Black holes and Hawking radiation in spacetime and its analogues

These notes introduce the fundamentals of black hole geometry, the thermality of the vacuum, and the Hawking effect, in spacetime and its analogues. Stimulated emission of Hawking radiation, the trans-Planckian question, short wavelength dispersion, and white hole radiation in the setting of analogue models are also discussed. No prior knowledge of differential geometry, general relativity, or quantum field theory in curved spacetime is assumed.Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures; to appear in the proceedings of the IX SIGRAV School on 'Analogue Gravity', Como (Italy), May 2011, eds. D. Faccio et. al. (Springer

Dielectronic Recombination in He+ Ions

This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF PHY-931478

Dielectronic Recombination in He+ Ions

This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF PHY-931478

Proton Elastic and Inelastic Scattering at Intermediate Energies from Isotopes of Oxygen and 9-Be as Part of a Unified Study of these Nuclei

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Grants NSF PHY 78-22774 A03, NSF PHY 81-14339, and by Indiana Universit

Proton Elastic and Inelastic Scattering at Intermediate Energies from Isotopes of Oxygen and 9-Be as Part of a Unified Study of These Nuclei

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF PHY 78-22774 A02 & A03 and by Indiana Universit

Proton Elastic and Inelastic Scattering at Intermediate Energies from Isotopes of Oxygen and 9-Be as Part of a Unified Study of These Nuclei

Supported by the National Science Foundation and Indiana Universit

Identification of a lead like inhibitor of the hepatitis C virus non-structural NS2 autoprotease

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) non-structural protein 2 (NS2) encodes a autoprotease activity that is essential for virus replication and thus represents an attractive anti-viral target. Recently, we demonstrated that a series of epoxide-based compounds, previously identified as potent inhibitors of the clotting factor, FXIII, also inhibited NS2-mediated proteolysis in vitro and possessed anti-viral activity in cell culture models. This suggested that a selective small molecule inhibitor of the NS2 autoprotease represents a viable prospect, therefore in this independent study we applied a structure-guided virtual high-throughput screening approach to identify a lead-like small molecule inhibitor of the NS2 autoprotease. This screen identified a candidate lead-like small molecule that was able to inhibit both NS2-mediated proteolysis in vitro and NS2-dependent genome replication in a cell-based assay. Structure-activity relationship analysis shed light on the nature of the active pharmacophore in this compound and may inform further development into a more potent inhibitor of NS2 mediated proteolysis

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio