2,626 research outputs found
Communications Biophysics
Contains research objectives and reports on six research projects
Cross-sectional associations between air pollution and chronic bronchitis: an ESCAPE meta-analysis across five cohorts
BACKGROUND: This study aimed to assess associations of outdoor air pollution on prevalence of chronic bronchitis symptoms in adults in five cohort studies (Asthma-E3N, ECRHS, NSHD, SALIA, SAPALDIA) participating in the European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects (ESCAPE) project. METHODS: Annual average particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5, PMabsorbance, PMcoarse), NO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and road traffic measures modelled from ESCAPE measurement campaigns 2008-2011 were assigned to home address at most recent assessments (1998-2011). Symptoms examined were chronic bronchitis (cough and phlegm for ≥3 months of the year for ≥2 years), chronic cough (with/without phlegm) and chronic phlegm (with/without cough). Cohort-specific cross-sectional multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted using common confounder sets (age, sex, smoking, interview season, education), followed by meta-analysis. RESULTS: 15 279 and 10 537 participants respectively were included in the main NO2 and PM analyses at assessments in 1998-2011. Overall, there were no statistically significant associations with any air pollutant or traffic exposure. Sensitivity analyses including in asthmatics only, females only or using back-extrapolated NO2 and PM10 for assessments in 1985-2002 (ECRHS, NSHD, SALIA, SAPALDIA) did not alter conclusions. In never-smokers, all associations were positive, but reached statistical significance only for chronic phlegm with PMcoarse OR 1.31 (1.05 to 1.64) per 5 µg/m(3) increase and PM10 with similar effect size. Sensitivity analyses of older cohorts showed increased risk of chronic cough with PM2.5abs (black carbon) exposures. CONCLUSIONS: Results do not show consistent associations between chronic bronchitis symptoms and current traffic-related air pollution in adult European populations
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Effects of amnesia on processing in the hippocampus and default mode network during a naturalistic memory task: a case study
Despite their severely impaired episodic memory, individuals with amnesia are able to comprehend ongoing events. Online representations of a current event are thought to be supported by a network of regions centred on the posterior midline cortex (PMC). By contrast, episodic memory is widely believed to be supported by interactions between the hippocampus and these cortical regions. In this MRI study, we investigated the encoding and retrieval of lifelike events (video clips) in a patient with severe amnesia likely resulting from a stroke to the right (and possibly the left) thalamus, and a group of 20 age-matched controls. Structural MRI revealed grey matter reductions in left hippocampus and left thalamus in comparison to controls. We first characterised the regions activated in the controls while they watched and retrieved the videos. There were no differences in activation between the patient and controls in any of the regions. We then identified a widespread network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, that were functionally connected with the PMC in controls. However, in the patient there was a specific reduction in functional connectivity between the PMC and a region of left hippocampus when both watching and attempting to retrieve the videos. A follow up analysis revealed that in controls the functional connectivity between these regions when watching the videos was correlated with memory performance. Taken together, these findings support the view that the interactions between the PMC and the hippocampus enable the encoding and retrieval of naturalistic events
Charged Particle Production in Proton-, Deuteron-, Oxygen- and Sulphur-Nucleus Collisions at 200 GeV per Nucleon
The transverse momentum and rapidity distributions of net protons and
negatively charged hadrons have been measured for minimum bias proton-nucleus
and deuteron-gold interactions, as well as central oxygen-gold and
sulphur-nucleus collisions at 200 GeV per nucleon. The rapidity density of net
protons at midrapidity in central nucleus-nucleus collisions increases both
with target mass for sulphur projectiles and with the projectile mass for a
gold target. The shape of the rapidity distributions of net protons forward of
midrapidity for d+Au and central S+Au collisions is similar. The average
rapidity loss is larger than 2 units of rapidity for reactions with the gold
target. The transverse momentum spectra of net protons for all reactions can be
described by a thermal distribution with `temperatures' between 145 +- 11 MeV
(p+S interactions) and 244 +- 43 MeV (central S+Au collisions). The
multiplicity of negatively charged hadrons increases with the mass of the
colliding system. The shape of the transverse momentum spectra of negatively
charged hadrons changes from minimum bias p+p and p+S interactions to p+Au and
central nucleus-nucleus collisions. The mean transverse momentum is almost
constant in the vicinity of midrapidity and shows little variation with the
target and projectile masses. The average number of produced negatively charged
hadrons per participant baryon increases slightly from p+p, p+A to central
S+S,Ag collisions.Comment: 47 pages, submitted to Z. Phys.
