Experimental demonstration of relativistic electron cooling

We report on an experimental demonstration of electron cooling of high-energy antiprotons circulating in a storage ring. In our experiments, electron cooling, a well-established method at low energies (<500 MeV/nucleon), was carried out in a new region of beam parameters, requiring a multi-MeV dc electron beam and an unusual beam transport line. In this Letter, we present the results of the longitudinal cooling force measurements and compare them with theoretical predictions.     

Infrared safety in factorized hard scattering cross-sections

The rules of soft-collinear effective theory can be used naïvely to write hard scattering cross-sections as convolutions of separate hard, jet, and soft functions. One condition required to guarantee the validity of such a factorization is the infrared safety of these functions in perturbation theory. Using e⁺e⁻$e^{+}{e}^{-}$ angularity distributions as an example, we propose and illustrate an intuitive method to test this infrared safety at one loop. We look for regions of integration in the sum of Feynman diagrams contributing to the jet and soft functions where the integrals become infrared divergent. Our analysis is independent of an explicit infrared regulator, clarifies how to distinguish infrared and ultraviolet singularities in pure dimensional regularization, and demonstrates the necessity of taking zero-bins into account to obtain infrared-safe jet functions.     

Inference of the electron temperature in inertial confinement fusion implosions from the hard X‐ray spectral continuum

Using the free‐free continuum self‐emission spectrum at photon energies above 15 keV is one of the most promising concepts for assessing the electron temperature in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. However, these photons are due to suprathermal electrons whose mean free path is much larger than the thermal one, making their distribution deviate from Maxwellian in a finite‐size hotspot. The first study of the free‐free X‐ray emission from an ICF implosion is conducted, accounting for the kinetic modifications to the electron distribution. These modifications are found to result in qualitatively new features in the hard X‐ray spectral continuum. Inference of the electron temperature as if the emitting electrons are Maxwellian is shown to give a lower value than the actual one.     

An Analytic Expression for the Distribution of the Generalized Shiryaev–Roberts Diffusion

We consider the quickest change-point detection problem where the aim is to detect the onset of a pre-specified drift in “live”-monitored standard Brownian motion; the change-point is assumed unknown (nonrandom). The topic of interest is the distribution of the Generalized Shryaev–Roberts (GSR) detection statistic set up to “sense” the presence of the drift. Specifically, we derive a closed-form formula for the transition probability density function (pdf) of the time-homogeneous Markov diffusion process generated by the GSR statistic when the Brownian motion under surveillance is “drift-free”, i.e., in the pre-change regime; the GSR statistic’s (deterministic) nonnegative headstart is assumed arbitrarily given. The transition pdf formula is found analytically, through direct solution of the respective Kolmogorov forward equation via the Fourier spectral method to achieve separation of the spacial and temporal variables. The obtained result generalizes the well-known formula for the (pre-change) stationary distribution of the GSR statistic: the latter’s stationary distribution is the temporal limit of the distribution sought in this work. To conclude, we exploit the obtained formula numerically and briefly study the pre-change behavior of the GSR statistic versus three factors: (a) drift-shift magnitude, (b) time, and (c) the GSR statistic’s headstart.     

On the Pathomorphological Pattern of the Efficiency of Photodynamic Therapy of Murine Melanoma B16 Using a New Photosensitizer Based on Chlorin e6 Conjugate with a Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an effective treatment for a number of solid malignancies. In this work, the antitumor efficacy of photodynamic therapy for murine B16 melanoma with intravenous administration of a new photosensitizer (PS) based on the chlorin e₆ conjugate with a prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) was studied in vivo. We have previously published the data obtained in the first part of the study: the dynamics of PS accumulation in the tumor and surrounding tissues and the antitumor efficacy of the photodynamic therapy, which was evaluated by the regression parameters and morphological characteristics of the tumors—including by the complete regression of the tumors, the absolute growth rate of the tumors among the mice with continued tumor growth, and an increase in life expectancy compared to the control. The criterion for a complete cure was the absence of signs of tumor recurrence within 90 days after therapy. The conducted studies demonstrated the high efficiency of the new photosensitizer for the photodynamic therapy of B16 melanoma. This article presents a continuation of this work, including histological studies of the zones exposed to laser irradiation on the 21st day after treatment and an assessment of the therapeutic potential of photodynamic therapy for the destruction of tumor cells. Pathological studies in the zones of photodynamic exposure revealed that the effectiveness of the PDT depended on the PS dose and the laser irradiation parameters.     

Fibroblasts alter spiral wave stability

We consider a three-domain model of cardiac tissue consisting of fibroblasts, myocytes, and extracellular space. We show in the one dimensional case that the fibroblasts with different resting potentials may alter restitution properties of tissue. On this basis we demonstrated that in two dimensional slice of cardiac tissue, a spiral wave break up can be caused purely by the influence of fibroblasts and, vice-versa, initially unstable spiral can be stabilized by fibroblasts depending on the value of their resting potential.     

Fabrication and drug release behavior of ionically cross-linked chitosan microspheres

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Steiner transitive-closure spanners of low-dimensional posets

Given a directed graph G=(V, E) and an integer k ≥ 1, a k-transitive-closure spanner (k-TC-spanner) of G is a directed graph H=(V, E _H ) that has (1) the same transitive closure as G and (2) diameter at most k. In some applications, the shortcut paths added to the graph in order to obtain small diameter can use Steiner vertices, that is, vertices not in the original graph G. The resulting spanner is called a Steiner transitive-closure spanner (Steiner TC-spanner). Motivated by applications to property reconstruction and access control hierarchies, we concentrate on Steiner TC-spanners of directed acyclic graphs or, equivalently, partially ordered sets. In these applications, the goal is to find a sparsest Steiner k-TC-spanner of a poset G for a given k and G. The focus of this paper is the relationship between the dimension of a poset and the size of its sparsest Steiner TC-spanner. The dimension of a poset G is the smallest d such that G can be embedded into a d-dimensional directed hypergrid via an order-preserving embedding. We present a nearly tight lower bound on the size of Steiner 2-TC-spanners of d- dimensional directed hypergrids. It implies better lower bounds on the complexity of local reconstructors of monotone functions and functions with small Lipschitz constant. The lower bound is derived from an explicit dual solution to a linear programming relaxation of the Steiner 2-TC-spanner problem. We also give an efficient construction of Steiner 2-TC-spanners, of size matching the lower bound, for all low-dimensional posets. Finally, we present a lower bound on the size of Steiner k-TC-spanners of d-dimensional posets. It shows that the best-known construction, due to De Santis et al., cannot be improved significantly.     

Nitro-substituted Hoveyda-Grubbs ruthenium carbenes: enhancement of catalyst activity through electronic activation

The design, synthesis, stability, and catalytic activity of nitro-substituted Hoveyda-Grubbs metathesis catalysts are described. The highly active and stable meta- and para-substituted complexes are attractive from a practical point of view. These catalysts operate in very mild conditions and can be successfully applied in various types of metathesis [ring-closing metathesis, cross-metathesis (CM), and enyne metathesis]. Although the presence of a NO(2) group leads to catalysts that are dramatically more active than both the second-generation Grubbs's catalyst and the phosphine-free Hoveyda's carbene, enhancement of reactivity is somewhat lower than that observed for a sterically activated Hoveyda-Grubbs catalyst. Attempts to combine two modes of activation, steric and electronic, result in severely decreasing a catalyst's stability. The present findings illustrate that different Ru catalysts turned out to be optimal for different applications. Whereas phosphine-free carbenes are catalysts of choice for CM of various electron-deficient substrates, they exhibit lower reactivity in the formation of tetrasubstituted double bonds. This demonstrates that no single catalyst outperforms all others in all possible applications.