Search for neutrino oscillations

A search for ν_μ→ν_e and oscillations has been conducted with the AGS wide-band neutrino beam at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. We find more ν_e ( _e) interactions than were expected on the basis of the number of incident ν_e ( _e) calculated as part of the neutrino beam. The excess is about a factor two over the expectation, the statistical significance being about two and a half standard deviations for ν_e and weaker for _e.     

Scaling in soft hadroproduction by positive projectiles in the range of 32–147 GeV/c

The total hadron multiplicity and the multiplicity in the three-jet events ine ⁺ e ^?-annihilation are considered. The formula for the total multiplicity (with account for the heavy quark contribution) agrees well with experiment. The value of the multiplicity for three-jet events is predicted.     

A high‐order element‐based Galerkin method for the barotropic vorticity equation

A high‐order element‐based Galerkin method is developed to solve the non‐divergent barotropic vorticity equation (BVE). The solution process involves solving a conservative transport equation for the vorticity fields and a Poisson equation for the stream function fields. The discontinuous Galerkin method is employed for solving the transport equation and a spectral element method (continuous Galerkin) is used for the Poisson equation. A third‐order strong stability preserving explicit Runge–Kutta scheme is used for time integration. A series of tests have been performed to validate the model, which include the evolution of an idealized tropical cyclone and interaction of dual vortices in close proximity. The numerical convergence study is performed by solving the BVE on the sphere where the analytic solution is known. The test results are consistent with physical observations, and the model exhibits exponential convergence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Context-dependent effects of asparagine glycosylation on Pin WW folding kinetics and thermodynamics

Asparagine glycosylation is one of the most common and important post-translational modifications of proteins in eukaryotic cells. N-glycosylation occurs when a triantennary glycan precursor is transferred en bloc to a nascent polypeptide (harboring the N-X-T/S sequon) as the peptide is cotranslationally translocated into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In addition to facilitating binding interactions with components of the ER proteostasis network, N-glycans can also have intrinsic effects on protein folding by directly altering the folding energy landscape. Previous work from our laboratories (Hanson et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2009, 109, 3131-3136; Shental-Bechor, D.; Levy, Y. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2008, 105, 8256-8261) suggested that the three sugar residues closest to the protein are sufficient for accelerating protein folding and stabilizing the resulting structure in vitro; even a monosaccharide can have a dramatic effect. The highly conserved nature of these three proximal sugars in N-glycans led us to speculate that introducing an N-glycosylation site into a protein that is not normally glycosylated would stabilize the protein and increase its folding rate in a manner that does not depend on the presence of specific stabilizing protein-saccharide interactions. Here, we test this hypothesis experimentally and computationally by incorporating an N-linked GlcNAc residue at various positions within the Pin WW domain, a small β-sheet-rich protein. The results show that an increased folding rate and enhanced thermodynamic stability are not general, context-independent consequences of N-glycosylation. Comparison between computational predictions and experimental observations suggests that generic glycan-based excluded volume effects are responsible for the destabilizing effect of glycosylation at highly structured positions. However, this reasoning does not adequately explain the observed destabilizing effect of glycosylation within flexible loops. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that specific, evolved protein-glycan contacts must also play an important role in mediating the beneficial energetic effects on protein folding that glycosylation can confer.     

Biocompatible copper(I) catalysts for in vivo imaging of glycans

The Cu(I)-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) is the standard method for bioorthogonal conjugation. However, current Cu(I) catalyst formulations are toxic, hindering their use in living systems. Here we report that BTTES, a tris(triazolylmethyl)amine-based ligand for Cu(I), promotes the cycloaddition reaction rapidly in living systems without apparent toxicity. This catalyst allows, for the first time, noninvasive imaging of fucosylated glycans during zebrafish early embryogenesis. We microinjected embryos with alkyne-bearing GDP-fucose at the one-cell stage and detected the metabolically incorporated unnatural sugars using the biocompatible click chemistry. Labeled glycans could be imaged in the enveloping layer of zebrafish embryos between blastula and early larval stages. This new method paves the way for rapid, noninvasive imaging of biomolecules in living organisms.     

Dark matter results from 100 live days of XENON100 data

We present results from the direct search for dark matter with the XENON100 detector, installed underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso of INFN, Italy. XENON100 is a two-phase time-projection chamber with a 62 kg liquid xenon target. Interaction vertex reconstruction in three dimensions with millimeter precision allows the selection of only the innermost 48 kg as the ultralow background fiducial target. In 100.9 live days of data, acquired between January and June 2010, no evidence for dark matter is found. Three candidate events were observed in the signal region with an expected background of (1.8 ± 0.6) events. This leads to the most stringent limit on dark matter interactions today, excluding spin-independent elastic weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) nucleon scattering cross sections above 7.0 × 10(-45) cm(2) for a WIMP mass of 50 GeV/c(2) at 90% confidence level.     

Collinear laser spectroscopy with reverse-extracted bunched beams at TRIUMF

Collinear laser spectroscopy with reverse-extracted cooled bunched beams was performed at TRIUMF with radioactive ion beams. Surface-ionized ^78,78mRb ions were injected into TITAN??s cooler-buncher, and reverse-extracted to the laser beam line. There they were neutralised and excited with a counter-propagating laser beam. The fluorescence signal from the D ₂ line was recorded with a photomultiplier tube. The cooler provided typically 50 ion bunches per second, with each bunch containing approximately 10⁵ ions, temporally distributed with a 1.6 ??s width. A hardware gate was set on the signal, suppressing the background by four orders of magnitude.