Neutrino Experiments: Status, Recent Progress, and Prospects

Neutrino physics has seen an explosion of activity and new results in the last decade. In this report the current state of the field is summarized, with a particular focus on progress in the last two years. Prospects for the near term (roughly 5 years) are also described.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, proceedings of plenary talk at EPS HEP 2007 Conference, Manchester, UK. Updated with citation added to Figure 1

Observation of the onset of strong scattering on high frequency acoustic phonons in densified silica glass

The linewidth of longitudinal acoustic waves in densified silica glass is obtained by inelastic x-ray scattering. It increases with a high power alpha of the frequency up to a crossover where the waves experience strong scattering. We find that \alpha is at least 4, and probably larger. Resonance and hybridization of acoustic waves with the boson-peak modes seems to be a more likely explanation for these findings than Rayleigh scattering from disorder.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Letter

CART - a chemical annotation retrieval toolkit

MOTIVATION: Data on bioactivities of drug-like chemicals is rapidly accumulating in public repositories, creating new opportunities for research in computational systems pharmacology. However, integrative analysis of these data sets is difficult due to prevailing ambiguity between chemical names and identifiers and a lack of cross-references between databases. RESULTS: To address this challenge, we have developed CART, a Chemical Annotation Retrieval Toolkit. As a key functionality, it matches an input list of chemical names into a comprehensive reference space to assign unambiguous chemical identifiers. In this unified space, bioactivity annotations can be easily retrieved from databases covering a wide variety of chemical effects on biological systems. Subsequently, CART can determine annotations enriched in the input set of chemicals and display these in tabular format and interactive network visualizations, thereby facilitating integrative analysis of chemical bioactivity data

Broken-Bond Rule for the Surface Energies of Noble Metals

Using two different full-potential ab-initio techniques we introduce a simple, universal rule based on the number of broken first-neighbor bonds to determine the surface energies of the three noble metals Cu, Ag and Au. When a bond is broken, the rearrangement of the electronic charge for these metals does not lead to a change of the remaining bonds. Thus the energy needed to break a bond is independent of the surface orientation. This novel finding can lead to the development of simple models to describe the energetics of a surface like step and kink formation, crystal growth, alloy formation, equilibrium shape of mesoscopic crystallites and surface faceting.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

The influence of direct DD-meson production to the determination on the nucleon strangeness asymmetry via dimuon events in neutrino experiments

Experimentally, the production of oppositely charged dimuon events by neutrino and anti-neutrino deep inelastic scattering (DIS) is used to determine the strangeness asymmetry inside a nucleon. Here we point out that the direct production of $D$-meson in DIS may make substantial influence to the measurement of nucleon strange distributions. The direct $D$-meson production is via the heavy quark recombination (HQR) and via the light quark fragmentation from perturbative QCD (LQF-P). To see the influence precisely, we compute the direct $D$-meson productions via HQR and LQF-P quantitatively and estimate their corrections to the analysis of the strangeness asymmetry. The results show that HQR has stronger effect than LQF-P does, and the former may influence the experimental determination of the nucleon strangeness asymmetry.Comment: 9 latex pages, 7 figure

Novel drug candidates for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer through global inverse gene-expression profiling

Drug-induced gene-expression profiles that invert disease profiles have recently been illustrated to be a starting point for drug repositioning. In this study, we validate this approach and focus on prediction of novel drugs for colorectal cancer, for which there is a pressing need to find novel antimetastatic compounds. We computationally predicted three novel and still unknown compounds against colorectal cancer: citalopram (an antidepressant), troglitazone (an antidiabetic), and enilconazole (a fungicide). We verified the compounds by in vitro assays of clonogenic survival, proliferation, and migration and in a subcutaneous mouse model. We found evidence that the mode of action of these compounds may be through inhibition of TGF{beta} signaling. Furthermore, one compound, citalopram, reduced tumor size as well as the number of circulating tumor cells and metastases in an orthotopic mouse model of colorectal cancer. This study proposes citalopram as a potential therapeutic option for patients with colorectal cancer, illustrating the potential of systems pharmacology

Graphene coating obtained in a cold-wall CVD process on the Co-Cr Alloy (L-605) for medical applications

Graphene coating on the cobalt-chromium alloy was optimized and successfully carried out by a cold-wall chemical vapor deposition (CW-CVD) method. A uniform layer of graphene for a large area of the Co-Cr alloy (discs of 10 mm diameter) was confirmed by Raman mapping coated area and analyzing specific G and 2D bands; in particular, the intensity ratio and the number of layers were calculated. The effect of the CW-CVD process on the microstructure and the mor-phology of the Co-Cr surface was investigated by scanning X-ray photoelectron microscope (SPEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Nanoindentation and scratch tests were performed to determine mechanical properties of Co-Cr disks. The results of microbiological tests indicate that the studied Co-Cr alloys covered with a graphene layer did not show a pro-coagulant effect. The obtained results confirm the possibility of using the developed coating method in medical applications, in particular in the field of cardiovascular diseases

Efimov physics beyond three particles

Efimov physics originally refers to a system of three particles. Here we review recent theoretical progress seeking for manifestations of Efimov physics in systems composed of more than three particles. Clusters of more than three bosons are tied to each Efimov trimer, but no independent Efimov physics exists there beyond three bosons. The case of a few heavy fermions interacting with a lighter atom is also considered, where the mass ratio of the constituent particles plays a significant role. Following Efimov's study of the (2+1) system, the (3+1) system was shown to have its own critical mass ratio to become Efimovian. We show that the (4+1) system becomes Efimovian at a mass ratio which is smaller than its sub-systems thresholds, giving a pure five-body Efimov effect. The (5+1) and (6+1) systems are also discussed, and we show the absence of 6- and 7-body Efimov physics there