2,530 research outputs found
Distinct Olfactory Signaling Mechanisms in the Malaria Vector Mosquito Anopheles gambiae
A combination of gene silencing and behavioral studies in the malaria vector mosquito Anopheles gambiae sheds light on the olfactory basis of DEET repulsion as well as reveals the role of another family of chemosensory receptors that facilitate olfaction in An. gambiae
Role of mitochondrial raft-like microdomains in the regulation of cell apoptosis
Lipid rafts are envisaged as lateral assemblies of specific lipids and proteins that dissociate and associate rapidly and form functional clusters in cell membranes. These structural platforms are not confined to the plasma membrane; indeed lipid microdomains are similarly formed at subcellular organelles, which include endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi and mitochondria, named raft-like microdomains. In addition, some components of raft-like microdomains are present within ER-mitochondria associated membranes. This review is focused on the role of mitochondrial raft-like microdomains in the regulation of cell apoptosis, since these microdomains may represent preferential sites where key reactions take place, regulating mitochondria hyperpolarization, fission-associated changes, megapore formation and release of apoptogenic factors. These structural platforms appear to modulate cytoplasmic pathways switching cell fate towards cell survival or death. Main insights on this issue derive from some pathological conditions in which alterations of microdomains structure or function can lead to severe alterations of cell activity and life span. In the light of the role played by raft-like microdomains to integrate apoptotic signals and in regulating mitochondrial dynamics, it is conceivable that these membrane structures may play a role in the mitochondrial alterations observed in some of the most common human neurodegenerative diseases, such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's chorea and prion-related diseases. These findings introduce an additional task for identifying new molecular target(s) of pharmacological agents in these pathologies
A search for resonant production of pairs in $4.8\ \rm{fb}^{-1}p\bar{p}\sqrt{s}=1.96\ \rm{TeV}$
We search for resonant production of tt pairs in 4.8 fb^{-1} integrated
luminosity of ppbar collision data at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV in the lepton+jets decay
channel, where one top quark decays leptonically and the other hadronically. A
matrix element reconstruction technique is used; for each event a probability
density function (pdf) of the ttbar candidate invariant mass is sampled. These
pdfs are used to construct a likelihood function, whereby the cross section for
resonant ttbar production is estimated, given a hypothetical resonance mass and
width. The data indicate no evidence of resonant production of ttbar pairs. A
benchmark model of leptophobic Z \rightarrow ttbar is excluded with m_{Z'} <
900 GeV at 95% confidence level.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review D Sep 21, 201
Evidence for t\bar{t}\gamma Production and Measurement of \sigma_t\bar{t}\gamma / \sigma_t\bar{t}
Using data corresponding to 6.0/fb of ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV
collected by the CDF II detector, we present a cross section measurement of
top-quark pair production with an additional radiated photon. The events are
selected by looking for a lepton, a photon, significant transverse momentum
imbalance, large total transverse energy, and three or more jets, with at least
one identified as containing a b quark. The ttbar+photon sample requires the
photon to have 10 GeV or more of transverse energy, and to be in the central
region. Using an event selection optimized for the ttbar+photon candidate
sample we measure the production cross section of, and the ratio of cross
sections of the two samples. Control samples in the dilepton+photon and
lepton+photon+\met, channels are constructed to aid in decay product
identification and background measurements. We observe 30 ttbar+photon
candidate events compared to the standard model expectation of 26.9 +/- 3.4
events. We measure the ttbar+photon cross section to be 0.18+0.08 pb, and the
ratio of the cross section of ttbar+photon to ttbar to be 0.024 +/- 0.009.
Assuming no ttbar+photon production, we observe a probability of 0.0015 of the
background events alone producing 30 events or more, corresponding to 3.0
standard deviations.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure
Precision Top-Quark Mass Measurements at CDF
We present a precision measurement of the top-quark mass using the full
sample of Tevatron TeV proton-antiproton collisions collected
by the CDF II detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 8.7
. Using a sample of candidate events decaying into the
lepton+jets channel, we obtain distributions of the top-quark masses and the
invariant mass of two jets from the boson decays from data. We then compare
these distributions to templates derived from signal and background samples to
extract the top-quark mass and the energy scale of the calorimeter jets with
{\it in situ} calibration. The likelihood fit of the templates from signal and
background events to the data yields the single most-precise measurement of the
top-quark mass, \mtop = 172.85 \pm\pmComment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Measurement of the lepton charge asymmetry in W-boson decays produced in p-pbar collisions
We describe a measurement of the charge asymmetry of leptons from W boson
decays in the rapidity range 0 enu, munu events from
110+/-7 pb^{-1}of data collected by the CDF detector during 1992-95. The
asymmetry data constrain the ratio of d and u quark momentum distributions in
the proton over the x range of 0.006 to 0.34 at Q2 \approx M_W^2. The asymmetry
predictions that use parton distribution functions obtained from previously
published CDF data in the central rapidity region (0.0<|y_l|<1.1) do not agree
with the new data in the large rapidity region (|y_l|>1.1).Comment: 13 pages, 3 tables, 1 figur
Shrinking a large dataset to identify variables associated with increased risk of Plasmodium falciparum infection in Western Kenya
Large datasets are often not amenable to analysis using traditional single-step approaches. Here, our general objective was to apply imputation techniques, principal component analysis (PCA), elastic net and generalized linear models to a large dataset in a systematic approach to extract the most meaningful predictors for a health outcome. We extracted predictors for Plasmodium falciparum infection, from a large covariate dataset while facing limited numbers of observations, using data from the People, Animals, and their Zoonoses (PAZ) project to demonstrate these techniques: data collected from 415 homesteads in western Kenya, contained over 1500 variables that describe the health, environment, and social factors of the humans, livestock, and the homesteads in which they reside. The wide, sparse dataset was simplified to 42 predictors of P. falciparum malaria infection and wealth rankings were produced for all homesteads. The 42 predictors make biological sense and are supported by previous studies. This systematic data-mining approach we used would make many large datasets more manageable and informative for decision-making processes and health policy prioritization
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