157 research outputs found
Bullets over ballots: Islamist groups, the state and electoral violence in Egypt and Morocco
This article is concerned with state-sponsored electoral violence in liberalized autocracies. The first section of the paper identifies a number of variables that can help explain the decision calculus of authoritarian incumbents to deploy force against strong electoral challengers. The second section then examines these propositions with reference to Egypt and Morocco. Drawing on recent parliamentary elections in both countries the article questions why, despite facing the challenge of political Islam, the two regimes differed so markedly in their willingness to manipulate the polls by recourse to violence. Whilst the Egyptian authorities decided to abrogate all pretence of peaceful elections in favour of violent repression against the Muslim Brotherhood candidates and sympathizers, no such tactics were deployed by the ruling elite in Morocco. We suggest that three principal factors influenced the regimes' response to this electoral challenge: (1) the centrality of the elected institution to authoritarian survival; (2) the availability of alternative electioneering tools; and (3) the anticipated response of the international community. The article concludes by suggesting that in order to understand better when and how states deploy violence in elections, we need to focus on a more complex set of factors rather than simply on the electoral potency of key opposition challengers or the authoritarian nature of the state
The Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (LEGEND)
The observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay (0)
would show that lepton number is violated, reveal that neutrinos are Majorana
particles, and provide information on neutrino mass. A discovery-capable
experiment covering the inverted ordering region, with effective Majorana
neutrino masses of 15 - 50 meV, will require a tonne-scale experiment with
excellent energy resolution and extremely low backgrounds, at the level of
0.1 count /(FWHMtyr) in the region of the signal. The
current generation Ge experiments GERDA and the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR
utilizing high purity Germanium detectors with an intrinsic energy resolution
of 0.12%, have achieved the lowest backgrounds by over an order of magnitude in
the 0 signal region of all 0
experiments. Building on this success, the LEGEND collaboration has been formed
to pursue a tonne-scale Ge experiment. The collaboration aims to develop
a phased 0 experimental program with discovery potential
at a half-life approaching or at years, using existing resources as
appropriate to expedite physics results.Comment: Proceedings of the MEDEX'17 meeting (Prague, May 29 - June 2, 2017
Development and validation of novel clinical endpoints in intermediate age-related macular degeneration in MACUSTAR
Background
Currently, no validated clinical endpoints for treatment studies exist for intermediate age-related macular degeneration (iAMD).
Objective
The European MACUSTAR study aims to develop and clinically validate adequate clinical endpoints for future treatment studies in iAMD and to identify early determinants of disease progression to late stage AMD.
Material and methods
The MACUSTAR study protocol was developed by an international consortium of researchers from academia, the pharmaceutical industry and medical device companies. The MACUSTAR project is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 (IMI2) of the European Union.
Results
The MACUSTAR study consists of a cross-sectional and a longitudinal investigation. A total of 750 subjects with early, intermediate and late AMD as well as control subjects with no signs of AMD will be included with a follow-up period of 3 years. Overall, 20 European study centers are involved.
Conclusion
The MACUSTAR project will generate large high-quality datasets, which will allow clinical validation of novel endpoints for future interventional trials in iAMD. The aim is that these endpoints will be accepted as suitable for medication approval studies by the regulatory authorities and that understanding of the disease process will be improved
Phase I dose escalation study of telatinib (BAY 57-9352) in patients with advanced solid tumours
Telatinib (BAY 57-9352) is an orally available, small-molecule inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptors 2 and 3 (VEGFR-2/-3) and platelet-derived growth factor receptor β tyrosine kinases. In this multicentre phase I dose escalation study, 71 patients with refractory solid tumours were enroled into 14 days on/7 days off (noncontinuous dosing) or continuous dosing groups to receive telatinib two times daily (BID). Hypertension (23%) and diarrhoea (7%) were the most frequent study drug-related adverse events of CTC grade 3. The maximum-tolerated dose was not reached up to a dose of 1500 mg BID continuous dosing. Telatinib was rapidly absorbed with median tmax of 3 hours or less. Geometric mean Cmax and AUC0−12 increased in a less than dose-proportional manner and plateaued in the 900–1500 mg BID dose range. Two renal cell carcinoma patients reached a partial response. Tumour blood flow measured by contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging and sVEGFR-2 plasma levels decreased with increasing AUC0−12 of telatinib. Telatinib is safe and well tolerated up to a dose of 1500 mg BID continuous dosing. Based on pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic criteria, 900 mg telatinib BID continuously administered was selected as the recommended phase II dose
Measured and projected beam backgrounds in the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider
The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB electron-positron collider aims to
collect an unprecedented data set of to study -violation
in the -meson system and to search for Physics beyond the Standard Model.
