Optimizing the Stark-decelerator beamline for the trapping of cold molecules using evolutionary strategies

We demonstrate feedback control optimization for the Stark deceleration and trapping of neutral polar molecules using evolutionary strategies. In a Stark-decelerator beamline pulsed electric fields are used to decelerate OH radicals and subsequently store them in an electrostatic trap. The efficiency of the deceleration and trapping process is determined by the exact timings of the applied electric field pulses. Automated optimization of these timings yields an increase of 40 % of the number of trapped OH radicals.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures (RevTeX) (v2) minor corrections (v3) no changes to manuscript, but fix author list in arXiv abstrac

Pressure Dependence of the Elastic Moduli in Aluminum Rich Al-Li Compounds

I have carried out numerical first principles calculations of the pressure dependence of the elastic moduli for several ordered structures in the Aluminum-Lithium system, specifically FCC Al, FCC and BCC Li, L1_2 Al_3Li, and an ordered FCC Al_7Li supercell. The calculations were performed using the full potential linear augmented plane wave method (LAPW) to calculate the total energy as a function of strain, after which the data was fit to a polynomial function of the strain to determine the modulus. A procedure for estimating the errors in this process is also given. The predicted equilibrium lattice parameters are slightly smaller than found experimentally, consistent with other LDA calculations. The computed elastic moduli are within approximately 10% of the experimentally measured moduli, provided the calculations are carried out at the experimental lattice constant. The LDA equilibrium shear modulus C11-C12 increases from 59.3 GPa in Al, to 76.0 GPa in Al_7Li, to 106.2 GPa in Al_3Li. The modulus C_44 increases from 38.4 GPa in Al to 46.1 GPa in Al_7Li, then falls to 40.7 GPa in Al_3Li. All of the calculated elastic moduli increase with pressure with the exception of BCC Li, which becomes elastically unstable at about 2 GPa, where C_11-C_12 vanishes.Comment: 17 pages (REVTEX) + 7 postscript figure

Varicella vaccination coverage of children under two years of age in Germany

Background: Since July 2004, routine varicella vaccination is recommended by the German Standing Vaccination Committee in Germany. Health Insurance Funds started to cover vaccination costs at different time points between 2004 and 2006 in the Federal States. Nationwide representative data on vaccination coverage against varicella of children under two years of age are not available. We aimed to determine varicella vaccination coverage in statutory health insured children under two years of age in twelve German Federal States using data from associations of statutory health insurance physicians (ASHIPs), in order to investigate the acceptance of the recommended routine varicella vaccination programme. Methods: We analysed data on varicella vaccination from 13 of 17 ASHIPs of the years 2004 to 2007. The study population consisted of all statutory health insured children under two years of age born in 2004 (cohort 2004) or 2005 (cohort 2005) in one of the studied regions. Vaccination coverage was determined by the number of children vaccinated under 2 years of age within the study population. Results: Varicella vaccination coverage of children under two years of age with either one dose of the monovalent varicella vaccine or two doses of the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine increased from 34% (cohort 2004) to 51% (cohort 2005) in the studied regions (p < 0.001). More than half of the vaccinated children of cohort 2004 and two third of cohort 2005 were immunised at the recommended age 11 to 14 months. The level of vaccination coverage of cohort 2004 was significantly associated with the delay in introduction of cost coverage since the recommendation of varicella vaccination (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Our study shows increasing varicella vaccination coverage of young children, indicating a growing acceptance of the routine varicella vaccination programme by the parents and physicians. We recommend further monitoring of vaccination coverage using data from ASHIPs to investigate acceptance of the routine vaccination programmes over time

Indirect protein quantification of drug-transforming enzymes using peptide group-specific immunoaffinity enrichment and mass spectrometry

Immunoaffinity enrichment of proteotypic peptides, coupled with selected reaction monitoring, enables indirect protein quantification. However the lack of suitable antibodies limits its widespread application. We developed a method in which multi-specific antibodies are used to enrich groups of peptides, thus facilitating multiplexed quantitative protein assays. We tested this strategy in a pharmacokinetic experiment by targeting a group of homologous drug transforming proteins in human hepatocytes. Our results indicate the generic applicability of this method to any biological system

Indirect protein quantification of drug-transforming enzymes using peptide group-specific immunoaffinity enrichment and mass spectrometry

Immunoaffinity enrichment of proteotypic peptides, coupled with selected reaction monitoring, enables indirect protein quantification. However the lack of suitable antibodies limits its widespread application. We developed a method in which multi-specific antibodies are used to enrich groups of peptides, thus facilitating multiplexed quantitative protein assays. We tested this strategy in a pharmacokinetic experiment by targeting a group of homologous drug transforming proteins in human hepatocytes. Our results indicate the generic applicability of this method to any biological system

