A silicon chip-based electric detector coupled to bead-based sandwich hybridization (BBSH) is presented as an approach to perform rapid analysis of specific nucleic acids. A microfluidic platform ...incorporating paramagnetic beads with immobilized capture probes is used for the biorecognition steps. The protocol involves simultaneous sandwich hybridization of a single-stranded nucleic acid target with the capture probe on the beads and with a detection probe in the reaction solution, followed by enzyme labeling of the detection probe, enzymatic reaction, and finally, potentiometric measurement of the enzyme product at the chip surface. Anti-DIG–alkaline phosphatase conjugate was used for the enzyme labeling of the DIG-labeled detection probe.
p-Aminophenol phosphate (pAPP) was used as a substrate. The enzyme reaction product,
p-aminophenol (pAP), is oxidized at the anode of the chip to quinoneimine that is reduced back to pAP at the cathode. The cycling oxidation and reduction of these compounds result in a current producing a characteristic signal that can be related to the concentration of the analyte. The performance of the different steps in the assay was characterized using
in vitro synthesized RNA oligonucleotides and then the instrument was used for analysis of 16S rRNA in
Escherichia coli extract. The assay time depends on the sensitivity required. Artificial RNA target and 16S rRNA, in amounts ranging from 10
11 to 10
10 molecules, were assayed within 25
min and 4
h, respectively.
Wild herbivore diversity and abundance have declined in African savannas for the past 20 years. Competition for forage resources between wild herbivore and livestock species might contribute to this ...decline, given habitat and diet overlap under conditions of resource limitation. Development of conservation and management strategies rely on understanding the spatial distribution of resources for livestock and wildlife, especially since the combination of transhumance pastoralism and wildlife conservation is common over Africa. We studied the distribution patterns of wild grazers in relation to cattle abundance, and distance to permanent and seasonal water bodies in semi-arid Kenya between 1983 and 2000. Cattle were abundant far from permanent water bodies during dry and wet years. Wild grazers less dependent on water also concentrated far from water during all years. Only wild grazer species more dependent on water remained concentrated close to water. Hence, wild grazers and cattle show spatial partitioning in the use of permanent and seasonal water bodies, but not in their forage resources. Our study provides no strong evidence of spatial displacement of wild grazers by cattle. We suggest that pastoralist decisions on cattle distribution do not need to negatively affect wildlife distribution and that coexistence can be possible through spatial partitioning. Our results show that pastoralist decisions play an important role in the interactions between livestock and wildlife in African savannas and that herd mobility is a key component in supporting sustainable use of resources for both wildlife and livestock.
Performance of the ATLAS Trigger System in 2010 Abbott, B.; Aefsky, S.; Ahles, F. ...
The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields,
01/2012, Letnik:
72, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Proton–proton collisions at
TeV and heavy ion collisions at
TeV were produced by the LHC and recorded using the ATLAS experiment’s trigger system in 2010. The LHC is designed with a maximum bunch ...crossing rate of 40 MHz and the ATLAS trigger system is designed to record approximately 200 of these per second. The trigger system selects events by rapidly identifying signatures of muon, electron, photon, tau lepton, jet, and
B
meson candidates, as well as using global event signatures, such as missing transverse energy. An overview of the ATLAS trigger system, the evolution of the system during 2010 and the performance of the trigger system components and selections based on the 2010 collision data are shown. A brief outline of plans for the trigger system in 2011 is presented.
The nature of b-quark jet hadronisation has been investigated using data taken at the Z peak by the DELPHI detector at LEP. Two complementary methods are used to reconstruct the energy of weakly ...decaying b-hadrons,
. The average value of
is measured to be 0.699±0.011. The resulting
distribution is then analysed in the framework of two choices for the perturbative contribution (parton shower and Next to Leading Log QCD calculation) in order to extract measurements of the non-perturbative contribution to be used in studies of b-hadron production in other experimental environments than LEP. In the parton shower framework, data favour the Lund model ansatz and corresponding values of its parameters have been determined within PYTHIA 6.156 from DELPHI data:
with a correlation factor
ρ
=92.2%.
Combining the data on the b-quark fragmentation distributions with those obtained at the Z peak by ALEPH, OPAL and SLD, the average value of
is found to be 0.7092±0.0025 and the non-perturbative fragmentation component is extracted. Using the combined distribution, a better determination of the Lund parameters is also obtained:
with a correlation factor
ρ
=92.6%.
Inclusive multi-jet production is studied in proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.4 pb
...−1
. Results on multi-jet cross sections are presented and compared to both leading-order plus parton-shower Monte Carlo predictions and to next-to-leading-order QCD calculations.
Single photons detected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP2 in the years 1997–2000 are reanalysed to investigate the existence of a single extra dimension in a modified ADD scenario with slightly warped ...large extra dimensions. The data collected at centre-of-mass energies between 180 and 209 GeV for an integrated luminosity of ∼650 pb
−1
agree with the predictions of the Standard Model and allow a limit to be set on graviton emission in one large extra dimension. The limit obtained on the fundamental mass scale
M
D
is 1.69 TeV/
c
2
at 95% CL, with an expected limit of 1.71 TeV/
c
2
.
An analysis of the direct soft photon production rate as a function of the parent jet characteristics is presented, based on hadronic events collected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP1. The ...dependences of the photon rates on the jet kinematic characteristics (momentum, mass, etc.) and on the jet charged, neutral and total hadron multiplicities are reported. Up to a scale factor of about four, which characterizes the overall value of the soft photon excess, a similarity of the observed soft photon behavior to that of the inner hadronic bremsstrahlung predictions is found for the momentum, mass, and jet charged multiplicity dependences. However for the dependence of the soft photon rate on the jet neutral and total hadron multiplicities a prominent difference is found for the observed soft photon signal as compared to the expected bremsstrahlung from final state hadrons. The observed linear increase of the soft photon production rate with the jet total hadron multiplicity and its strong dependence on the jet neutral multiplicity suggest that the rate is proportional to the number of quark pairs produced in the fragmentation process, with the neutral pairs being more effectively radiating than the charged ones.
A
bstract
Using inelastic proton-proton interactions at
GeV and 7 TeV, recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC, measurements have been made of the correlations between forward and backward ...charged-particle multiplicities and, for the first time, between forward and backward charged-particle summed transverse momentum. In addition, jet-like structure in the events is studied by means of azimuthal distributions of charged particles relative to the charged particle with highest transverse momentum in a selected kinematic region of the event. The results are compared with predictions from tunes of the pythia and herwig++ Monte Carlo generators, which in most cases are found to provide a reasonable description of the data.
The data taken by
Delphi
at centre-of-mass energies between 189 and 209 GeV are used to place limits on the
CP
-conserving trilinear gauge boson couplings
,
λ
γ
and Δ
κ
γ
associated to
W
+
W
−
and ...single
W
production at
Lep2
. Using data from the
jj
ℓ
ν
,
jjjj
,
jjX
and
ℓ
X
final states, where
j
,
ℓ
and
X
represent a jet, a lepton and missing four-momentum, respectively, the following limits are set on the couplings when one parameter is allowed to vary and the others are set to their Standard Model values of zero:
Results are also presented when two or three parameters are allowed to vary. All observations are consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model and supersede the previous results on these gauge coupling parameters published by
Delphi
.