Glomerular diseases are potentially fatal, requiring aggressive interventions and close monitoring. Urine is a readily-accessible body fluid enriched in molecular signatures from the kidney and ...therefore particularly suited for routine clinical analysis as well as development of non-invasive biomarkers for glomerular diseases.
The Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network (NEPTUNE; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT01209000) is a North American multicenter collaborative consortium established to develop a translational research infrastructure for nephrotic syndrome. This includes standardized urine collections across all participating centers for the purpose of discovering non-invasive biomarkers for patients with nephrotic syndrome due to minimal change disease, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, and membranous nephropathy. Here we describe the organization and methods of urine procurement and banking procedures in NEPTUNE.
We discuss the rationale for urine collection and storage conditions, and demonstrate the performance of three experimental analytes (neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin NGAL, retinol binding globulin, and alpha-1 microglobulin) under these conditions with and without urine preservatives (thymol, toluene, and boric acid). We also demonstrate the quality of RNA and protein collected from the urine cellular pellet and exosomes.
The urine collection protocol in NEPTUNE allows robust detection of a wide range of proteins and RNAs from urine supernatant and pellets collected longitudinally from each patient over 5 years. Combined with the detailed clinical and histopathologic data, this provides a unique resource for exploration and validation of new or accepted markers of glomerular diseases.
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT01209000.
Employing the Bonn–Gatchina partial wave analysis framework (PWA), we have analyzed HADES data of the reaction p(3.5 GeV)+p→pK+Λ. This reaction might contain information about the kaonic cluster ...“ppK−” (with quantum numbers JP=0− and total isospin I=1/2) via its decay into pΛ. Due to interference effects in our coherent description of the data, a hypothetical K‾NN (or, specifically “ppK−”) cluster signal need not necessarily show up as a pronounced feature (e.g. a peak) in an invariant mass spectrum like pΛ. Our PWA analysis includes a variety of resonant and non-resonant intermediate states and delivers a good description of our data (various angular distributions and two-hadron invariant mass spectra) without a contribution of a K‾NN cluster. At a confidence level of CLs=95% such a cluster cannot contribute more than 2–12% to the total cross section with a pK+Λ final state, which translates into a production cross-section between 0.7 μb and 4.2 μb, respectively. The range of the upper limit depends on the assumed cluster mass, width and production process.
The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment (KATRIN) aims to determine the effective electron (anti)-neutrino mass with a sensitivity of 0.2eV/c \(^2\) by precisely measuring the endpoint region of the ...tritium \(\beta \) -decay spectrum. It uses a tandem of electrostatic spectrometers working as magnetic adiabatic collimation combined with an electrostatic (MAC-E) filters. In the space between the pre-spectrometer and the main spectrometer, creating a Penning trap is unavoidable when the superconducting magnet between the two spectrometers, biased at their respective nominal potentials, is energized. The electrons accumulated in this trap can lead to discharges, which create additional background electrons and endanger the spectrometer and detector section downstream. To counteract this problem, “electron catchers” were installed in the beamline inside the magnet bore between the two spectrometers. These catchers can be moved across the magnetic-flux tube and intercept on a sub-ms time scale the stored electrons along their magnetron motion paths. In this paper, we report on the design and the successful commissioning of the electron catchers and present results on their efficiency in reducing the experimental background.
We present a low-power chip for nonvolatile storage and conditioning of voiceband analog audio signals and nonvolatile storage for use in mobile communication devices. The system allows for direct ...interface to acoustic transducer elements and provides signal conditioning to gain adjust, multiples, filter, and mix two independent signals. The system can record these processed signals as analog samples in a nonvolatile flash EEPROM array for later retrieval. Together with an integrated signal path, the system can store up to 8 minutes of audio signal. Control of the system is achieved via a serial interface, which is used to configure and control the device. All necessary components of the system are provided on chip including analog processing elements, nonvolatile storage, high voltage, and reference generation.
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