Survival of non-Western first generations immigrants with stomach cancer in North East Netherlands

Background: Isolated groups, such as first generation non-Western immigrants, are at risk for suboptimal utilisation of the health care system resulting in a worse outcome. Methods: From 1989 to 2007, all patients with stomach cancer were selected from the Comprehensive Cancer Centre North-East cancer registry. Associations between country of birth and patient, tumour and treatment characteristics were determined using χ2 analysis. Relative survival analysis was used to estimate relative excess risk of dying according to country of birth (non-Western vs Western). Results: After adjusting for confounding factors (patient, tumour and treatment related), the risk of dying was lower for first generation non-Western immigrants (relative excess risk 0.55, 95% confidence interval 0.43–0.70) compared with Western patients. Conclusion: Although the better survival of first generation non-Western immigrants with stomach cancer remains unexplained, it argues against accessibility problems within the Dutch health care syste

Evolutionary relationships among barley and <i>Arabidopsis</i> core circadian clock and clock-associated genes

The circadian clock regulates a multitude of plant developmental and metabolic processes. In crop species, it contributes significantly to plant performance and productivity and to the adaptation and geographical range over which crops can be grown. To understand the clock in barley and how it relates to the components in the Arabidopsis thaliana clock, we have performed a systematic analysis of core circadian clock and clock-associated genes in barley, Arabidopsis and another eight species including tomato, potato, a range of monocotyledonous species and the moss, Physcomitrella patens. We have identified orthologues and paralogues of Arabidopsis genes which are conserved in all species, monocot/dicot differences, species-specific differences and variation in gene copy number (e.g. gene duplications among the various species). We propose that the common ancestor of barley and Arabidopsis had two-thirds of the key clock components identified in Arabidopsis prior to the separation of the monocot/dicot groups. After this separation, multiple independent gene duplication events took place in both monocot and dicot ancestors. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00239-015-9665-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

A mobile ELF4 delivers circadian temperature information from shoots to roots

Extended Data and Source Data can be found at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-020-0634-2Ajuts: the Mas laboratory is funded by the FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the Ramon Areces Foundation and the Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR). The P.M. laboratory also acknowledges financial support from the CERCA Program, Generalitat de Catalunya and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the Severo Ochoa Program for Centers of Excellence in R&D 2016-2019 (SEV-2015-0533).The circadian clock is synchronized by environmental cues, mostly by light and temperature. Explaining how the plant circadian clock responds to temperature oscillations is crucial to understanding plant responsiveness to the environment. Here, we found a prevalent temperature-dependent function of the Arabidopsis clock component EARLY FLOWERING 4 (ELF4) in the root clock. Although the clocks in roots are able to run in the absence of shoots, micrografting assays and mathematical analyses show that ELF4 moves from shoots to regulate rhythms in roots. ELF4 movement does not convey photoperiodic information, but trafficking is essential for controlling the period of the root clock in a temperature-dependent manner. Low temperatures favour ELF4 mobility, resulting in a slow-paced root clock, whereas high temperatures decrease movement, leading to a faster clock. Hence, the mobile ELF4 delivers temperature information and establishes a shoot-to-root dialogue that sets the pace of the clock in root

A search for the decay modes B+/- to h+/- tau l

We present a search for the lepton flavor violating decay modes B+/- to h+/- tau l (h= K,pi; l= e,mu) using the BaBar data sample, which corresponds to 472 million BBbar pairs. The search uses events where one B meson is fully reconstructed in one of several hadronic final states. Using the momenta of the reconstructed B, h, and l candidates, we are able to fully determine the tau four-momentum. The resulting tau candidate mass is our main discriminant against combinatorial background. We see no evidence for B+/- to h+/- tau l decays and set a 90% confidence level upper limit on each branching fraction at the level of a few times 10^-5.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Dawn and Dusk Set States of the Circadian Oscillator in Sprouting Barley (Hordeum vulgare) Seedlings

