Measurement of the antineutrino neutral-current elastic differential cross section

arXiv:1309.7257v1 [hep-ex

Forecasting Human-Object Interaction: Joint Prediction of Motor Attention and Actions in First Person Video

We address the challenging task of anticipating human-object interaction in first person videos. Most existing methods ignore how the camera wearer interacts with the objects, or simply consider body motion as a separate modality. In contrast, we observe that the international hand movement reveals critical information about the future activity. Motivated by this, we adopt intentional hand movement as a future representation and propose a novel deep network that jointly models and predicts the egocentric hand motion, interaction hotspots and future action. Specifically, we consider the future hand motion as the motor attention, and model this attention using latent variables in our deep model. The predicted motor attention is further used to characterise the discriminative spatial-temporal visual features for predicting actions and interaction hotspots. We present extensive experiments demonstrating the benefit of the proposed joint model. Importantly, our model produces new state-of-the-art results for action anticipation on both EGTEA Gaze+ and the EPIC-Kitchens datasets. Our project page is available at https://aptx4869lm.github.io/ForecastingHOI

Galactic and Extragalactic Samples of Supernova Remnants: How They Are Identified and What They Tell Us

Supernova remnants (SNRs) arise from the interaction between the ejecta of a supernova (SN) explosion and the surrounding circumstellar and interstellar medium. Some SNRs, mostly nearby SNRs, can be studied in great detail. However, to understand SNRs as a whole, large samples of SNRs must be assembled and studied. Here, we describe the radio, optical, and X-ray techniques which have been used to identify and characterize almost 300 Galactic SNRs and more than 1200 extragalactic SNRs. We then discuss which types of SNRs are being found and which are not. We examine the degree to which the luminosity functions, surface-brightness distributions and multi-wavelength comparisons of the samples can be interpreted to determine the class properties of SNRs and describe efforts to establish the type of SN explosion associated with a SNR. We conclude that in order to better understand the class properties of SNRs, it is more important to study (and obtain additional data on) the SNRs in galaxies with extant samples at multiple wavelength bands than it is to obtain samples of SNRs in other galaxiesComment: Final 2016 draft of a chapter in "Handbook of Supernovae" edited by Athem W. Alsabti and Paul Murdin. Final version available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20794-0_90-

Radio emission from Supernova Remnants

The explosion of a supernova releases almost instantaneously about 10^51 ergs of mechanic energy, changing irreversibly the physical and chemical properties of large regions in the galaxies. The stellar ejecta, the nebula resulting from the powerful shock waves, and sometimes a compact stellar remnant, constitute a supernova remnant (SNR). They can radiate their energy across the whole electromagnetic spectrum, but the great majority are radio sources. Almost 70 years after the first detection of radio emission coming from a SNR, great progress has been achieved in the comprehension of their physical characteristics and evolution. We review the present knowledge of different aspects of radio remnants, focusing on sources of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds, where the SNRs can be spatially resolved. We present a brief overview of theoretical background, analyze morphology and polarization properties, and review and critical discuss different methods applied to determine the radio spectrum and distances. The consequences of the interaction between the SNR shocks and the surrounding medium are examined, including the question of whether SNRs can trigger the formation of new stars. Cases of multispectral comparison are presented. A section is devoted to reviewing recent results of radio SNRs in the Magellanic Clouds, with particular emphasis on the radio properties of SN 1987A, an ideal laboratory to investigate dynamical evolution of an SNR in near real time. The review concludes with a summary of issues on radio SNRs that deserve further study, and analyzing the prospects for future research with the latest generation radio telescopes.Comment: Revised version. 48 pages, 15 figure

Cardiac Tissue Engineering: Implications for Pediatric Heart Surgery

Children with severe congenital malformations, such as single-ventricle anomalies, have a daunting prognosis. Heart transplantation would be a therapeutic option but is restricted due to a lack of suitable donor organs and, even in case of successful heart transplantation, lifelong immune suppression would frequently be associated with a number of serious side effects. As an alternative to heart transplantation and classical cardiac reconstructive surgery, tissue-engineered myocardium might become available to augment hypomorphic hearts and/or provide new muscle material for complex myocardial reconstruction. These potential applications of tissue engineered myocardium will, however, impose major challenges to cardiac tissue engineers as well as heart surgeons. This review will provide an overview of available cardiac tissue-engineering technologies, discuss limitations, and speculate on a potential application of tissue-engineered heart muscle in pediatric heart surgery

Assay for high glucose-mediated islet cell sensitization to apoptosis induced by streptozotocin and cytokines

Pancreatic β-cell apoptosis is known to participate in the β-cell destruction process that occurs in diabetes. It has been described that high glucose level induces a hyperfunctional status which could provoke apoptosis. This phenomenon is known as glucotoxicity and has been proposed that it can play a role in type 1 diabetes mellitus pathogenesis. In this study we develop an experimental design to sensitize pancreatic islet cells by high glucose to streptozotocin (STZ) and proinflammatory cytokines [interleukin (IL)-1β, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and interferon (IFN)-γ]-induced apoptosis. This method is appropriate for subsequent quantification of apoptotic islet cells stained with Tdt-mediated dUTP Nick-End Labeling (TUNEL) and protein expression assays by Western Blotting (WB)

Improved Search for νˉμ→νˉe\bar ν_μ\rightarrow \bar ν_e Oscillations in the MiniBooNE Experiment

Submitted to PRL. Further information provided in arXiv:1207.4809Submitted to PRL. Further information provided in arXiv:1207.4809The MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab reports results from an analysis of $\bar \nu_e$ appearance data from $11.27 \times 10^{20}$ protons on target in antineutrino mode, an increase of approximately a factor of two over the previously reported results. An event excess of $78.4 \pm 28.5$ events ($2.8 \sigma$) is observed in the energy range $200<E_\nu^{QE}<1250$ MeV. If interpreted in a two-neutrino oscillation model, $\bar{\nu}_{\mu}\rightarrow\bar{\nu}_e$, the best oscillation fit to the excess has a probability of 66% while the background-only fit has a $\chi^2$-probability of 0.5% relative to the best fit. The data are consistent with antineutrino oscillations in the $0.01 < \Delta m^2 < 1.0$ eV$^2$ range and have some overlap with the evidence for antineutrino oscillations from the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND). All of the major backgrounds are constrained by in-situ event measurements so non-oscillation explanations would need to invoke new anomalous background processes. The neutrino mode running also shows an excess at low energy of $162.0 \pm 47.8$ events ($3.4 \sigma$) but the energy distribution of the excess is marginally compatible with a simple two neutrino oscillation formalism. Expanded models with several sterile neutrinos can reduce the incompatibility by allowing for CP violating effects between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations

Early peri-operative hyperglycaemia and renal allograft rejection in patients without diabetes

BACKGROUND: Patients with diabetes have an increased risk for allograft rejection, possibly related to peri-operative hyperglycaemia. Hyperglycaemia is also common following transplantation in patients without diabetes. We hypothesise that exposure of allograft tissue to hyperglycaemia could influence the risk for rejection in any patient with high sugars. To investigate the relationship of peri-operative glucose control to acute rejection in renal transplant patients without diabetes, all patients receiving their first cadaveric graft in a single center were surveyed and patients without diabetes receiving cyclosporin-based immunosuppression were reviewed (n = 230). Records of the plasma blood glucose concentration following surgery and transplant variables pertaining to allograft rejection were obtained. All variables suggestive of association were entered into multivariate logistic regression analysis, their significance analysed and modeled. RESULTS: Hyperglycaemia (>8.0 mmol/L) occurs in over 73% of non-diabetic patients following surgery. Glycaemic control immediately following renal transplantation independently predicted acute rejection (Odds ratio=1.08). 42% of patients with a glucose < 8.0 mmol/L following surgery developed rejection compared to 71% of patients who had a serum glucose above this level. Hyperglycaemia was not associated with any delay of graft function. CONCLUSION: Hyperglycaemia is associated with an increased risk for allograft rejection. This is consistent with similar findings in patients with diabetes. We hypothesise a causal link concordant with epidemiological and in vitro evidence and propose further clinical research

Group differences in physician responses to handheld presentation of clinical evidence: a verbal protocol analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To identify individual differences in physicians' needs for the presentation of evidence resources and preferences for mobile devices.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Within-groups analysis of responses to semi-structured interviews. Interviews consisted of using prototypes in response to task-based scenarios. The prototypes were implemented on two different form factors: a tablet style PC and a pocketPC. Participants were from three user groups: general internists, family physicians and medicine residents, and from two different settings: urban and semi-urban. Verbal protocol analysis, which consists of coding utterances, was conducted on the transcripts of the testing sessions. Statistical relationships were investigated between staff physicians' and residents' background variables, self-reported experiences with the interfaces, and verbal code frequencies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>47 physicians were recruited from general internal medicine, family practice clinics and a residency training program. The mean age of participants was 42.6 years. Physician specialty had a greater effect on device and information-presentation preferences than gender, age, setting or previous technical experience. Family physicians preferred the screen size of the tablet computer and were less concerned about its portability. Residents liked the screen size of the tablet, but preferred the portability of the pocketPC. Internists liked the portability of the pocketPC, but saw less advantage to the large screen of the tablet computer (F[2,44] = 4.94, p = .012).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Different types of physicians have different needs and preferences for evidence-based resources and handheld devices. This study shows how user testing can be incorporated into the process of design to inform group-based customization.</p

A Toxin–Antitoxin System Promotes the Maintenance of an Integrative Conjugative Element

SXT is an integrative and conjugative element (ICE) that confers resistance to multiple antibiotics upon many clinical isolates of Vibrio cholerae. In most cells, this ∼100 Kb element is integrated into the host genome in a site-specific fashion; however, SXT can excise to form an extrachromosomal circle that is thought to be the substrate for conjugative transfer. Daughter cells lacking SXT can theoretically arise if cell division occurs prior to the element's reintegration. Even though ∼2% of SXT-bearing cells contain the excised form of the ICE, cells that have lost the element have not been detected. Here, using a positive selection-based system, SXT loss was detected rarely at a frequency of ∼1×10−7. As expected, excision appears necessary for loss, and factors influencing the frequency of excision altered the frequency of SXT loss. We screened the entire 100 kb SXT genome and identified two genes within SXT, now designated mosA and mosT (for maintenance of SXT Antitoxin and Toxin), that promote SXT stability. These two genes, which lack similarity to any previously characterized genes, encode a novel toxin-antitoxin pair; expression of mosT greatly impaired cell growth and mosA expression ameliorated MosT toxicity. Factors that promote SXT excision upregulate mosAT expression. Thus, when the element is extrachromosomal and vulnerable to loss, SXT activates a TA module to minimize the formation of SXT-free cells