The PAX Toolkit and its Applications at Tevatron and LHC

At the CHEP03 conference we launched the Physics Analysis eXpert (PAX), a C++ toolkit released for the use in advanced high energy physics (HEP) analyses. This toolkit allows to define a level of abstraction beyond detector reconstruction by providing a general, persistent container model for HEP events. Physics objects such as particles, vertices and collisions can easily be stored, accessed and manipulated. Bookkeeping of relations between these objects (like decay trees, vertex and collision separation, etc.) including deep copies is fully provided by the relation management. Event container and associated objects represent a uniform interface for algorithms and facilitate the parallel development and evaluation of different physics interpretations of individual events. So-called analysis factories, which actively identify and distinguish different physics processes and study systematic uncertainties, can easily be realized with the PAX toolkit. PAX is officially released to experiments at Tevatron and LHC. Being explored by a growing user community, it is applied in a number of complex physics analyses, two of which are presented here. We report the successful application in studies of t-tbar production at the Tevatron and Higgs searches in the channel t-tbar-Higgs at the LHC and give a short outlook on further developments

Variable Selection in Latent Regression IRT Models via Knockoffs: An Application to International Large-scale Assessment in Education

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) play an important role in educational research and policy making. They collect valuable data on education quality and performance development across many education systems, giving countries the opportunity to share techniques, organizational structures, and policies that have proven efficient and successful. To gain insights from ILSA data, we identify non-cognitive variables associated with students' academic performance. This problem has three analytical challenges: 1) academic performance is measured by cognitive items under a matrix sampling design; 2) there are many missing values in the non-cognitive variables; and 3) multiple comparisons due to a large number of non-cognitive variables. We consider an application to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), aiming to identify non-cognitive variables associated with students' performance in science. We formulate it as a variable selection problem under a general latent variable model framework and further propose a knockoff method that conducts variable selection with a controlled error rate for false selections

Aerial river management by smart cross-border reforestation

In the face of increasing socio-economic and climatic pressures in growing cities, it is rational for managers to consider multiple approaches for securing water availability. One often disregarded option is the promotion of reforestation in source regions supplying important quantities of atmospheric moisture transported over long distances through aerial rivers, affecting water resources of a city via precipitation and runoff (‘smart reforestation’). Here we present a case demonstrating smart reforestation's potential as a water management option. Using numerical moisture back-tracking models, we identify important upwind regions contributing to the aerial river of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia). Simulating the effect of reforestation in the identified regions, annual precipitation and runoff reception in the city was found to increase by 1.25% and 2.30% respectively, while runoff gain during the dry season reached 26.93%. Given the city's population growth scenarios, the increase of the renewable water resource by smart reforestation could cover 22–59% of the additional demand by 2030. Building on the findings, we argue for a more systematic consideration of aerial river connections between regions in reforestation and land planning for future challenges. © 2019 The Author

Landscape matters: Insights from the impact of mega-droughts on Colombia's energy transition

Mega-droughts can cause disruption to the affected society sparking a transition. We explore the causes and effects of the 2015−2016 mega-drought in Colombia. Using the multi-level perspective as a framework, we found that the mega-drought sparked an energy transition in Colombia whose dynamics were impacted both by the institutionalization of niches as well as the ability to predict the next drought. We were able to trace, using the current understanding of anthropogenic forces, the cause of the mega-drought to socio-technical landscape development influenced by human-induced warming and land use change. We found that the regimes in Bolivia and Brazil were able to influence the landscape through deforestation, and hence contribute to the intensity of a mega-drought in Colombia. The knowledge that a regime can cause disruption in regimes in other geographies and sectors has implications for transition research as well as decision-making for coping with droughts and other disasters. © 202

Recombinant hirudin for extended aortic surgery in patients with heparin-induced thrombocytopenia

AbstractJ Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 1999;118:191-

Reporter Assay for Endo/Lysosomal Escape of Toxin-Based Therapeutics

Protein-based therapeutics with cytosolic targets are capable of exhibiting their therapeutic effect once they have escaped from the endosomes or lysosomes. In this study, the reporters—horseradish peroxidase (HRP), Alexa Fluor 488 (Alexa) and ricin A-chain (RTA)—were investigated for their capacity to monitor the endo/lysosomal escape of the ribosome-inactivating protein, saporin. The conjugates—saporin-HRP, Alexasaporin and saporin-KQ-RTA—were constructed, and the endo/lysosomal escape of these conjugates alone (lack of endo/lysosomal release) or in combination with certain structurally-specific triterpenoidal saponins (efficient endo/lysosomal escape) was characterized. HRP failed in reporting the endo/lysosomal escape of saporin. Contrastingly, Alexa Fluor 488 successfully allowed the report of the process at a toxin concentration of 1000 nM. In addition, single endo/lysosome analysis facilitated the determination of the amount of Alexasaporin released from each vesicle. RTA was also successful in reporting the endo/lysosomal escape of the enzymatically inactive mutant, saporin-KQ, but in this case, the sensitivity of the method reached a toxin concentration of 10 nM. In conclusion, the simultaneous usage of Alexa Fluor 488 and RTA as reporters may provide the possibility of monitoring the endo/lysosomal escape of protein-based therapeutics in the concentration range of 10–1000 nM. View Full-Tex

Antiferromagnetism in metals: from the cuprate superconductors to the heavy fermion materials

The critical theory of the onset of antiferromagnetism in metals, with concomitant Fermi surface reconstruction, has recently been shown to be strongly coupled in two spatial dimensions. The onset of unconventional superconductivity near this critical point is reviewed: it involves a subtle interplay between the breakdown of fermionic quasiparticle excitations on the Fermi surface, and the strong pairing glue provided by the antiferromagnetic fluctuations. The net result is a logarithm-squared enhancement of the pairing vertex for generic Fermi surfaces, with a universal dimensionless co-efficient independent of the strength of interactions, which is expected to lead to superconductivity at the scale of the Fermi energy. We also discuss the possibility that the antiferromagnetic critical point can be replaced by an intermediate `fractionalized Fermi liquid' phase, in which there is Fermi surface reconstruction but no long-range antiferromagnetic order. We discuss the relevance of this phase to the underdoped cuprates and the heavy-fermion materials.Comment: Talk at SCES 2011; 19 pages, 12 figures; (v2) corrected typo

Plant Extracellular Vesicles and Nanovesicles: Focus on Secondary Metabolites, Proteins and Lipids with Perspectives on Their Potential and Sources

While human extracellular vesicles (EVs) have attracted a big deal of interest and have been extensively characterized over the last years, plant-derived EVs and nanovesicles have earned less attention and have remained poorly investigated. Although a series of investigations already revealed promising beneficial health effects and drug delivery properties, adequate (pre)clinical studies are rare. This fact might be caused by a lack of sources with appropriate qualities. Our study introduces plant cell suspension culture as a new and well controllable source for plant EVs. Plant cells, cultured in vitro, release EVs into the growth medium which could be harvested for pharmaceutical applications. In this investigation we characterized EVs and nanovesicles from distinct sources. Our findings regarding secondary metabolites indicate that these might not be packaged into EVs in an active manner but enriched in the membrane when lipophilic enough, since apparently lipophilic compounds were associated with nanovesicles while more hydrophilic structures were not consistently found. In addition, protein identification revealed a possible explanation for the mechanism of EV cell wall passage in plants, since cell wall hydrolases like 1,3-β-glucosidases, pectinesterases, polygalacturonases, β-galactosidases and β-xylosidase/α-L-arabinofuranosidase 2-like are present in plant EVs and nanovesicles which might facilitate cell wall transition. Further on, the identified proteins indicate that plant cells secrete EVs using similar mechanisms as animal cells to release exosomes and microvesicles