Development of a rapid and sensitive immunomagnetic-bead based assay for detecting Bacillus cereus in milk

Bacillus cereus is a major food-born pathogen in Taiwan and its major syndromes include vomiting, fever and diarrhea. To minimize the possibility of exposing consumers to pathogenic B. cereus, this study develops a rapid and sensitive assay that utilizes immunoliposomal nanovesicles (IMLNs) and immunomagnetic beads (IMBs). In this work, fluorescent dyes (sulforhodamine B)-loaded IMLNs were employed to increase the detection signal; anti-B. cereus antibody-conjugated IMBs were applied to capture B. cereus in samples. Hence in this assay, a sandwich complex was formed as "IMBs-B. cereus-IMLNs". The optimal IMLNs had a diameter of 300 nm with a conjugated antibody molar percentage (mol%) of 0.25 mol%. The limit of detection (LOD) of this developed assay reaches 10 CFU/mL of B. cereus with the false negative value as zero in 20 parallel assays in milk samples. To evaluate the specificity of this assay, nine Gram positive and negative bacteria were tested and found to cause no significant interference problems. In conclusion, this study elucidates the feasibility of using a novel IMB/IMLN assay for detecting B. cereus and its LOD without pre-enrichment could amount to 10 CFU/mL within 4 h

Instanton Number of Noncommutative U(n) gauge theory

We show that the integral of the first Pontrjagin class is given by an integer and it is identified with instanton number of the U(n) gauge theory on noncommutative ${\bf R^4}$. Here the dimension of the vector space $V$ that appear in the ADHM construction is called Instanton number. The calculation is done in operator formalism and the first Pontrjagin class is defined by converge series. The origin of the instanton number is investigated closely, too.Comment: 6 color figures, 27 pages, some comments and references are added,typos fixe

Hadron Properties with FLIC Fermions

The Fat-Link Irrelevant Clover (FLIC) fermion action provides a new form of nonperturbative O(a)-improvement in lattice fermion actions offering near continuum results at finite lattice spacing. It provides computationally inexpensive access to the light quark mass regime of QCD where chiral nonanalytic behaviour associated with Goldstone bosons is revealed. The motivation and formulation of FLIC fermions, its excellent scaling properties and its low-lying hadron mass phenomenology are presented.Comment: 29 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables. Contribution to lecure notes in 2nd Cairns Topical Workshop on Lattice Hadron Physics 2003 (LHP 2003), Cairns, Australia, 22-30 Jul 200

Search for the Chiral Magnetic Effect in Au+Au collisions at sNN=27\sqrt{s_{_{\rm{NN}}}}=27 GeV with the STAR forward Event Plane Detectors

A decisive experimental test of the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) is considered one of the major scientific goals at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) towards understanding the nontrivial topological fluctuations of the Quantum Chromodynamics vacuum. In heavy-ion collisions, the CME is expected to result in a charge separation phenomenon across the reaction plane, whose strength could be strongly energy dependent. The previous CME searches have been focused on top RHIC energy collisions. In this Letter, we present a low energy search for the CME in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{\rm{NN}}}}=27$ GeV. We measure elliptic flow scaled charge-dependent correlators relative to the event planes that are defined at both mid-rapidity $|\eta|<1.0$ and at forward rapidity $2.1 < |\eta|<5.1$. We compare the results based on the directed flow plane ($\Psi_1$) at forward rapidity and the elliptic flow plane ($\Psi_2$) at both central and forward rapidity. The CME scenario is expected to result in a larger correlation relative to $\Psi_1$ than to $\Psi_2$, while a flow driven background scenario would lead to a consistent result for both event planes[1,2]. In 10-50\% centrality, results using three different event planes are found to be consistent within experimental uncertainties, suggesting a flow driven background scenario dominating the measurement. We obtain an upper limit on the deviation from a flow driven background scenario at the 95\% confidence level. This work opens up a possible road map towards future CME search with the high statistics data from the RHIC Beam Energy Scan Phase-II.Comment: main: 8 pages, 5 figures; supplementary material: 2 pages, 1 figur

Physical Processes in Star Formation

© 2020 Springer-Verlag. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00693-8.Star formation is a complex multi-scale phenomenon that is of significant importance for astrophysics in general. Stars and star formation are key pillars in observational astronomy from local star forming regions in the Milky Way up to high-redshift galaxies. From a theoretical perspective, star formation and feedback processes (radiation, winds, and supernovae) play a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of the physical processes at work, both individually and of their interactions. In this review we will give an overview of the main processes that are important for the understanding of star formation. We start with an observationally motivated view on star formation from a global perspective and outline the general paradigm of the life-cycle of molecular clouds, in which star formation is the key process to close the cycle. After that we focus on the thermal and chemical aspects in star forming regions, discuss turbulence and magnetic fields as well as gravitational forces. Finally, we review the most important stellar feedback mechanisms.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Search for leptophobic Z ' bosons decaying into four-lepton final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Search for black holes and other new phenomena in high-multiplicity final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

Peer reviewe

Measurements of differential production cross sections for a Z boson in association with jets in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Search for high-mass diphoton resonances in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV and combination with 8 TeV search

Peer reviewe