Texture analysis-and support vector machine-assisted diffusional kurtosis imaging may allow in vivo gliomas grading and IDH-mutation status prediction:a preliminary study

We sought to investigate, whether texture analysis of diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI) enhanced by support vector machine (SVM) analysis may provide biomarkers for gliomas staging and detection of the IDH mutation. First-order statistics and texture feature extraction were performed in 37 patients on both conventional (FLAIR) and mean diffusional kurtosis (MDK) images and recursive feature elimination (RFE) methodology based on SVM was employed to select the most discriminative diagnostic biomarkers. The first-order statistics demonstrated significantly lower MDK values in the IDH-mutant tumors. This resulted in 81.1% accuracy (sensitivity = 0.96, specificity = 0.45, AUC 0.59) for IDH mutation diagnosis. There were non-significant differences in average MDK and skewness among the different tumour grades. When texture analysis and SVM were utilized, the grading accuracy achieved by DKI biomarkers was 78.1% (sensitivity 0.77, specificity 0.79, AUC 0.79); the prediction accuracy for IDH mutation reached 83.8% (sensitivity 0.96, specificity 0.55, AUC 0.87). For the IDH mutation task, DKI outperformed significantly the FLAIR imaging. When using selected biomarkers after RFE, the prediction accuracy achieved 83.8% (sensitivity 0.92, specificity 0.64, AUC 0.88). These findings demonstrate the superiority of DKI enhanced by texture analysis and SVM, compared to conventional imaging, for gliomas staging and prediction of IDH mutational status

Electroosmotically generated disinfectant from urine as a by-product of electricity in microbial fuel cell for the inactivation of pathogenic species

This work presents a small scale and low cost ceramic based microbial fuel cell, utilising human urine into electricity, while producing clean catholyte into an initially empty cathode chamber through the process of electro-osmostic drag. It is the first time that the catholyte obtained as a by-product of electricity generation from urine was transparent in colour and reached pH>13 with high ionic conductivity values. The catholyte was collected and used ex situ as a killing agent for the inactivation of a pathogenic species such as Salmonella typhimurium, using a luminometer assay. Results showed that the catholyte solutions were efficacious in the inactivation of the pathogen organism even when diluted up to 1:10, resulting in more than 5 log-fold reduction in 4 min. Long-term impact of the catholyte on the pathogen killing was evaluated by plating Salmonella typhimurium on agar plates and showed that the catholyte possesses a long-term killing efficacy and continued to inhibit pathogen growth for 10 days

Participation of Candida albicans transcription factor Rlm1 in cell wall biogenesis and virulence

Candida albicans cell wall is important for growth and interaction with the environment. RLM1 is one of the putative transcription factors involved in the cell wall integrity pathway, which plays an important role in the maintenance of the cell wall integrity. In this work we investigated the involvement of RLM1 in the cell wall biogenesis and in virulence. Newly constructed C. albicans Δ/Δrlm1 mutants showed typical cell wall weakening phenotypes, such as hypersensitivity to Congo Red, Calcofluor White, and caspofungin (phenotype reverted in the presence of sorbitol), confirming the involvement of RLM1 in the cell wall integrity. Additionally, the cell wall of C. albicans Δ/Δrlm1 showed a significant increase in chitin (213%) and reduction in mannans (60%), in comparison with the wild-type, results that are consistent with cell wall remodelling. Microarray analysis in the absence of any stress showed that deletion of RLM1 in C. albicans significantly down-regulated genes involved in carbohydrate catabolism such as DAK2, GLK4, NHT1 and TPS1, up-regulated genes involved in the utilization of alternative carbon sources, like AGP2, SOU1, SAP6, CIT1 or GAL4, and genes involved in cell adhesion like ECE1, ALS1, ALS3, HWP1 or RBT1. In agreement with the microarray results adhesion assays showed an increased amount of adhering cells and total biomass in the mutant strain, in comparison with the wild-type. C. albicans mutant Δ/Δrlm1 strain was also found to be less virulent than the wild-type and complemented strains in the murine model of disseminated candidiasis. Overall, we showed that in the absence of RLM1 the modifications in the cell wall composition alter yeast interaction with the environment, with consequences in adhesion ability and virulence. The gene expression findings suggest that this gene participates in the cell wall biogenesis, with the mutant rearranging its metabolic pathways to allow the use of alternative carbon sources.This work was supported by CBMA (Centre of Molecular and Environmental Biology) through the FCT (Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia) project PEst-C/BIA/UI4050/2011. Yolanda Delgado-Silva was supported by an ALbAN scholarship (No E07D400922PE), and Alexandra Correia by SFRH/BD/31354/2006 fellowship. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript