Authoritarianism, not social class, is the dividing line between supporting and opposing Donald Trump

In the nine months since New York billionaire Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign, many pundits and commentators have attributed his snowballing success to his popularity with white working class voters who also lacked a college education. Using new survey data, Jonathan Weiler and Matthew MacWilliams find that this characterization of Trump voter isn’t accurate; rather than class or education, authoritarianism is the biggest driver of support for Trump

Electric dipole moments at one-loop in the dimension-6 SMEFT

In this paper we present the complete expressions of the lepton and neutron electric dipole moments (EDMs) in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT), up to 1-loop and dimension-6 level and including both RG running contributions and finite corrections. The latter play a fundamental role in the cases of operators that do not renormalize the dipoles, but there are also classes of operators for which they provide an important fraction, $10-20\%$, of the total 1-loop contribution, if the new physics scale is around $\Lambda=5$ TeV. We present the full set of bounds on each individual Wilson coefficient contributing to the EDMs using both the current experimental constraints, as well as those from future experiments, which are expected to improve by at least an order of magnitude.Comment: 40 pages plus appendices, 17 figures, 15 table

Fractured America: How did we get here?

An August 2020 CBS Poll asked Americans whether they considered the number of fatalities from Covid-19 – then around 170,000 in the United States – acceptable. The vast majority of Americans, including 90% of Democrats, said it was not. But among Republicans, fully 57% did deem it acceptable, though many also wondered whether the number of deaths was being exaggerated. Regardless, the reporting of that poll was accompanied by widespread shock that so many Republicans could be so blasé about s..

mRNA fusion constructs serve in a general cell‐based assay to profile oligonucleotide activity

A cellular assay has been developed to allow measurement of the inhibitory activity of large numbers of oligonucleotides at the protein level. The assay is centred on an mRNA fusion transcript construct comprising of a full‐length reporter gene with a target region of interest inserted into the 3′‐untranslated region. Luciferase and fluorescent reporter genes were used in the constructs. The insert can be from multiple sources (uncharacterised ESTs, partial or full‐length genes, genes from alternate species, etc.). Large numbers of oligonucleotides were screened for antisense activity against a number of such constructs bearing different reporters, in different cell lines and the inhibitory profiles obtained were compared with those observed through screening the oligonucleotides against the corresponding endogenous genes assayed at the mRNA level. A high degree of similarity in the profiles was obtained indicating that the fusion constructs are suitable surrogates for the endogenous messages for characterisation of antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs). Furthermore, the results support the hypothesis that the secondary structure of mRNAs are divided into domains, the nature of which is determined by primary nucleotide sequence. Oligonucleotides whose activity is dependent on the local structure of their target mRNAs (e.g. ASOs, short interfering RNAs) can be characterised via such fusion RNA construct

Applications of High-Pressure Die-Casting (HPDC) Magnesium Alloys in Industry

High-pressure die-cast (HPDC) magnesium alloys have seen diverse applications in the automotive industry, primarily driven by requirements in internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. As the automotive industry is transitioning to an electric vehicle (EV) architecture, there is a great potential for novel applications to improve driving range efficiency. In addition, there is a trend toward larger-sized automotive die castings and an increased interest in aerospace applications due to weight reduction. In this chapter, we reviewed the traditional automotive structural applications in ICE vehicles, as well as current and potential future EV and aerospace applications of HPDC magnesium alloys. The structural applications using AM50, AM60, AZ91 and AE44 magnesium alloys in traditional vehicles can be applied to modern EVs. Additionally, magnesium alloys with varying degrees of higher thermal conductivity, improved castability, superior high temperature properties and flammability need to be developed to replace battery and aerospace in-cabin-related structural materials to meet all safety requirements. Several newly developed magnesium alloys with superior castability are also reviewed for potential automotive and aerospace applications

