4,466 research outputs found
Information requirements for guidance and control systems
Control or guidance system performance dependency on information handling by subsystem
The design of an experiment to determine the limitations imposed on a multiple-aperture antenna system by propagation phenomena third quarterly report, 1 dec. 1964 - 28 feb. 1965
Antenna array experiment to determine propagation path limitations on multiple aperture radio antenna
On the effect of resonances in composite Higgs phenomenology
We consider a generic composite Higgs model based on the coset SO(5)/SO(4)
and study its phenomenology beyond the leading low-energy effective lagrangian
approximation. Our basic goal is to introduce in a controllable and simple way
the lowest-lying, possibly narrow, resonances that may exist is such models. We
do so by proposing a criterion that we call partial UV completion. We
characterize the simplest cases, corresponding respectively to a scalar in
either singlet or tensor representation of SO(4) and to vectors in the adjoint
of SO(4). We study the impact of these resonances on the signals associated to
high-energy vector boson scattering, pointing out for each resonance the
characteristic patterns of depletion and enhancement with respect to the
leading-order chiral lagrangian. En route we derive the O(p^4) general chiral
lagrangian and discuss its peculiar accidental and approximate symmetries.Comment: v3: a few typos corrected. Conclusions unchange
Effective suppression of Dengue virus using a novel group-I intron that induces apoptotic cell death upon infection through conditional expression of the Bax C-terminal domain
Introduction:
Approximately 100 million confirmed infections and 20,000 deaths are caused by Dengue virus (DENV) outbreaks annually. Global warming and rapid dispersal have resulted in DENV epidemics in formally non-endemic regions. Currently no consistently effective preventive measures for DENV exist, prompting development of transgenic and paratransgenic vector control approaches. Production of transgenic mosquitoes refractory for virus infection and/or transmission is contingent upon defining antiviral genes that have low probability for allowing escape mutations, and are equally effective against multiple serotypes. Previously we demonstrated the effectiveness of an anti-viral group I intron targeting U143 of the DENV genome in mediating trans-splicing and expression of a marker gene with the capsid coding domain. In this report we examine the effectiveness of coupling expression of ΔN Bax to trans-splicing U143 intron activity as a means of suppressing DENV infection of mosquito cells.
Results:
Targeting the conserved DENV circularization sequence (CS) by U143 intron trans-splicing activity appends a 3’ exon RNA encoding ΔN Bax to the capsid coding region of the genomic RNA, resulting in a chimeric protein that induces premature cell death upon infection. TCID50-IFA analyses demonstrate an enhancement of DENV suppression for all DENV serotypes tested over the identical group I intron coupled with the non-apoptotic inducing firefly luciferase as the 3’ exon. These cumulative results confirm the increased effectiveness of this αDENV-U143-ΔN Bax group I intron as a sequence specific antiviral that should be useful for suppression of DENV in transgenic mosquitoes. Annexin V staining, caspase 3 assays, and DNA ladder observations confirm DCA-ΔN Bax fusion protein expression induces apoptotic cell death.
Conclusion:
This report confirms the relative effectiveness of an anti-DENV group I intron coupled to an apoptosis-inducing ΔN Bax 3’ exon that trans-splices conserved sequences of the 5’ CS region of all DENV serotypes and induces apoptotic cell death upon infection. Our results confirm coupling the targeted ribozyme capabilities of the group I intron with the generation of an apoptosis-inducing transcript increases the effectiveness of infection suppression, improving the prospects of this unique approach as a means of inducing transgenic refractoriness in mosquitoes for all serotypes of this important disease
Linking Animals Aloft with the Terrestrial Landscape
Despite using the aerosphere for many facets of their life, most flying animals (i.e., birds, bats, some insects) are still bound to terrestrial habitats for resting, feeding, and reproduction. Comprehensive broad-scale observations by weather surveillance radars of animals as they leave terrestrial habitats for migration or feeding flights can be used to map their terrestrial distributions either as point locations (e.g., communal roosts) or as continuous surface layers (e.g., animal densities in habitats across a landscape). We discuss some of the technical challenges to reducing measurement biases related to how radars sample the aerosphere and the flight behavior of animals. We highlight a recently developed methodological approach that precisely and quantitatively links the horizontal spatial structure of birds aloft to their terrestrial distributions and provides novel insights into avian ecology and conservation across broad landscapes. Specifically, we present case studies that (1) elucidate how migrating birds contend with crossing ecological barriers and extreme weather events, (2) identify important stopover areas and habitat use patterns of birds along their migration routes, and (3) assess waterfowl response to wetland habitat management and restoration. These studies aid our understanding of how anthropogenic modification of the terrestrial landscape (e.g., urbanization, habitat management), natural geographic features, and weather (e.g., hurricanes) can affect the terrestrial distributions of flying animals
Linking Animals Aloft with the Terrestrial Landscape
Despite using the aerosphere for many facets of their life, most flying animals (i.e., birds, bats, some insects) are still bound to terrestrial habitats for resting, feeding, and reproduction. Comprehensive broad-scale observations by weather surveillance radars of animals as they leave terrestrial habitats for migration or feeding flights can be used to map their terrestrial distributions either as point locations (e.g., communal roosts) or as continuous surface layers (e.g., animal densities in habitats across a landscape). We discuss some of the technical challenges to reducing measurement biases related to how radars sample the aerosphere and the flight behavior of animals. We highlight a recently developed methodological approach that precisely and quantitatively links the horizontal spatial structure of birds aloft to their terrestrial distributions and provides novel insights into avian ecology and conservation across broad landscapes. Specifically, we present case studies that (1) elucidate how migrating birds contend with crossing ecological barriers and extreme weather events, (2) identify important stopover areas and habitat use patterns of birds along their migration routes, and (3) assess waterfowl response to wetland habitat management and restoration. These studies aid our understanding of how anthropogenic modification of the terrestrial landscape (e.g., urbanization, habitat management), natural geographic features, and weather (e.g., hurricanes) can affect the terrestrial distributions of flying animals
Validity of numerical trajectories in the synchronization transition of complex systems
We investigate the relationship between the loss of synchronization and the
onset of shadowing breakdown {\it via} unstable dimension variability in
complex systems. In the neighborhood of the critical transition to strongly
non-hyperbolic behavior, the system undergoes on-off intermittency with respect
to the synchronization state. There are potentially severe consequences of
these facts on the validity of the computer-generated trajectories obtained
from dynamical systems whose synchronization manifolds share the same
non-hyperbolic properties.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Long-lived stops in MSSM scenarios with a neutralino LSP
This work investigates the possibility of a long-lived stop squark in
supersymmetric models with the neutralino as the lightest supersymmetric
particle (LSP). We study the implications of meta-stable stops on the sparticle
mass spectra and the dark matter density. We find that in order to obtain a
sufficiently long stop lifetime so as to be observable as a stable R-hadron at
an LHC experiment, we need to fine tune the mass degeneracy between the stop
and the LSP considerably. This increases the stop-neutralino coanihilation
cross section, leaving the neutralino relic density lower than what is expected
from the WMAP results for stop masses ~1.5 TeV/c^2. However, if such scenarios
are realised in nature we demonstrate that the long-lived stops will be
produced at the LHC and that stop-based R-hadrons with masses up to 1 TeV/c^2
can be detected after one year of running at design luminosity
Production of scalar and pseudo-scalar Higgs bosons to next-to-next-to-leading order at hadron colliders
We consider the production of intermediate-mass CP-even and CP-odd Higgs
bosons in proton-proton and proton-anti-proton collisions. We extend the
recently published results for the complete next-to-next-to-leading order
calculation for a scalar Higgs boson to the pseudo-scalar case and present
details of the calculation that might be useful for similar future
investigations. The result is based on an expansion in the limit of a heavy top
quark mass and a subsequent matching to the expression obtained in the limit of
infinite energy. For a Higgs boson mass of 120 GeV the deviation from the
infinite-top quark mass result is small. For 300 GeV, however, the
next-to-next-to-leading order corrections for a scalar Higgs boson exceed the
effective-theory result by about 9% which increases to 22% in the pseudo-scalar
case. Thus in this mass range the effect on the total cross section amounts to
about 2% and 6%, respectively, which may be relevant in future precision
studies.Comment: 29 page
Fitting Neutrino Physics with a U(1)_R Lepton Number
We study neutrino physics in the context of a supersymmetric model where a
continuous R-symmetry is identified with the total Lepton Number and one
sneutrino can thus play the role of the down type Higgs. We show that
R-breaking effects communicated to the visible sector by Anomaly Mediation can
reproduce neutrino masses and mixing solely via radiative contributions,
without requiring any additional degree of freedom. In particular, a relatively
large reactor angle (as recently observed by the Daya Bay collaboration) can be
accommodated in ample regions of the parameter space. On the contrary, if the
R-breaking is communicated to the visible sector by gravitational effects at
the Planck scale, additional particles are necessary to accommodate neutrino
data.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures; v2: references added, constraints updated,
overall conclusions unchange
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