Recent advances: role of mycolactone in the pathogenesis and monitoring of Mycobacterium ulcerans infection/Buruli ulcer disease.

Infection of subcutaneous tissue with Mycobacterium ulcerans can lead to chronic skin ulceration known as Buruli ulcer. The pathogenesis of this neglected tropical disease is dependent on a lipid-like toxin, mycolactone, which diffuses through tissue away from the infecting organisms. Since its identification in 1999, this molecule has been intensely studied to elucidate its cytotoxic and immunosuppressive properties. Two recent major advances identifying the underlying molecular targets for mycolactone have been described. First, it can target scaffolding proteins (such as Wiskott Aldrich Syndrome Protein), which control actin dynamics in adherent cells and therefore lead to detachment and cell death by anoikis. Second, it prevents the co-translational translocation (and therefore production) of many proteins that pass through the endoplasmic reticulum for secretion or placement in cell membranes. These pleiotropic effects underpin the range of cell-specific functional defects in immune and other cells that contact mycolactone during infection. The dose and duration of mycolactone exposure for these different cells explains tissue necrosis and the paucity of immune cells in the ulcers. This review discusses recent advances in the field, revisits older findings in this context and highlights current developments in structure-function studies as well as methodology that make mycolactone a promising diagnostic biomarker

Cosmological distance indicators

We review three distance measurement techniques beyond the local universe: (1) gravitational lens time delays, (2) baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO), and (3) HI intensity mapping. We describe the principles and theory behind each method, the ingredients needed for measuring such distances, the current observational results, and future prospects. Time delays from strongly lensed quasars currently provide constraints on $H_0$ with < 4% uncertainty, and with 1% within reach from ongoing surveys and efforts. Recent exciting discoveries of strongly lensed supernovae hold great promise for time-delay cosmography. BAO features have been detected in redshift surveys up to z <~ 0.8 with galaxies and z ~ 2 with Ly-$\alpha$ forest, providing precise distance measurements and $H_0$ with < 2% uncertainty in flat $\Lambda$CDM. Future BAO surveys will probe the distance scale with percent-level precision. HI intensity mapping has great potential to map BAO distances at z ~ 0.8 and beyond with precisions of a few percent. The next years ahead will be exciting as various cosmological probes reach 1% uncertainty in determining $H_0$, to assess the current tension in $H_0$ measurements that could indicate new physics.Comment: Review article accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews (Springer), 45 pages, 10 figures. Chapter of a special collection resulting from the May 2016 ISSI-BJ workshop on Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Ag

Grain Surface Models and Data for Astrochemistry

AbstractThe cross-disciplinary field of astrochemistry exists to understand the formation, destruction, and survival of molecules in astrophysical environments. Molecules in space are synthesized via a large variety of gas-phase reactions, and reactions on dust-grain surfaces, where the surface acts as a catalyst. A broad consensus has been reached in the astrochemistry community on how to suitably treat gas-phase processes in models, and also on how to present the necessary reaction data in databases; however, no such consensus has yet been reached for grain-surface processes. A team of ∼25 experts covering observational, laboratory and theoretical (astro)chemistry met in summer of 2014 at the Lorentz Center in Leiden with the aim to provide solutions for this problem and to review the current state-of-the-art of grain surface models, both in terms of technical implementation into models as well as the most up-to-date information available from experiments and chemical computations. This review builds on the results of this workshop and gives an outlook for future directions

Detector Description and Performance for the First Coincidence Observations between LIGO and GEO

For 17 days in August and September 2002, the LIGO and GEO interferometer gravitational wave detectors were operated in coincidence to produce their first data for scientific analysis. Although the detectors were still far from their design sensitivity levels, the data can be used to place better upper limits on the flux of gravitational waves incident on the earth than previous direct measurements. This paper describes the instruments and the data in some detail, as a companion to analysis papers based on the first data.Comment: 41 pages, 9 figures 17 Sept 03: author list amended, minor editorial change