Familiäre Kavernome des Zentralnervensystems: Eine klinische und genetische Studie an 15 deutsche Familien
Zusammenfassung: 1928 beschrieb Hugo Friedrich Kufs erstmalig eine Familie mit zerebralen, retinalen und kutanen Kavernomen. Mittlerweile wurden über 300 weitere Familien beschrieben. Ebenfalls wurden drei Genloci 7q21-q22 (mit dem Gen CCM1), 7p15-p13 (Gen CCM2) und 3q25.2-q27 (Gen CCM3) beschrieben, in denen Mutationen zu Kavernomen führen. Das Genprodukt von CCM1 ist das Protein Krit1 (Krev Interaction Trapped 1), das über verschiedene Mechanismen mit der Angiogenese interagiert. Das neu entdeckte CCM2-Gen enkodiert ein Protein, das möglicherweise eine dem Krit1 ähnliche Funktion in der Regulation der Angiogenese hat. Das CCM3-Gen wurde noch nicht beschrieben. In dieser Arbeit werden sowohl die klinischen und genetischen Befunde bei 15 deutschen Familien beschriebe
Software environment for controlling and re-configuration of Xilinx Virtex FPGAs – TWEPP-07
The Time Projection Chamber is one of the detectors of the ALICE experiment, that is currently being commissioned at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The Detector Control System is used for control and monitoring of the system. For the TPC Front-End Electronics (FEE) the control node is a Readout Control Unit that communicates to higher layers via Ethernet, using the standard framework DIM. The Readout Control Unit is equipped with commercial SRAM based FPGAs that will experience errors due to the radiation environment they are operating in. This article will present the implemented hardware solution for error correction and will focus on the software environment for configuration and controlling of the system – TWEPP-07
The ALICE TPC, a large 3-dimensional tracking device with fast readout for ultra-high multiplicity events
The design, construction, and commissioning of the ALICE Time-Projection
Chamber (TPC) is described. It is the main device for pattern recognition,
tracking, and identification of charged particles in the ALICE experiment at
the CERN LHC. The TPC is cylindrical in shape with a volume close to 90 m^3 and
is operated in a 0.5 T solenoidal magnetic field parallel to its axis.
In this paper we describe in detail the design considerations for this
detector for operation in the extreme multiplicity environment of central
Pb--Pb collisions at LHC energy. The implementation of the resulting
requirements into hardware (field cage, read-out chambers, electronics),
infrastructure (gas and cooling system, laser-calibration system), and software
led to many technical innovations which are described along with a presentation
of all the major components of the detector, as currently realized. We also
report on the performance achieved after completion of the first round of
stand-alone calibration runs and demonstrate results close to those specified
in the TPC Technical Design Report.Comment: 55 pages, 82 figure
Multiplicity dependence of jet-like two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at = 5.02 TeV
Two-particle angular correlations between unidentified charged trigger and
associated particles are measured by the ALICE detector in p-Pb collisions at a
nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The transverse-momentum
range 0.7 5.0 GeV/ is examined,
to include correlations induced by jets originating from low
momen\-tum-transfer scatterings (minijets). The correlations expressed as
associated yield per trigger particle are obtained in the pseudorapidity range
. The near-side long-range pseudorapidity correlations observed in
high-multiplicity p-Pb collisions are subtracted from both near-side
short-range and away-side correlations in order to remove the non-jet-like
components. The yields in the jet-like peaks are found to be invariant with
event multiplicity with the exception of events with low multiplicity. This
invariance is consistent with the particles being produced via the incoherent
fragmentation of multiple parton--parton scatterings, while the yield related
to the previously observed ridge structures is not jet-related. The number of
uncorrelated sources of particle production is found to increase linearly with
multiplicity, suggesting no saturation of the number of multi-parton
interactions even in the highest multiplicity p-Pb collisions. Further, the
number scales in the intermediate multiplicity region with the number of binary
nucleon-nucleon collisions estimated with a Glauber Monte-Carlo simulation.Comment: 23 pages, 6 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 17,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/161
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