The bias of cosmic voids in the presence of massive neutrinos

Cosmic voids offer an extraordinary opportunity to study the effects of massive neutrinos on cosmological scales. Because they are freely streaming, neutrinos can penetrate the interior of voids more easily than cold dark matter or baryons, which makes their relative contribution to the mass budget in voids much higher than elsewhere in the Universe. In simulations it has recently been shown how various characteristics of voids in the matter distribution are affected by neutrinos, such as their abundance, density profiles, dynamics, and clustering properties. However, the tracers used to identify voids in observations (e.g., galaxies or halos) are affected by neutrinos as well, and isolating the unique neutrino signatures inherent to voids becomes more difficult. In this paper we make use of the DEMNUni suite of simulations to investigate the clustering bias of voids in Fourier space as a function of their core density and compensation. We find a clear dependence on the sum of neutrino masses that remains significant even for void statistics extracted from halos. In particular, we observe that the amplitude of the linear void bias increases with neutrino mass for voids defined in dark matter, whereas this trend gets reversed and slightly attenuated when measuring the relative void-halo bias using voids identified in the halo distribution. Finally, we argue how the original behaviour can be restored when considering observations of the total matter distribution (e.g. via weak lensing), and comment on scale-dependent effects in the void bias that may provide additional information on neutrinos in the future.Comment: 23 pages, 18 figure

Why Cosmic Voids Matter: Nonlinear Structure & Linear Dynamics

We use the Magneticum suite of state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations to identify cosmic voids based on the watershed technique and investigate their most fundamental properties across different resolutions in mass and scale. This encompasses the distributions of void sizes, shapes, and content, as well as their radial density and velocity profiles traced by the distribution of cold dark matter particles and halos. We also study the impact of various tracer properties, such as their sparsity and mass, and the influence of void merging on these summary statistics. Our results reveal that all of the analyzed void properties are physically related to each other and describe universal characteristics that are largely independent of tracer type and resolution. Most notably, we find that the motion of tracers around void centers is perfectly consistent with linear dynamics, both for individual, as well as stacked voids. Despite the large range of scales accessible in our simulations, we are unable to identify the occurrence of nonlinear dynamics even inside voids of only a few Mpc in size. This suggests voids to be among the most pristine probes of cosmology down to scales that are commonly referred to as highly nonlinear in the field of large-scale structure.Comment: 35 pages (+ references), 22 figures. Key results in figure 22. Accepted for publication in JCA

Development of a universal dual-bolus injection scheme for the quantitative assessment of myocardial perfusion cardiovascular magnetic resonance

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The dual-bolus protocol enables accurate quantification of myocardial blood flow (MBF) by first-pass perfusion cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). However, despite the advantages and increasing demand for the dual-bolus method for accurate quantification of MBF, thus far, it has not been widely used in the field of quantitative perfusion CMR. The main reasons for this are that the setup for the dual-bolus method is complex and requires a state-of-the-art injector and there is also a lack of post processing software. As a solution to one of these problems, we have devised a universal dual-bolus injection scheme for use in a clinical setting. The purpose of this study is to show the setup and feasibility of the universal dual-bolus injection scheme.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The universal dual-bolus injection scheme was tested using multiple combinations of different contrast agents, contrast agent dose, power injectors, perfusion sequences, and CMR scanners. This included 3 different contrast agents (Gd-DO3A-butrol, Gd-DTPA and Gd-DOTA), 4 different doses (0.025 mmol/kg, 0.05 mmol/kg, 0.075 mmol/kg and 0.1 mmol/kg), 2 different types of injectors (with and without "pause" function), 5 different sequences (turbo field echo (TFE), balanced TFE, k-space and time (k-t) accelerated TFE, k-t accelerated balanced TFE, turbo fast low-angle shot) and 3 different CMR scanners from 2 different manufacturers. The relation between the time width of dilute contrast agent bolus curve and cardiac output was obtained to determine the optimal predefined pause duration between dilute and neat contrast agent injection.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>161 dual-bolus perfusion scans were performed. Three non-injector-related technical errors were observed (1.9%). No injector-related errors were observed. The dual-bolus scheme worked well in all the combinations of parameters if the optimal predefined pause was used. Linear regression analysis showed that the optimal duration for the predefined pause is 25s to separate the dilute and neat contrast agent bolus curves if 0.1 mmol/kg dose of Gd-DO3A-butrol is used.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The universal dual-bolus injection scheme does not require sophisticated double-head power injector function and is a feasible technique to obtain reasonable arterial input function curves for absolute MBF quantification.</p

Interface-related magnetic and vibrational properties in Fe/MgO heterostructures from nuclear resonant spectroscopy and first-principles calculations

We combine ⁵⁷Fe Mössbauer spectroscopy and ⁵⁷Fe nuclear resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (NRIXS) on nanoscale polycrystalline [bcc−⁵⁷Fe/MgO] multilayers with various Fe-layer thicknesses and layer-resolved density-functional-theory (DFT)-based first-principles calculations of a (001)-oriented [Fe(8 ML)/MgO(8 ML)](001) heterostructure (where ML denotes monolayer) to unravel the interface-related atomic vibrational properties of a multilayer system. Being consistent in theory and experiment, we observe enhanced hyperfine magnetic fields B_(hf) in the multilayers as compared to B_(hf) in bulk bcc Fe; this effect is associated with the Fe/MgO interface layers. NRIXS and DFT both reveal a strong reduction of the longitudinal acoustic phonon peak in combination with an enhancement of the low-energy vibrational density of states (VDOS) suggesting that the presence of interfaces and the associated increase in the layer-resolved magnetic moments results in drastic changes in the Fe-partial VDOS. From the experimental and calculated VDOS, vibrational thermodynamic properties have been determined as a function of Fe thickness and were found to be in excellent agreement

Anti-angiogenic therapy for cancer: Current progress, unresolved questions and future directions

Tumours require a vascular supply to grow and can achieve this via the expression of pro-angiogenic growth factors, including members of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) family of ligands. Since one or more of the VEGF ligand family is overexpressed in most solid cancers, there was great optimism that inhibition of the VEGF pathway would represent an effective anti-angiogenic therapy for most tumour types. Encouragingly, VEGF pathway targeted drugs such as bevacizumab, sunitinib and aflibercept have shown activity in certain settings. However, inhibition of VEGF signalling is not effective in all cancers, prompting the need to further understand how the vasculature can be effectively targeted in tumours. Here we present a succinct review of the progress with VEGF-targeted therapy and the unresolved questions that exist in the field: including its use in different disease stages (metastatic, adjuvant, neoadjuvant), interactions with chemotherapy, duration and scheduling of therapy, potential predictive biomarkers and proposed mechanisms of resistance, including paradoxical effects such as enhanced tumour aggressiveness. In terms of future directions, we discuss the need to delineate further the complexities of tumour vascularisation if we are to develop more effective and personalised anti-angiogenic therapies. © 2014 The Author(s)

Neutrinos

229 pages229 pages229 pagesThe Proceedings of the 2011 workshop on Fundamental Physics at the Intensity Frontier. Science opportunities at the intensity frontier are identified and described in the areas of heavy quarks, charged leptons, neutrinos, proton decay, new light weakly-coupled particles, and nucleons, nuclei, and atoms

Polymeric particulates for subunit vaccine delivery

Vaccines still represent the best long-term treatment option for reducing many infectious diseases, including acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), malaria, and tuberculosis. Therefore, to effectively combat these severe diseases, it is of utmost importance to develop and explore novel and more efficient delivery modalities and administration routes. In this context, new polymeric nano- and microparticulate delivery platforms may represent an alternative and/or complementary therapeutic option. With the help of modern polymer chemistry, an increased number of sophisticated architectures have been developed, although these materials are in terms of bio applications still in relatively early stages. Therefore, a lot of recent attention has been dedicated to designing and tailoring novel particulates delivery systems with focus to create more efficient delivery platform. Various structures, including nanogels, nanocapsules, nano- and microparticles, dendrimers, and different hierarchical assemblies in solution have been studied in vaccine delivery. However, none of these explored platforms until now fully complies with basic delivery requirements like biocompatibility, non-toxicity, high encapsulation efficiency, and the ability to induce prolonged immune responses. In general, the unique structural and mechanical properties of polymers and their abilities to create three-dimensional structures or hybrid systems is under intensive investigation and hold a great promise in vaccine delivery