Optimized profiles for improved confinement and stability in the DIII-D tokamak

Simultaneous achievement of high energy confinement, {tau}{sub E}, and high plasma beta, {beta}, leads to an economically attractive compact tokamak fusion reactor. High confinement enhancement, H = {tau}{sub E}/{tau}{sub E-ITER89P} = 4, and high normalized beta {beta}{sub N} = {beta}/(I/aB) = 6%-m-T/MA, have been obtained in DIII-D experimental discharges. These improved confinement and/or improved stability limits are observed in several DIII-D high performance operational regimes: VH-mode, high {ell}{sub i} H-mode, second stable core, and high beta poloidal. The authors have identified several important features of the improved performance in these discharges: details of the plasma shape, toroidal rotation or ExB flow profile, q profile and current density profile, and pressure profile. From the improved physics understanding of these enhanced performance regimes, they have developed operational scenarios which maintain the essential features of the improved confinement and which increase the stability limits using localized current profile control. The stability limit is increased by modifying the interior safety factor profile to be nonmonotonic with high central q, while maintaining the edge current density consistent with the improved transport regimes and the high edge bootstrap current. They have calculated high beta equilibria with {beta}{sub N} = 6.5, stable to ideal n = 1 kinks and stable to ideal ballooning modes. The safety factor at the 95% flux surface is 6, the central q value is 3.9 and the minimum in q is 2.6. The current density profile is maintained by the natural profile of the bootstrap current, and a modest amount of electron cyclotron current drive

The Science of Sungrazers, Sunskirters, and Other Near-Sun Comets

This review addresses our current understanding of comets that venture close to the Sun, and are hence exposed to much more extreme conditions than comets that are typically studied from Earth. The extreme solar heating and plasma environments that these objects encounter change many aspects of their behaviour, thus yielding valuable information on both the comets themselves that complements other data we have on primitive solar system bodies, as well as on the near-solar environment which they traverse. We propose clear definitions for these comets: We use the term near-Sun comets to encompass all objects that pass sunward of the perihelion distance of planet Mercury (0.307 AU). Sunskirters are defined as objects that pass within 33 solar radii of the Sun’s centre, equal to half of Mercury’s perihelion distance, and the commonly-used phrase sungrazers to be objects that reach perihelion within 3.45 solar radii, i.e. the fluid Roche limit. Finally, comets with orbits that intersect the solar photosphere are termed sundivers. We summarize past studies of these objects, as well as the instruments and facilities used to study them, including space-based platforms that have led to a recent revolution in the quantity and quality of relevant observations. Relevant comet populations are described, including the Kreutz, Marsden, Kracht, and Meyer groups, near-Sun asteroids, and a brief discussion of their origins. The importance of light curves and the clues they provide on cometary composition are emphasized, together with what information has been gleaned about nucleus parameters, including the sizes and masses of objects and their families, and their tensile strengths. The physical processes occurring at these objects are considered in some detail, including the disruption of nuclei, sublimation, and ionisation, and we consider the mass, momentum, and energy loss of comets in the corona and those that venture to lower altitudes. The different components of comae and tails are described, including dust, neutral and ionised gases, their chemical reactions, and their contributions to the near-Sun environment. Comet-solar wind interactions are discussed, including the use of comets as probes of solar wind and coronal conditions in their vicinities. We address the relevance of work on comets near the Sun to similar objects orbiting other stars, and conclude with a discussion of future directions for the field and the planned ground- and space-based facilities that will allow us to address those science topics

Search for jet extinction in the inclusive jet-pT spectrum from proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.The first search at the LHC for the extinction of QCD jet production is presented, using data collected with the CMS detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.7  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The extinction model studied in this analysis is motivated by the search for signatures of strong gravity at the TeV scale (terascale gravity) and assumes the existence of string couplings in the strong-coupling limit. In this limit, the string model predicts the suppression of all high-transverse-momentum standard model processes, including jet production, beyond a certain energy scale. To test this prediction, the measured transverse-momentum spectrum is compared to the theoretical prediction of the standard model. No significant deficit of events is found at high transverse momentum. A 95% confidence level lower limit of 3.3 TeV is set on the extinction mass scale

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

Searches for electroweak neutralino and chargino production in channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV

Searches for supersymmetry (SUSY) are presented based on the electroweak pair production of neutralinos and charginos, leading to decay channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons and undetected lightest SUSY particles (LSPs). The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of about 19.5 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected in 2012 with the CMS detector at the LHC. The main emphasis is neutralino pair production in which each neutralino decays either to a Higgs boson (h) and an LSP or to a Z boson and an LSP, leading to hh, hZ, and ZZ states with missing transverse energy (E-T(miss)). A second aspect is chargino-neutralino pair production, leading to hW states with E-T(miss). The decays of a Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair, to a photon pair, and to final states with leptons are considered in conjunction with hadronic and leptonic decay modes of the Z and W bosons. No evidence is found for supersymmetric particles, and 95% confidence level upper limits are evaluated for the respective pair production cross sections and for neutralino and chargino mass values

