Rescattering of Vector Meson Daughters in High Energy Heavy Ion Collisions

We consider the role of hadronic rescattering of daughter kaons on the observed mass spectra from $\phi$ meson decays in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. A hadronic cascade code (RQMD v2.4) shows that $\sim$26% of all $\phi$'s decaying to $K^+K^-$ in central Pb+Pb collisions at SPS energies ($E_{beam} = 158 GeV/A$) have a rescattered or absorbed daughter. This significantly affects the reconstructed invariant mass of the pair and shifts $\phi$ mesons out of the mass peak. Kaon rescattering depletes the low velocity region, hardening and broadening the observed phi $m_t$ and rapidity distributions respectively, relative to the dilepton channel. This effect produces an apparent change in the experimentally determined branching ratio not necessarily related to chiral symmetry restoration. Comparisons to recent experimental measures at CERN energies reveal a possible mechanism to account for the shape of the observed spectra, though not their absolute relative magnitude.Comment: submitted to Eur Jour Phys

Woodwinds of the Las Vegas Philharmonic

Program listing performers and works performe

Adversarial training with cycle consistency for unsupervised super-resolution in endomicroscopy

In recent years, endomicroscopy has become increasingly used for diagnostic purposes and interventional guidance. It can provide intraoperative aids for real-time tissue characterization and can help to perform visual investigations aimed for example to discover epithelial cancers. Due to physical constraints on the acquisition process, endomicroscopy images, still today have a low number of informative pixels which hampers their quality. Post-processing techniques, such as Super-Resolution (SR), are a potential solution to increase the quality of these images. SR techniques are often supervised, requiring aligned pairs of low-resolution (LR) and high-resolution (HR) images patches to train a model. However, in our domain, the lack of HR images hinders the collection of such pairs and makes supervised training unsuitable. For this reason, we propose an unsupervised SR framework based on an adversarial deep neural network with a physically-inspired cycle consistency, designed to impose some acquisition properties on the super-resolved images. Our framework can exploit HR images, regardless of the domain where they are coming from, to transfer the quality of the HR images to the initial LR images. This property can be particularly useful in all situations where pairs of LR/HR are not available during the training. Our quantitative analysis, validated using a database of 238 endomicroscopy video sequences from 143 patients, shows the ability of the pipeline to produce convincing super-resolved images. A Mean Opinion Score (MOS) study also confirms this quantitative image quality assessment.Comment: Accepted for publication on Medical Image Analysis journa

The Faculty Evaluation Process: The First Step In Fostering Professional Development In An Online University

The presentation will trace the experiences of two program directors from Walden University and their examination of issues involved with faculty assessment.  Their experiences were used to create a simple but effective and workable model for faculty assessment and development.  Once a presentation of how data were obtained, and analyzed, to create an effective communication process, the specifics of how faculty members were engaged in the collegial methods to ensure a workable professional development process will be described.  The experiences of the directors in working with assessment will be utilized as they demonstrate how they regularly conduct an interactive evaluation process, involving the audience in using the model created at Walden in the Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.  This model was developed using various metrics, such as student course evaluations, faculty self-assessments, checklists of activity, adherence to rubrics, etc.  The entire process begins with the premise that collegial interactions will provide the most sustainable changes.  The process concludes with the implementation of online professional development in response to the collected data

Palliative Care: Is Now the Time?

Palliative care is an approach that focuses on optimizing quality of life for patients and families affected by serious illness, regardless of prognosis. It comprises pain and symptom management; psychological, spiritual, and social support; assistance with treatment decision-making; and complex care coordination. Mounting evidence indicates that palliative care reduces symptom burden, improves mood, decreases healthcare utilization, and improves quality of life for both patients with end-stage heart disease and their caregivers. Indeed, there is a consensus among major clinical guidelines of the importance of early integration of palliative care as an essential component of high quality care for patients with heart failure, a growing use of palliative care in patients with end-stage heart disease, and a clear desire of patients for such care

Host proteins interacting with the Moloney murine leukemia virus integrase: Multiple transcriptional regulators and chromatin binding factors

Background A critical step for retroviral replication is the stable integration of the provirus into the genome of its host. The viral integrase protein is key in this essential step of the retroviral life cycle. Although the basic mechanism of integration by mammalian retroviruses has been well characterized, the factors determining how viral integration events are targeted to particular regions of the genome or to regions of a particular DNA structure remain poorly defined. Significant questions remain regarding the influence of host proteins on the selection of target sites, on the repair of integration intermediates, and on the efficiency of integration. Results We describe the results of a yeast two-hybrid screen using Moloney murine leukemia virus integrase as bait to screen murine cDNA libraries for host proteins that interact with the integrase. We identified 27 proteins that interacted with different integrase fusion proteins. The identified proteins include chromatin remodeling, DNA repair and transcription factors (13 proteins); translational regulation factors, helicases, splicing factors and other RNA binding proteins (10 proteins); and transporters or miscellaneous factors (4 proteins). We confirmed the interaction of these proteins with integrase by testing them in the context of other yeast strains with GAL4-DNA binding domain-integrase fusions, and by in vitro binding assays between recombinant proteins. Subsequent analyses revealed that a number of the proteins identified as Mo-MLV integrase interactors also interact with HIV-1 integrase both in yeast and in vitro. Conclusion We identify several proteins interacting directly with both MoMLV and HIV-1 integrases that may be common to the integration reaction pathways of both viruses. Many of the proteins identified in the screen are logical interaction partners for integrase, and the validity of a number of the interactions are supported by other studies. In addition, we observe that some of the proteins have documented interactions with other viruses, raising the intriguing possibility that there may be common host proteins used by different viruses. We undertook this screen to identify host factors that might affect integration target site selection, and find that our screens have generated a wealth of putative interacting proteins that merit further investigation

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Challenges and Opportunities for Consumer Protection. Paper No. 11 in the CEPS-CTR project ‘TTIP in the Balance’ and CEPS Special Report No. 115/July 2015

This paper examines options for regulatory cooperation in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and assesses the challenges and opportunities posed by regulatory cooperation for consumer protection. It looks at existing approaches to regulatory cooperation by referencing a range of case studies. Based on established practice and on the European Commission’s recently published proposal on regulatory cooperation, we discuss a possible approach that could be adopted in the TTIP. Against the significant potential gains from improved regulatory cooperation, one must set the significant challenges of reconciling the different regulatory philosophies of the US and the EU as well as some differences in their respective approaches to cooperation. In broad terms, this analysis finds that regulatory powers on both sides of the Atlantic will not be significantly affected by the TTIP, but suggests that European and American legislators will need to ensure that their priorities shape the TTIP regulatory cooperation agenda and not the other way around

Association Between Blood Pressure and Adverse Renal Events in Type 1 Diabetes.

ObjectiveTo compare different blood pressure (BP) levels in their association with the risk of renal outcomes in type 1 diabetes and to determine whether an intensive glycemic control strategy modifies this association.Research design and methodsWe included 1,441 participants with type 1 diabetes between the ages of 13 and 39 years who had previously been randomized to receive intensive versus conventional glycemic control in the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT). The exposures of interest were time-updated systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) categories. Outcomes included macroalbuminuria (>300 mg/24 h) or stage III chronic kidney disease (CKD) (sustained estimated glomerular filtration rate <60 mL/min/1.73 m2).ResultsDuring a median follow-up time of 24 years, there were 84 cases of stage III CKD and 169 cases of macroalbuminuria. In adjusted models, SBP in the <120 mmHg range was associated with a 0.59 times higher risk of macroalbuminuria (95% CI 0.37-0.95) and a 0.32 times higher risk of stage III CKD (95% CI 0.14-0.75) compared with SBPs between 130 and 140 mmHg. DBP in the <70 mmHg range were associated with a 0.73 times higher risk of macroalbuminuria (95% CI 0.44-1.18) and a 0.47 times higher risk of stage III CKD (95% CI 0.21-1.05) compared with DBPs between 80 and 90 mmHg. No interaction was noted between BP and prior DCCT-assigned glycemic control strategy (all P > 0.05).ConclusionsA lower BP (<120/70 mmHg) was associated with a substantially lower risk of adverse renal outcomes, regardless of the prior assigned glycemic control strategy. Interventional trials may be useful to help determine whether the currently recommended BP target of 140/90 mmHg may be too high for optimal renal protection in type 1 diabetes