Search for Lepton Flavor Violating Decay at FASER

FASER is one of the promising experiments which search for long-lived particles beyond the Standard Model. In this paper, we consider charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) via a light and weakly interacting boson and discuss the detectability by FASER. We focus on four types of CLFV interactions, i.e., the scalar-, pseudoscalar-, vector-, and dipole-type interaction, and calculate the sensitivity of FASER to each CLFV interaction. We show that, with the setup of FASER2, a wide region of the parameter space can be explored. Particularly, it is found that FASER2 has a sensitivity to very small coupling regions in which the rare muon decays, such as $\mu \rightarrow e\gamma$, cannot place bounds, and that there is a possibility to detect CLFV decays of the new light bosons.Comment: 27 pages; v2: minor changes, final versio

Dark Photon from Light Scalar Boson Decays at FASER

FASER is one of the promising experiments which search for long-lived particles beyond the Standard Model. In this paper, we focus on dark photon associating with an additional U(1) gauge symmetry, and also a scalar boson breaking this U(1) gauge symmetry. We study the sensitivity to the dark photon originated from U(1)-breaking scalar decays. We find that a sizable number of dark photon signatures can be expected in wider parameter space than previous studies.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures; v2: typos corrected, discussions and references added; v3: added references, figures, and comments on the light scalar case, calculated event number by Monte Carlo simulations, version to be published in JHE

Effects of Salinity on Yield and Grain Antioxidant Contents of Black Rice

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New Constraint on Dark Photon at T2K Off-Axis Near Detector

The T2K experiment is one of the most powerful long-baseline experiments to investigate neutrino oscillations. The off-axis near detector called ND280 is installed 280 m downstream from the neutrino production target to measure the neutrino energy spectrum. In this paper, we study the capability of the ND280 detector to search for the dark photon produced through the meson rare decay and proton bremsstrahlung processes at the proton beam dump. We find that the ten-year operation of T2K with the ND280 detector excludes the unexplored parameter region for the dark photon mass and kinetic mixing. We also show that a broader parameter region can be searched by the ND280 in the future T2K operation for dark photon as well as U(1)$_{B-L}$ gauge boson.Comment: v1: 22 pages, v2: 23 pages, discussion on background added, acccepted versio

Inorganic Fertilizer Use and Its Association With Rice Yield Gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa

Where and which countries should receive higher priority for improving inorganic fertilizer use in rice fields in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)? This study addressed this question by assessing the spatial variation in fertilizer use and its association with rice yield and yield gap in 24 SSA countries through a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed papers, theses, and grey literature published between 1995 and 2021. The results showed a large variation in N, P, and K fertilizer application rates and rice yield and an opportunity for narrowing the yield gap by increasing N and P rates, especially in irrigated rice systems. We identified clusters of sites/countries based on nutrient input and yield and suggested research and development strategies for improving yields and optimizing nutrient use efficiencies. Further research is essential to identify the factors causing low fertilizer use and the poor association between its use and yield in rainfed systems

Convolutional neural network can recognize drug resistance of single cancer cells

It is known that single or isolated tumor cells enter cancer patients' circulatory systems. These circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are thought to be an effective tool for diagnosing cancer malignancy. However, handling CTC samples and evaluating CTC sequence analysis results are challenging. Recently, the convolutional neural network (CNN) model, a type of deep learning model, has been increasingly adopted for medical image analyses. However, it is controversial whether cell characteristics can be identified at the single-cell level by using machine learning methods. This study intends to verify whether an AI system could classify the sensitivity of anticancer drugs, based on cell morphology during culture. We constructed a CNN based on the VGG16 model that could predict the efficiency of antitumor drugs at the single-cell level. The machine learning revealed that our model could identify the effects of antitumor drugs with ~0.80 accuracies. Our results show that, in the future, realizing precision medicine to identify effective antitumor drugs for individual patients may be possible by extracting CTCs from blood and performing classification by using an AI system

DOCK2 is involved in the host genetics and biology of severe COVID-19

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19疾患感受性遺伝子DOCK2の重症化機序を解明 --アジア最大のバイオレポジトリーでCOVID-19の治療標的を発見--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-10.Identifying the host genetic factors underlying severe COVID-19 is an emerging challenge. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 2, 393 cases of COVID-19 in a cohort of Japanese individuals collected during the initial waves of the pandemic, with 3, 289 unaffected controls. We identified a variant on chromosome 5 at 5q35 (rs60200309-A), close to the dedicator of cytokinesis 2 gene (DOCK2), which was associated with severe COVID-19 in patients less than 65 years of age. This risk allele was prevalent in East Asian individuals but rare in Europeans, highlighting the value of genome-wide association studies in non-European populations. RNA-sequencing analysis of 473 bulk peripheral blood samples identified decreased expression of DOCK2 associated with the risk allele in these younger patients. DOCK2 expression was suppressed in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 61 individuals) identified cell-type-specific downregulation of DOCK2 and a COVID-19-specific decreasing effect of the risk allele on DOCK2 expression in non-classical monocytes. Immunohistochemistry of lung specimens from patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia showed suppressed DOCK2 expression. Moreover, inhibition of DOCK2 function with CPYPP increased the severity of pneumonia in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by weight loss, lung oedema, enhanced viral loads, impaired macrophage recruitment and dysregulated type I interferon responses. We conclude that DOCK2 has an important role in the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, and could be further explored as a potential biomarker and/or therapeutic target

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements