The future of genetic testing for drug response

The effect of variation in genes coding for drug targets and for the enzymes involved in drug metabolism has highlighted the genetic component of drug response. Drug response can be likened to a complex, multifactorial genetic trait, and the study of its genetic variation, termed pharmacogenetics, is analogous to the study of complex genetic disease in terms of the questions posed and the analytical possibilities. Just as DNA variants are associated with specific disease predispositions, so will they be associated with individual response to certain drugs. The testing for drug response is following the same route as the genetic testing for inherited disorders, and has reached the stage where genome-wide analysis, as opposed to the analysis of single genes, is a reality. In this article, we will discuss some of the technical advances that facilitate such analyses, leading to faster and more extensive diagnostic capabilities

Integration of hydrothermal liquefaction and carbon capture and storage for the production of advanced liquid biofuels with negative CO2 emissions

The technical and economic feasibility to deliver sustainable liquid biocrude through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) while enabling negative carbon dioxide emissions is evaluated in this paper, looking into the potential of the process in the context of negative emission technologies (NETs) for climate change mitigation. In the HTL process, a gas phase consisting mainly of carbon dioxide is obtained as a side product driving a potential for the implementation of carbon capture and storage in the process (BECCS) that has not been explored yet in the existing literature and is undertaken in this study. To this end, the process is divided in a standard HTL base and a carbon capture add-on, having forestry residues as feedstock. The Selexol technology is adapted in a novel scheme to simultaneously separate the CO2 from the HTL gas and recover the excess hydrogen for biocrude upgrading. The cost evaluation indicates that the additional cost of the carbon capture can be compensated by revenues from the excess process heat and the European carbon allowance market. The impact in the MFSP of the HTL base case ranges from -7% to 3%, with -15% in the most favorable scenario, with a GHG emissions reduction potential of 102-113% compared to the fossil baseline. These results show that the implementation of CCS in the HTL process is a promising alternative from technical, economic and environmental perspective in future scenarios in which advanced liquid biofuels and NETs are expected to play a role in the decarbonization of the energy system

Self-organized criticality in a rice-pile model

We present a new model for relaxations in piles of granular material. The relaxations are determined by a stochastic rule which models the effect of friction between the grains. We find power-law distributions for avalanche sizes and lifetimes characterized by the exponents $\tau = 1.53 \pm 0.05$ and $y = 1.84 \pm 0.05$, respectively. For the discharge events, we find a characteristic size that scales with the system size as $L^\mu$, with $\mu = 1.20 \pm 0.05$. We also find that the frequency of the discharge events decrease with the system size as $L^{-\mu'}$ with $\mu' = 1.20 \pm 0.05$.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, multicol, epsf, rotate (sty files provided). To appear Phys. Rev. E Rapid Communication (Nov or Dec 96

A Method to Estimate the Boson Mass and to Optimise Sensitivity to Helicity Correlations of tau+tau- Final States

In proton-proton collisions at LHC energies, Z and low mass Higgs bosons would be produced with high and predominantly longitudinal boost with respect to the beam axis. This note describes a new analysis tool devised to handle this situation in cases when such bosons decay to a pair of tau-leptons. The tool reconstructs the rest frame of the tau+tau- pair by finding the boost that minimises the acollinearity between the visible tau decay products. In most cases this gives a reasonable approximation to the rest frame of the decaying boson. It is shown how the reconstructed rest frame allows for a new method of mass estimation. Also a considerable gain in sensitivity to helicity correlations is obtained by analysing the tau-jets in the reconstructed frame instead of using the laboratory momenta and energies, particularly when both tau-leptons decay hadronically.Comment: 13 pages, method extended with 3D boost finde

Avalanche statistics of sand heaps

Large scale computer simulations are presented to investigate the avalanche statistics of sand piles using molecular dynamics. We could show that different methods of measurement lead to contradicting conclusions, presumably due to avalanches not reaching the end of the experimental table.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure