Microborings in mid Cretaceous fish teeth

Fish teeth and other remains from the British Cretaceous contain abundant evidence for post-mortem colonization by endolithic organisms. The borings are here recognised as occurring in three morphotypes, including a flask-shaped form not previously recorded. There is strong evidence to suggest that each of these boring types shows a strong preference for a particular substrate histology. The damage and destruction of vertebrate remains by microborings is here considered to exert a major taphonomic control on microvertebrate assemblages. The relationships between the intensity of colonization of vertebrate material by endolithic organisms and palaeoenvironment have implications for using these bone microborings as palaeoenvironmental indicators

A fundamental test of the Higgs Yukawa coupling at RHIC in A+A collisions

Searches for the intermediate boson, $W^{\pm}$, the heavy quantum of the Weak Interaction, via its semi-leptonic decay, $W\to e +\nu$, in the 1970's instead discovered unexpectedly large hadron production at high $p_T$, notably $\pi^0$, which provided a huge background of $e^{\pm}$ from internal and external conversions. Methods developed at the CERN ISR which led to the discovery of direct-single-$e^{\pm}$ in 1974, later determined to be from the semi-leptonic decay of charm which had not yet been discovered, were used by PHENIX at RHIC to make precision measurements of heavy quark production in p-p and Au+Au collisions, leading to the puzzle of apparent equal suppression of light and heavy quarks in the QGP. If the Higgs mechanism gives mass to gauge bosons but not to fermions, then a proposal that all 6 quarks are nearly massless in a QGP, which would resolve the puzzle, can not be excluded. This proposal can be tested with future measurements of heavy quark correlations in A+A collisionsComment: 12 pages, 16 figures, 26th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Ocho Rios, Jamaica WI, January 2-9, 2010. Corrected citation of 1974 direct single lepton discover

Differential expression of the interleukin 5 receptor alpha isoforms in blood and tissue eosinophils of nasal polyp patients

Given the key role of interleukin-5 (IL-5) in eosinophil function, we investigated the regulated expression of the membrane-anchored (TM-IL-5R alpha) isoform, or a secreted (SOL IL-5R alpha) isoform, on both protein and transcript level in vitro and in vivo. A real-time PCR, FACS and ELISA were established to determine IL-5R alpha isoform expression in peripheral blood and nasal tissue from control subjects and nasal polyp (NP) patients with or without asthma. Human peripheral blood eosinophils were incubated with IL-5 and were analyzed for SOL-IL-5R alpha and TM-IL-5R alpha mRNA and protein levels in comparison with CD-69 expression. SOL-IL-5R alpha and TM-IL-5R alpha mRNA and protein expression was significantly increased in NP vs controls. In polyp tissue, SOL-IL-5R alpha expression correlated to disease severity and eosinophils counts, whereas TM-IL-5R alpha levels were inversely correlated to eosinophils counts and SOL-IL-5R alpha expression. FACS analysis revealed increased CD-69 and decreased TM-IL-5R alpha expression in NP tissue eosinophils vs blood eosinophils. Incubation of blood eosinophils with IL-5 caused up-regulation of CD-69 and down-regulation of TM-IL-5R alpha after 2 and 24 h. The expression of SOL-IL-5R alpha and TM-IL-5R alpha differs according to the eosinophil activation state and localization in the body (blood vs tissue) and may therefore be involved in the fine-tuning of the eosinophil homeostasis. Exposure of eosinophils to IL-5 reduces their responsiveness to IL-5 by regulated expression of the IL-5R alpha isoforms. Since, TM-IL-5R alpha is down-regulated and SOL-IL-5R alpha (antagonistic) is upregulated in NP tissue, our findings are important to understand the clinical trials with anti-IL-5 in humans

Probing color coherence effects in pp collisions at [Formula: see text].

A study of color coherence effects in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7[Formula: see text] is presented. The data used in the analysis were collected in 2010 with the CMS detector at the LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb[Formula: see text]. Events are selected that contain at least three jets and where the two jets with the largest transverse momentum exhibit a back-to-back topology. The measured angular correlation between the second- and third-leading jet is shown to be sensitive to color coherence effects, and is compared to the predictions of Monte Carlo models with various implementations of color coherence. None of the models describe the data satisfactorily

Measurement of jet multiplicity distributions in [Formula: see text] production in pp collisions at [Formula: see text].

The normalised differential top quark-antiquark production cross section is measured as a function of the jet multiplicity in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7[Formula: see text] at the LHC with the CMS detector. The measurement is performed in both the dilepton and lepton+jets decay channels using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.0[Formula: see text]. Using a procedure to associate jets to decay products of the top quarks, the differential cross section of the [Formula: see text] production is determined as a function of the additional jet multiplicity in the lepton+jets channel. Furthermore, the fraction of events with no additional jets is measured in the dilepton channel, as a function of the threshold on the jet transverse momentum. The measurements are compared with predictions from perturbative quantum chromodynamics and no significant deviations are observed