Verification and Validation of Common Derivative Terms Approximation in Meshfree Numerical Scheme

In order to improve the approximation of spatial derivatives without meshes, a set of meshfree numerical schemes for derivative terms is developed, which is compatible with the coordinates of Cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical. Based on the comparisons between numerical and theoretical solutions, errors and convergences are assessed by a posteriori method, which shows that the approximations for functions and derivatives are of the second accuracy order, and the scale of the support domain has some influences on numerical errors but not on accuracy orders. With a discrete scale h=0.01, the relative errors of the numerical simulation for the selected functions and their derivatives are within 0.65%

Optimisation of the Read-out Electronics of Muon Drift-Tube Chambers for Very High Background Rates at HL-LHC and Future Colliders

In the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer, Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) chambers and sMDT chambers with half of the tube diameter of the MDTs are used for precision muon track reconstruction. The sMDT chambers are designed for operation at high counting rates due to neutron and gamma background irradiation expected for the HL-LHC and future hadron colliders. The existing MDT read-out electronics uses bipolar signal shaping which causes an undershoot of opposite polarity and same charge after a signal pulse. At high counting rates and short electronics dead time used for the sMDTs, signal pulses pile up on the undershoot of preceding background pulses leading to a reduction of the signal amplitude and a jitter in the drift time measurement and, therefore, to a degradation of drift tube efficiency and spatial resolution. In order to further increase the rate capability of sMDT tubes, baseline restoration can be used in the read-out electronics to suppress the pile-up effects. A discrete bipolar shaping circuit with baseline restoration has been developed and used for reading out sMDT tubes under irradiation with a 24 MBq 90Sr source. The measurements results show a substantial improvement of the performance of the sMDT tubes at high counting rates

Recombinant antigen P29 of Echinococcus granulosus induces Th1, Tc1, and Th17 cell immune responses in sheep

Echinococcosis is a common human and animal parasitic disease that seriously endangers human health and animal husbandry. Although studies have been conducted on vaccines for echinococcosis, to date, there is no human vaccine available for use. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of in-depth research on basic immunization with vaccines. Our previous results confirmed that recombinant antigen P29 (rEg.P29) induced more than 90% immune protection in both mice and sheep, but data on its induction of sheep-associated cellular immune responses are lacking. In this study, we investigated the changes in CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, and antigen-specific cytokines IFN-γ, IL-4, and IL-17A after rEg.P29 immunization using enzyme-linked immunospot assay (ELISPOT), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and flow cytometry to investigate the cellular immune response induced by rEg.P29 in sheep. It was found that rEg.P29 immunization did not affect the percentage of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), and was able to stimulate the proliferation of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells after immunization in vitro. Importantly, the results of both ELISPOT and ELISA showed that rEg.P29 can induce the production of the specific cytokines IFN-γ and IL-17A, and flow cytometry verified that rEg.P29 can induce the expression of IFN-γ in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and IL-17A in CD4+ T cells; however, no IL-4 expression was observed. These results indicate that rEg.P29 can induce Th1, Th17, and Tc1 cellular immune responses in sheep against echinococcosis infection, providing theoretical support for the translation of rEg.P29 vaccine applications