The Biochemistry, Ultrastructure, and Subunit Assembly Mechanism of AMPA Receptors

The AMPA-type ionotropic glutamate receptors (AMPA-Rs) are tetrameric ligand-gated ion channels that play crucial roles in synaptic transmission and plasticity. Our knowledge about the ultrastructure and subunit assembly mechanisms of intact AMPA-Rs was very limited. However, the new studies using single particle EM and X-ray crystallography are revealing important insights. For example, the tetrameric crystal structure of the GluA2cryst construct provided the atomic view of the intact receptor. In addition, the single particle EM structures of the subunit assembly intermediates revealed the conformational requirement for the dimer-to-tetramer transition during the maturation of AMPA-Rs. These new data in the field provide new models and interpretations. In the brain, the native AMPA-R complexes contain auxiliary subunits that influence subunit assembly, gating, and trafficking of the AMPA-Rs. Understanding the mechanisms of the auxiliary subunits will become increasingly important to precisely describe the function of AMPA-Rs in the brain. The AMPA-R proteomics studies continuously reveal a previously unexpected degree of molecular heterogeneity of the complex. Because the AMPA-Rs are important drug targets for treating various neurological and psychiatric diseases, it is likely that these new native complexes will require detailed mechanistic analysis in the future. The current ultrastructural data on the receptors and the receptor-expressing stable cell lines that were developed during the course of these studies are useful resources for high throughput drug screening and further drug designing. Moreover, we are getting closer to understanding the precise mechanisms of AMPA-R-mediated synaptic plasticity

Design concepts for the Cherenkov Telescope Array CTA: an advanced facility for ground-based high-energy gamma-ray astronomy

Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has had a major breakthrough with the impressive results obtained using systems of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has a huge potential in astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology. CTA is an international initiative to build the next generation instrument, with a factor of 5-10 improvement in sensitivity in the 100 GeV-10 TeV range and the extension to energies well below 100 GeV and above 100 TeV. CTA will consist of two arrays (one in the north, one in the south) for full sky coverage and will be operated as open observatory. The design of CTA is based on currently available technology. This document reports on the status and presents the major design concepts of CTA

Retraining of the 1232 Main Dipole Magnets in the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) contains eight main dipole circuits, each of them with 154 dipole magnets powered in series. These 15-m-long magnets are wound from Nb-Ti superconducting Rutherford cables, and have active quench detection triggering heaters to quickly force the transition of the coil to the normal conducting state in case of a quench, and hence reduce the hot spot temperature. During the reception tests in 2002-2007, all these magnets have been trained up to at least 12 kA, corresponding to a beam energy of 7.1 TeV. After installation in the accelerator, the circuits have been operated at reduced currents of up to 6.8 kA, from 2010 to 2013, corresponding to a beam energy of 4 TeV. After the first long shutdown of 2013-2014, the LHC runs at 6.5 TeV, requiring a dipole magnet current of 11.0 kA. A significant number of training quenches were needed to bring the 1232 magnets up to this current. In this paper, the circuit behavior in case of a quench is presented, as well as the quench training as compared to the initial training during the reception tests of the individual magnets

Performance of the cold powered diodes and diode leads in the main magnets of the LHC

During quench tests in 2011 variations in resistance of an order of magnitude were found in the diode by-pass circuit of the main LHC magnets. An investigation campaign was started to understand the source, the occurrence and the impact of the high resistances. Many tests were performed offline in the SM18 test facility with a focus on the contact resistance of the diode to heat sink contact and the diode wafer temperature. In 2014 the performance of the diodes and diode leads of the main dipole bypass systems in the LHC was assessed during a high current qualification test. In the test a current cycle similar to a magnet circuit discharge from 11 kA with a time constant of 100 s was performed. Resistances of up to 600 μΩ have been found in the diode leads at intermediate current, but in general the high resistances decrease at higher current levels and no sign of overheating of diodes has been seen and the bypass circuit passed the test. In this report the performance of the diodes and in particular the contact resistances in the diode leads are analysed with available data acquired over more than 10 years from acceptance test until the main dipole training campaign in the LHC in 2015