A role for hemopexin in oligodendrocyte differentiation and myelin formation.

Myelin formation and maintenance are crucial for the proper function of the CNS and are orchestrated by a plethora of factors including growth factors, extracellular matrix components, metalloproteases and protease inhibitors. Hemopexin (Hx) is a plasma protein with high heme binding affinity, which is also locally produced in the CNS by ependymal cells, neurons and glial cells. We have recently reported that oligodendrocytes (OLs) are the type of cells in the brain that are most susceptible to lack of Hx, as the number of iron-overloaded OLs increases in Hx-null brain, leading to oxidative tissue damage. In the current study, we found that the expression of the Myelin Basic Protein along with the density of myelinated fibers in the basal ganglia and in the motor and somatosensory cortex of Hx-null mice were strongly reduced starting at 2 months and progressively decreased with age. Myelin abnormalities were confirmed by electron microscopy and, at the functional level, resulted in the inability of Hx-null mice to perform efficiently on the Rotarod. It is likely that the poor myelination in the brain of Hx-null mice was a consequence of defective maturation of OLs as we demonstrated that the number of mature OLs was significantly reduced in mutant mice whereas that of precursor cells was normal. Finally, in vitro experiments showed that Hx promotes OL differentiation. Thus, Hx may be considered a novel OL differentiation factor and the modulation of its expression in CNS may be an important factor in the pathogenesis of human neurodegenerative disorders

Predictive Value of Carcinoembryonic Antigen in Symptomatic Patients without Colorectal Cancer: A Post-Hoc Analysis within the COLONPREDICT Cohort

We aimed to assess the risk of cancer in patients with abdominal symptoms after a complete colonoscopy without colorectal cancer (CRC), according to the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) concentration, as well as its diagnostic accuracy. For this purpose, we performed a post-hoc analysis within a cohort of 1431 patients from the COLONPREDICT study, prospectively designed to assess the fecal immunochemical test accuracy in detecting CRC. Over 36.5 +/- 8.4 months, cancer was detected in 115 (8%) patients. Patients with CEA values higher than 3 ng/mL revealed an increased risk of cancer (HR 2.0, 95% CI 1.3-3.1), CRC (HR 4.4, 95% CI 1.1-17.7) and non-gastrointestinal cancer (HR 1.7, 95% CI 1.0-2.8). A new malignancy was detected in 51 (3.6%) patients during the first year and three variables were independently associated: anemia (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.3-5.8), rectal bleeding (OR 0.3, 95% CI 0.1-0.7) and CEA level >3 ng/mL (OR 3.4, 95% CI 1.7-7.1). However, CEA was increased only in 31.8% (95% CI, 16.4-52.7%) and 50% (95% CI, 25.4-74.6%) of patients with and without anemia, respectively, who would be diagnosed with cancer during the first year of follow-up. On the basis of this information, CEA should not be used to assist in the triage of patients presenting with lower bowel symptoms who have recently been ruled out a CRC

NG2 antigen is involved in leukemia invasiveness and central nervous system infiltration in MLL-rearranged infant B-ALL

Mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL)-rearranged (MLLr) infant B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (iMLLr-B-ALL) has a dismal prognosis and is associated with a pro-B/mixed phenotype, therapy refractoriness and frequent central nervous system (CNS) disease/relapse. Neuron-glial antigen 2 (NG2) is specifically expressed in MLLr leukemias and is used in leukemia immunophenotyping because of its predictive value for MLLr acute leukemias. NG2 is involved in melanoma metastasis and brain development; however, its role in MLL-mediated leukemogenesis remains elusive. Here we evaluated whether NG2 distinguishes leukemia-initiating/propagating cells (L-ICs) and/or CNS-infiltrating cells (CNS-ICs) in iMLLr-B-ALL. Clinical data from the Interfant cohort of iMLLr-B-ALL demonstrated that high NG2 expression associates with lower event-free survival, higher number of circulating blasts and more frequent CNS disease/relapse. Serial xenotransplantation of primary MLL-AF4 + leukemias indicated that NG2 is a malleable marker that does not enrich for L-IC or CNS-IC in iMLLr-B-All. However, NG2 expression was highly upregulated in blasts infiltrating extramedullar hematopoietic sites and CNS, and specific blockage of NG2 resulted in almost complete loss of engraftment. Indeed, gene expression profiling of primary blasts and primografts revealed a migratory signature of NG2 + blasts. This study provides new insights on the biology of NG2 in iMLLr-B-ALL and suggests NG2 as a potential therapeutic target to reduce the risk of CNS disease/relapse and to provide safer CNS-directed therapies for iMLLr-B-ALL

Extreme Starbursts in the Local Universe

The "Extreme starbursts in the local universe" workshop was held at the Insituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia in Granada, Spain on 21-25 June 2010. Bearing in mind the advent of a new generation of facilities such as JWST, Herschel, ALMA, eVLA and eMerlin, the aim of the workshop was to bring together observers and theorists to review the latest results. The purpose of the workshop was to address the following issues: what are the main modes of triggering extreme starbursts in the local Universe? How efficiently are stars formed in extreme starbursts? What are the star formation histories of local starburst galaxies? How well do the theoretical simulations model the observations? What can we learn about starbursts in the distant Universe through studies of their local counterparts? How important is the role of extreme starbursts in the hierarchical assembly of galaxies? How are extreme starbursts related to the triggering of AGN in the nuclei of galaxies? Overall, 41 talks and 4 posters with their corresponding 10 minutes short talks were presented during the workshop. In addition, the workshop was designed with emphasis on discussions, and therefore, there were 6 discussion sessions of up to one hour during the workshop. Here is presented a summary of the purposes of the workshop as well as a compilation of the abstracts corresponding to each of the presentations. The summary and conclusions of the workshop along with a description of the future prospects by Sylvain Veilleux can be found in the last section of this document. A photo of the assistants is included.Comment: worksho

An instrumented baffle for the Advanced Virgo Input Mode Cleaner End Mirror

A novel instrumented baffle surrounding the suspended end mirror in the input mode cleaner cavity of the Virgo interferometer was installed in spring 2021. Since then, the device has been regularly operated in the experiment and the obtained results indicate a good agreement with simulations of the stray light inside the optical cavity. The baffle will operate in the upcoming O4 observation run, serving as a demonstrator of the technology designed to instrument the baffles in front of the main mirrors in time for O5. In this paper we present a detailed description of the baffle design, including mechanics, front-end electronics, data acquisition, as well as optical and vacuum tests, calibration and installation procedures, and performance results.Comment: 12 pages, 21 figures, 3 tables, to be submitted to PR

Precise measurement of the W-boson mass with the CDF II detector

We have measured the W-boson mass MW using data corresponding to 2.2/fb of integrated luminosity collected in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. Samples consisting of 470126 W->enu candidates and 624708 W->munu candidates yield the measurement MW = 80387 +- 12 (stat) +- 15 (syst) = 80387 +- 19 MeV. This is the most precise measurement of the W-boson mass to date and significantly exceeds the precision of all previous measurements combined

FGF receptor genes and breast cancer susceptibility: results from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium

Background:Breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies in women. Genome-wide association studies have identified FGFR2 as a breast cancer susceptibility gene. Common variation in other fibroblast growth factor (FGF) receptors might also modify risk. We tested this hypothesis by studying genotyped single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and imputed SNPs in FGFR1, FGFR3, FGFR4 and FGFRL1 in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. Methods:Data were combined from 49 studies, including 53 835 cases and 50 156 controls, of which 89 050 (46 450 cases and 42 600 controls) were of European ancestry, 12 893 (6269 cases and 6624 controls) of Asian and 2048 (1116 cases and 932 controls) of African ancestry. Associations with risk of breast cancer, overall and by disease sub-type, were assessed using unconditional logistic regression. Results:Little evidence of association with breast cancer risk was observed for SNPs in the FGF receptor genes. The strongest evidence in European women was for rs743682 in FGFR3; the estimated per-allele odds ratio was 1.05 (95 confidence interval=1.02-1.09, P=0.0020), which is substantially lower than that observed for SNPs in FGFR2. Conclusion:Our results suggest that common variants in the other FGF receptors are not associated with risk of breast cancer to the degree observed for FGFR2. © 2014 Cancer Research UK

Search for gravitational waves associated with the InterPlanetary Network short gamma ray bursts

We outline the scientific motivation behind a search for gravitational waves associated with short gamma ray bursts detected by the InterPlanetary Network (IPN) during LIGO's fifth science run and Virgo's first science run. The IPN localisation of short gamma ray bursts is limited to extended error boxes of different shapes and sizes and a search on these error boxes poses a series of challenges for data analysis. We will discuss these challenges and outline the methods to optimise the search over these error boxes.Comment: Methods paper; Proceedings for Eduardo Amaldi 9 Conference on Gravitational Waves, July 2011, Cardiff, U

Measurement of the t t-bar production cross section in the dilepton channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The t t-bar production cross section (sigma[t t-bar]) is measured in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV in data collected by the CMS experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.3 inverse femtobarns. The measurement is performed in events with two leptons (electrons or muons) in the final state, at least two jets identified as jets originating from b quarks, and the presence of an imbalance in transverse momentum. The measured value of sigma[t t-bar] for a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV is 161.9 +/- 2.5 (stat.) +5.1/-5.0 (syst.) +/- 3.6(lumi.) pb, consistent with the prediction of the standard model.Comment: Replaced with published version. Included journal reference and DO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO