Little-Parks effect governed by magnetic nanostructures with out-of-plane magnetization

Little-Parks effect names the oscillations in the superconducting critical temperature as a function of the magnetic field. This effect is related to the geometry of the sample. In this work, we show that this effect can be enhanced and manipulated by the inclusion of magnetic nanostructures with perpendicular magnetization. These magnetic nanodots generate stray fields with enough strength to produce superconducting vortex-antivortex pairs. So that, the L-P effect deviation from the usual geometrical constrictions is due to the interplay between local magnetic stray fields and superconducting vortices. Moreover, we compare our results with a low-stray field sample (i.e. with the dots in magnetic vortex state) showing how the enhancement of the L-P effect can be explained by an increment of the effective size of the nanodots

Vortex dynamics controlled by local superconducting enhancement

status: publishe

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele