The Bending Magnets for the Proton Transfer Line of CNGS

The project "CERN neutrinos to Gran Sasso (CNGS)", a collaboration between CERN and the INFN (Gran Sasso Laboratory) in Italy, will study neutrino oscillations in a long base-line experiment. High-energy protons will be extracted from the CERN SPS accelerator, transported through a 727 m long transfer line and focused onto a graphite target to produce a beam of pions and kaons and subsequently neutrinos. The transfer line requires a total of 78 dipole magnets. They were produced in the framework of an in-kind contribution of Germany via DESY to the CNGS project. The normal conducting dipoles, built from laminated steel cores and copper coils, have a core length of 6.3 m, a 37 mm gap height and a nominal field range of 1.38 T - 1.91 T at a maximum current of 4950 A. The magnet design was a collaboration between CERN and BINP. The half-core production was subcontracted to EFREMOV Institute; the coil fabrication, magnet assembly and the field measurements were concluded at BINP in June 2004. The main design issues and results of the acceptance tests, including mechanical, electrical and magnetic field measurements, are discussed

Effects of early neonatal proinflammatory stress on the expression of BDNF transcripts in the brain regions of prepubertal male rats

Early postnatal proinflammatory stress provokes behavioral impairments in adulthood; however, underlying mechanisms are still elusive. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a crucial role in neuroplastic changes in health as well as at pathology. The BDNF gene is transcribed to exon-specific mRNAs and the pattern of their expression depends on stimulus. We suggest that disturbances of exonspecific BDNF mRNA expression in the brain regions after stress induced by proinflammatory stimuli in early postnatal period could be one of the underlying mechanisms of consequent behavioral impairments. Thus, the aim of the study was to investigate the effects of proinflammatory stress in early postnatal ontogeny on the expression of BDNF and the patterns of expression of the BDNF gene in the neocortex and hippocampus of prepubertal male rats. The proinflammatory stress was induced by subcutaneous administration of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to rat pups on postnatal days 3 and 5, while BDNF expression was analyzed in 36-day-old rats. BDNF polypeptide concentration was estimated by means of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, while quantitative polymerase chain reaction followed by reverse transcription was used to detect exon-specific BDNF mRNA expression. The levels of BDNF and transcripts, containing common exon IX were similar in the control and LPS-treated rats. In the rats treated with LPS, the level of BDNF mRNA, containing exon IV, was lower in the neocortex, but not in the hippocampus. No changes in the expression of the transcripts containing exons I and VI were observed in any brain structure studied. We suggest that specific alterations in BDNF expression may be involved in the susceptibility to the development of behavioral impairments of animals subjected to early proinflammatory stress