSCLC patients

Quality versus quantity of social ties in experimental cooperative networks

Recent studies suggest that allowing individuals to choose their partners can help to maintain cooperation in human social networks; this behaviour can supplement behavioural reciprocity, whereby humans are influenced to cooperate by peer pressure. However, it is unknown how the rate of forming and breaking social ties affects our capacity to cooperate. Here we use a series of online experiments involving 1,529 unique participants embedded in 90 experimental networks, to show that there is a ‘Goldilocks’ effect of network dynamism on cooperation. When the rate of change in social ties is too low, subjects choose to have many ties, even if they attach to defectors. When the rate is too high, cooperators cannot detach from defectors as much as defectors re-attach and, hence, subjects resort to behavioural reciprocity and switch their behaviour to defection. Optimal levels of cooperation are achieved at intermediate levels of change in social ties

Time-dependent search for neutrino emission from X-ray binaries with the ANTARES telescope

[EN] ANTARES is currently the largest neutrino telescope operating in the Northern Hemisphere, aiming at the detection of high-energy neutrinos from astrophysical sources. Neutrino telescopes constantly monitor at least one complete hemisphere of the sky, and are thus well-suited to detect neutrinos produced in transient astrophysical sources. A time-dependent search has been applied to a list of 33 X-ray binaries undergoing high flaring activities in satellite data (RXTE/ASM, MAXI and Swift/BAT) and during hardness transi-tion states in the 2008 2012 period. The background originating from interactions of charged cosmic rays in the Earth s atmosphere is drastically reduced by requiring a directional and temporal coincidence with astrophysical phenomena. The results of this search are presented together with comparisons between the neutrino flux upper limits and the neutrino flux predictions from astrophysical models. The neutrino flux upper limits resulting from this search limit the jet parameter space for some astrophysical models.The authors acknowledge the financial support of the funding agencies: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Commissariat a l'energie atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA), Commission Europeenne (FEDER fund and Marie Curie Program), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), IdEx program and UnivEarthS Labex program at Sorbonne Paris Cite (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02), Labex OCEVU (ANR-11-LABX-0060) and the A* MIDEX project (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02), Region Ile-de-France (DIM-ACAV), Region Alsace (contrat CPER), Region Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, Departement du Var and Ville de La Seyne-sur-Mer, France; Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy; Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM), Nederlandse organisatie voor Weten-schappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; Council of the President of the Russian Federation for young scientists and leading scientific schools supporting grants, Russia; National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO): Plan Estatal de Investigacion (refs. FPA2015-65150-C3-1-P, -2-P and -3-P, (MINECO/FEDER)), Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence and MultiDark Consolider (MINECO), and Prometeo and Grisolia programs (Generalitat Valenciana), Spain; Agence de l'Oriental and CNRST, Morocco. We also acknowledge the technical support of Ifremer, AIM and Foselev Marine for the sea operation and the CC-IN2P3 for the computing facilitiesAlbert, A.; Andre, M.; Anton, G.; Ardid Ramírez, M.; Aubert, J.; Avgitas, T.; Baret, B.... (2017). Time-dependent search for neutrino emission from X-ray binaries with the ANTARES telescope. JOURNAL OF COSMOLOGY AND ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS. 4(19):1-23. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2017/04/019S123419Vila, G. S., Romero, G. E., & Casco, N. A. (2012). An inhomogeneous lepto-hadronic model for the radiation of relativistic jets. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 538, A97. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201118106Pepe, C., Vila, G. S., & Romero, G. E. (2015). Lepto-hadronic model for the broadband emission of Cygnus X-1. 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Quasi-continuous Interpolation Scheme for Pathways between Distant Configurations

A quasi-continuous interpolation (QCI) scheme is introduced for characterizing physically realistic initial pathways from which to initiate transition state searches and construct kinetic transition networks. Applications are presented for peptides, proteins, and a morphological transformation in an atomic cluster. The first step in each case involves end point alignment, and we describe the use of a shortest augmenting path algorithm for optimizing permutational isomers. The QCI procedure then employs an interpolating potential, which preserves the covalent bonding framework for the biomolecules and includes repulsive terms between unconstrained atoms. This potential is used to identify an interpolating path by minimizing contributions from a connected set of images, including terms corresponding to minima in the interatomic distances between them. This procedure detects unphysical geometries in the line segments between images. The most difficult cases, where linear interpolation would involve chain crossings, are treated by growing the structure an atom at a time using the interpolating potential. To test the QCI procedure, we carry through a series of benchmark calculations where the initial interpolation is coupled to explicit transition state searches to produce complete pathways between specified local minima.This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/H042660/1]This document is the unedited Author’s version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work see http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ct300483