Free amino acids in a cave beetle \u3cem\u3eDarlingtonea kentuckensis\u3c/em\u3e Valentine (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

Free amino acids of Darlingtonea kentuckensis were investigated by two-dimensional, thin-layer chromatography on Silica Gel G. Thirteen amino acids which could be identifìed (alanine, glutamic acid, glycine, histidine, isoleucine and/or leucine, lysine, phenylalanine, proline, serine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine and valine) and seven unidentified ninhydrin-positive spots were found. Beta-Alanine, alpha-amino-butyric acid, arginine, aspartic acid, cystine, hydroxyproline and methionine were not detected. No difference was observed in the free amino acids with respect to sex of beetle, time after feeding and method of sample preparation

Search for tb resonances in the leptonic final state with the CMS experiment

A search for a W' boson is presented using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 fb−1 of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at √s = 7TeV. The W' to tb decay mode is analyzed leading to a final state signature with a single electron or muon, missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is identified as a b-jet. Different scenarios involving an arbitrary mixture of both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions are considered. A W' boson that couples to the right-handed (left-handed) chiral projections of the fermions with the same coupling constants as the Standard Model W boson is excluded for masses below 1.85 (1.51)TeV at the 95% confidence level

Few remarks on relations between Wladislaus of Opole and Moldova and Wallachia

Ducele Władysław Opolczyk, Transilvania, Ţara Românească, Polonia, Alexandru Basarab. Rezumat: Articolul este consacrat relaţiilor dintre Władysław Opolczyk cu Moldova şi Ţara Românească. În primul rând, autorul face analiza originii primei soţiei a lui Władysław Opolczyk, Elizabeta, despre care este foarte puţin cunoscut în literatura istorică. Există două ipoteze în această privinţă. Conform primei, doamna provenea din Transilvania sau din Ţara Românească. Autorul susţine cea de a doua ipoteză, considerând-o fiica lui Alexandru Basarab. Władysław Opolczyk a fost implicat în politica moldovenească şi cea românească, dar cel mai mare merit al lui a fost atragerea imigranţilor din Rutenia, care ulterior au dat naştere unor familii de nobili, despre care autorul scrie mai detaliat

A search for a heavy resonance decaying to a top quark and a bottom quark with the CMS experiment

The standard model of particle physics can explain most measurements of elementary particle properties and interactions performed to date. However, it does not naturally explain the relatively light Higgs boson mass or the existence of small neutrino masses, and has no explanation for the dark matter observed in the universe. Many extensions to the standard model have been proposed to attempt to address these questions, and several predict the existence of heavy charged gauge bosons, usually referred to as W' bosons. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world and offers the opportunity to search for W' bosons using the CMS experiment, a large multi-purpose particle detector. Results are presented from a search for a W' boson produced in proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy sqrt(s)=8 TeV and decaying into a top and a bottom quark, using a dataset collected by the CMS experiment corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 fb^-1. Various models of W' boson production are studied by allowing for an arbitrary combination of left- and right-handed fermionic couplings. The analysis is based on the detection of events with an electron or muon, jets and missing transverse energy in the final state. No evidence for W' boson production is found and 95% confidence level upper limits are obtained on the production cross section for several mass hypotheses and compared to theoretical predictions. For W' bosons with purely right-handed couplings, and for those with left-handed couplings when ignoring interference effects, the observed 95% confidence level limit on the W' boson mass is M(W')>2.05 TeV. These are the most stringent limits obtained to date in this channel

“For Us, By Us”: Professionalization and Witnessing in New Orleans

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Splash: A Software Tool for Stereotactic Planning of Recording Chamber Placement and Electrode Trajectories

While computer-aided planning of human neurosurgeries is becoming more and more common, animal researchers still largely rely on paper atlases for planning their approach before implanting recording chambers to perform invasive recordings of neural activity, which makes this planning process tedious and error-prone. Here we present SPLASh (Stereotactic PLAnning Software), an interactive software tool for the stereotactic planning of recording chamber placement and electrode trajectories. SPLASh has been developed for monkey cortical recordings and relies on a combination of structural MRIs and electronic brain atlases. Since SPLASh is based on the neuroanatomy software Caret, it should also be possible to use it for other parts of the brain or other species for which Caret atlases are available. The tool allows the user to interactively evaluate different possible placements of recording chambers and to simulate electrode trajectories

Searching for order in atmospheric pressure plasma jets

The self-organized discharge behaviour occurring in a non-thermal radio-frequency plasma jet in rare gases at atmospheric pressure was investigated. The frequency of the azimuthal rotation of filaments in the active plasma volume and their inclination were measured along with the gas temperature under varying discharge conditions. The gas flow and heating were described theoretically by a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model. The rotation frequencies obtained by both methods qualitatively agree. The results demonstrate that the plasma filaments forming an inclination angle α with the axial gas velocity u z are forced to a transversal movement with the velocity ${u}_{\phi }=\tan (\alpha )\cdot {u}_{z}$, which is oriented in the inclination direction. Variations of ${u}_{\phi }$ in the model reveal that the observed dynamics minimizes the energy loss due to convective heat transfer by the gas flow. The control of the self-organization regime motivates the application of the plasma jet for precise and reproducible material processing

Observation of the production of three massive gauge bosons at √s=13 TeV

The first observation is reported of the combined production of three massive gauge bosons (VVV with V=W, Z) in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The analysis is based on a data sample recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137  fb^−1. The searches for individual WWW, WWZ, WZZ, and ZZZ production are performed in final states with three, four, five, and six leptons (electrons or muons), or with two same-sign leptons plus one or two jets. The observed (expected) significance of the combined VVV production signal is 5.7 (5.9) standard deviations and the corresponding measured cross section relative to the standard model prediction is 1.02^+0.26_−0.23. The significances of the individual WWW and WWZ production are 3.3 and 3.4 standard deviations, respectively. Measured production cross sections for the individual triboson processes are also reported.Published versio

Retrovirális proteinázok vizsgálata a rezisztencia kialakulásának megértéséhez, és felhasználásuk biológiai folyamatok szabályozására = Study of retroviral proteinases to understand development of resistance and their use in regulation of biological processes

Számos, gyógyszerrezisztenciában megjelenő mutációt tartalmazó HIV-1 proteináz specificitását, gátolhatósági profilját és dimerstabilitását jellemeztük. A gátolhatósági profilok elkészítéséhez nagykapacitású floreszcens mérési módszert dolgoztunk ki. Eredményeink arra utaltak, hogy a mutánsok gátolhatóságát jelentősen befolyásolta a ligandok konformációs flexibilitása, továbbá az enzim egyik régiója képes volt mutációktól függetlenül a ligandhoz illeszkedni. Cefalosporin származékokat tartalmazó vegyületkönyvtár szűrésével különleges, unkompetitív mechanizmusú HIV-1 proteináz inhibitorokat azonosítottunk. A HIV-1 fertőzés korai szakaszában szubsztrátként valószínűsített nukleokapszid fehérje hasításával kapcsolatban szubsztrát-mutagenezis és kinetikai vizsgálatokat végeztünk és a mutációkat a HIV vírusba bejuttatva korrelációt tapasztaltunk a fertőzőképesség és a nukleokapszid fehérje proteolitikus érzékenysége között. Különböző retrovírusok természetes hasítási helyeit reprezentáló oligopeptidekkel összehasonlítottuk retrovirális proteinázok specificitását, mely alapján a HTLV-1 proteáz szubsztrátspecificitása meglehetősen szűknek bizonyult. Egy HIV-1 természetes hasítási helyet reprezentáló oligopeptid sorozattal végzett korábbi szubsztrátspecificitási vizsgálatainkat részben kiegészítettük úgy, hogy az adatsor már 11 retrovirális proteáz adatait tartalmazza. Egy alhely feltérképezésével kapott eredményeink jól korreláltak a retrovírusok filogenetikai analízisével. | Specificity, dimer stability and inhibition profile was determined for several HIV-1 protease mutants harboring mutations occurring in drug resistance. To perform the inhibition profiling, a new, high-throughput fluorescent assay was developed. Our results suggested that the inhibition of the mutants was stronlgy dependent on the conformational flexibility of the inhibitors, furthermore, a critical region of the enzyme was able to fit flexibly to the ligands, independently from its mutations. Screening a library of cephalosporin derivatives, inhibitors uniqally acting in an uncompetitive manner were identified. Mutational and kinetic studies were performed on the nucleocapsid protein, which is suspected to be a substrate of the viral protease in the early phase of infection, and mutations were introduced into an infectious HIV-1 clone. There was a correlation between the protease sensitivity of mutant nucleocapsid proteins and the infectivity of the clones. The specificity of various retroviral proteinases was compared using a large set of oligopeptide substrates representing naturally occurring cleavage sites of various retroviruses: the specificity of HTLV-1 protease appeared to be fairly narrow. We have complemented our previous specificity studies performed with a substrate set representing an HIV-1 cleavage site to probe a substrate binding subsite of 11 retroviral proteases. The results obtained correlated well with the philogenetic analysis of retroviruses

