Decoherence by electromagnetic fluctuations in double-quantum-dot charge qubits

We discuss decoherence due to electromagnetic fluctuations in charge qubits formed by two lateral quantum dots. We use an effective circuit model to evaluate correlations of voltage fluctuations in the qubit setup. These correlations allows us to estimate energy (T1) and phase (T2) relaxation times of the the qubit system. Our theoretical estimate of the quality factor due to dephasing by electromagnetic fluctuations yields values much higher than those found in recent experiments, indicating that other sources of decoherence play a dominant role.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Is there any clinical relevant difference between non mosaic Klinefelter Syndrome patients with or without Androgen Receptor variations?

Klinefelter Syndrome (KS) is the most common chromosomal disorder in men leading to non-obstructive azoospermia. Spermatozoa can be found by TESE in about 50% of adults with KS despite severe testicular degeneration. We evaluated AR variations and polymorphism length in 135 non-mosaic KS patients, aimed to find possible correlation with clinical features, sex hormones and sperm retrieval. Among 135 KS patients we found AR variations in eight subjects (5.9%). All variations but one caused a single amino acid substitution. Four variations P392S, Q58L, L548F, A475V found in six patients had been previously described to be associated with different degrees of androgen insensitivity. Moreover we observed in two patients Y359F and D732D novel variations representing respectively a missense variation and a synonymous variation not leading to amino acid substitution. All the Klinefelter patients with AR gene variations were azoospermic. Spermatozoa were retrieved with TESE for two men (40%), sperm retrieval was unsuccessful in other 3 patients. This is the only study reporting AR variations in KS patients. Relevant clinical differences not emerged between AR mutated and not AR mutated KS patients, but does each variation play an important role in the trasmission to the offspring obtained by ART in this patients

GNAO1 encephalopathy: broadening the phenotype and evaluating treatment and outcome

OBJECTIVE: To describe better the motor phenotype, molecular genetic features, and clinical course of GNAO1-related disease. METHODS: We reviewed clinical information, video recordings, and neuroimaging of a newly identified cohort of 7 patients with de novo missense and splice site GNAO1 mutations, detected by next-generation sequencing techniques. RESULTS: Patients first presented in early childhood (median age of presentation 10 months, range 0-48 months), with a wide range of clinical symptoms ranging from severe motor and cognitive impairment with marked choreoathetosis, self-injurious behavior, and epileptic encephalopathy to a milder phenotype, featuring moderate developmental delay associated with complex stereotypies, mainly facial dyskinesia and mild epilepsy. Hyperkinetic movements were often exacerbated by specific triggers, such as voluntary movement, intercurrent illnesses, emotion, and high ambient temperature, leading to hospital admissions. Most patients were resistant to drug intervention, although tetrabenazine was effective in partially controlling dyskinesia for 2/7 patients. Emergency deep brain stimulation (DBS) was life saving in 1 patient, resulting in immediate clinical benefit with complete cessation of violent hyperkinetic movements. Five patients had well-controlled epilepsy and 1 had drug-resistant seizures. Structural brain abnormalities, including mild cerebral atrophy and corpus callosum dysgenesis, were evident in 5 patients. One patient had a diffuse astrocytoma (WHO grade II), surgically removed at age 16. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support the causative role of GNAO1 mutations in an expanded spectrum of early-onset epilepsy and movement disorders, frequently exacerbated by specific triggers and at times associated with self-injurious behavior. Tetrabenazine and DBS were the most useful treatments for dyskinesia

Detecting Community Structure in Dynamic Social Networks Using the Concept of Leadership

Detecting community structure in social networks is a fundamental problem empowering us to identify groups of actors with similar interests. There have been extensive works focusing on finding communities in static networks, however, in reality, due to dynamic nature of social networks, they are evolving continuously. Ignoring the dynamic aspect of social networks, neither allows us to capture evolutionary behavior of the network nor to predict the future status of individuals. Aside from being dynamic, another significant characteristic of real-world social networks is the presence of leaders, i.e. nodes with high degree centrality having a high attraction to absorb other members and hence to form a local community. In this paper, we devised an efficient method to incrementally detect communities in highly dynamic social networks using the intuitive idea of importance and persistence of community leaders over time. Our proposed method is able to find new communities based on the previous structure of the network without recomputing them from scratch. This unique feature, enables us to efficiently detect and track communities over time rapidly. Experimental results on the synthetic and real-world social networks demonstrate that our method is both effective and efficient in discovering communities in dynamic social networks

Comparison of established and emerging biodosimetry assays

Rapid biodosimetry tools are required to assist with triage in the case of a large-scale radiation incident. Here, we aimed to determine the dose-assessment accuracy of the well-established dicentric chromosome assay (DCA) and cytokinesis-block micronucleus assay (CBMN) in comparison to the emerging γ-H2AX foci and gene expression assays for triage mode biodosimetry and radiation injury assessment. Coded blood samples exposed to 10 X-ray doses (240 kVp, 1 Gy/min) of up to 6.4 Gy were sent to participants for dose estimation. Report times were documented for each laboratory and assay. The mean absolute difference (MAD) of estimated doses relative to the true doses was calculated. We also merged doses into binary dose categories of clinical relevance and examined accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the assays. Dose estimates were reported by the first laboratories within 0.3-0.4 days of receipt of samples for the γ-H2AX and gene expression assays compared to 2.4 and 4 days for the DCA and CBMN assays, respectively. Irrespective of the assay we found a 2.5-4-fold variation of interlaboratory accuracy per assay and lowest MAD values for the DCA assay (0.16 Gy) followed by CBMN (0.34 Gy), gene expression (0.34 Gy) and γ-H2AX (0.45 Gy) foci assay. Binary categories of dose estimates could be discriminated with equal efficiency for all assays, but at doses ≥1.5 Gy a 10% decrease in efficiency was observed for the foci assay, which was still comparable to the CBMN assay. In conclusion, the DCA has been confirmed as the gold standard biodosimetry method, but in situations where speed and throughput are more important than ultimate accuracy, the emerging rapid molecular assays have the potential to become useful triage tools

Heterocycle-containing tranylcypromine derivatives endowed with high anti-LSD1 activity

As regioisomers/bioisosteres of 1a, a 4-phenylbenzamide tranylcypromine (TCP) derivative previously disclosed by us, we report here the synthesis and biological evaluation of some (hetero)arylbenzoylamino TCP derivatives 1b-6, in which the 4-phenyl moiety of 1a was shifted at the benzamide C3 position or replaced by 2- or 3-furyl, 2- or 3-thienyl, or 4-pyridyl group, all at the benzamide C4 or C3 position. In anti-LSD1-CoREST assay, all the meta derivatives were more effective than the para analogues, with the meta thienyl analogs 4b and 5b being the most potent (IC50 values = 0.015 and 0.005 μM) and the most selective over MAO-B (selectivity indexes: 24.4 and 164). When tested in U937 AML and prostate cancer LNCaP cells, selected compounds 1a,b, 2b, 3b, 4b, and 5a,b displayed cell growth arrest mainly in LNCaP cells. Western blot analyses showed increased levels of H3K4me2 and/or H3K9me2 confirming the involvement of LSD1 inhibition in these assays

Effect of a 40-weeks multicomponent exercise program and branched chain amino acids supplementation on functional fitness and mental health in frail older persons

BACKGROUND: The ageing process implies several physiological and psychological changes that hence affect the general health, mood states, and quality of life of older persons. Exercise and adequate nutrition are renowned non-pharmacological strategies that significantly delay and alleviate the adverse consequences of the ageing process. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) supplementation and a multicomponent exercise program (ME) on the physical frailty and mood states of older persons. METHODS: 35 participants (women and men; 83 ± 3 years old) from residential care homes were submitted to a 40-week exercise-washout-retraining intervention (16 weeks of the elastic band based exercise and/or supplementation, 8 weeks of washout, and 16 weeks of multicomponent exercise and/or resupplementing), with or without BCAA supplementation. The experimental groups were: (i) ME plus BCAA supplementation (ME+BCAA); (ii) ME; (iii) BCAA supplementation (BCAA), and (iv) control group (CG). Fried's phenotype was used to assess frailty prevalence. Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Profile of Mood State (POMS), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), were used to access mental health and cognition. The Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) was used to access functional capacity. Salivary testosterone levels (ST) were also determined to access the anabolic effects of the intervention. RESULTS: Exercise was effective in improving functional capacity and prevented the increase in frailty that occurred in the non-exercising CG, where the frailty scores increased over time (p < 0.01). BCAAs supplement alone had no impact on functional fitness, but in a short time (16 weeks) contributed to diminishing frailty and combined with exercise may have the potential to reduce the effect of a detraining period on functional capacity. Salivary testosterone levels correlated with handgrip strength and could be a useful indicator of susceptibility to frailty. No effects were found for mood states, cognition, and depression. CONCLUSION: This study showed that a long-term exercise program, independent of being multicomponent or strength elastic band-based, was effective in improving functional capacity and prevented an increase in frailty in frail and pre-frail older persons living in residential care homes

Start of SPIDER operation towards ITER neutral beams

Heating Neutral Beam (HNB) Injectors will constitute the main plasma heating and current drive tool both in ITER and JT60-SA, which are the next major experimental steps for demonstrating nuclear fusion as viable energy source. In ITER, in order to achieve the required thermonuclear fusion power gain Q=10 for short pulse operation and Q=5 for long pulse operation (up to 3600s), two HNB injectors will be needed [1], each delivering a total power of about 16.5 MW into the magnetically-confined plasma, by means of neutral hydrogen or deuterium particles having a specific energy of about 1 MeV. Since only negatively charged particles can be efficiently neutralized at such energy, the ITER HNB injectors [2] will be based on negative ions, generated by caesium-catalysed surface conversion of atoms in a radio-frequency driven plasma source. A negative deuterium ion current of more than 40 A will be extracted, accelerated and focused in a multi-aperture, multi-stage electrostatic accelerator, having 1280 apertures (~ 14 mm diam.) and 5 acceleration stages (~200 kV each) [3]. After passing through a narrow gas-cell neutralizer, the residual ions will be deflected and discarded, whereas the neutralized particles will continue their trajectory through a duct into the tokamak vessels to deliver the required heating power to the ITER plasma for a pulse duration of about 3600 s. Although the operating principles and the implementation of the most critical parts of the injector have been tested in different experiments, the ITER NBI requirements have never been simultaneously attained. In order to reduce the risks and to optimize the design and operating procedures of the HNB for ITER, a dedicated Neutral Beam Test Facility (NBTF) [4] has been promoted by the ITER Organization with the contribution of the European Union\u2019s Joint Undertaking for ITER and of the Italian Government, with the participation of the Japanese and Indian Domestic Agencies (JADA and INDA) and of several European laboratories, such as IPP-Garching, KIT-Karlsruhe, CCFE-Culham, CEA-Cadarache. The NBTF, nicknamed PRIMA, has been set up at Consorzio RFX in Padova, Italy [5]. The planned experiments will verify continuous HNB operation for one hour, under stringent requirements for beam divergence (< 7 mrad) and aiming (within 2 mrad). To study and optimise HNB performances, the NBTF includes two experiments: MITICA, full-scale NBI prototype with 1 MeV particle energy and SPIDER, with 100 keV particle energy and 40 A current, aiming at testing and optimizing the full-scale ion source. SPIDER will focus on source uniformity, negative ion current density and beam optics. In June 2018 the experimental operation of SPIDER has started

The UA9 experimental layout

The UA9 experimental equipment was installed in the CERN-SPS in March '09 with the aim of investigating crystal assisted collimation in coasting mode. Its basic layout comprises silicon bent crystals acting as primary collimators mounted inside two vacuum vessels. A movable 60 cm long block of tungsten located downstream at about 90 degrees phase advance intercepts the deflected beam. Scintillators, Gas Electron Multiplier chambers and other beam loss monitors measure nuclear loss rates induced by the interaction of the beam halo in the crystal. Roman pots are installed in the path of the deflected particles and are equipped with a Medipix detector to reconstruct the transverse distribution of the impinging beam. Finally UA9 takes advantage of an LHC-collimator prototype installed close to the Roman pot to help in setting the beam conditions and to analyze the efficiency to deflect the beam. This paper describes in details the hardware installed to study the crystal collimation during 2010.Comment: 15pages, 11 figure, submitted to JINS

Ecological network metrics: Opportunities for synthesis

Network ecology provides a systems basis for approaching ecological questions, such as factors that influence biological diversity, the role of particular species or particular traits in structuring ecosystems, and long-term ecological dynamics (e.g., stability). Whereas the introduction of network theory has enabled ecologists to quantify not only the degree, but also the architecture of ecological complexity, these advances have come at the cost of introducing new challenges, including new theoretical concepts and metrics, and increased data complexity and computational intensity. Synthesizing recent developments in the network ecology literature, we point to several potential solutions to these issues: integrating network metrics and their terminology across sub-disciplines; benchmarking new network algorithms and models to increase mechanistic understanding; and improving tools for sharing ecological network research, in particular model data provenance, to increase the reproducibility of network models and analyses. We propose that applying these solutions will aid in synthesizing ecological sub-disciplines and allied fields by improving the accessibility of network methods and models