Search for lepton-flavor violation at HERA

A search for lepton-flavor-violating interactions $e p \to \mu X$ and $e p\to \tau X$ has been performed with the ZEUS detector using the entire HERA I data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 130 pb^{-1}. The data were taken at center-of-mass energies, $\sqrt{s}$, of 300 and 318 GeV. No evidence of lepton-flavor violation was found, and constraints were derived on leptoquarks (LQs) that could mediate such interactions. For LQ masses below $\sqrt{s}$, limits were set on $\lambda_{eq_1} \sqrt{\beta_{\ell q}}$, where $\lambda_{eq_1}$ is the coupling of the LQ to an electron and a first-generation quark $q_1$, and $\beta_{\ell q}$ is the branching ratio of the LQ to the final-state lepton $\ell$ ($\mu$ or $\tau$) and a quark $q$. For LQ masses much larger than $\sqrt{s}$, limits were set on the four-fermion interaction term $\lambda_{e q_\alpha} \lambda_{\ell q_\beta} / M_{\mathrm{LQ}}^2$ for LQs that couple to an electron and a quark $q_\alpha$ and to a lepton $\ell$ and a quark $q_\beta$, where $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are quark generation indices. Some of the limits are also applicable to lepton-flavor-violating processes mediated by squarks in $R$-Parity-violating supersymmetric models. In some cases, especially when a higher-generation quark is involved and for the process $e p\to \tau X$, the ZEUS limits are the most stringent to date.Comment: 37 pages, 10 figures, Accepted by EPJC. References and 1 figure (Fig. 6) adde

Measurement of (anti)deuteron and (anti)proton production in DIS at HERA

The first observation of (anti)deuterons in deep inelastic scattering at HERA has been made with the ZEUS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 300--318 GeV using an integrated luminosity of 120 pb-1. The measurement was performed in the central rapidity region for transverse momentum per unit of mass in the range 0.3<p_T/M<0.7. The particle rates have been extracted and interpreted in terms of the coalescence model. The (anti)deuteron production yield is smaller than the (anti)proton yield by approximately three orders of magnitude, consistent with the world measurements.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, submitted to Nucl. Phys.

Multijet production in neutral current deep inelastic scattering at HERA and determination of alpha_s

Multijet production rates in neutral current deep inelastic scattering have been measured in the range of exchanged boson virtualities 10 < Q2 < 5000 GeV2. The data were taken at the ep collider HERA with centre-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 318 GeV using the ZEUS detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 82.2 pb-1. Jets were identified in the Breit frame using the k_T cluster algorithm in the longitudinally invariant inclusive mode. Measurements of differential dijet and trijet cross sections are presented as functions of jet transverse energy E_{T,B}{jet}, pseudorapidity eta_{LAB}{jet} and Q2 with E_{T,B}{jet} > 5 GeV and -1 < eta_{LAB}{jet} < 2.5. Next-to-leading-order QCD calculations describe the data well. The value of the strong coupling constant alpha_s(M_Z), determined from the ratio of the trijet to dijet cross sections, is alpha_s(M_Z) = 0.1179 pm 0.0013(stat.) {+0.0028}_{-0.0046}(exp.) {+0.0064}_{-0.0046}(th.)Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure

Time-integrated luminosity recorded by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e+e- collider

This article is the Preprint version of the final published artcile which can be accessed at the link below.We describe a measurement of the time-integrated luminosity of the data collected by the BABAR experiment at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e+e- collider at the ϒ(4S), ϒ(3S), and ϒ(2S) resonances and in a continuum region below each resonance. We measure the time-integrated luminosity by counting e+e-→e+e- and (for the ϒ(4S) only) e+e-→μ+μ- candidate events, allowing additional photons in the final state. We use data-corrected simulation to determine the cross-sections and reconstruction efficiencies for these processes, as well as the major backgrounds. Due to the large cross-sections of e+e-→e+e- and e+e-→μ+μ-, the statistical uncertainties of the measurement are substantially smaller than the systematic uncertainties. The dominant systematic uncertainties are due to observed differences between data and simulation, as well as uncertainties on the cross-sections. For data collected on the ϒ(3S) and ϒ(2S) resonances, an additional uncertainty arises due to ϒ→e+e-X background. For data collected off the ϒ resonances, we estimate an additional uncertainty due to time dependent efficiency variations, which can affect the short off-resonance runs. The relative uncertainties on the luminosities of the on-resonance (off-resonance) samples are 0.43% (0.43%) for the ϒ(4S), 0.58% (0.72%) for the ϒ(3S), and 0.68% (0.88%) for the ϒ(2S).This work is supported by the US Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique and Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physiquedes Particules (France), the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy), the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (The Netherlands), the Research Council of Norway, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain), and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (United Kingdom). Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie IEF program (European Union) and the A.P. Sloan Foundation (USA)

Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events

The $B^0$-$\bar B^0$ oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of 23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives $\Delta m_d = 0.493 \pm 0.012{(stat)}\pm 0.009{(syst)}$ ps$^{-1}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter