julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
High-Statistics Measurement of the Cosmic-Ray Electron Spectrum with H.E.S.S.
2024-11-25

Owing to their rapid cooling rate and hence loss-limited propagation distance, cosmic-ray electrons and positrons (CRe) at very high energies probe local cosmic-ray accelerators and provide constraints on exotic production mechanisms such as annihilation of dark matter particles. We present a high-statistics measurement of the spectrum of CRe candidate events from 0.3 to 40 TeV with the High Energy Stereoscopic System, covering 2 orders of magnitude in energy and reaching a proton rejection power of better than 10^{4}. The measured spectrum is well described by a broken power law, with a break around 1 TeV, where the spectral index increases from Γ_{1}=3.25±0.02(stat)±0.2(sys) to Γ_{2}=4.49±0.04(stat)±0.2(sys). Apart from the break, the spectrum is featureless. The absence of distinct signatures at multi-TeV energies imposes constraints on the presence of nearby CRe accelerators and the local CRe propagation mechanisms.
Roles for primary cilia in synapses and neurological disorders
2024-11-25

The role of primary cilia has recently garnered significant attention in the field of neurodegeneration. This review explores the diversity of primary cilia in the mature brain and their interrelationships with a multitude of cellular structures, including axons and synapses. Importantly, an overview of the growing prominence of ciliary-related dysfunctions in neurodegenerative diseases is summarized, with a special emphasis on Parkinson's disease (PD) and neuropsychiatric disorders.
Multiwavelength coverage of the 2024 periastron passage of PSR B1259–63/LS 2883
2024-11-25

ABSTRACT PSR B1259 63is a gamma-ray binary system with a 48 ms radio pulsar orbiting around an O9.5Ve star, LS 2883, in a highly eccentric yr long orbit. Close to the periastron the system is detected from radio up to the TeV energies due to the interaction of the stellar wind from LS 2883 and the pulsar’s relativistic outflow. Observations of the last four periastron passages, taken in 2010–2021, demonstrate periastron-to-periastron variability at all wavelengths, probably linked to the state of the Be star’s decretion disc. In this paper, we present the results of our optical, radio and X-ray observational campaigns on PSR B1259 63 performed in 2024 accompanied with the analysis of the publicly available GeV Fermi/LAT data. We show that this periastron passage was characterized by the early flaring of X-rays before the periastron passage and GeV emission after the periastron passage, which can be explained by a larger size of the decretion disc as supported by the optical observations. The structure of the GeV flare is also in agreement with the disruption of the large dense disc. The possible X-ray/radio correlation was observed only during the post-periastron rise of X-ray and radio emission.
Hawking-Type Singularity Theorems for Worldvolume Energy Inequalities
2024-11-25

Abstract The classical singularity theorems of R. Penrose and S. Hawking from the 1960s show that, given a pointwise energy condition (and some causality as well as initial assumptions), spacetimes cannot be geodesically complete. Despite their great success, the theorems leave room for physically relevant improvements, especially regarding the classical energy conditions as essentially any quantum field theory necessarily violates them. While singularity theorems with weakened energy conditions exist for worldline integral bounds, so-called worldvolume bounds are in some cases more applicable than the worldline ones, such as the case of some massive free fields. In this paper, we study integral Ricci curvature bounds based on worldvolume quantum strong energy inequalities. Under the additional assumption of a—potentially very negative—global timelike Ricci curvature bound, a Hawking-type singularity theorem is proved. Finally, we apply the theorem to a cosmological scenario proving past geodesic incompleteness in cases where the worldline theorem was inconclusive.
Cutibacterium acnes infective endocarditis—an emerging pathogen
2024-11-25

