Determination of Deuteron Beam Polarizations at COSY

The vector and tensor polarizations of a deuteron beam have been measured using elastic deuteron-carbon scattering at 75.6 MeV and deuteron-proton scattering at 270 MeV. After acceleration to 1170 MeV inside the COSY ring, the polarizations of the deuterons were checked by studying a variety of nuclear reactions using a cluster target at the ANKE magnet spectrometer placed at an internal target position of the storage ring. All these measurements were consistent with the absence of depolarization during acceleration and provide a number of secondary standards that can be used in subsequent experiments at the facility.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figure

Improved Upper Limit on the Neutrino Mass from a Direct Kinematic Method by KATRIN.

We report on the neutrino mass measurement result from the first four-week science run of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment KATRIN in spring 2019. Beta-decay electrons from a high-purity gaseous molecular tritium source are energy analyzed by a high-resolution MAC-E filter. A fit of the integrated electron spectrum over a narrow interval around the kinematic end point at 18.57 keV gives an effective neutrino mass square value of (-1.0_{-1.1}^{+0.9})  eV^{2}. From this, we derive an upper limit of 1.1 eV (90% confidence level) on the absolute mass scale of neutrinos. This value coincides with the KATRIN sensitivity. It improves upon previous mass limits from kinematic measurements by almost a factor of 2 and provides model-independent input to cosmological studies of structure formation

Commissioning of the vacuum system of the KATRIN Main Spectrometer

The KATRIN experiment will probe the neutrino mass by measuring the beta-electron energy spectrum near the endpoint of tritium beta-decay. An integral energy analysis will be performed by an electro-static spectrometer (Main Spectrometer), an ultra-high vacuum vessel with a length of 23.2 m, a volume of 1240 m^3, and a complex inner electrode system with about 120000 individual parts. The strong magnetic field that guides the beta-electrons is provided by super-conducting solenoids at both ends of the spectrometer. Its influence on turbo-molecular pumps and vacuum gauges had to be considered. A system consisting of 6 turbo-molecular pumps and 3 km of non-evaporable getter strips has been deployed and was tested during the commissioning of the spectrometer. In this paper the configuration, the commissioning with bake-out at 300{\deg}C, and the performance of this system are presented in detail. The vacuum system has to maintain a pressure in the 10^{-11} mbar range. It is demonstrated that the performance of the system is already close to these stringent functional requirements for the KATRIN experiment, which will start at the end of 2016.Comment: submitted for publication in JINST, 39 pages, 15 figure

: a cis antisense RNA operates in trans in S. aureus

International audienceAntisense RNAs (asRNAs) pair to RNAs expressed from the complementary strand, and their functions are thought to depend on nucleotide overlap with genes on the opposite strand. There is little information on the roles and mechanisms of asRNAs. We show that a cis asRNA acts in trans, using a domain outside its target complementary sequence. SprA1 small regulatory RNA (sRNA) and SprA1(AS) asRNA are concomitantly expressed in S. aureus. SprA1(AS) forms a complex with SprA1, preventing translation of the SprA1-encoded open reading frame by occluding translation initiation signals through pairing interactions. The SprA1 peptide sequence is within two RNA pseudoknots. SprA1(AS) represses production of the SprA1-encoded cytolytic peptide in trans, as its overlapping region is dispensable for regulation. These findings demonstrate that sometimes asRNA functional domains are not their gene-target complementary sequences, suggesting there is a need for mechanistic re-evaluation of asRNAs expressed in prokaryotes and eukaryotes

Methodological study to evaluate the psychometric properties of FACIT-CD in a sample of Brazilian women with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia

Background: The occurrence of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) is associated with changes in health-related quality of life, including psychological factors, such as fear and shame, and changes in sexuality and sexual satisfaction, such as decreased sexual desire and frequency of sexual intercourse. Personal relationships are the most affected because CIN is sexually transmitted and many women tend to blame their partner for disease transmission. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the FACIT-CD questionnaire in Brazilian women diagnosed with CIN. Methods: The properties of the FACIT-CD questionnaire were tested on a sample of 439 women seen at the Department of Prevention of Barretos Cancer Hospital, including 329 patients who were diagnosed with CIN and 110 women who were not diagnosed with the disease. The analysed parameters included internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha), reproducibility (intraclass correlation coefficient), structural validity, convergent validity (correlation with the SF-12 and EORTC QLQ-CX24 questionnaires), discriminant validity (according to disease status, and self-rating of health), sensitivity, and responsiveness. Results: The Cronbach alpha values of the FACIT-CD scales were higher than 0.70 with the exception of the relationship scale (0.66). The FACIT-CD reproducibility was satisfactory, with variation in the intraclass correlation coefficients ranging between 0.50 and 0.83, although the 95% confidence interval (CI) was lower than 0.40 (0.33-0.64) on the treatment satisfaction scale. Regarding structural validity, only one item on the physical well-being scale was not kept in the original domain. The expected correlations between the FACIT-CD and SF-12 were not confirmed, whereas the correlations between the FACIT-CD and EORTC QLQ-CX24 were confirmed. The questionnaire was able to discriminate the groups according to disease status and self-rating of health. The sensitivity was low for the relationship scale and moderate for the other scales. The responsiveness of the FACIT-CD questionnaire varied between the groups that denominate the self-perception of health as no change, improvement or worsening. Conclusion: Our results are encouraging and indicate that the FACIT-CD questionnaire is a promising tool for the analysis of the quality of life of women with CIN.The postdoctoral fellowship was supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation (Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo - FAPESP, Sao Paulo, Brazil). Process number: FAPESP 2014/10158-3. The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Efficacy and safety of palliative treatment in patients with autoimmune liver disease-associated hepatocellular carcinoma

Introduction and Objectives: Autoimmune liver diseases (AILD) are rare causes hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and data on the efficacy and tolerability of anti-tumor therapies are scarce. This pan-European study aimed to assess outcomes in AILD-HCC patients treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) or transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) compared with patients with more common HCC etiologies, including viral, alcoholic or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. / Materials and Methods: 107 patients with HCC-AILD (AIH:55; PBC:52) treated at 13 European centres between 1996 and 2020 were included. 65 received TACE and 28 received TKI therapy. 43 (66 %) were female (median age 73 years) with HCC tumor stage BCLC A (34 %), B (46 %), C (9 %) or D (11 %). For each treatment type, propensity score matching was used to match AILD to non-AILD-HCC on a 1:1 basis, yielding in a final cohort of 130 TACE and 56 TKI patients for comparative analyses of median overall survival (mOS) and treatment tolerability. / Results: HCC-AILD patients showed comparable mOS to controls for both TACE (19.5 vs. 22.1 months, p = 0.9) and TKI (15.4 vs. 15.1 months, p = 0.5). Adverse events were less frequent in AILD-HCC patients than controls (33 % % vs. 62 %, p = 0.003). For TKIs, there were no significant differences in adverse events (73% vs. 86%, p = 0.2) or interruption rates (44% vs. 36 %, p = 0.7). / Conclusions: In summary, this study demonstrates comparable mOS for AILD-HCC patients undergoing local and systemic treatments, with better tolerability than HCC of other causes. TKIs remain important therapeutic options for AILD-HCC patients, particularly given their exclusion from recent immunotherapy trials