Cherenkov Light Imaging - Fundamentals and recent Developments

We review in a historical way the fundamentals of Cherenkov light imaging applied to Ring Imaging Cherenkov Counters. We also point out some of the newer developments in this very active field.Comment: Submitted to special edition of NIMA, Proceedings of RICH201

Status Report of the DPHEP Study Group: Towards a Global Effort for Sustainable Data Preservation in High Energy Physics

Data from high-energy physics (HEP) experiments are collected with significant financial and human effort and are mostly unique. An inter-experimental study group on HEP data preservation and long-term analysis was convened as a panel of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA). The group was formed by large collider-based experiments and investigated the technical and organisational aspects of HEP data preservation. An intermediate report was released in November 2009 addressing the general issues of data preservation in HEP. This paper includes and extends the intermediate report. It provides an analysis of the research case for data preservation and a detailed description of the various projects at experiment, laboratory and international levels. In addition, the paper provides a concrete proposal for an international organisation in charge of the data management and policies in high-energy physics

IL-2(high) tissue-resident T cells in the human liver: Sentinels for hepatotropic infection

The liver provides a tolerogenic immune niche exploited by several highly prevalent pathogens as well as by primary and metastatic tumors. We have sampled healthy and hepatitis B virus (HBV)-infected human livers to probe for a subset of T cells specialized to overcome local constraints and mediate immunity. We characterize a population of T-bet(lo)Eomes(lo)Blimp-1(hi)Hobit(lo) T cells found within the intrahepatic but not the circulating memory CD8 T cell pool expressing liver-homing/retention markers (CD69(+)CD103(+) CXCR6(+)CXCR3(+)). These tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM) are preferentially expanded in patients with partial immune control of HBV infection and can remain in the liver after the resolution of infection, including compartmentalized responses against epitopes within all major HBV proteins. Sequential IL-15 or antigen exposure followed by TGFβ induces liver-adapted TRM, including their signature high expression of exhaustion markers PD-1 and CD39. We suggest that these inhibitory molecules, together with paradoxically robust, rapid, cell-autonomous IL-2 and IFNγ production, equip liver CD8 TRM to survive while exerting local noncytolytic hepatic immunosurveillance

Transition from Positive to Neutral in Mutation Fixation along with Continuing Rising Fitness in Thermal Adaptive Evolution

It remains to be determined experimentally whether increasing fitness is related to positive selection, while stationary fitness is related to neutral evolution. Long-term laboratory evolution in Escherichia coli was performed under conditions of thermal stress under defined laboratory conditions. The complete cell growth data showed common continuous fitness recovery to every 2°C or 4°C stepwise temperature upshift, finally resulting in an evolved E. coli strain with an improved upper temperature limit as high as 45.9°C after 523 days of serial transfer, equivalent to 7,560 generations, in minimal medium. Two-phase fitness dynamics, a rapid growth recovery phase followed by a gradual increasing growth phase, was clearly observed at diverse temperatures throughout the entire evolutionary process. Whole-genome sequence analysis revealed the transition from positive to neutral in mutation fixation, accompanied with a considerable escalation of spontaneous substitution rate in the late fitness recovery phase. It suggested that continually increasing fitness not always resulted in the reduction of genetic diversity due to the sequential takeovers by fit mutants, but caused the accumulation of a considerable number of mutations that facilitated the neutral evolution

Tests of innovative photon detectors and integrated electronics for the large-area CLAS12 ring-imaging Cherenkov detector

Abstract A large area ring-imaging Cherenkov detector has been designed to provide clean hadron identification capability in the momentum range from 3 GeV/c to 8 GeV/c for the CLAS12 experiments at the upgraded 12 GeV continuous electron beam accelerator facility of Jefferson Lab. Its aim is to study the 3D nucleon structure in the yet poorly explored valence region by deep-inelastic scattering, and to perform precision measurements in hadron spectroscopy. The adopted solution foresees a novel hybrid optics design based on an aerogel radiator, composite mirrors and a densely packed and highly segmented photon detector. Cherenkov light will either be imaged directly (forward tracks) or after two mirror reflections (large angle tracks). Extensive tests have been performed on Hamamatsu H8500 and novel flat multi-anode photomultipliers under development and on various types of silicon photomultipliers. A large scale prototype based on 28 H8500 MA-PMTs has been realized and tested with few GeV/c hadron beams at the T9 test-beam facility of CERN. In addition a small prototype was used to study the response of customized SiPM matrices within a temperature interval ranging from 25 down to −25 °C. The preliminary results of the individual photon detector tests and of the prototype performance at the test-beams are here reported

Molecular Clock of Neutral Mutations in a Fitness-Increasing Evolutionary Process

The molecular clock of neutral mutations, which represents linear mutation fixation over generations, is theoretically explained by genetic drift in fitness-steady evolution or hitchhiking in adaptive evolution. The present study is the first experimental demonstration for the molecular clock of neutral mutations in a fitness-increasing evolutionary process. The dynamics of genome mutation fixation in the thermal adaptive evolution of Escherichia coli were evaluated in a prolonged evolution experiment in duplicated lineages. The cells from the continuously fitness-increasing evolutionary process were subjected to genome sequencing and analyzed at both the population and single-colony levels. Although the dynamics of genome mutation fixation were complicated by the combination of the stochastic appearance of adaptive mutations and clonal interference, the mutation fixation in the population was simply linear over generations. Each genome in the population accumulated 1.6 synonymous and 3.1 non-synonymous neutral mutations, on average, by the spontaneous mutation accumulation rate, while only a single genome in the population occasionally acquired an adaptive mutation. The neutral mutations that preexisted on the single genome hitchhiked on the domination of the adaptive mutation. The successive fixation processes of the 128 mutations demonstrated that hitchhiking and not genetic drift were responsible for the coincidence of the spontaneous mutation accumulation rate in the genome with the fixation rate of neutral mutations in the population. The molecular clock of neutral mutations to the fitness-increasing evolution suggests that the numerous neutral mutations observed in molecular phylogenetic trees may not always have been fixed in fitness-steady evolution but in adaptive evolution