SuperKEKB is already the world's highest-luminosity collider. In order to
collect the planned data set within approximately one decade, the target is to
reach a peak luminosity of by further
increasing the beam currents and reducing the beam size at the interaction
point by squeezing the betatron function down to . To ensure detector longevity and maintain good reconstruction
performance, beam backgrounds must remain well controlled. We report on current
background rates in Belle II and compare these against simulation. We find that
a number of recent refinements have significantly improved the background
simulation accuracy. Finally, we estimate the safety margins going forward. We
predict that backgrounds should remain high but acceptable until a luminosity
of at least is reached for
. At this point, the most vulnerable Belle II
detectors, the Time-of-Propagation (TOP) particle identification system and the
Central Drift Chamber (CDC), have predicted background hit rates from
single-beam and luminosity backgrounds that add up to approximately half of the
maximum acceptable rates.Comment: 28 pages, 17 figures, 9 tables (revised
Perspective Chapter: European Robotics League – Benchmarking through Smart City Robot Competitions
The SciRoc project, started in 2018, is an EU-H2020 funded project supporting the European Robotics League (ERL) and builds on the success of the EU-FP7/H2020 projects RoCKIn, euRathlon, EuRoC and ROCKEU2. The ERL is a framework for robot competitions currently consisting of three challenges: ERL Consumer, ERL Professional and ERL Emergency. These three challenge scenarios are set up in urban environments and converge every two years under one major tournament: the ERL Smart Cities Challenge. Smart cities are a new urban innovation paradigm promoting the use of advanced technologies to improve citizens’ quality of life. A key novelty of the SciRoc project is the ERL Smart Cities Challenge, which aims to show how robots will integrate into the cities of the future as physical agents. The SciRoc Project ran two such ERL Smart Cities Challenges, the first in Milton Keynes, UK (2019) and the second in Bologna, Italy (2021). In this chapter we evaluate the three challenges of the ERL, explain why the SciRoc project introduced a fourth challenge to bring robot benchmarking to Smart Cities and outline the process in conducting a Smart City event under the ERL umbrella. These innovations may pave the way for easier robotic benchmarking in the future
B-flavor tagging at Belle II
We report on new flavor tagging algorithms developed to determine the quark-flavor content of bottom ( ) mesons at Belle II. The algorithms provide essential inputs for measurements of quark-flavor mixing and charge-parity violation. We validate and evaluate the performance of the algorithms using hadronic decays with flavor-specific final states reconstructed in a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 62.8 fb−1
, collected at the resonance with the Belle II detector at the SuperKEKB collider. We measure the total effective tagging efficiency to be
εeff=(30.0±1.2(stat)±0.4(syst))%
for a category-based algorithm and
εeff=(28.8±1.2(stat)±0.4(syst))%
for a deep-learning-based algorithm
Search for an invisible in a final state with two muons and missing energy at Belle II
The extension of the standard model predicts the existence
of a lepton-flavor-universality-violating boson that couples only
to the heavier lepton families. We search for such a through its
invisible decay in the process . We use a
sample of electron-positron collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 10.58GeV
collected by the Belle II experiment in 2019-2020, corresponding to an
integrated luminosity of 79.7fb. We find no excess over the expected
standard-model background. We set 90-confidence-level upper limits on the
cross section for this process as well as on the coupling of the model, which
ranges from at low masses to 1 at
masses of 8
Measurement of the branching fraction and asymmetry of decays using pairs in Belle II data
We report measurements of the branching fraction and asymmetry in
decays reconstructed at Belle II in an
electron-positron collision sample containing
pairs. We measure a branching fraction \mathcal{B}(\Bpipi) =
(1.38 \pm 0.27 \pm 0.22) \times 10^{-6} and a asymmetry \Acp(\Bpipi)
= 0.14 \pm 0.46 \pm 0.07, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the
second is systematic
Tests of light-lepton universality in angular asymmetries of decays
We present the first comprehensive tests of light-lepton universality in the
angular distributions of semileptonic \Bz-meson decays to charged spin-1
charmed mesons. We measure five angular-asymmetry observables as functions of
the decay recoil that are sensitive to lepton-universality-violating
contributions. We use events where one neutral \B is fully reconstructed in
\PUpsilonFourS{} \to\B\overline{B} decays in data corresponding to \lumion
integrated luminosity from electron-positron collisions collected with the
\belletwo detector. We find no significant deviation from the standard model
expectations
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