Immunologic and genetic factors are involved in HIV-1/AIDS pathogenesis. Defensins are key molecules in innate immunity that participate in the control and/or development of infection and disease. ...Using PCR-RFLPs, we determined the association between HIV-1/AIDS and human β-defensin 1 (DEFB1) 5'UTR -52 G/A (rs1799946), -44 C/G (rs1800972), and -20 G/A (rs11362) polymorphisms in three groups of women from the state of Sinaloa, located in the Northwest region of Mexico: i) healthy blood donors; ii) sex-workers; and iii) HIV-1 patients. The -52GG genotype was more frequent in blood donors than in patients (p= 0.023; Odds Ratio, OR= 0.49; 95% CI= 0.25-0.95), whereas the - 52GA genotype was significantly higher in patients (p= 0.013; OR= 2.03; 95% CI= 1.11-3.79, statistical power SP= 98.8%), as well as the frequencies of -20A allele (p= 0.017; OR= 1.60; 95% CI= 1.06-2.40), -20AA genotype (p= 0.047; OR = 2.02; 95% CI= 0.93-4.33) and the ACA haplotype with respect to healthy blood donors (p= 0.000012; OR= 5.82; 95% CI= 2.33-16.43, SP= 99.89%) and sex-workers (p= 0.019; OR= 2.18; 95% CI= 1.07-4.46). Conversely, the ACG haplotype was higher in healthy blood donors than in patients (p= 0.009; OR= 0.55; 95% CI= 0.34-0.89). In addition, the -44CC genotype was associated with a low plasma viral load (p= 0.015), whereas AGA, AGG and GGA haplotypes were more prevalent in individuals with high CD4 counts (p= 0.004, 0.046, and 0.029, respectively). These findings associate DEFB1 5'UTR polymorphisms with HIV-1/AIDS in Mexican women for the first time.
Elastic neutrino scattering on electrons is a precisely known purely leptonic process that provides a standard candle for measuring neutrino flux in conventional neutrino beams. Using a total sample ...of 810 neutrino-electron scatters after background subtraction, the measurement reduces the normalization uncertainty on the ν μ NuMI beam flux between 2 and 20 GeV from 7.6 to 3.9%. This is the most precise measurement of neutrino-electron scattering to date, will reduce uncertainties on MINER ν A's absolute cross section measurements, and demonstrates a technique that can be used in future neutrino beams such as long baseline neutrino facility.
Scattering of high energy particles from nucleons probes their structure, as was done in the experiments that established the non-zero size of the proton using electron beams
. The use of charged ...leptons as scattering probes enables measuring the distribution of electric charges, which is encoded in the vector form factors of the nucleon
. Scattering weakly interacting neutrinos gives the opportunity to measure both vector and axial vector form factors of the nucleon, providing an additional, complementary probe of their structure. The nucleon transition axial form factor, F
, can be measured from neutrino scattering from free nucleons, ν
n → μ
p and Formula: see text, as a function of the negative four-momentum transfer squared (Q
). Up to now, F
(Q
) has been extracted from the bound nucleons in neutrino-deuterium scattering
, which requires uncertain nuclear corrections
. Here we report the first high-statistics measurement, to our knowledge, of the Formula: see text cross-section from the hydrogen atom, using the plastic scintillator target of the MINERvA
experiment, extracting F
from free proton targets and measuring the nucleon axial charge radius, r
, to be 0.73 ± 0.17 fm. The antineutrino-hydrogen scattering presented here can access the axial form factor without the need for nuclear theory corrections, and enables direct comparisons with the increasingly precise lattice quantum chromodynamics computations
. Finally, the tools developed for this analysis and the result presented are substantial advancements in our capabilities to understand the nucleon structure in the weak sector, and also help the current and future neutrino oscillation experiments
to better constrain neutrino interaction models.
We measure neutrino charged-current quasielasticlike scattering on hydrocarbon at high statistics using the wideband Neutrinos at the Main Injector beam with neutrino energy peaked at 6 GeV. The ...double-differential cross section is reported in terms of muon longitudinal (p_{∥}) and transverse (p_{⊥}) momentum. Cross section contours versus lepton momentum components are approximately described by a conventional generator-based simulation, however, discrepancies are observed for transverse momenta above 0.5 GeV/c for longitudinal momentum ranges 3-5 and 9-20 GeV/c. The single differential cross section versus momentum transfer squared (dσ/dQ_{QE}^{2}) is measured over a four-decade range of Q^{2} that extends to 10 GeV^{2}. The cross section turnover and falloff in the Q^{2} range 0.3-10 GeV^{2} is not fully reproduced by generator predictions that rely on dipole form factors. Our measurement probes the axial-vector content of the hadronic current and complements the electromagnetic form factor data obtained using electron-nucleon elastic scattering. These results help oscillation experiments because they probe the importance of various correlations and final-state interaction effects within the nucleus, which have different effects on the visible energy in detectors.
Faced with unresolved tensions between neutrino interaction measurements at few-GeV neutrino energies, current experiments are forced to accept large systematic uncertainties to cover discrepancies ...between their data and model predictions. The widely used pion production model in GENIE is compared to four MINERνA charged current pion production measurements using nuisance. Tunings, i.e., adjustments of model parameters, to help match GENIE to MINERνA and older bubble chamber data are presented. We find that scattering off nuclear targets as measured in MINERνA is not in good agreement with expectations based upon scattering off nucleon (hydrogen or deuterium) targets in existing bubble chamber data. An additional ad hoc correction for the low−Q2 region, where collective nuclear effects are expected to be large, is presented. While these tunings and corrections improve the agreement of GENIE with the data, the modeling is imperfect. The development of these tunings within the nuisance framework allows for straightforward extensions to other neutrino event generators and models, and allows omitting and including new datasets as they become available.
We have measured new observables based on the final state kinematic imbalances in the mesonless production of $\nu_\mu+A\rightarrow\mu^-+p+X$ in the $\text{MINER}\nu\text{A}$ tracker. Components of ...the muon-proton momentum imbalances parallel ($\delta p_\mathrm{Ty}$) and perpendicular($\delta p_\mathrm{Tx}$) to the momentum transfer in the transverse plane are found to be sensitive to the nuclear effects such as Fermi motion, binding energy and non-QE contributions. The QE peak location in $\delta p_\mathrm{Ty}$ is particularly sensitive to the binding energy. Differential cross sections are compared to predictions from different neutrino interaction models. The Fermi gas models presented in this study cannot simultaneously describe features such as QE peak location, width and the non-QE events contributing to the signal process. Correcting the GENIE's binding energy implementation according to theory causes better agreement with data. Hints of proton left-right asymmetry are observed in $\delta p_\mathrm{Tx}$. Better modeling of the binding energy can reduce bias in neutrino energy reconstruction and these observables can be applied in current and future experiments to better constrain nuclear effects.
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