B70/B7-2 is identical to CD86 and is the major functional ligand for CD28 expressed on human dendritic cells.

Dendritic cells comprise a system of highly efficient antigen-presenting cells involved in the initiation of T cell responses. Herein, we investigated the role of the CD28 pathway during alloreactive T cell proliferation induced by dendritic-Langerhans cells (D-Lc) generated by culturing human cord blood CD34+ progenitor cells with granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor and tumor necrosis factor alpha. In addition to expressing CD80 (B7/BB1), a subset of D-Lc expressed B70/B7-2. Binding of the CTLA4-Ig fusion protein was completely inhibited by a combination of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against CD80 and B70/B7-2, indicating the absence of expression of a third ligand for CD28/CTLA-4. It is interesting to note that mAbs against CD86 completely prevented the binding of CTLA4-Ig in the presence of mAbs against CD80 and bound to a B70/B7-2-transfected fibroblast cell line, demonstrating that the B70/B7-2 antigen is identical to CD86. CD28 triggering was essential during D-Lc-induced alloreaction as it was inhibited by mAbs against CD28 (9 out of 11 tested). However, none of six anti-CD80 mAbs demonstrated any activity on the D-Lc-induced alloreaction, though some were previously described as inhibitory in assays using CD80-transfected cell lines. In contrast, a mAb against CD86 (IT-2) was found to suppress the D-Lc-dependent alloreaction by 70%. This inhibitory effect was enhanced to > or = 90% when a combination of anti-CD80 and anti-CD86 mAbs was used. The present results demonstrate that D-Lc express, in addition to CD80, the other ligand for CTLA-4, CD86 (B70/B7-2), which plays a primordial role during D-Lc-induced alloreaction

Mixed Mediation of Supersymmetry Breaking with Anomalous U(1) Gauge Symmetry

Models with anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry contain various superfields which can have nonzero supersymmetry breaking auxiliary components providing the origin of soft terms in the visible sector, e.g. the U(1) vector superfield, the modulus or dilaton superfield implementing the Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation mechanism, U(1)-charged but standard model singlet matter superfield required to cancel the Fayet-Iliopoulos term, and finally the supergravity multiplet. We examine the relative strength between these supersymmetry breaking components in a simple class of models, and find that various different mixed mediations of supersymmetry breaking, involving the modulus, gauge, anomaly and D-term mediations, can be realized depending upon the characteristics of D-flat directions and how those D-flat directions are stabilized with a vanishing cosmological constant. We identify two parameters which represent such properties and thus characterize how the various mediations are mixed. We also discuss the moduli stabilization and soft terms in a variant of KKLT scenario, in which the visible sector K\"ahler modulus is stabilized by the D-term potential of anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure

Evidence for the Appearance of Atmospheric Tau Neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande

Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino data were fit with an unbinned maximum likelihood method to search for the appearance of tau leptons resulting from the interactions of oscillation-generated tau neutrinos in the detector. Relative to the expectation of unity, the tau normalization is found to be 1.42 \pm 0.35 \ (stat) {\}^{+0.14}_{-0.12}\ (syst) excluding the no-tau-appearance hypothesis, for which the normalization would be zero, at the 3.8$\sigma$ level. We estimate that 180.1 \pm 44.3\ (stat) {\}^{+17.8}_{-15.2}\ (syst) tau leptons were produced in the 22.5 kton fiducial volume of the detector by tau neutrinos during the 2806 day running period. In future analyses, this large sample of selected tau events will allow the study of charged current tau neutrino interaction physics with oscillation produced tau neutrinos.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. This is the version as published in Physical Review Letters including the supplemental figure. A typographical error in the description of figure 3 is also correcte

Search for dinucleon decay into pions at Super-Kamiokande

A search for dinucleon decay into pions with the Super-Kamiokande detector has been performed with an exposure of 282.1 kiloton-years. Dinucleon decay is a process that violates baryon number by two units. We present the first search for dinucleon decay to pions in a large water Cherenkov detector. The modes $^{16}$O$(pp) \rightarrow$ $^{14}$C$\pi^{+}\pi^{+}$, $^{16}$O$(pn) \rightarrow$ $^{14}$N$\pi^{+}\pi^{0}$, and $^{16}$O$(nn) \rightarrow$ $^{14}$O$\pi^{0}\pi^{0}$ are investigated. No significant excess in the Super-Kamiokande data has been found, so a lower limit on the lifetime of the process per oxygen nucleus is determined. These limits are: $\tau_{pp\rightarrow\pi^{+}\pi^{+}} > 7.22 \times 10^{31}$ years, $\tau_{pn\rightarrow\pi^{+}\pi^{0}} > 1.70 \times 10^{32}$ years, and $\tau_{nn\rightarrow\pi^{0}\pi^{0}} > 4.04 \times 10^{32}$ years. The lower limits on each mode are about two orders of magnitude better than previous limits from searches for dinucleon decay in iron.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review D on March 30, 201