The plant circadian clock is an internal timekeeper that coordinates biological processes with daily changes in the external environment. The transcript levels of clock genes, which oscillate to control circadian outputs, were examined during early seedling development in barley (Hordeum vulgare), a model for temperate cereal crops. Oscillations of clock gene transcript levels do not occur in barley seedlings grown in darkness or constant light but were observed with day-night cycles. A dark-to-light transition influenced transcript levels of some clock genes but triggered only weak oscillations of gene expression, whereas a light-to-dark transition triggered robust oscillations. Single light pulses of 6, 12 or 18 hours induced robust oscillations. The light-to-dark transition was the primary determinant of the timing of subsequent peaks of clock gene expression. After the light-to-dark transition the timing of peak transcript levels of clock gene also varied depending on the length of the preceding light pulse. Thus, a single photoperiod can trigger initiation of photoperiod-dependent circadian rhythms in barley seedlings. Photoperiod-specific rhythms of clock gene expression were observed in two week old barley plants. Changing the timing of dusk altered clock gene expression patterns within a single day, showing that alteration of circadian oscillator behaviour is amongst the most rapid molecular responses to changing photoperiod in barley. A barley EARLY FLOWERING3 mutant, which exhibits rapid photoperiod–insensitive flowering behaviour, does not establish clock rhythms in response to a single photoperiod. The data presented show that dawn and dusk cues are important signals for setting the state of the circadian oscillator during early development of barley and that the circadian oscillator of barley exhibits photoperiod-dependent oscillation states

Observation and study of baryonic B decays: B -> D(*) p pbar, D(*) p pbar pi, and D(*) p pbar pi pi

We present a study of ten B-meson decays to a D(*), a proton-antiproton pair, and a system of up to two pions using BaBar's data set of 455x10^6 BBbar pairs. Four of the modes (B0bar -> D0 p anti-p, B0bar -> D*0 p anti-p, B0bar -> D+ p anti-p pi-, B0bar -> D*+ p anti-p pi-) are studied with improved statistics compared to previous measurements; six of the modes (B- -> D0 p anti-p pi-, B- -> D*0 p anti-p pi-, B0bar -> D0 p anti-p pi- pi+, B0bar -> D*0 p anti-p pi- pi+, B- -> D+ p anti-p pi- pi-, B- -> D*+ p anti-p pi- pi-) are first observations. The branching fractions for 3- and 5-body decays are suppressed compared to 4-body decays. Kinematic distributions for 3-body decays show non-overlapping threshold enhancements in m(p anti-p) and m(D(*)0 p) in the Dalitz plots. For 4-body decays, m(p pi-) mass projections show a narrow peak with mass and full width of (1497.4 +- 3.0 +- 0.9) MeV/c2, and (47 +- 12 +- 4) MeV/c2, respectively, where the first (second) errors are statistical (systematic). For 5-body decays, mass projections are similar to phase space expectations. All results are preliminary.Comment: 28 pages, 90 postscript figures, submitted to LP0

A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons

Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots for b/w printin

Waveforms of molecular oscillations reveal circadian timekeeping mechanisms

Circadian clocks play a pivotal role in orchestrating numerous physiological and developmental events. Waveform shapes of the oscillations of protein abundances can be informative about the underlying biochemical processes of circadian clocks. We derive a mathematical framework where waveforms do reveal hidden biochemical mechanisms of circadian timekeeping. We find that the cost of synthesizing proteins with particular waveforms can be substantially reduced by rhythmic protein half-lives over time, as supported by previous plant and mammalian data, as well as our own seedling experiment. We also find that previously-enigmatic, cyclic expression of positive arm components within the mammalian and insect clocks allows both a broad range of peak time differences between protein waveforms and the symmetries of the waveforms about the peak times. Such various peak-time differences may facilitate tissue-specific or developmental stage-specific multicellular processes. Our waveform-guided approach can be extended to various biological oscillators, including cell-cycle and synthetic genetic oscillators.Comment: Supplementary material is available at the journal websit

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT