General NMSSM signatures at the LHC

Peer reviewe

Prevalence and determinants of anxiety and depression in end stage renal disease (ESRD). A comparison between ESRD patients with and without coexisting diabetes mellitus

Objective: To compare anxiety and/or depressive symptoms between patients with end-stage renal disease with and without comorbid diabetes and identify factors associated with symptoms of distress in this population. Methods: Data from two studies (conducted between 2010 and 2014) were pooled. A total of 526 patients on hemodialysis (68.8% with diabetes) completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Elevated symptoms were defined as HADS-Anxiety or HADS-Depression ≥ 8. Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used to estimate associations between diabetic status, and other socio-demographic and clinical factors with baseline clinical anxiety and depression. Results: A total of 233 (45.4%) reported elevated anxiety symptoms and 256 (49.9%) reported elevated depressive symptoms sufficient for caseness. Rates were not different between patients with and without diabetes. Risk for clinical depression was higher in patients who were single/unpartnered (OR = 1.828), Chinese vs. Malay (OR = 2.05), or had lower albumin levels (OR = 0.932). None of the parameters were associated with anxiety caseness. Conclusion: Sociocultural factors rather than comorbid burden may help identify patients at risk for depression. The high rates of anxiety and depression underlie the importance for monitoring and intervention in dialysis care

Seasonal variation in breast cancer diagnosis in Singapore

This study investigates seasonality in the diagnosis of 3219 female breast carcinoma cases reported between 1995–8 in Singapore. There is little evidence of marked seasonal variation. Angular regression suggested that observed differences in peak diagnosis with respect to menopausal status, tumour size, ER and PR status may be chance. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co

Heated Motorized Stage for Nanoscale Thin Film Deposition

ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Fall 2015Thin film deposition is a technology of applying a very thin film of material onto a substrate surface to be coated, or onto a previously deposited coating to form layers. As a modified Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) method, Spatial ALD greatly improves the efficiency of the process by separating the half-reactions spatially instead of through the use of purge steps in convectional ALD. This paper proposes the use of heated motorized stage as a research prototype to further study the effect of deposition conditions such as gap size, gap alignment and substrate temperature on the SALD coating results. This strategy utilized three stepper motors and high precision non-contact gap sensors to control gap alignment and gap size between the substrate and the depositor. The details of the involved methodology, engineering analysis, validation of the final design and the design critiques are discussed in this paper.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117338/1/ME450-F15-Project19-FinalReport.pd

S-nitrosylation of endogenous protein tyrosine phosphatases in endothelial insulin signaling.

Nitric oxide (NO) exerts its biological function through S-nitrosylation of cellular proteins. Due to the labile nature of this modification under physiological condition, identification of S-nitrosylated residue in enzymes involved in signaling regulation remains technically challenging. The present study investigated whether intrinsic NO produced in endothelium-derived MS-1 cells response to insulin stimulation might target endogenous protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs). For this, we have developed an approach using a synthetic reagent that introduces a phenylacetamidyl moiety on S-nitrosylated Cys, followed by detection with anti-phenylacetamidyl Cys (PAC) antibody. Coupling with sequential blocking of free thiols with multiple iodoacetyl-based Cys-reactive chemicals, we employed this PAC-switch method to show that endogenous SHP-2 and PTP1B were S-nitrosylated in MS-1 cells exposed to insulin. The mass spectrometry detected a phenylacetamidyl moiety specifically present on the active-site Cys463 of SHP-2. Focusing on the regulatory role of PTP1B, we showed S-nitrosylation to be the principal Cys reversible redox modification in endothelial insulin signaling. The PAC-switch method in an imaging format illustrated that a pool of S-nitrosylated PTP1B was colocalized with activated insulin receptor to the cell periphery, and that such event was endothelial NO synthase (eNOS)-dependent. Moreover, ectopic expression of the C215S mutant of PTP1B that mimics the active-site Cys215 S-nitrosylated form restored insulin responsiveness in eNOS-ablated cells, which was otherwise insensitive to insulin stimulation. This work not only introduces a new method that explores the role of physiological NO in regulating signal transduction, but also highlights a positive NO effect on promoting insulin responsiveness through S-nitrosylation of PTP1B's active-site Cys215

Simple model for decay of superdeformed nuclei

Recent theoretical investigations of the decay mechanism out of a superdeformed nuclear band have yielded qualitatively different results, depending on the relative values of the relevant decay widths. We present a simple two-level model for the dynamics of the tunneling between the superdeformed and normal-deformed bands, which treats decay and tunneling processes on an equal footing. The previous theoretical results are shown to correspond to coherent and incoherent limits of the full tunneling dynamics. Our model accounts for experimental data in both the A~150 mass region, where the tunneling dynamics is coherent, and in the A~190 mass region, where the tunneling dynamics is incoherent.Comment: 4 page

Boron Nitride Monolayer: A Strain-Tunable Nanosensor

The influence of triaxial in-plane strain on the electronic properties of a hexagonal boron-nitride sheet is investigated using density functional theory. Different from graphene, the triaxial strain localizes the molecular orbitals of the boron-nitride flake in its center depending on the direction of the applied strain. The proposed technique for localizing the molecular orbitals that are close to the Fermi level in the center of boron nitride flakes can be used to actualize engineered nanosensors, for instance, to selectively detect gas molecules. We show that the central part of the strained flake adsorbs polar molecules more strongly as compared with an unstrained sheet.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

Widely Tunable Berry curvature in the Magnetic Semimetal Cr1+dTe2

Magnetic semimetals have increasingly emerged as lucrative platforms hosting spin-based topological phenomena in real and momentum spaces. Of particular interest is the emergence of Berry curvature, whose geometric origin, accessibility from Hall transport experiments, and material tunability, bodes well for new physics and practical devices. Cr1+dTe2, a self-intercalated magnetic transition metal dichalcogenide, TMD, exhibits attractive natural attributes relevant to such applications, including topological magnetism, tunable electron filling, magnetic frustration etc. While recent studies have explored real-space Berry curvature effects in this material, similar considerations of momentum-space Berry curvature are lacking. Here, we systematically investigate the electronic structure and transport properties of epitaxial Cr1+dTe2 thin films over a wide range of doping, d between 0.33 and 0.71. Spectroscopic experiments reveal the presence of a characteristic semi-metallic band region near the Brillouin Zone edge, which shows a rigid band like energy shift as a function of d. Transport experiments show that the intrinsic component of the anomalous Hall effect, AHE, is sizable, and undergoes a sign flip across d. Finally, density functional theory calculations establish a causal link between the observed doping evolution of the band structure and AHE: the AHE sign flip is shown to emerge from the sign change of the Berry curvature, as the semi-metallic band region crosses the Fermi energy. Our findings underscore the increasing relevance of momentum-space Berry curvature in magnetic TMDs and provide a unique platform for intertwining topological physics in real and momentum spaces

Novel Orientational Ordering and Reentrant Metallicity in KxC60 Monolayers for 3 <= x <= 5

We have performed local STM studies on potassium-doped C60 (KxC60) monolayers over a wide regime of the phase diagram. As K content increases from x = 3 to 5, KxC60 monolayers undergo metal-insulator-metal reentrant phase transitions and exhibit a variety of novel orientational orderings. The most striking new structure has a pinwheel-like 7-molecule unit cell in insulating K4+dC60. We propose that the driving mechanism for the orientational ordering in KxC60 is the lowering of electron kinetic energy through maximization of the overlap of neighboring molecular orbitals over the entire doping range x = 3 to 5. In the insulating and metallic phases this gives rise to orbital versions of the superexchange and double-exchange interactions respectively.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure

Spreading Width for Decay out of a Superdeformed Band

The attenuation factor F responsible for the decay out of a superdeformed (SD) band is calculated with the help of a statistical model. This factor is given by 1/F = (1 + Gamma(down) / Gamma(S)). Here, Gamma(S) is the width for the collective E2 transition within the superdeformed band, and Gamma(down) is the spreading width which describes the mixing between a state in the SD band and the normally deformed (ND) states of equal spin. The attenuation factor F is independent of the statistical E1 decay widths Gamma(N) of the ND states provided that the Gamma(N) are much larger than both Gamma(down) and Gamma(S). This condition is generically met. Previously measured values of F are used to determine Gamma(down).Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letter