We must know. We will know

The after-dinner talk has by now become a tradition of this Conference series on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum. On this occasion, I have tried to combine a free-style and (hopefully) amusing presentation with deep questions of physics especially connected with the dynamics of strong interaction. To this end some masterpieces of classical music (by Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak, Stravinsky ...) and pop music (by Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton) were employed to illustrate certain aspects of physics. By no means was this presentation (nor this paper) intended as a comprehensive review of the different topics examined during the Conference, but rather a call for further thinking on the sinergy of different branches of physics and the excitement of foreseen discoveries in a not too distant future.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, After-dinner talk given at the IX Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Structure, Madrid, August 30th to September 3rd 201

Searching for hidden sectors in multiparticle production at the LHC

Most signatures of new physics in colliders have been studied so far on the transverse plane with respect to the beam direction. In this work however we study the impact of a hidden sector beyond the Standard Model (SM) on inclusive (pseudo)rapidity correlations and moments of the multiplicity distributions, with special emphasis in the LHC results.Comment: Presentation given at ICHEP 2014 Valenci

The ridge effect and three-particle correlations

Pseudorapidity and azimuthal three-particle correlations are studied based on a correlated-cluster model of multiparticle production. The model provides a common framework for correlations in proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions allowing easy comparison with the measurements. It is shown that azimuthal cluster correlations are definitely required in order to understand three-particle correlations in the near-side ridge effect. This is similar to the explanation of the ridge phenomenon found in our previous analysis of two-particle correlations and generalizes the model to higher-order correlations.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1610.0640

Molecular characterization of the synapse from a proteomic perspective

The synapse is the most characteristic feature of the brain that allows the flow of information encoding our cognitive functions, behavior and memory. Slight perturbations in synaptic function can derive in wide range of psychiatric, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the synaptic proteome and interactome in order to gain insights in the molecular mechanisms underlying synaptic function. To this end, we exploited the potential of multiple advanced mass spectrometry methodologies for protein identification, quantification, and protein interaction determination. In chapter 2, I investigated the molecular development of the synapse. This process requires prominent changes of the synaptic proteome and potentially involves thousands of different proteins at every synapse. We analyzed the cortical synaptic membrane proteome of juvenile, adolescent and adult mice brains using iTRAQ-based DDA quantitative proteomics. In several cases, proteins from a single functional molecular entity, e.g., subunits of the NMDA receptor, showed differences in their temporal regulation, which may reflect specific synaptic development features of connectivity, strength and plasticity. We also evaluated the function of Cxadr, a protein with high expression level at early stages and a fast decline in expression during neuronal development. Knockdown of the expression of Cxadr in cultured primary mouse neurons revealed a significant decrease in synapse density. Altogether, these results reveal the expression profile of synaptic proteome during development and provide new insights into the molecular processes underlying synaptogenesis and synapse maturation. In chapter 3, I explored the mechanism behind the synaptic modulation mediated by the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5. mGluR5 plays a major role in the modulation of synaptic function and plasticity, as well as in several brain disorders. Despite robust pre-clinical data, mGluR5 antagonists failed in several clinical trials, highlighting the need for a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying mGluR5 function. Using a proteomic approach, we determined the molecular response of the synapse to a reduction of mGluR5 activity by pharmacological inhibition and gene deletion. In both cases, the most prominent response of the synaptic proteome was the change in protein expression of key mitochondrial pathways. Together with this, we observed morphological and functional alterations of mitochondria in mGluR5 KO synapses. Our findings provide new insight into a functional connection of mGluR5 and specific mitochondrial function. In chapter 4, I applied XL-MS as entry into the synapse interactome, in particular to reveal the architecture and assembly of synaptic protein complexes. As a result, we generated to the first large-scale cross-linking repository in the brain. The reliability of the data was validated by several approaches as we deemed necessary for a recent methodology. In addition, a large part of the crosslink data contains novel information which allowed us to identify novel protein partners, to model protein conformational dynamics, and to delineate within and between protein interactions of main synaptic constituents, such as Camk2, the AMPA-type glutamate receptor, and associated proteins. Given the molecular complexity of the synapse and the large amount and depth of the data generated, we provided the complete dataset as an interactive web-based platform for further investigations (http://xlink.cncr.nl). Together, we generated one of the largest cross-linking collections that provided new entries into exploration of protein structures and interactions. Collectively, the application and development of multiple proteomic methodologies allowed us to reveal several aspects of the molecular architecture of the synapse, including protein composition, function, structure and interaction. Beyond the new insights uncovered for specific proteins in this thesis, the data resources generated can be further used for probing additional proteins and contributes to improve our understanding of synapse function and brain disease

A heuristic study of the distribution of primes in short and not-so-short intervals

A numerical study on the distributions of primes in short intervals of length $h$ over the natural numbers $N$ is presented. Based on Cram\'er's model in Number Theory, we obtain a heuristic expression applicable when $h \gg \log{N}$ but $h \ll N$, providing support to the Montgomery and Soundararajan conjecture on the variance of the prime distribution at this scale.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NURSING SAFETY CULTURE AND PATIENT PERCEPTION OF SAFETY IN INPATIENT UNITS OF AN ACADEMIC SPECIALTY HOSPITAL

The objective of this research was to analyze the relationship between nursing safety work culture in inpatient nursing units of a specialty academic hospital and their patients’ perception of safety using quantitative and qualitative methods. The aim of the quantitative study was to quantitatively evaluate whether nursing safety culture, as measured on the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPS) safety questions of the institutional employee opinion survey, was associated with patients’ perception of safety during their inpatient care, as measured by responses on the inpatient Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. The aim of the qualitative study was to explore patients’ and nurses’ perceptions of the experiences about safety through individual interviews. The setting of the study was 14 inpatient nursing units. The sample for the quantitative study was these 14 units. The selected HSOPS and HCAHPS question scores were used for selected domains for a regression analysis. For the qualitative study, 4 units were selected from these 14 units based on their HCAHPS score (top, lowest, and two average performers). A total of 14 nurses and 12 patients were interviewed from these selected units. The quantitative results indicated that there was no significant association between any of the domains of the nurses’ safety culture and the domains of patients’ perception of safety. A possible explanation was the limited vii statistical power, given the fixed sample size of 14 units. In the qualitative study, the nursing themes were the following: High workload and insufficient staff, nurses identified safety risks, and safety climate is favorable. The patient themes were the following: Patients identified safety risks, Communication and caring from nurses is appreciated, Patients noticed nurses work as a team, Insufficient staffing not an issue for patients. The conclusions from the study was that nurses are working in a favorable safety climate and teamwork is important because both nurses and patients recognized it as part of safety, patients perceived safe care and felt that nurses genuinely cared for them, and working and staffing are the highest safety priority for nurses

Three-particle correlations in QCD jets and beyond

In this paper, we present a more detailed version of our previous work for three-particle correlations in quark and gluon jets [1]. We give theoretical results for this observable in the double logarithmic approximation and the modified leading logarithmic approximation. In both resummation schemes, we use the formalism of the generating functional and solve the evolution equations analytically from the steepest descent evaluation of the one-particle distribution. In addition, in this paper we include predictions beyond the limiting spectrum approximation and study this observable near the hump of the single inclusive distribution. We thus provide a further test of the local parton hadron duality (LPHD) and make predictions for the LHC. The computation of higher rank correlators is presented in the double logarithmic approximation and shown to be rather cumbersome.Comment: 34 pages and 14 figure

Non-perturbative effects in WIMP scattering off nuclei in the NMSSM

We explore a scenario in the Next-to-Minimal-Supersymmetric-Standard-Model (NMSSM) with both a light O(10) GeV neutralino and a CP-odd Higgs boson with significant coupling to down-type fermions, evading all current B physics, LEP and WMAP bounds. Motivated by a possible slight lepton universality breaking hinted in Upsilon decays, we consider the effect of the mixing of eta(b) resonances with the pseudoscalar Higgs on the spin-dependent scattering neutralino cross section off nucleons. We conclude that this mechanism could be relevant provided that non-perturbative effects enhance the effective eta(b)-nucleon coupling, taking over velocity/q^2 suppression factors, perhaps giving a new insight into the current controversial situation concerning direct search experiments of dark matter.Comment: We have incorporated a discussion on instanton-induced effects as a possible non-perturbative contribution to WIMP scattering off nuclei. 6 pages, 2 figure

Is it possible to discriminate the body weight loss?

Most studies have described how the weight loss is when different treatments are compared (1-3), while others have also compared the weight loss by sex (4), or have taken into account psychosocial (5) and lifestyle (6, 7) variables. However, no studies have examined the interaction of different variables and the importance of them in the weight loss