243 research outputs found
Isolation and characterization of pokeweed antiviral protein mutations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: identification of residues important for toxicity.
Observation of TeV Gamma Rays from the Crab Nebula with Milagro Using a New Background Rejection Technique
The recent advances in TeV gamma-ray astronomy are largely the result of the
ability to differentiate between extensive air showers generated by gamma rays
and hadronic cosmic rays. Air Cherenkov telescopes have developed and perfected
the "imaging" technique over the past several decades. However until now no
background rejection method has been successfully used in an air shower array
to detect a source of TeV gamma rays. We report on a method to differentiate
hadronic air showers from electromagnetic air showers in the Milagro gamma ray
observatory, based on the ability to detect the energetic particles in an
extensive air shower. The technique is used to detect TeV emission from the
Crab nebula. The flux from the Crab is estimated to be 2.68(+-0.42stat +-
1.4sys) x10^{-7} (E/1TeV)^{-2.59} m^{-2} s^{-1} TeV^{-1}, where the spectral
index is assumed to be as given by the HEGRA collaboration.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journa
Paradigm of tunable clustering using binarization of consensus partition matrices (Bi-CoPaM) for gene discovery
Copyright @ 2013 Abu-Jamous et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Clustering analysis has a growing role in the study of co-expressed genes for gene discovery. Conventional binary and fuzzy clustering do not embrace the biological reality that some genes may be irrelevant for a problem and not be assigned to a cluster, while other genes may participate in several biological functions and should simultaneously belong to multiple clusters. Also, these algorithms cannot generate tight clusters that focus on their cores or wide clusters that overlap and contain all possibly relevant genes. In this paper, a new clustering paradigm is proposed. In this paradigm, all three eventualities of a gene being exclusively assigned to a single cluster, being assigned to multiple clusters, and being not assigned to any cluster are possible. These possibilities are realised through the primary novelty of the introduction of tunable binarization techniques. Results from multiple clustering experiments are aggregated to generate one fuzzy consensus partition matrix (CoPaM), which is then binarized to obtain the final binary partitions. This is referred to as Binarization of Consensus Partition Matrices (Bi-CoPaM). The method has been tested with a set of synthetic datasets and a set of five real yeast cell-cycle datasets. The results demonstrate its validity in generating relevant tight, wide, and complementary clusters that can meet requirements of different gene discovery studies.National Institute for Health Researc
Symphytum Species: A Comprehensive Review on Chemical Composition, Food Applications and Phytopharmacology
Symphytum species belongs to the Boraginaceae family and have been used for centuries for
bone breakages, sprains and rheumatism, liver problems, gastritis, ulcers, skin problems, joint pain
and contusions, wounds, gout, hematomas and thrombophlebitis. Considering the innumerable
potentialities of the Symphytum species and their widespread use in the world, it is extremely
important to provide data compiling the available literature to identify the areas of intense research
and the main gaps in order to design future studies. The present review aims at summarizing the
main data on the therapeutic indications of the Symphytum species based on the current evidence,
also emphasizing data on both the e cacy and adverse e ects. The present review was carried
out by consulting PubMed (Medline), Web of Science, Embase, Scopus, Cochrane Database, Science
Direct and Google Scholar (as a search engine) databases to retrieve the most updated articles on this
topic. All articles were carefully analyzed by the authors to assess their strengths and weaknesses,
and to select the most useful ones for the purpose of review, prioritizing articles published from 1956
to 2018. The pharmacological e ects of the Symphytum species are attributed to several chemical
compounds, among them allantoin, phenolic compounds, glycopeptides, polysaccharides and some
toxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids. Not less important to highlight are the risks associated with its use.
In fact, there is increasing consumption of over-the-counter drugs, which when associated with
conventional drugs can cause serious and even fatal adverse events. Although clinical trials sustain
the folk topical application of Symphytum species in musculoskeletal and blunt injuries, with minor
adverse e ects, its antimicrobial potency was still poorly investigated. Further studies are needed to
assess the antimicrobial spectrum of Symphytum species and to characterize the active molecules both
in vitro and in vivo
Calibration of the Milagro Cosmic Ray Telescope
The Milagro detector is an air shower array which uses the water Cherenkov
technique and is capable of continuously monitoring the sky at energies near 1
TeV. The detector consists of 20000 metric tons of pure water instrumented with
723 photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs). The PMTs are arranged in a two-layer
structure on a lattice of 3 m spacing covering 5000 area. The direction
of the shower is determined from the relative timing of the PMT signals,
necessitating a common time reference and amplitude slewing corrections to
improve the time resolution. The calibration system to provide these consists
of a pulsed laser driving 30 diffusing light sources deployed in the pond to
allow cross-calibration of the PMTs. The system is capable of calibrating times
and the pulse-heights from the PMTs using the time-over-threshold technique.
The absolute energy scale is provided using single muons passing through the
detector. The description of the calibration system of the Milagro detector and
its prototype Milagrito will be presented.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to the XXVI International Cosmic Ray Conferenc
Search for Short Duration Bursts of TeV Gamma Rays with the Milagrito Telescope
The Milagrito water Cherenkov telescope operated for over a year. The most
probable gamma-ray energy was ~1 TeV and the trigger rate was as high as 400
Hz. We have developed an efficient technique for searching the entire sky for
short duration bursts of TeV photons. Such bursts may result from "traditional"
gamma-ray bursts that were not in the field-of-view of any other instruments,
the evaporation of primordial black holes, or some as yet undiscovered
phenomenon. We have begun to search the Milagrito data set for bursts of
duration 10 seconds. Here we will present the technique and the expected
results. Final results will be presented at the conference.Comment: submitted to XXVI International Cosmic Ray Conference, Salt Lake Cit
Instrumented Water Tanks can Improve Air Shower Detector Sensitivity
Previous works have shown that water Cherenkov detectors have superior
sensitivity to those of scintillation counters as applied to detecting
extensive air showers (EAS). This is in large part due to their much higher
sensitivity to EAS photons which are more than five times more numerous than
EAS electrons. Large area water Cherenkov detectors can be constructed
relatively cheaply and operated reliably. A sparse detector array has been
designed which uses these types of detectors to substantially increase the area
over which the Milagro Gamma Ray Observatory collects EAS information.
Improvements to the Milagro detector's performance characteristics and
sensitivity derived from this array and preliminary results from a prototype
array currently installed near the Milagro detector will be presented.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to XXVI International Cosmic Ray Conference, Salt
Lake Cit
Study of the Shadows of the Moon and the Sun with VHE Cosmic Rays
Milagrito, a prototype for the Milagro detector, operated for 15 months in
1997-8 and collected 8.9 billion events. It was the first extensive air shower
(EAS) array sensitive to showers intiated by primaries with energy below 1 TeV.
The shadows of the sun and moon observed with cosmic rays can be used to study
systematic pointing shifts and measure the angular resolution of EAS arrays.
Below a few TeV, the paths of cosmic rays coming toward the earth are bent by
the helio- and geo-magnetic fields. This is expected to distort and displace
the shadows of the sun and the moon. The moon shadow, offset from the nominal
(undeflected) position, has been observed with high statistical significance in
Milagrito. This can be used to establish energy calibrations, as well as to
search for the anti-matter content of the VHE cosmic ray flux. The shadow of
the sun has also been observed with high significance.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to XXVI International Cosmic Ray Conference, Salt
Lake Cit
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