Abstract OBJECTIVES The study aimed to review a multicentre experience of patients undergoing surgical intervention for infective endocarditis caused by Cutibacterium acnes and to analyse the diagnostic challenges and operative results. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed 8812 patients undergoing cardiac surgery for endocarditis at 12 cardiac surgical departments across Germany. The overall population was divided based on the type of endocarditis (i.e. native and prosthetic valve endocarditis). Primary outcomes were in-hospital mortality, 1- and 5-year survival. RESULTS Cutibacterium acnes caused endocarditis in 269 patients (3.1%). Median age was 65 years (54–72 years) and 237 (88.1%) were male. We observed significantly higher rates of native valve endocarditis in patients aged 21–40, whereas prosthetic valve endocarditis was more frequent in all other age groups (P &amp;lt; 0.001). The median EuroSCORE II of the cohort was 10.7 (5.0–29.6), with it being significantly higher in the prosthetic valve endocarditis group (P &amp;lt; 0.001). Blood culture-negative infective endocarditis was initially reported in 54.3% of the patients. The in-hospital mortality was comparable between the groups (P = 0.340). Survival at 1 and 5 years was significantly higher in the native valve endocarditis group (P &amp;lt; 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Cutibacterium acnes causes native valve endocarditis, especially in younger patients. The incidence of endocarditis caused by C.acnes is alarming and is at par with well-known endocarditis pathogens such as the HACEK group. The pathogen has a low virulence and presents with a rather indolent course. The diagnosis of C.acnes endocarditis is challenging and requires a multimodal specialized approach. Surgical treatment is associated with acceptable outcomes.
The high energy X-ray probe (HEX-P): science overview
2024-11-25

To answer NASA’s call for a sensitive X-ray observatory in the 2030s, we present the High Energy X-ray Probe (HEX-P) mission concept. HEX-P is designed to provide the required capabilities to explore current scientific questions and make new discoveries with a broadband X-ray observatory that simultaneously measures sources from 0.2 to 80 keV. HEX-P’s main scientific goals include: 1) understand the growth of supermassive black holes and how they drive galaxy evolution; 2) explore the lower mass populations of white dwarfs, neutron stars, and stellar-mass black holes in the nearby universe; 3) explain the physics of the mysterious corona, the luminous plasma close to the central engine of accreting compact objects that dominates cosmic X-ray emission; and 4) find the sources of the highest energy particles in the Galaxy. These goals motivate a sensitive, broadband X-ray observatory with imaging, spectroscopic, and timing capabilities, ensuring a versatile platform to serve a broad General Observer (GO) and Guest Investigator (GI) community. In this paper, we present an overview of these mission goals, which have been extensively discussed in a collection of more than a dozen papers that are part of this Research Topic volume. The proposed investigations will address key questions in all three science themes highlighted by Astro2020, including their associated priority areas. HEX-P will extend the capabilities of the most sensitive low- and high-energy X-ray satellites currently in orbit and will complement existing and planned high-energy, time-domain, and multi-messenger facilities in the next decade.
Childhood, adolescent, and young adulthood cancer risk in BRCA1 or BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers
2024-11-25

Abstract Background Whether carriers of BRCA1 or BRCA2 pathogenic variants have increased risks of childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancers is controversial. We aimed to evaluate this risk and to inform clinical care of young BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers and genetic testing for childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancer patients. Methods Using data from 47 117 individuals from 3086 BRCA1 or BRCA2 families, we conducted pedigree analysis to estimate relative risks (RRs) for cancers diagnosed before age 30 years. Results Our data included 274 cancers diagnosed before age 30 years: 139 breast cancers, 10 ovarian cancers, and 125 nonbreast nonovarian cancers. Associations for breast cancer in young adulthood (aged 20-29 years) were found with relative risks of 11.4 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 5.5 to 23.7) and 5.2 (95% CI = 1.6 to 17.7) for BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers, respectively. No association was found for any other investigated childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancer or for all nonbreast nonovarian cancers combined; the relative risks were 0.4 (95% CI = 0.1 to 1.4) and 1.4 (95% CI = 0.7 to 3.0) in BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers, respectively. Conclusion We found no evidence that BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers have an increased childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancer risk aside from breast cancer in women aged between 20 and 30 years. Our results, along with a critical evaluation of previous germline sequencing studies, suggest that the childhood and adolescent cancer risk conferred by BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant would be low (ie, RR &amp;lt; 2) if it existed. Our findings do not support pathogenic variant testing for offspring of BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers at ages younger than 18 years or for conducting BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant testing for childhood and adolescent cancer patients.
S2k guideline basal cell carcinoma of the skin (update 2023)
2024-11-25

