Light (anti)nuclei production in high-energy nuclear collisions at the LHC with ALICE

The measurement of (anti)nuclei production in pp, p-A and A-A collisions at ultrarelativistic energies is important to understand hadronization. The excellent tracking and particle identification capabilities of ALICE make it the most suited detector at the LHC to study light (anti)nuclei produced in high-energy hadronic collisions. (Anti)nuclei with mass numbers up to 4, such as (anti)deuterons, (anti)tritons, (anti)$^3$He and (anti)$^4$He have been successfully identified in ALICE at midrapidity ($|\eta|<$0.9). In this contribution, multiplicity dependent results on the yields, nuclei-to-protons ratios as well as the coalescence parameter $B_{\mathrm A}$ as a function of the charged-particle multiplicity are presented and compared with the expectations of coalescence and statistical hadronization models (SHM) to provide insight into their production mechanism in heavy-ion collisions.Comment: Proceedings of The Eighth Annual Conference on Large Hadron Collider Physics-LHCP2020, 25-30 May 2020, online conference, 5 pages, 5 figure

(Anti)(hyper)nuclei production in small collision systems measured with ALICE at the LHC

The production mechanism of (anti)nuclei in ultrarelativistic hadronic collisions is under intense debate in the scientific community. The description of the experimental measurements is currently based on two competing phenomenological models: the statistical hadronization model and the coalescence approach. Light (anti)nuclei have been extensively measured in small collision systems, namely pp and p--Pb collisions, with ALICE at the LHC. Recent results on the (anti)deuteron production measured in jets and in the underlying event, and in high-multiplicity pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV are discussed in the context of phenomenological models, as they provide new insights on the nucleosynthesis process.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, FAIRness 2022 conference proceedings. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2209.0438

Wolbachia surface protein induces innate immune responses in mosquito cells

BACKGROUND: Wolbachia endosymbiotic bacteria are capable of inducing chronic upregulation of insect immune genes in some situations and this phenotype may influence the transmission of important insect-borne pathogens. However the molecules involved in these interactions have not been characterized. RESULTS: Here we show that recombinant Wolbachia Surface Protein (WSP) stimulates increased transcription of immune genes in mosquito cells derived from the mosquito Anopheles gambiae, which is naturally uninfected with Wolbachia; at least two of the upregulated genes, TEP1 and APL1, are known to be important in Plasmodium killing in this species. When cells from Aedes albopictus, which is naturally Wolbachia-infected, were challenged with WSP lower levels of upregulation were observed than for the An. gambiae cells. CONCLUSIONS: We have found that WSP is a strong immune elicitor in a naturally Wolbachia-uninfected mosquito species (Anopheles gambiae) while a milder elicitor in a naturally-infected species (Aedes albopictus). Since the WSP of a mosquito non-native (nematode) Wolbachia strain was used, these data suggest that there is a generalized tolerance to WSP in Ae. albopictus

May Adiponectin be considered as a Novel Cardiometabolic Biomarker?

This study was designed to evaluate the interaction between total adiponectin (ADPN) and metabolic syndrome (MetS) on cardiac changes in 135 subjects with and without MetS, subgrouped according to normal or low ADPN. Left ventricular internal diameter (LVID/h), LV mass (LVM), LVM index (LVMI), interventricular septal thickness (IVST), relative wall thickness (RWT) and LV ejection fraction (EF) by echocardiography and diastolic parameters, by pulsed-wave Doppler were calculated. BMI, LVM, LVMI, LVID/h, IVST and RWT values were significantly (p<0.05) higher in both groups with low ADPN. Prevalence of left ventricular hypertrophy (p<0.001) and coronary artery disease (p<0.01) was significantly higher in both low ADPN groups. LVMI correlated directly with BMI (p<0.001), (p<0.001), MetS (p<0.001) and inversely with ADPN (p<0.0001). ADPN and BMI resulted independently associated with LVMI. In conclusion, our data suggest that hypoadiponectinemia might be considered a novel “cardiometabolic biomarker”. Accordingly, circulating ADPN might become a new target in the management of cardiometabolic syndrome

Mutual Information Rate Decomposition as a Tool to Investigate Coupled Dynamical Systems: Estimation Approaches, Simulations and Application to Physiological Signals

In this work, we present a framework for the computation of the MIR between two random processes X and Y, expressed equivalently as the sum of the individual entropy rates of X and Y minus their joint entropy rate, or as the sum of the transfer entropies from X to Y and from Y to X plus the instantaneous information shared by the processes at zero lag. After defining the theoretical formulation of the framework, different approaches for the estimation of each dynamic measure composing the MIR are provided: the linear model-based estimator relying on Gaussian data; two model-free estimators based on discretization, performed via uniform quantization through binning or rank ordering through permutations; a model-free estimator based on direct computation of the differential entropy via k-nearest neighbor searches

Novel parameter-free coalescence model for deuteron production

A microscopic understanding of (anti)deuteron production in hadron-hadron collisions is the subject of many experimental and theoretical efforts in nuclear physics. This topic is also very relevant for astrophysics, since the rare production of antinuclei in our Universe could be a doorway to discover new physics. In this work, we describe a new coalescence afterburner for event generators based on the Wigner function formalism and we apply it to the (anti)deuteron case, taking into account a realistic particle emitting source. The model performance is validated using the EPOS and PYTHIA event generators applied to proton-proton collisions at the centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV, triggered for high multiplicity events, and the experimental data measured by ALICE in the same collision system. The model relies on the direct measurement of the particle emitting source carried out by means of nucleon-nucleon femtoscopic correlations in the same collision system and energy. The resulting parameter-free model is used to predict deuteron differential spectra assuming different deuteron wavefunctions within the Wigner function formalism. The predicted deuteron spectra show a clear sensitivity to the choice of the deuteron wavefunction. The Argonne $v_{18}$ wavefunction provides the best description of the experimental data. This model can now be used to study the production of (anti)deuterons over a wide range of collision energies and be extended to heavier nuclei.Comment: 13 pages, 9 Figures, submitted to PR

Mass spectrometry based proteomics for the molecular fingerprinting of Fiano, Greco and Falanghina cultivars

Abstract The official methodologies used for the identification and comparison of vine cultivars are ampelography and ampelometry. These methodologies are essentially based on qualitative assessments or biometric dependent morphological features of the plant. The heterogeneity of cultivars and consequently the increasing demand for a more detailed product typization, led to the introduction of new methodologies for the varietal characterization. In this scenario, proteomics has already proved to be a very useful discipline for the typization of many kinds of edible products. In this paper, we present a proteomic study carried out on three cultivars of Vitis vinifera peculiar of south Italy (Campania) used for white wine production (Fiano, Greco and Falanghina) by advanced biomolecular mass spectrometry approach. Our data highlight variations in the proteomic profiles during ripening for each cultivar and between analyzed cultivars, thus suggesting a new way to outline the biomolecular signature of vines