Gamma-Ray Astronomy with ARGO-YBJ

ARGO-YBJ is a full coverage air shower array located at the YangBaJing Cosmic Ray Laboratory (Tibet, P.R. China, 4300 m a.s.l., 606 g/cm2) recording data with a duty cycle 85% and an energy threshold of a few hundred GeV. In this paper the latest results in Gamma-Ray Astronomy are summarized

Cosmic ray physics with the ARGO-YBJ experiment

The main scientific goals of the ARGO-YBJ experiment are ray astronomy with a few hundreds GeV energy threshold and cosmic ray physics below and around the knee of the primary energy spectrum (10**12−10**16 eV), where the transition from direct to indirect measurement techniques takes place. The ARGO-YBJ experiment, located at the Cosmic Ray Observatory of Yangbajing (Tibet, P.R. of China, 4 300 m a.s.l.), is an unconventional Extensive Air Shower array of about 6,700 m2 of active area, the only one exploiting the full-coverage technique at very high altitude currently in operation. The detector space-time granularity, performance and location offer a unique chance to make a detailed study of the structure of cosmic ray showers, in particular of the hadronic component. In this work we will focus on the main experimental results concerning cosmic ray and hadronic interaction physics: primary cosmic ray energy spectrum, antiproton over proton ratio, anisotropy in the cosmic ray flux and proton-air cross-section. Moreover, the possible data analysis improvements based on the use of all detailed information on the shower front (curvature, time width, rise time and so on), as well as the extension of the investigable energy range, allowed by the analog RPC readout, will be pointed out

Simulation study of air shower particles near the core region

The ARGO-YBJ experiment has two kinds of signals in the shower working mode which allows coverage of the energy region from TeV to PeV region. One is the digital strip pattern, another is so-called ‘big pad’ mode, which is the analog signal counting the pulse height on half of an RPC, proportional to the number of hitting particles. In this paper by using the Monte Carlo simulation method the ARGO-YBJ sensitivity to the cosmic ray composition is discussed, by using the ‘big pad’ signal for measuring the number of particles detected close to the shower core

Search for gamma ray bursts with the ARGO-YBJ detector in scaler mode

The ARGO-YBJ experiment has been designed to decrease the energy threshold of typical Extensive Air Shower arrays by exploiting the high altitude and the full coverage, consisting of a 6700m2 carpet of Resistive Plate Chambers located at Yangbajing (Tibet, PR China, 4300m a.s.l.). The lower energy limit of the detector (1 GeV) is reached with the ‘‘Scaler Mode’’, recording the counting rate at fixed time intervals. Here we present results concerning the search for emission from Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) in coincidence with satellite detections

Study of cosmic ray showers front and time structure with ARGO-YBJ

ARGO-YBJ is a full coverage Extensive Air Shower array located by the high-altitude cosmic rays laboratory of Yangbajing (4300 m a.s.l., Tibet, China). The detector consists of a layer of Resistive Plate Counters covering an area of about 5800 m^2 with 58x62 cm^2 unit cells. This design allows a detailed characterization of cosmic ray showers induced by primaries with energy in the range from 300 GeV up to 100 TeV. A set of well reconstructed data has been used in order to study the shower phenomenology and front structure with high time resolution (1 ns accuracy) and fine granularity. Simulated CORSIKA showers have been used and the detector response is taken into account in detail for this analysis. Several observables have been investigated in both real and simulated data and compared, aiming to derive hints on cosmic ray shower age, energy and mass composition

Prognostic value of CD44 expression in penile squamous cell carcinoma: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Several studies have reported on the prognostic value of molecular markers for metastasis risk and survival in penile squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) patients. The usefulness of CD44 expression as such a marker has been studied in different tumors, but not in penile SCC. Our aim was to determine whether CD44 expression may serve as a prognostic marker for lymph node metastasis and survival in penile SCC patients. METHODS: CD44 immunoistochemical expression was investigated in tissue specimens from 39 patients with penile SCC. CD44 cell positivity, staining intensity and distribution were analyzed and correlated with tumor stage, grade, lymph node status and disease-specific survival. RESULTS: CD44 expression was detected in epithelial cells of both intratumoral and normal tissues with different intensities and staining distributions. In normal tissues CD44 protein was mainly detected in cell membranes, whereas in the tumor compartments it was found in both the cell membranes and the cytoplasm. The intensities and percentages of CD44 expressing cells did not correlate with tumor stage and/or grade. Seventy-three percent of the patients with lymph node metastasis showed high intensities of CD44 staining, as compared to 44% of the patients without lymph node metastasis (P = 0.03). Lymph node-positive patients showed both cytoplasmic and membranous CD44 expression. High CD44 expression was found to be significantly correlated with a decreased 5 year overall survival (P = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: CD44 levels and patterns of expression can be considered as markers for penile SCC aggressiveness and, in addition, may serve as predictive markers for lymph node metastasis, also in patients with clinically negative lymph nodes. CD44 expression may provide prognostic information for penile SCC patients, next to classical clinical-pathological factors

Reconstitution of microtubule into GTP-responsive nanocapsules

Nanocapsules that collapse in response to guanosine triphosphate (GTP) have the potential as drug carriers for efficiently curing diseases caused by cancer and RNA viruses because GTP is present at high levels in such diseased cells and tissues. However, known GTP-responsive carriers also respond to adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is abundant in normal cells as well. Here, we report the elaborate reconstitution of microtubule into a nanocapsule that selectively responds to GTP. When the tubulin monomer from microtubule is incubated at 37 degrees C with a mixture of GTP (17 mol%) and nonhydrolysable GTP* (83 mol%), a tubulin nanosheet forms. Upon addition of photoreactive molecular glue to the resulting dispersion, the nanosheet is transformed into a nanocapsule. Cell death results when a doxorubicin-containing nanocapsule, after photochemically crosslinked for properly stabilizing its shell, is taken up into cancer cells that overexpress GTP.GTP-triggered release from drug carriers has huge potential in cancer therapy but current carriers suffers from off target release due to ATP also acting as a trigger. Here, the authors report on the development of a microtubule capsule which is engineered to be responsive to only GTP not ATP and demonstrate targeted drug delivery

Research data on "Reconstitution of microtubule into GTP-responsive nanocapsules"

This repository contains the set of data shown in the paper "Reconstitution of microtubule into GTP-responsive nanocapsules", published on Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33156-5). All the input data needed to run the simulations and get the results are organized in 3 different folders: * `00-MDPFiles/` in this folder there are the mdp files for each step for Gromacs-MD simulations: energy minimization, nvt, npt, production with restraints and production without restraints. * `01-TubulinSystems/` the folder contains all the necessary files for the tubulin assembly MD simulations with and without glue (`SystemA_Glue/`, `SystemA_noGlue/`, `SystemB_Glue/`, `SystemB_noGlue/`). * `02-OnlyGlue/` the folder contains all the files needed for the the atomistic MD simulations of the glue in water