Summary Basal cell carcinoma is the most common malignant tumor in the fair‐skinned population and its incidence continues to rise. An update of the S2k guideline with the participation of all specialist societies familiar with the clinical picture and previous literature research is of great importance for the quality of care for affected patients. In addition to epidemiology, diagnostics and histology are discussed. After risk stratification, therapy is divided into topical, systemic and radiation therapy. Surgical removal remains the treatment of first choice in most cases. The approval of anti‐PD1 inhibitors for locally advanced and metastatic tumors has opened up a new option in second‐line therapy (after hedgehog inhibitors).
Novick Meets Bayes: Improving the Assessment of Individual Students in Educational Practice and Research by Capitalizing on Assessors’ Prior Beliefs
2024-11-25

The assessment of individual students is not only crucial in the school setting but also at the core of educational research. Although classical test theory focuses on maximizing insights from student responses, the Bayesian perspective incorporates the assessor’s prior belief, thereby enriching assessment with knowledge gained from previous interactions with the student or with similar students. We propose and illustrate a formal Bayesian approach that not only allows to form a stronger belief about a student’s competency but also offers a more accurate assessment than classical test theory. In addition, we propose a straightforward method for gauging prior beliefs using two specific items and point to the possibility to integrate additional information.
Structural Disconnections Caused by White Matter Hyperintensities in Post‐Stroke Spatial Neglect
2024-11-25

ABSTRACT White matter hyperintensities (WMH), a common feature of cerebral small vessel disease, affect a wide range of cognitive dysfunctions, including spatial neglect. The latter is a disorder of spatial attention and exploration typically after right hemisphere brain damage. To explore the impact of WMH on neglect‐related structural disconnections, the present study investigated the indirectly quantified structural disconnectome induced by either stroke lesion alone, WMH alone, or their combination. Furthermore, we compared different measures of structural disconnection—voxel‐wise, pairwise, tract‐wise, and parcel‐wise—to identify neural correlates and predict acute neglect severity. We observed that WMH‐derived disconnections alone were not associated with neglect behavior. However, when combined with disconnections derived from individual stroke lesions, pre‐stroke WMH contributed to post‐stroke neglect severity by affecting right frontal and subcortical substrates, like the middle frontal gyrus, basal ganglia, thalamus, and the fronto‐pontine tract. Predictive modeling demonstrated that voxel‐wise disconnection data outperformed other measures of structural disconnection, explaining 42% of the total variance; interestingly, the best model used predictors of stroke‐based disconnections only. We conclude that prestroke alterations in the white matter microstructure due to WMH contribute to poststroke deficits in spatial attention, likely by impairing the integrity of human attention networks.
Sumatran orangutan mothers differ in the extent and trajectory of their expression of maternal behaviour
2024-11-25

Abstract Mothers play a crucial role in the early development and survival of mammalian offspring, and differences in maternal care may differentially affect offspring’s development. Whereas previous research has primarily focused on biological and socioecological factors to understand population-level variation in maternal behaviour, the individual as a source of variation remains understudied. We investigated between-individual variation in the average expression of, and plasticity in, six maternal behaviours in Sumatran orangutans, using 15 years of behavioural data. We found that mothers differed substantially in the average expression of four maternal behaviours, even after controlling for socioecological conditions, biological state characteristics, and the offspring’s influence on these behaviours. Furthermore, not controlling for these confounding effects exaggerated or masked between-individual variation. Mothers also substantially differed in how they adjusted three of the maternal behaviours during offspring development, meaning that mothers differed in behavioural plasticity. Our results suggest that Sumatran orangutan mothers are constrained in the average expression of maternal behaviours and their plastic responses, potentially resulting in consistent differences among mothers, otherwise called maternal personality. Our findings highlight that individual variation around the population mean in maternal behaviour is more than noise and presents opportunities to study novel evolutionary processes that shape maternal behaviour.
Equality of Magnetization and Edge Current for Interacting Lattice Fermions at Positive Temperature
2024-11-25

Abstract We prove that the magnetization is equal to the edge current in the thermodynamic limit for a large class of models of lattice fermions with finite-range interactions satisfying local indistinguishability of the Gibbs state, a condition known to hold for sufficiently high temperatures. Our result implies that edge currents in such systems are determined by bulk properties and are therefore stable against large perturbations near the boundaries. Moreover, the equality persists also after taking the derivative with respect to the chemical potential. We show that this form of bulk-edge correspondence is essentially a consequence of homogeneity in the bulk and locality of the Gibbs state. An important intermediate result is a new version of Bloch’s theorem for two-dimensional systems, stating that persistent currents vanish in the bulk.
Hadron-in-jet production at partonic threshold
2024-11-25

We consider the longitudinal momentum distribution of hadrons inside jets in proton-proton collisions. At partonic threshold large double logarithmic corrections arise which need to be resummed to all orders. We develop a factorization formalism within SCET that allows for the joint resummation of threshold and jet radius logarithms. We achieve next-to-leading logarithmic NLL' accuracy by including non-global logarithms in the leading-color approximation. Overall, we find that the threshold resummation leads to a sizable enhancement of the cross section and a reduced QCD scale dependence, suggesting that the all-order resummation can be important for the reliable extraction of fragmentation functions in global analyses when jet substructure data is included.
Utopias Tried and Tested: Pueblos-Hospitales de Santa Fe and Cofradías in Early Colonial Mexico
2024-11-25

This article compares sixteenth-century Mexican confraternities (est. since 1527) with the utopian hospital-towns of Vasco de Quiroga, est. in 1530 and 1533–4. Although likewise oriented towards the Christian moral ideals of charity and solidarity, and driven by kindred utopian aspirations and missionizing zeal, the institutions displayed notable differences in their daily operations and governing structures. These differences, the article shows, can be explained by a diverging understanding of the ideal of equality. Whereas Mexican confraternities embraced extant ethnic and individual diversity, aspiring only to as much equality as necessary for the execution of their charitable mission, the vision behind Quiroga’s hospitales espoused civilizational homogeneity, aiming to accomplish as much equality as possible. Consequently, confraternal institutions were run largely “bottom-up” and in a much more open and inclusive manner than the paternalistic “top-down” style of administration characteristic of Quiroga’s hospitales.
Ultrafast Hot Carrier Cooling Enables van der Waals Photodetectors at Telecom Wavelengths
2024-11-25

With the increasing demand for optical data transmission and processing by modern communication systems, high-speed optoelectronics operating at telecom wavelengths are greatly desired. Two-dimensional (2D) materials with high carrier mobility and picosecond intrinsic response times exhibit large potential in this respect. However, most reported 2D material photodetectors for the telecom C-band either suffer from a slow response speed or rely on integrated silicon waveguides, which is a consequence of the inefficient utilization of hot carriers in these devices. Here, we report a high-performance and waveguide-free WS2/graphene photodetector operating at 1560 nm enabled by hot carrier injection and long-lived charge separation. The efficiently injected hot electrons from graphene to WS2 exhibit ultrafast cooling dynamics with 3 ps intrinsic response time. Simultaneous hole trapping in WS2 ensures a long circulation of injected electrons, enabling a high responsivity of 0.26 A/W. In continuation, we present a vertical WS2/graphene/WSe2 device with a built-in electric field and the same detection mechanism, for which a photocurrent on-off ratio of 3500 and an extrinsic response time of 1.71 ns are obtained. Our study highlights the benefits of combing 2D semiconductors and semimetals for high-speed photodetection.
Carrageenan and insulin resistance in humans: a randomised double-blind cross-over trial
2024-11-26

Abstract Background The potential impact of specific food additives, common in Western diets, on the risk of developing type 2 diabetes is not well understood. This study focuses on carrageenan, a widely used food additive known to induce insulin resistance and gut inflammation in animal models, and its effects on human health. Methods In a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial conducted at a university hospital metabolic study centre, 20 males (age 27.4 ± 4.3 years, BMI 24.5 ± 2.5 kg/m 2 ) participated. The intervention involved oral intake of carrageenan (250 mg) or placebo in the morning and in the evening and each intervention lasted 2 weeks. The primary outcome measured was insulin sensitivity (using oral glucose tolerance test [OGTT] and hyperinsulinaemic-euglycaemic clamp). Additional end-points included whole body and hepatic insulin sensitivity, MRI-measured brain inflammation and insulin resistance, intestinal permeability (via lactulose-mannitol test and plasma zonulin levels), and gut microbiome composition. Immune-cell activation and pro-inflammatory cytokine release from peripheral blood mononuclear cells were measured. Results Overall insulin sensitivity did not show significant differences between the treatments. However, interactions between BMI and treatment were observed (OGTT-based insulin sensitivity index: p =0.04, fasting insulin resistance: p =0.01, hepatic insulin sensitivity index: p =0.04). In overweight participants, carrageenan exposure resulted in lower whole body and hepatic insulin sensitivity, a trend towards increased brain inflammation, and elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) and IL-6 levels compared to placebo. Additionally, carrageenan was associated with increased intestinal permeability. In vitro natural killer (NK-)cell activation and increased pro-inflammatory cytokine release were found after carrageenan exposure in the participant’s peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Conclusions These findings suggest that carrageenan, a common food additive, may contribute to insulin resistance and subclinical inflammation in overweight individuals through pro-inflammatory mechanisms in the gut. Further investigation into the long-term health impacts of carrageenan and other food additives is warranted. Trial registration NCT02629705.
Carmaphycin B-Based Proteasome Inhibitors to Treat Human African Trypanosomiasis: Structure–Activity Relationship and In Vivo Efficacy
2024-11-26

The proteasome is essential for eukaryotic cell proteostasis, and inhibitors of the 20S proteasome are progressing preclinically and clinically as antiparasitics. We screened<i>Trypanosoma brucei</i>, the causative agent of human and animal African trypanosomiasis, <i>in vitro</i> with a set of 27 carmaphycin B analogs, irreversible epoxyketone inhibitors that were originally developed to inhibit the<i>Plasmodium falciparum</i>20S (Pf20S). The structure-activity relationship was distinct from that of the human c20S antitarget by the acceptance of d-amino acids at the P3 position of the peptidyl backbone to yield compounds with greatly decreased toxicity to human cells. For the three most selective compounds, binding to the Tb20S β5 catalytic subunit was confirmed by competition with a fluorescent activity-based probe. For one compound, <b>J-80</b>, with its P3 d-configuration, the differential binding to the parasite's β5 subunit was supported by both covalent and noncovalent docking analysis. Further, <b>J-80</b> was equipotent against both <i>Trypanosoma brucei gambiense</i> and <i>Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense</i> <i>in vitro</i>. In a mouse model of Stage 1 <i>T. brucei</i> infection, a single intraperitoneal (i.p.) dose of 40 mg/kg <b>J-80</b> halted the growth of the parasite, and when given at 50 mg/kg i.p. twice daily for 5 days, parasitemia was decreased to below the detectable limit, with parasite recrudescence 48 h after the last dose. The <i>in vivo</i> proof of principle demonstrated by a potent, selective, and irreversible inhibitor of Tb20S reveals an alternative path to the development of kinetoplastid proteasome inhibitors that differs from the current focus on allosteric reversible inhibitors.