Pasteurella multocida Heddleston serovars 1 and 14 express different lipopolysaccharide structures but share the same lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis outer core locus

Pasteurella multocida strains are classified using the Heddleston lipopolysaccharide (LPS) serotyping scheme into 16 serovars. Understanding the structural and genetic basis for this LPS typing scheme is important because protection against infections caused by P. multocida is generally considered to be serovar specific. Here we show that the serovar 14 type strain P2225 and the serovar 1 strains X73 and VP161 express similar LPS structures. However, the serovar 14 LPS lacks the terminal phosphocholine (PCho) residues present on the serovar 1 LPS and contains the 1,4-linked \u3b2-galactose but not the 1,6-linked \u3b2-galactose. Sequencing analysis of the LPS biosynthesis outer core loci of P2225 and the serovar 1 type strain X73 showed that they were nearly identical. However, the phosphocholine biosynthesis gene, pcgA of P2225 contained a 19. bp nucleotide deletion. Complementation of P2225 with an intact pcgA resulted in an LPS structure identical to that expressed by serovar 1 strain VP161 and highly similar to that expressed by strain X73, with a 1,6-linked \u3b2-galactose and both terminal PCho residues. This study has shown unequivocally that strains belonging to serovar 1 and 14 share a common LPS outer core locus and that minor changes within this locus can dramatically alter the LPS structure expressed on the surface of P. multocida, and thus has implications into our understanding of the potential to generate cross-protective vaccines. \ua9 2011.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

Characterization of the lipopolysaccharide from Pasteurella multocida Heddleston serovar 9: Identification of a proposed bi-functional dTDP-3-acetamido-3,6-dideoxy-\u3b1-D-glucose biosynthesis enzyme

Pasteurella multocida strains are classified into 16 different lipopolysaccharide (LPS) serovars using the Heddleston serotyping scheme. Ongoing studies in our laboratories on the LPS aim to determine the core oligosaccharide (OS) structures expressed by each of the Heddleston type strains and identify the genes and transferases required for the biosynthesis of the serovar-specific OSs. In this study, we have determined the core OS of the LPS expressed by the Heddleston serovar 9 type strain, P2095. Structural information was established by a combination of monosaccharide and methylation analyses, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry revealing the following structure: The serovar 9 OS contains an inner core that is conserved among P. multocida strains with an elaborate outer core extension containing rhamnose (Rha), a D-glycero-D-manno isomer of heptose, and the unusual deoxyamino sugar, 3-acetamido-3,6-dideoxy-d-glucose (Qui3NAc). Genetic analyses of the LPS outer core biosynthesis locus revealed that in addition to the glycosyltransferases predicted to transfer the sugars to the nascent LPS molecule, the locus also contained the complete set of genes required for the biosynthesis of the nucleotide sugar donors dTDP-Rha and dTDP-Qui3NAc. One of the genes identified as part of the dTDP-Qui3NAc biosynthesis pathway, qdtD, encodes a proposed bi-functional enzyme with N-terminal amino acid identity to dTDP-4-oxo-6-deoxy-d-glucose-3,4-oxoisomerase and C-terminal amino acid identity to dTDP-3-oxo-6-deoxy-D-glucose transacetylase. \ua9 The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

Structural analysis of lipopolysaccharide produced by Heddleston serovars 10, 11, 12 and 15 and the identification of a new Pasteurella multocida lipopolysaccharide outer core biosynthesis locus, L6

Pasteurella multocida is a Gram-negative bacterial pathogen classified into 16 serovars based on lipopolysaccharide (LPS) antigens. Previously, we have characterized the LPS outer core biosynthesis loci L1, L2, L3, L5 and L7, and have elucidated the full range of LPS structures associated with each. In this study, we have determined the LPS structures produced by the type strains representing the serovars 10, 11, 12 and 15 and characterized a new LPS outer core biosynthesis locus, L6, common to all. The L6 outer core biosynthesis locus shares significant synteny with the L3 locus but due to nucleotide divergence, gene duplication and gene redundancy, the L6 and L3 LPS outer cores are structurally distinct. Using LPS structural and genetic differences identified in each L6 strain, we have predicted a role for most of the L6 glycosyltransferases in LPS assembly. Importantly, we have identified two glycosyltransferases, GctD and GatB, that differ by one amino acid, A162T, but use different donor sugars [uridine diphosphate (UDP)-Glc and UDP-Gal, respectively]. The longest outer core oligosaccharide, produced by the serovar 12 type strain, contained a terminal region consisting of \u3b2-Gal-(1,4)- \u3b2-GlcNAc-(1,3)-\u3b2-Gal-(1,4)-\u3b2-Glc that was identical in structure to the vertebrate glycosphingolipid, paragloboside. Mimicry of host glycosphingolipids has been observed previously in P. multocida strains belonging to L3 LPS genotype, which produce LPS similar in structure to the globo-series of glycosphingolipids. The expression of a paragloboside-like oligosaccharide on the LPS produced by the serovar 12 type strain indicates that strains belonging to the L6 LPS genotype may also engage in molecular mimicry. \ua9 The Author 2014.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye