Radiative Decay of a Long-Lived Particle and Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis

The effects of radiatively decaying, long-lived particles on big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) are discussed. If high-energy photons are emitted after BBN, they may change the abundances of the light elements through photodissociation processes, which may result in a significant discrepancy between the BBN theory and observation. We calculate the abundances of the light elements, including the effects of photodissociation induced by a radiatively decaying particle, but neglecting the hadronic branching ratio. Using these calculated abundances, we derive a constraint on such particles by comparing our theoretical results with observations. Taking into account the recent controversies regarding the observations of the light-element abundances, we derive constraints for various combinations of the measurements. We also discuss several models which predict such radiatively decaying particles, and we derive constraints on such models.Comment: Published version in Phys. Rev. D. Typos in figure captions correcte

RANTES/CCL5 and Risk for Coronary Events: Results from the MONICA/KORA Augsburg Case-Cohort, Athero-Express and CARDIoGRAM Studies

BACKGROUND: The chemokine RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T-cell expressed and secreted)/CCL5 is involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in mice, whereas less is known in humans. We hypothesised that its relevance for atherosclerosis should be reflected by associations between CCL5 gene variants, RANTES serum concentrations and protein levels in atherosclerotic plaques and risk for coronary events. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a case-cohort study within the population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg studies. Baseline RANTES serum levels were measured in 363 individuals with incident coronary events and 1,908 non-cases (mean follow-up: 10.2±4.8 years). Cox proportional hazard models adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, metabolic factors and lifestyle factors revealed no significant association between RANTES and incident coronary events (HR [95% CI] for increasing RANTES tertiles 1.0, 1.03 [0.75-1.42] and 1.11 [0.81-1.54]). None of six CCL5 single nucleotide polymorphisms and no common haplotype showed significant associations with coronary events. Also in the CARDIoGRAM study (>22,000 cases, >60,000 controls), none of these CCL5 SNPs was significantly associated with coronary artery disease. In the prospective Athero-Express biobank study, RANTES plaque levels were measured in 606 atherosclerotic lesions from patients who underwent carotid endarterectomy. RANTES content in atherosclerotic plaques was positively associated with macrophage infiltration and inversely associated with plaque calcification. However, there was no significant association between RANTES content in plaques and risk for coronary events (mean follow-up 2.8±0.8 years). CONCLUSIONS: High RANTES plaque levels were associated with an unstable plaque phenotype. However, the absence of associations between (i) RANTES serum levels, (ii) CCL5 genotypes and (iii) RANTES content in carotid plaques and either coronary artery disease or incident coronary events in our cohorts suggests that RANTES may not be a novel coronary risk biomarker. However, the potential relevance of RANTES levels in platelet-poor plasma needs to be investigated in further studies

RANTES/CCL5 and risk for coronary events: Results from the MONICA/KORA Augsburg case-cohort, Athero-express and CARDIoGRAM studies

Background: The chemokine RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T-cell expressed and secreted)/CCL5 is involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in mice, whereas less is known in humans. We hypothesised that its relevance for atherosclerosis should be reflected by associations between CCL5 gene variants, RANTES serum concentrations and protein levels in atherosclerotic plaques and risk for coronary events. Methods and Findings: We conducted a case-cohort study within the population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg studies. Baseline RANTES serum levels were measured in 363 individuals with incident coronary events and 1,908 non-cases (mean follow-up: 10.2±

The health care and life sciences community profile for dataset descriptions

Access to consistent, high-quality metadata is critical to finding, understanding, and reusing scientific data. However, while there are many relevant vocabularies for the annotation of a dataset, none sufficiently captures all the necessary metadata. This prevents uniform indexing and querying of dataset repositories. Towards providing a practical guide for producing a high quality description of biomedical datasets, the W3C Semantic Web for Health Care and the Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG) identified Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabularies that could be used to specify common metadata elements and their value sets. The resulting guideline covers elements of description, identification, attribution, versioning, provenance, and content summarization. This guideline reuses existing vocabularies, and is intended to meet key functional requirements including indexing, discovery, exchange, query, and retrieval of datasets, thereby enabling the publication of FAIR data. The resulting metadata profile is generic and could be used by other domains with an interest in providing machine readable descriptions of versioned datasets

Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Electric-Arc Airspikes for Blunt and Sharp Bodies at Mach 5

Joint experimental and numerical investigation is performed to analyze effect of a localized DC-arc discharge upstream of blunt and sharp axisymmetric bodies on the flowfield structure and aerodynamic drag at Mach 5. DC arc power of W = 1.5 kW was realized for the flow control using thin tungsten-electrodes. Experimental investigations are conducted in the Ludwieg Tube Facility at DLR Göttingen. The numerical calculations are performed in the framework of the unsteady Euler equations

Influence of TAL-TATS surgery on energy production of Triceps Surea – a musculoskeletal modeling evaluation

Introduction Cerebral palsy is the most common paediatric motor disability in Europe [1]. It is known to cause structural and functional gait deformities, such as equinus foot and toewalking. A common surgical option to rehabilitate toewalking is Tendo Achilles Lengthening (TAL) surgery. However, this procedure can lead to plantar flexor weakening, which can develop into a drop-foot or even crouch gait post-surgery [2]. To prevent these complications, a previous study recommended adding Tibialis Anterior Tendon Shortening (TATS) to the surgical procedure [3]. The combined TAL-TATS procedure has shown improvement towards typically developing gait patterns after surgery during early and midterm evaluations regarding clinical and overall gait scores [3,4], but it remains unknown how the procedure affects muscle function of the triceps surae. As conventional gait analysis does not provide detailed information on single muscles, this study proposes a musculoskeletal modelling approach, which will allow more in-depth investigation of muscle function before and after TAL-TATS intervention. Research Question Does the TAL-TATS procedure lead to weakening of the triceps surae (as shown by a reduction in energy production) during gait? Methods 3D gait analysis outcomes of 10 patients who underwent a combined TAL-TATS procedure (5 years 6 months ± 1 year 1 month post-surgery [mean±SD]) were analysed using the Twente Lower Extremity Model v1.1 from the AnyBody repository (5 segments; 5 degrees of freedom; 159 muscle fibers in 37 muscle groups; simple muscles; polynomial recruitment solver power 3). Resulting joint moments of every muscle fiber with respect to a certain joint were determined in order to compute the power of a muscle. This enabled computation of muscle moments of biarticular muscles at both joints separately. Muscle power was computed by multiplying these moments with the corresponding joint velocity. Integration of this power over the time of interest revealed the produced or absorbed energy of a muscle per joint [5]. Pre-operative muscle power over the ankle join of the gastrocnemius and soleus were compared against postoperative findings, using paired t-tests and statistical parametric mapping. Results Outcomes showed no significant reduction in produced energy during push off over the ankle joint for both Gastrocnemius (p=0.81) and Soleus (p=0.32), while there was a significant reduction in absorbed energy by the triceps surae during the load-response phase (p<0.001), when comparing pre- to postoperative gait (Figure 1). Discussion In conclusion, no indicators for reduced energy production of the triceps surae during gait after TAL-TATS procedure were found. The common fear of weakening plantar flexors after lengthening is not supported by the current findings. This outcome supports previous statements that the combined TAL-TATS procedure could prevent plantar flexor weakening after surgery. Further validation of the proposed method and further investigation of the TAL-TATS procedure are needed to establish added value of TAL-TATS to TAL