Verfassung und Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit an der Schnittstelle zwischen Politik und Recht

Die vorliegende Arbeit versucht, die Entwicklung und Verbreitung von Verfassung und Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit in der Form der richterlichen Normenkontrolle zur Sicherung des Vorrangs der Verfassung zu klären und systemtheoretisch zu begründen. Dazu wird im ersten Teil untersucht, welche historischen Brüche zur Entstehung moderner Verfassungen und der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit führten. Ausgehend von den ursprünglichen Begriffsinhalten der Worte „Verfassung“ und „Konstitution“ als Zustandsbeschreibungen wird die Bedeutungsveränderung hin zu einem normativen Begriff in der englischen Verfassungsgeschichte aufgezeigt. Anhand der amerikanisch-französischen Doppelrevolution werden folgende Voraussetzungen der modernen Verfassung überprüft: Der moderne Staat, das neuzeitliche Bürgertum als Träger der Revolution und der leitenden Ordnungsvorstellung der Trennung von Staat und Gesellschaft sowie die Revolution als Bruch mit den bestehenden Herrschaftsverhältnissen. Die Lehre des Widerstandsrechts und der Gewaltenteilung werden als Grundpfeiler der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit diskutiert und anschließend die Entwicklung und Verbreitung des amerikanischen und des österreichischen Modells der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit nachgezeichnet. Im zweiten Teil wird anhand der Systemtheorie Niklas Luhmanns die Verfassung und die Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit mit der Ausdifferenzierung funktional-differenzierter Systeme, welche die moderne Gesellschaft charakterisieren, begründet: Die Verfassung bietet dem politischen System und dem Rechtssystem die Lösung ihrer Selbstreferenzprobleme und ist der Schlussstein ihrer Ausdifferenzierung. Nur durch die Verfassung kann die unabhängige Funktion der Systeme gewährleistet werden. Die Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit ist dabei (sowohl im österreichischen als auch amerikanischen Modell) eine notwendige Einrichtung im Rechtssystem und kann das System der Politik nur irritieren, aber nicht lenken.This thesis elaborates on the establishment of constitutions and judicial review in general and from the perspective of Luhmann’s systems theory. The first part reconstructs the original meaning of the term “constitution” and depicts its development up until the modern understanding of “constitution”, as it was established in the Franco-American revolution. The modern state, the “bourgeoisie” representing the revolution and the ideals of classical liberalism (limited government and liberty of individuals) and overcoming the existing modes of power are also discussed as the prerequisites of modern constitutions. The origins of the idea of judicial review can be traced in the means to safeguard higher law as it was laid down in the right to resist and the idea of the separation of powers. The evolution of the development of the American system of judicial review and the Austrian system is then explained. The second part explains the evolution of the constitution and judicial review by the functional differentiation which dominates modern society. The constitution is observed as the compulsory structural coupling between the political system and the system of law which completes their differentiation. The constitution guarantees the independence of each system. The judicial review is thereby a necessary practice within the system of law