Multi-scale spatial heterogeneity enhances particle clearance in airway ciliary arrays

Mucus clearance constitutes the primary defence of the respiratory system against viruses, bacteria and environmental insults [1]. This transport across the entire airway emerges from the integrated activity of thousands of multiciliated cells, each containing hundreds of cilia, which together must coordinate their spatial arrangement, alignment and motility [2, 3]. The mechanisms of fluid transport have been studied extensively at the level of an individual cilium [4, 5], collectively moving metachronal waves [6-10], and more generally the hydrodynamics of active matter [11, 12]. However, the connection between local cilia architecture and the topology of the flows they generate remains largely unexplored. Here, we image the mouse airway from the sub-cellular (nm) to the organ scales (mm), characterising quantitatively its ciliary arrangement and the generated flows. Locally we measure heterogeneity in both cilia organisation and flow structure, but across the trachea fluid transport is coherent. To examine this result, a hydrodynamic model was developed for a systematic exploration of different tissue architectures. Surprisingly, we find that disorder enhances particle clearance, whether it originates from fluctuations, heterogeneity in multiciliated cell arrangement or ciliary misalignment. This resembles elements of 'stochastic resonance' [13-15], in the sense that noise can improve the function of the system. Taken together, our results shed light on how the microstructure of an active carpet [16, 17] determines its emergent dynamics. Furthermore, this work is also directly applicable to human airway pathologies [1], which are the third leading cause of deaths worldwide [18]

Centrality and rapidity dependence of inclusive jet production in root(NN)-N-S=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Measurements of the centrality and rapidity dependence of inclusive jet production in root(NN)-N-S = 5.02 TeV proton-lead (p + Pb) collisions and the jet cross-section in root s = 2.76 TeV proton-proton collisions are presented. These quantities are measured in datasets corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 27.8 nb(-1) and 4.0 pb(-1), respectively, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2013. The p + Pb collision centrality was characterised using the total transverse energy measured in the pseudorapidity interval -4.9 < eta < -3.2 in the direction of the lead beam. Results are presented for the double-differential per-collision yields as a function of jet rapidity and transverse momentum (p(T)) for minimum-bias and centrality-selected p + Pb collisions, and are compared to the jet rate from the geometric expectation. The total jet yield in minimum-bias events is slightly enhanced above the expectation in a p(T)-dependent manner but is consistent with the expectation within uncertainties. The ratios of jet spectra from different centrality selections show a strong modification of jet production at all p(T) at forward rapidities and for large pT at mid-rapidity, which manifests as a suppression of the jet yield in central events and an enhancement in peripheral events. These effects imply that the factorisation between hard and soft processes is violated at an unexpected level in proton-nucleus collisions. Furthermore, the modifications at forward rapidities are found to be a function of the total jet energy only, implying that the violations may have a simple dependence on the hard parton-parton kinematics. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B.V