Observability of Earth-skimming Ultra-high Energy Neutrinos

Neutrinos with energies above 10^8 GeV are expected from cosmic ray interactions with the microwave background and are predicted in many speculative models. Such energetic neutrinos are difficult to detect, as they are shadowed by the Earth, but rarely interact in the atmosphere. Here we propose a novel detection strategy: Earth-skimming neutrinos convert to charged leptons that escape the Earth, and these leptons are detected in ground level fluorescence detectors. With the existing HiRes detector, neutrinos from some proposed sources are marginally detectable, and improvements of two orders of magnitude are possible at the proposed Telescope Array.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A novel microarray approach reveals new tissue-specific signatures of known and predicted mammalian microRNAs

Microarrays to examine the global expression levels of microRNAs (miRNAs) in a systematic in-parallel manner have become important tools to help unravel the functions of miRNAs and to understand their roles in RNA-based regulation and their implications in human diseases. We have established a novel miRNA-specific microarray platform that enables the simultaneous expression analysis of both known and predicted miRNAs obtained from human or mouse origin. Chemically modified 2′-O-(2-methoxyethyl)-(MOE) oligoribonucleotide probes were arrayed onto Evanescent Resonance (ER) microchips by robotic spotting. Supplementing the complementary probes against miRNAs with carefully designed mismatch controls allowed for accurate sequence-specific determination of miRNA expression profiles obtained from a panel of mouse tissues. This revealed new expression signatures of known miRNAs as well as of novel miRNAs previously predicted using bioinformatic methods. Systematic confirmation of the array data with northern blotting and, in particular, real-time PCR suggests that the described microarray platform is a powerful tool to analyze miRNA expression patterns with rapid throughput and high fidelity

Scalable Collaborative Infrastructure for a Learning Healthcare System (SCILHS): Architecture

We describe the architecture of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funded Scalable Collaborative Infrastructure for a Learning Healthcare System (SCILHS, http://www.SCILHS.org) clinical data research network, which leverages the $48 billion dollar federal investment in health information technology (IT) to enable a queryable semantic data model across 10 health systems covering more than 8 million patients, plugging universally into the point of care, generating evidence and discovery, and thereby enabling clinician and patient participation in research during the patient encounter. Central to the success of SCILHS is development of innovative ‘apps’ to improve PCOR research methods and capacitate point of care functions such as consent, enrollment, randomization, and outreach for patient-reported outcomes. SCILHS adapts and extends an existing national research network formed on an advanced IT infrastructure built with open source, free, modular components

Proceedings from the Inaugural American Initiative in Mast Cell Diseases (AIM) Investigator Conference

The American Initiative in Mast Cell Diseases (AIM) held its inaugural investigator conference at Stanford University School of Medicine in May 2019. The overarching goal of this meeting was to establish a Pan-American organization of physicians and scientists with multidisciplinary expertise in mast cell disease. To serve this unmet need, AIM envisions a network where basic, translational, and clinical researchers could establish collaborations with both academia and biopharma to support the development of new diagnostic methods, enhanced understanding of the biology of mast cells in human health and disease, and the testing of novel therapies. In these AIM proceedings, we highlight selected topics relevant to mast cell biology and provide updates regarding the recently described hereditary alpha-tryptasemia. In addition, we discuss the evaluation and treatment of mast cell activation (syndromes), allergy and anaphylaxis in mast cell disorders, and the clinical and biologic heterogeneity of the more indolent forms of mastocytosis. Because mast cell disorders are relatively rare, AIM hopes to achieve a coordination of scientific efforts not only in the Americas but also in Europe by collaborating with the well-established European Competence Network on Mastocytosis.The research reported in this publication was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (award no. R13TR002722 to J.G.). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. We thank The Mast Cell Disease Society, Inc (TMS), a national 501c3 nonprofit, for their partnership and support of AIM, for patient-centered research, and for sponsoring international physicians at this inaugural meeting. J.G. expresses gratitude for the support of the Charles and Ann Johnson Foundation, the staff of the Stanford Mastocytosis Center, and the Stanford Cancer Institute Innovation Fund. M.C., J.J.L., and D.D.M. are supported in part by the Division of Intramural Research of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. D.F.D. is supported by the Asthma and Allergic Diseases Cooperative Research Centers Opportunity Fund (award no. U19AI07053 from the NIH). P.V. has been supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (grant nos. F4701-B20, F4704-B20, and P32470-B)