1,493 research outputs found
Dysbiosis of the vaginal microbiota and higher vaginal kynurenine/tryptophan ratio reveals an association with Chlamydia trachomatis genital infections
© 2018 Ziklo, Vidgen, Taing, Huston and Timms. The natural course of Chlamydia trachomatis urogenital tract infections varies between individuals. While protective immunity can occur, some women can become reinfected, contributing to the development of severe pathology. While the reasons for these differences are unknown, an individual's response to induced interferon-γ (IFN-γ) is suggested to be critical. IFN-γ induction of the enzyme indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase, which depletes tryptophan, may be the key. One hypothesis suggests that indole-producing bacteria in the vaginal microbiota can provide a substrate for the Chlamydia to synthesize tryptophan, rescuing the Chlamydia from host IFN-γ attack. We studied a cohort of 25 women who were either, Chlamydia negative, Chlamydia positive with a single infection, or Chlamydia positive with repeated infection, to test our hypothesis. We characterized their vaginal microbiota, cytokine response, as well as their tryptophan, kynurenine and indole concentrations directly in vaginal secretions. We found that C. trachomatis urogenital tract infections either initial or repeat infections, were associated with elevated vaginal kynurenine/tryptophan ratios, primarily as a result of elevated kynurenine levels. In addition, vaginal microbiota of community state type (CST) IV showed significantly lower vaginal tryptophan levels compared to CST I and III, which might be related to a higher abundance of indole producers found within this group. Furthermore, we found a higher abundance of indole producers in women who cleared their Chlamydia infection post antibiotic treatment. This study demonstrates for the first time in vivo, the association between high vaginal kynurenine/tryptophan ratios and C. trachomatis infections. In addition, tryptophan depletion was associated with vaginal microbiota of CST IV
Microservice Transition and its Granularity Problem: A Systematic Mapping Study
Microservices have gained wide recognition and acceptance in software
industries as an emerging architectural style for autonomic, scalable, and more
reliable computing. The transition to microservices has been highly motivated
by the need for better alignment of technical design decisions with improving
value potentials of architectures. Despite microservices' popularity, research
still lacks disciplined understanding of transition and consensus on the
principles and activities underlying "micro-ing" architectures. In this paper,
we report on a systematic mapping study that consolidates various views,
approaches and activities that commonly assist in the transition to
microservices. The study aims to provide a better understanding of the
transition; it also contributes a working definition of the transition and
technical activities underlying it. We term the transition and technical
activities leading to microservice architectures as microservitization. We then
shed light on a fundamental problem of microservitization: microservice
granularity and reasoning about its adaptation as first-class entities. This
study reviews state-of-the-art and -practice related to reasoning about
microservice granularity; it reviews modelling approaches, aspects considered,
guidelines and processes used to reason about microservice granularity. This
study identifies opportunities for future research and development related to
reasoning about microservice granularity.Comment: 36 pages including references, 6 figures, and 3 table
Studying the Underlying Event in Drell-Yan and High Transverse Momentum Jet Production at the Tevatron
We study the underlying event in proton-antiproton collisions by examining
the behavior of charged particles (transverse momentum pT > 0.5 GeV/c,
pseudorapidity |\eta| < 1) produced in association with large transverse
momentum jets (~2.2 fb-1) or with Drell-Yan lepton-pairs (~2.7 fb-1) in the
Z-boson mass region (70 < M(pair) < 110 GeV/c2) as measured by CDF at 1.96 TeV
center-of-mass energy. We use the direction of the lepton-pair (in Drell-Yan
production) or the leading jet (in high-pT jet production) in each event to
define three regions of \eta-\phi space; toward, away, and transverse, where
\phi is the azimuthal scattering angle. For Drell-Yan production (excluding the
leptons) both the toward and transverse regions are very sensitive to the
underlying event. In high-pT jet production the transverse region is very
sensitive to the underlying event and is separated into a MAX and MIN
transverse region, which helps separate the hard component (initial and
final-state radiation) from the beam-beam remnant and multiple parton
interaction components of the scattering. The data are corrected to the
particle level to remove detector effects and are then compared with several
QCD Monte-Carlo models. The goal of this analysis is to provide data that can
be used to test and improve the QCD Monte-Carlo models of the underlying event
that are used to simulate hadron-hadron collisions.Comment: Submitted to Phys.Rev.
Diffractive Dijet Production at sqrt(s)=630 and 1800 GeV at the Fermilab Tevatron
We report a measurement of the diffractive structure function of
the antiproton obtained from a study of dijet events produced in association
with a leading antiproton in collisions at GeV at the
Fermilab Tevatron. The ratio of at GeV to
obtained from a similar measurement at GeV is compared with
expectations from QCD factorization and with theoretical predictions. We also
report a measurement of the (-Pomeron) and ( of parton in
Pomeron) dependence of at GeV. In the region
, GeV and , is
found to be of the form , which obeys
- factorization.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pages, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Letter
Precision measurement of the top quark mass from dilepton events at CDF II
We report a measurement of the top quark mass, M_t, in the dilepton decay
channel of
using an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb^{-1} of p\bar{p} collisions collected
with the CDF II detector. We apply a method that convolutes a leading-order
matrix element with detector resolution functions to form event-by-event
likelihoods; we have enhanced the leading-order description to describe the
effects of initial-state radiation. The joint likelihood is the product of the
likelihoods from 78 candidate events in this sample, which yields a measurement
of M_{t} = 164.5 \pm 3.9(\textrm{stat.}) \pm 3.9(\textrm{syst.})
\mathrm{GeV}/c^2, the most precise measurement of M_t in the dilepton channel.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, version includes changes made prior to
publication by journa
Measurement of the Ratios of Branching Fractions B(Bs -> Ds pi pi pi) / B(Bd -> Dd pi pi pi) and B(Bs -> Ds pi) / B(Bd -> Dd pi)
Using 355 pb^-1 of data collected by the CDF II detector in \ppbar collisions
at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron, we study the fully
reconstructed hadronic decays B -> D pi and B -> D pi pi pi. We present the
first measurement of the ratio of branching fractions B(Bs -> Ds pi pi pi) /
B(Bd -> Dd pi pi pi) = 1.05 pm 0.10 (stat) pm 0.22 (syst). We also update our
measurement of B(Bs -> Ds pi) / B(Bd -> Dd pi) to 1.13 pm 0.08 (stat) pm 0.23
(syst) improving the statistical uncertainty by more than a factor of two. We
find B(Bs -> Ds pi) = [3.8 pm 0.3 (stat) pm 1.3 (syst)] \times 10^{-3} and B(Bs
-> Ds pi pi pi) = [8.4 pm 0.8 (stat) pm 3.2 (syst)] \times 10^{-3}.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
Cross Section Measurements of High- Dilepton Final-State Processes Using a Global Fitting Method
We present a new method for studying high- dilepton events
(, , ) and simultaneously
extracting the production cross sections of , , and p\bar{p} \to \ztt at a center-of-mass energy of TeV. We perform a likelihood fit to the dilepton data in a parameter
space defined by the missing transverse energy and the number of jets in the
event. Our results, which use of data recorded with the CDF
II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, are pb, pb, and
\sigma(\ztt) =291^{+50}_{-46} pb.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures, to be submitted to PRD-R
Top Quark Mass Measurement from Dilepton Events at CDF II with the Matrix-Element Method
We describe a measurement of the top quark mass using events with two charged
leptons collected by the CDF II detector from collisions with TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron. The likelihood in top mass is
calculated for each event by convoluting the leading order matrix element
describing
with detector resolution functions. The presence of background events in the
data sample is modeled using similar calculations involving the matrix elements
for major background processes. In a data sample with integrated luminosity of
340 pb, we observe 33 candidate events and measure This
measurement represents the first application of this method to events with two
charged leptons and is the most precise single measurement of the top quark
mass in this channel.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figure
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