Tetracritical behavior in strongly interacting theories

We suggest a tetracritical fixed point to naturally occur in strongly interacting theories. As a fundamental example we analyze the temperature--quark chemical potential phase diagram of QCD with fermions in the adjoint representation of the gauge group (i.e. adjoint QCD). Here we show that such a non trivial multicritical point exists and is due to the interplay between the spontaneous breaking of a global U(1) symmetry and the center group symmetry associated to confinement. Our results demonstrate that taking confinement into account is essential for understanding the critical behavior as well as the full structure of the phase diagram of adjoint QCD. This is in contrast to ordinary QCD where the center group symmetry associated to confinement is explicitly broken when the quarks are part of the theory.Comment: RevTex, 5 figures. Final version to appear in PR

The adaptor molecule CARD9 is essential for tuberculosis control

The cross talk between host and pathogen starts with recognition of bacterial signatures through pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which mobilize downstream signaling cascades. We investigated the role of the cytosolic adaptor caspase recruitment domain family, member 9 (CARD9) in tuberculosis. This adaptor was critical for full activation of innate immunity by converging signals downstream of multiple PRRs. Card9−/− mice succumbed early after aerosol infection, with higher mycobacterial burden, pyogranulomatous pneumonia, accelerated granulocyte recruitment, and higher abundance of proinflammatory cytokines and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) in serum and lung. Neutralization of G-CSF and neutrophil depletion significantly prolonged survival, indicating that an exacerbated systemic inflammatory disease triggered lethality of Card9−/− mice. CARD9 deficiency had no apparent effect on T cell responses, but a marked impact on the hematopoietic compartment. Card9−/− granulocytes failed to produce IL-10 after Mycobaterium tuberculosis infection, suggesting that an absent antiinflammatory feedback loop accounted for granulocyte-dominated pathology, uncontrolled bacterial replication, and, ultimately, death of infected Card9−/− mice. Our data provide evidence that deregulated innate responses trigger excessive lung inflammation and demonstrate a pivotal role of CARD9 signaling in autonomous innate host defense against tuberculosis

A conditionally replicating adenovirus with strict selectivity in killing cells expressing epidermal growth factor receptor

AbstractVirotherapy of cancer using oncolytic adenoviruses has shown promise in both preclinical and clinical settings. One important challenge to reach the full therapeutic potential of oncolytic adenoviruses is accomplishing efficient infection of cancer cells and avoiding uptake by normal tissue through tropism modification. Towards this goal, we constructed and characterized an oncolytic adenovirus, carrying mutated capsid proteins to abolish the promiscuous adenovirus native tropism and encoding a bispecific adapter molecule to target the virus to the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). The new virus displayed a highly selective targeting profile, with reduced infection of EGFR-negative cells and efficient killing of EGFR-positive cancer cells including primary EGFR-positive osteosarcoma cells that are refractory to infection by conventional adenoviruses. Our method to modify adenovirus tropism might thus be useful to design new oncolytic adenoviruses for more effective treatment of cancer

A national approach to pediatric sepsis surveillance

Pediatric sepsis is a major public health concern, and robust surveillance tools are needed to characterize its incidence, outcomes, and trends. The increasing use of electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States creates an opportunity to conduct reliable, pragmatic, and generalizable population-level surveillance using routinely collected clinical data rather than administrative claims or resource-intensive chart review. In 2015, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recruited sepsis investigators and representatives of key professional societies to develop an approach to adult sepsis surveillance using clinical data recorded in EHRs. This led to the creation of the adult sepsis event definition, which was used to estimate the national burden of sepsis in adults and has been adapted into a tool kit to facilitate widespread implementation by hospitals. In July 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention convened a new multidisciplinary pediatric working group to tailor an EHR-based national sepsis surveillance approach to infants and children. Here, we describe the challenges specific to pediatric sepsis surveillance, including evolving clinical definitions of sepsis, accommodation of agedependent physiologic differences, identifying appropriate EHR markers of infection and organ dysfunction among infants and children, and the need to account for children with medical complexity and the growing regionalization of pediatric care. We propose a preliminary pediatric sepsis event surveillance definition and outline next steps for refining and validating these criteria so that they may be used to estimate the national burden of pediatric sepsis and support site-specific surveillance to complement ongoing initiatives to improve sepsis prevention, recognition, and treatment

Energy loss due to defect formation from 206Pb recoils in SuperCDMS germanium detectors

The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory studied energy loss associated with defect formation in germanium crystals at mK temperatures using in situ 210Pb sources. We examine the spectrum of 206Pb nuclear recoils near its expected 103 keV endpoint energy and determine an energy loss of (6:08 ± 0:18)%, which we attribute to defect formation. From this result and using TRIM simulations, we extract the first experimentally determined average displacement threshold energy of 19.7+0.6−0.5 eV for germanium. This has implications for the analysis thresholds of future germanium-based dark matter searches

Orbital Observations of Dust Lofted by Daytime Convective Turbulence

Over the past several decades, orbital observations of lofted dust have revealed the importance of mineral aerosols as a climate forcing mechanism on both Earth and Mars. Increasingly detailed and diverse data sets have provided an ever-improving understanding of dust sources, transport pathways, and sinks on both planets, but the role of dust in modulating atmospheric processes is complex and not always well understood. We present a review of orbital observations of entrained dust on Earth and Mars, particularly that produced by the dust-laden structures produced by daytime convective turbulence called “dust devils”. On Earth, dust devils are thought to contribute only a small fraction of the atmospheric dust budget; accordingly, there are not yet any published accounts of their occurrence from orbit. In contrast, dust devils on Mars are thought to account for several tens of percent of the planet’s atmospheric dust budget; the literature regarding martian dust devils is quite rich. Because terrestrial dust devils may temporarily contribute significantly to local dust loading and lowered air quality, we suggest that martian dust devil studies may inform future studies of convectively-lofted dust on Earth

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

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