Neural mechanisms of resistance to peer influence in early adolescence

During the shift from a parent-dependent child to a fully autonomous adult, peers take on a significant role in shaping the adolescent’s behaviour. Peer-derived influences are not always positive, however. Here we explore neural correlates of inter-individual differences in the probability of resisting peer influence in early adolescence. Using functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI), we found striking differences between 10-year old children with high and low resistance to peer influence in their brain activity during observation of angry hand-movements and angry facial expressions: compared with subjects with low resistance to peer influence, individuals with high resistance showed a highly coordinated brain activity in neural systems underlying perception of action and decision making. These findings suggest that the probability of resisting peer influence depends on neural interactions during observation of emotion-laden actions

Rapid and widely disseminated acute phase protein response after experimental bacterial infection of pigs

The acute phase protein response is a well-described generalized early host response to tissue injury, inflammation and infection, observed as pronounced changes in the concentrations of a number of circulating serum proteins. The biological function of this response and its interplay with other parts of innate host defence reactions remain somewhat elusive. In order to gain new insight into this early host defence response in the context of bacterial infection we studied gene expression changes in peripheral lymphoid tissues as compared to hepatic expression changes, 14–18 h after lung infection in pigs. The lung infection was established with the pig specific respiratory pathogen Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae. Quantitative real-time PCR based expression analysis were performed on samples from liver, tracheobronchial lymph node, tonsils, spleen and on blood leukocytes, supplemented with measurements of interleukin-6 and selected acute phase proteins in serum. C-reactive protein and serum amyloid A were clearly induced 14–18 h after infection. Extrahepatic expression of acute phase proteins was found to be dramatically altered as a result of the lung infection with an extrahepatic acute phase protein response occurring concomitantly with the hepatic response. This suggests that the acute phase protein response is a more disseminated systemic response than previously thought. The current study provides to our knowledge the first example of porcine extrahepatic expression and regulation of C-reactive protein, haptoglobin, fibrinogen, pig major acute phase protein, and transferrin in peripheral lymphoid tissues

Unitarity as preservation of entropy and entanglement in quantum systems

The logical structure of Quantum Mechanics (QM) and its relation to other fundamental principles of Nature has been for decades a subject of intensive research. In particular, the question whether the dynamical axiom of QM can be derived from other principles has been often considered. In this contribution, we show that unitary evolutions arise as a consequences of demanding preservation of entropy in the evolution of a single pure quantum system, and preservation of entanglement in the evolution of composite quantum systems.Comment: To be submitted to the special issue of Foundations of Physics on the occassion of the seventieth birthday of Emilio Santos. v2: 10 pages, no figures, RevTeX4; Corrected and extended version, containing new results on consequences of entanglement preservatio

Dynamically turning off interactions in a two component condensate

We propose a mechanism to change the interaction strengths of a two component condensate. It is shown that the application of pi/2 pulses allows to alter the effective interspecies interaction strength as well as the effective interaction strength between particles of the same kind. This mechanism provides a simple method to transform spatially stable condensates into unstable once and vice versa. It also provides a means to store a squeezed spin state by turning off the interaction for the internal states and thus allows to gain control over many body entangled states.Comment: 7 pages 5 figures, symbols changed, minor changes, to appear in Phys. Rev.

On the single mode approximation in spinor-1 atomic condensate

We investigate the validity conditions of the single mode approximation (SMA) in spinor-1 atomic condensate when effects due to residual magnetic fields are negligible. For atomic interactions of the ferromagnetic type, the SMA is shown to be exact, with a mode function different from what is commonly used. However, the quantitative deviation is small under current experimental conditions (for $^{87}$Rb atoms). For anti-ferromagnetic interactions, we find that the SMA becomes invalid in general. The differences among the mean field mode functions for the three spin components are shown to depend strongly on the system magnetization. Our results can be important for studies of beyond mean field quantum correlations, such as fragmentation, spin squeezing, and multi-partite entanglement.Comment: Revised, newly found analytic proof adde

Identification of common genetic risk variants for autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly heritable and heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental phenotypes diagnosed in more than 1% of children. Common genetic variants contribute substantially to ASD susceptibility, but to date no individual variants have been robustly associated with ASD. With a marked sample-size increase from a unique Danish population resource, we report a genome-wide association meta-analysis of 18,381 individuals with ASD and 27,969 controls that identified five genome-wide-significant loci. Leveraging GWAS results from three phenotypes with significantly overlapping genetic architectures (schizophrenia, major depression, and educational attainment), we identified seven additional loci shared with other traits at equally strict significance levels. Dissecting the polygenic architecture, we found both quantitative and qualitative polygenic heterogeneity across ASD subtypes. These results highlight biological insights, particularly relating to neuronal function and corticogenesis, and establish that GWAS performed at scale will be much more productive in the near term in ASD.Peer reviewe

Measurement of the cross section for isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector

The dynamics of isolated-photon production in association with a jet in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV are studied with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using a dataset with an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb−1. Photons are required to have transverse energies above 125 GeV. Jets are identified using the anti- algorithm with radius parameter and required to have transverse momenta above 100 GeV. Measurements of isolated-photon plus jet cross sections are presented as functions of the leading-photon transverse energy, the leading-jet transverse momentum, the azimuthal angular separation between the photon and the jet, the photon–jet invariant mass and the scattering angle in the photon–jet centre-of-mass system. Tree-level plus parton-shower predictions from Sherpa and Pythia as well as next-to-leading-order QCD predictions from Jetphox and Sherpa are compared to the measurements

A search for resonances decaying into a Higgs boson and a new particle X in the XH → qqbb final state with the ATLAS detector

A search for heavy resonances decaying into a Higgs boson (H) and a new particle (X) is reported, utilizing 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data at collected during 2015 and 2016 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The particle X is assumed to decay to a pair of light quarks, and the fully hadronic final state is analysed. The search considers the regime of high XH resonance masses, where the X and H bosons are both highly Lorentz-boosted and are each reconstructed using a single jet with large radius parameter. A two-dimensional phase space of XH mass versus X mass is scanned for evidence of a signal, over a range of XH resonance mass values between 1 TeV and 4 TeV, and for X particles with masses from 50 GeV to 1000 GeV. All search results are consistent with the expectations for the background due to Standard Model processes, and 95% CL upper limits are set, as a function of XH and X masses, on the production cross-section of the resonance