A method of eta' decay product selection to study partial chiral symmetry restoration

In case of chiral U_A(1) symmetry restoration the mass of the eta' boson (the ninth, would-be Goldstone boson) is decreased, thus its production cross section is heavily enhanced. The eta' decays (through one of its decay channels) into five pions. These pions will not be correlated in terms of Bose-Einsten correlations, thus the production enhancement changes the strength of two-pion correlation functions at low momentum. Preliminary results strongly support the mass decrease of the eta' boson. In this paper we propose a method to select pions coming from eta' decays. We investigate the efficiency of the proposed kinematical cut in several collision systems and energies with several simulators. We prove that our method can be used in all investigeted collision systems.Comment: Talk at the VI Workshop on Particle Correlations and Femtoscopy, Kiev, September 14-18, 2010. 6 pages, 3 figures. This work was supported by the OTKA grant NK73143 and M. Csanad's Bolyai scholarshi

A clinical tool for predicting survival in ALS

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive and usually fatal neurodegenerative disease. Survival from diagnosis varies considerably. Several prognostic factors are known, including site of onset (bulbar or limb), age at symptom onset, delay from onset to diagnosis and the use of riluzole and non-invasive ventilation (NIV). Clinicians and patients would benefit from a practical way of using these factors to provide an individualised prognosis. Methods: 575 consecutive patients with incident ALS from a population-based registry in South-East England register for ALS (SEALS) were studied. Their survival was modelled as a two-step process: the time from diagnosis to respiratory muscle involvement, followed by the time from respiratory involvement to death. The effects of predictor variables were assessed separately for each time interval. Findings: Younger age at symptom onset, longer delay from onset to diagnosis and riluzole use were associated with slower progression to respiratory involvement, and NIV use was associated with lower mortality after respiratory involvement, each with a clinically significant effect size. Riluzole may have a greater effect in younger patients and those with longer delay to diagnosis. A patient's survival time has a roughly 50% chance of falling between half and twice the predicted median. Interpretation: A simple and clinically applicable graphical method of predicting an individual patient's survival from diagnosis is presented. The model should be validated in an independent cohort, and extended to include other important prognostic factors

Escherichia coli MazF Leads to the Simultaneous Selective Synthesis of Both “Death Proteins” and “Survival Proteins”

The Escherichia coli mazEF module is one of the most thoroughly studied toxin–antitoxin systems. mazF encodes a stable toxin, MazF, and mazE encodes a labile antitoxin, MazE, which prevents the lethal effect of MazF. MazF is an endoribonuclease that leads to the inhibition of protein synthesis by cleaving mRNAs at ACA sequences. Here, using 2D-gels, we show that in E. coli, although MazF induction leads to the inhibition of the synthesis of most proteins, the synthesis of an exclusive group of proteins, mostly smaller than about 20 kDa, is still permitted. We identified some of those small proteins by mass spectrometry. By deleting the genes encoding those proteins from the E. coli chromosome, we showed that they were required for the death of most of the cellular population. Under the same experimental conditions, which induce mazEF-mediated cell death, other such proteins were found to be required for the survival of a small sub-population of cells. Thus, MazF appears to be a regulator that induces downstream pathways leading to death of most of the population and the continued survival of a small sub-population, which will likely become the nucleus of a new population when growth conditions become less stressful

One-pot synthesis, crystallization and deracemization of isoindolinones from achiral reactants

The synthesis, crystallization, and complete solid-state deracemization of isoindolinones was realized in one pot simply by grinding achiral reaction components in a suitable solvent with an achiral catalyst. Previously, this concept was applied to a reversible reaction, but herein we showed that it could also be used in combination with reactions in which product formation is irreversible. A controlled final configuration of the product was obtained by using small amounts of chiral additives or seed crystals of the product

A Differential Effect of E. coli Toxin-Antitoxin Systems on Cell Death in Liquid Media and Biofilm Formation

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) modules are gene pairs specifying for a toxin and its antitoxin and are found on the chromosomes of many bacteria including pathogens. Here we report how each of five such TA systems in E. coli affect bacterial cell death differently in liquid media and during biofilm formation. Of all these systems, only the TA system mazEF mediated cell death both in liquid media and during biofilm formation. At the other extreme, as our results have revealed here, the TA system dinJ-YafQ is unique in that it is involved only in the death process during biofilm formation. Cell death governed by mazEF and dinJ-YafQ seems to participate in biofilm formation through a novel mechanism

The benefit of evolving multidisciplinary care in ALS: a diagnostic cohort survival comparison

BACKGROUND Care for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has altered at King's College Hospital over the last 20 years. The clinic has been a multidisciplinary, specialist, tertiary referral centre since 1995 with a large team with integrated palliative and respiratory care since 2006. We hypothesised that these changes would improve survival. METHODS In this retrospective observational study, patients diagnosed with El Escorial definite, probable and possible ALS between 1995-1998 and 2008-2011 were followed up. The primary outcome measure was a chi-square test for the proportion of each cohort surviving. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox multivariate regression were secondary analyses. RESULTS There was low reporting of some interventions. Five hundred and forty-seven people were included. Survival between the cohorts was significantly different (p = 0.022) with a higher proportion surviving during 2008-2011. Survival time was 21.6 (95% CI 19.2-24.0) months in the 2008-2011 cohort compared to 19.2 years (15.6-21.6) in the 1995-1998 cohort (log rank p = 0.018). Four hundred and ninety-three cases were included in the Cox regression. Diagnostic cohort was a significant predictor variable (HR 0.79 (0.64-0.97) p = 0.023). CONCLUSIONS These results support the hypothesis that integrated specialist clinics with multidisciplinary input improve survival in ALS

A linguistic analysis of lying in negative evaluations: The speech act performance of Chinese learners of Korean

이 논문은 중국인 한국어 학습자와 한국어 화자들 사이의 ‘거짓말’ 화행 양상을 언어학적으로 분석한 연구이다. 여기서 말하는 ‘거짓말’이란 요청, 사과, 거절 등과 같은 화행의 일종으로서 ‘부정적 평가’에 속하며 대화 참여자나 상황을 고려한 소위 ‘선의의 거짓말’을 가리키는 것으로 이해할 수 있을 것이다. 우리는 중국인 한국어 학습자 15명과 한국어 화자 15명을 대상으로 담화완성테스트(DCT)와 부연설명질문지(QFE)를 사용하여 피실험자들의 화행을 분석하였다. 피실험자 자신들의 설명과 한국어교육 전문가 다섯 명의 판정을 종합해 ‘거짓말’ 화행을 가려내고 통계 처리를 바탕으로 다음과 같은 결론에 도달했다. 한국어 화자들이 중국인 한국어 학습자들보다 (선의의) 거짓말을 더 많이 수행하는 것으로 나타났다. 그리고 두 집단 모두 부정적 평가가 사물에 관련된 경우보다 사람에 관련된 경우에 ‘거짓말’ 화행을 더 많이 사용한다. 그러나 화자와 청자 사이의 친소관계(distance)나 상하관계(power)는 거짓말 사용에 직접적 상관 관계를 보여주지 않았다. 이 연구는 지금까지 화행 연구 중에서 상대적으로 연구가 부진했던 부정평가와 ‘거짓말’ 화행에 대한 분석을 시도했다는 점에서 의미가 있다. 또한 한국어 화자와 중국인 한국어 학습자 사이에 보이는 화행 수행의 차이를 문화인식(cultural awareness)의 관점에서 해석해 볼 수 있는 가능성도 열어 주었다