Optical ptychography with extended depth of field

Ptychography is an increasingly popular phase imaging technique. However, like any imaging technique it has a depth of field that limits the volume of a thick specimen that can be imaged in focus. Here, we have proposed to extend the depth of field using a multislice calculation model; an optical experiment successfully demonstrates our proposal

Comparability of antibody response to a booster dose of 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in infants primed with either 2 or 3 doses

In this cohort study we compared IgG antibody levels between infants immunized with 7-valent CRM197-conjugated pneumococcal vaccine (PCV-7) at 2,4 and 11 months and at 2, 3, 4 and 11 months of age,as measured by double adsorption ELISA. Pre- and post-booster levels following the 2 + 1 - and 3 + 1-dose schedule were comparable for 5 out of 7 serotypes except for serotypes 6B and 19F. The proportion of children reaching post-booster antibody thresholds were comparable except for 6B (>= 1.0 mu g/ml and >= 5.0 mu g/ml) and 19F (>= 5.0 mu g/ml). Surveillance studies are warranted for vaccine impact on 6B and 19F disease cases after reduced-dose PCV-7 schedules. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Weekly low-dose mitoxantrone plus doxorubicin as second-line chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer

Weekly low dose mitoxantrone (3 mg/m2) plus doxorubicin (8 mg/m2) was administered as second-line chemotherapy to 33 patients with advanced breast cancer. Four out of 28 evaluable patients (14%) obtained a partial response with a median duration of 34 weeks (range 18-67+ weeks), while 8 patients (29%) showed stable disease with a median duration of 28 weeks (range 11+-60 weeks). Gastrointestinal toxicity and alopecia were mild. Grade II and III leukopenia occurred in 63% of the courses without serious infectious disease. Four patients experienced an asymptomatic drop of 16-20% in the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) after relatively low cumulative doses of each drug, and one patient with a history of pericarditis carcinomatosa and mediastinal irradiation developed a heart failure. In conclusion, this second-line combination treatment had moderate activity in breast cancer and caused only few subjective side effects, especially with respect to gastrointestinal symptoms

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE

Willingness to pay for multifunctional megaprojects: A stated preference analysis among firms in the Amsterdam Zuidas area

http://hdl.handle.net/1871/1621

Quantitative electron phase imaging with high sensitivity and an unlimited field of view

As it passes through a sample, an electron beam scatters, producing an exit wavefront rich in information. A range of material properties, from electric and magnetic field strengths to specimen thickness, strain maps and mean inner potentials, can be extrapolated from its phase and mapped at the nanoscale. Unfortunately, the phase signal is not straightforward to obtain. It is most commonly measured using off-axis electron holography, but this is experimentally challenging, places constraints on the sample and has a limited field of view. Here we report an alternative method that avoids these limitations and is easily implemented on an unmodified transmission electron microscope (TEM) operating in the familiar selected area diffraction mode. We use ptychography, an imaging technique popular amongst the X-ray microscopy community; recent advances in reconstruction algorithms now reveal its potential as a tool for highly sensitive, quantitative electron phase imaging

Combined search for the quarks of a sequential fourth generation

Results are presented from a search for a fourth generation of quarks produced singly or in pairs in a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011. A novel strategy has been developed for a combined search for quarks of the up and down type in decay channels with at least one isolated muon or electron. Limits on the mass of the fourth-generation quarks and the relevant Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements are derived in the context of a simple extension of the standard model with a sequential fourth generation of fermions. The existence of mass-degenerate fourth-generation quarks with masses below 685 GeV is excluded at 95% confidence level for minimal off-diagonal mixing between the third- and the fourth-generation quarks. With a mass difference of 25 GeV between the quark masses, the obtained limit on the masses of the fourth-generation quarks shifts by about +/- 20 GeV. These results significantly reduce the allowed parameter space for a fourth generation of fermions.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Predicting homeless people’s perceived health after entering the social relief system in The Netherlands

Objectives: We explored whether changes in the perceived health of homeless people after entering the social relief system (SRS) in The Netherlands were predicted by housing, income, hours of work, social support, unmet care needs, arrests, physical and mental health, substance use, and experiences of autonomy, competence and relatedness, in addition to perceived health at baseline, demographics, suspected intellectual disability, the duration of homelessness and the company of children in the shelter facility. Methods: A hierarchical regression analysis was used to explore the significant predictors of the perceived health of 344 homeless persons 18 months after entering the social relief system. Results: A decrease in psychological distress and an increase in hours of (paid/voluntary) work as well as competence predicted a better perceived health. Conclusions: Perceived health is not only influenced by objective circumstances related to work and mental health, but also self-determination, as shown by the influence of competence. Services should aim to reduce psychological distress of homeless people, support them in increasing their working hours and focus on strengthening their competence

A Robust Solution to the Super-Resolution Phase Problem in Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy

From a set of images, each of poor resolution, recorded in a transmission microscope under many different incident angles of coherent illumination, it is possible to obtain wavelength-limited resolution even if there is a narrow aperture lying in the back-focal plane of the imaging lens. This is achieved by a deconvolution algorithm which retrieves the phase of the Fourier transform of the specimen. The method accounts for complex components in the transfer function of the lens, is not very sensitive to defocus and is remarkably resilient to noise. It may have important applications in overcoming the resolution limit in the scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), where such data are readily available

Mutations in SELENBP1, encoding a novel human methanethiol oxidase, cause extraoral halitosis

Selenium-binding protein 1 (SELENBP1) has been associated with several cancers, although its exact role is unknown. We show that SELENBP1 is a methanethiol oxidase (MTO), related to the MTO in methylotrophic bacteria, that converts methanethiol to H2O2, formaldehyde, and H2S, an activity not previously known to exist in humans. We identified mutations in SELENBP1 in five patients with cabbage-like breath odor. The malodor was attributable to high levels of methanethiol and dimethylsulfide, the main odorous compounds in their breath. Elevated urinary excretion of dimethylsulfoxide was associated with MTO deficiency. Patient fibroblasts had low SELENBP1 protein levels and were deficient in MTO enzymatic activity; these effects were reversed by lentivirus-mediated expression of wild-type SELENBP1. Selenbp1-knockout mice showed biochemical characteristics similar to those in humans. Our data reveal a potentially frequent inborn error of metabolism that results from MTO deficiency and leads to a malodor syndrome