Tag Archives: Analysis
Hadron collider quest for the God particle – Daily News & Analysis
Here under the rolling hills on the French-Swiss border near Geneva, the biggest machine ever built is preparing for a new assault on its elusive quarry. Because it is now make-or-break time for the scientists at Cern, Europe’s nuclear research laboratory, as their titanic Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful atom smasher in the world, gears up for a frantic rush to corner the elusive Higgs boson, better (if inaccurately) known as the God Particle.
Cern made a tentative announcement last year that it had found “hints” of the Higgs; in the next six months, it will either pin down the elusive particle or force physicists back to the drawing board. The LHC has been repaired and fettled over the winter, and is this week completing a series of test firings before starting high-energy collisions next week.
For almost half a century the particle, whose existence was first predicted by the British physicist Peter Higgs in 1964, has escaped detection – the tools at our disposal were simply not powerful enough to smoke it out. But in the ring of tunnels and caverns buried deep below the Geneva suburbs, engineers are readying their machine for a last, turbo-charged offensive.
Physicists believe not only that the Higgs is there, but that its properties fall between certain parameters. If it turns out not to be there, or to have wildly different properties to what the theories say, the equations will have to be torn up – a prospect that fills physicists with dread and nervous anticipation in equal measure.
With a major overhaul of the LHC due this year, which will see the £6 billion machine shut down for 18 months, the atmosphere at Cern is intense. Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director-general, has instructed his scientists to confirm or rule out the existence of a Higgs boson (or more precisely a Higgs with the mass predicted by science) before the autumn.
The challenge has been accepted with such gusto that Sergio Bertolucci, Cern’s ebullient, motorbike-mad chief scientist, has told the teams analysing the data from the LHC collisions that he is not interested in painstakingly combining their data (as usually happens) and ordered each to find a cast-iron result on the strength of their measurements alone.
To give their physicists a fighting chance, engineers agreed last month to increase the power of the LHC for the duration of 2012 from seven teraelectronvolts (TeV) of energy to eight, giving each microscopic beam the energy of a Eurostar train travelling at full speed.
One way or the other, Prof Heuer says, 2012 will be the year the Higgs nut is finally cracked. “We plan to have around four times as many statistics this year, and that should settle the question of the standard-model Higgs by the end of the summer. We will have an answer to the Shakespeare question: to be or not to be.”
The Higgs is the embodiment of an ether-like field that, according to the “Standard Model” of physics, endows all other particles with their mass and is a major missing piece in the physics jigsaw puzzle. Without the Higgs mechanism a major part of the Standard Model, a series of equations that describe how the basic particles and forces interact, will be incomplete.
Exploring the physics of the impossibly small requires some gargantuan engineering. From the cathedral-sized chambers where the enormous Atlas and CMS detectors – the two biggest “stations” on the LHC ring – are housed, the sense of urgency among engineers putting the final touches to their eye-wateringly expensive equipment is palpable.
The optimism is reassuringly upbeat, because it is fair to say the LHC did not get off to the most auspicious start. The 17-mile underground ring, through which beams of particles thinner than a human hair are fired in opposing directions, took 10 years to construct and twice as long to design.
But shortly after being launched amid great fanfare in 2008, the machine was brought to a halt by a power cut when a pigeon dropped a piece of bread onto an electrical component.
Days later an electrical fault caused a magnet to fail, sparking a gas leak inside the tube which knocked the entire apparatus out of service for a whole year.
Since it was restarted in 2009 two years’ worth of collisions have brought us closer than ever to finding the truth about the Higgs, but have only uncovered tantalising hints of the particle itself.
Now there is a growing sense that the search may at last be coming to an end – a belief strengthened by the final analysis of data from the American Tevatron, the now-defunct forerunner of the LHC, which found strikingly similar “blips” in its results – terabytes of statistical data generated by the debris resulting from particle collisions.
Cern knows that public – and political – expectation is mounting that a “Higgs result”, which will probably mean Nobel Prizes all round, is needed soon. The LHC costs pounds 690 million a year to run and in a cash-strapped Europe, esoteric research like this is always vulnerable to budget cuts.
But the engineers are also thinking ahead to a new phase in the life of the LHC – when the machine can be ramped up to full power and perhaps open up a new window of post-Higgs, super-high-energy physics. The machine will enter a longer period of hibernation at the end of 2012 for its final upgrade. The LHC is designed to handle 14TeV of energy, but before turning it up to full power, engineers must pull the massive detectors apart and test and repair 10,000 connections along the entire length of the accelerator to make sure they will not buckle under the strain.
BioScale Presents Data from a Novel Signal Transduction Pathway Analysis Using AMMP Assays at the 2012 American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Meeting
’ Snapshot of the MAP kinase pathway activation state from in vitro and in vivo tumors and tumor cell lines ’
LEXINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr 2, 2012 – BioScale, Inc. a life science company that develops ultrasensitive protein analysis technology, presented findings of recently completed research studies on phospho-protein analysis of the activation state of the MAP kinase pathway at the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), held at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, March 31 – April 4, 2012.
“The data we presented at AACR are representative of our commitment to enable advancements in protein research especially in the elucidation of biological pathways so important in cancer research,” said Chip Leveille, BioScale’s Chief Operating Officer. “Our customers believe that the ability to measure and monitor the activation states and molecular interactions of these pathways are crucial in the understanding and development of anti-cancer pharmaceuticals and therapeutics. Our goal is to provide, through our ViBE workstations and AMMP assay technology, the necessary tools for scientists to identify and ultrasensitively measure the levels of target proteins and biomarkers in complex samples.”
The presentation entitled “Snapshot of MAP kinase and related signal transduction pathways from biopsied cells using a novel non-optical assay technology – a proof of concept study” was presented by W. Matthew Dickerson, Ph.D. Senior Assay Development Scientist. The studies reported here utilized non-optical, AMMP (acoustic membrane microparticle) technology to quantitate the activity state of multiple kinases including EGFR, MEK, ERK, AKT, p38 and JNK in their native state and included the detection of the MEK-ERK heterodimer highlighting the ability of the technology to detect weak and transient low affinity interactions. Lysates from multiple unstimulated tumor cell lines were compared with those from the same cell lines specifically stimulated with ligands to several well-known surface receptors for expressed changes in their phosphorylation states. The results indicated that the AMMP assays detect a range of phosphoproteins with improved sensitivity with much simpler workflow. Correlation between protein concentration and cell numbers determined that far fewer than 1000 cells were needed per assessment which is very important when assaying tumor biopsy samples where the cell numbers collected are typically low. And finally, using the AMMP assay, multiple phosphoproteins comprising a portion of the MAPK pathway were measured on a single plate allowing the analysis of groups of analytes at the same time under the same conditions. Monitoring changes in expression of analytes due to stimulation by mitogens or specific agents such as receptor ligands provides significant advantages to drug discovery and development.
About BioScale, Inc.
BioScale is a life science company that develops, manufactures and promotes a proprietary protein analysis technology to accelerate the discovery, development and production of biological and pharmaceutical products. BioScale’s innovative ViBE™ platform powered by its AMMP™ (Acoustic Membrane Microparticle) technology enables highly-sensitive detection and quantitation of proteins in complex samples used in pre-clinical and clinical research, bioprocess, patient point-of-care and personalized medicine applications. BioScale is headquartered in Lexington, MA. For more information, visit http://www.bioscale.com.
Contact: BioScale, Inc.
Sharon Correia, 781-430-6868
Director Corporate and Marketing Communications
sharon@bioscale.com
Posted: April 2012
Biocept to Present at the 103rd AACR Annual Meeting on New Analytic Methods for Circulating Tumor Cell Analysis, Including SelectorTM, Ultra-Sensitive Mutation Detection Technology
SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr 2, 2012 – Biocept, Inc., a privately-held, CLIA certified laboratory testing company focused on detection and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer patients, announced that it will be presenting three posters at the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, being held in Chicago March 31 – April 4. The presentations will cover the company’s ultra-sensitive mutation detection technology, SelectorTM, which is being applied to CTC analysis and other clinical and research applications where nucleic acid analysis requires exceptional sensitivity and specificity, as well as biomarker analysis in CTCs related to breast and prostate cancer.
The Selector presentation, entitled “The CEE-Selector Assay: A Tool for the Identification of Rare Allele Variants” (Alexiadis, V., et al) will take place on Tuesday, April 3rd, from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm (Abstract #3198). Selector is a proprietary, highly sensitive mutation detection technology that offers unprecedented sensitivity and specificity. It is able to detect rare mutations in complex wild-type genomic backgrounds with a ratio of greater than 1 in 10,000. It was developed at Biocept, initially for analysis of mutations in rare CTCs, and will be utilized in the company’s future tests, including OncoCEE-LUTM for non-small cell lung cancer and OncoCEE-CRTM for colorectal cancer. Additionally, Biocept has recently demonstrated broader utility for the technology, including detection of mutations in cell-free circulating DNA (cfcDNA) in the plasma of cancer patients. For example, it was able to identify the tyrosine kinase inhibitor resistance mutation T790M in the EGFR gene in lung cancer patients, where ratios of mutant to wild-type gene ranged down to 0.004%. Dr. Lyle Arnold, CSO and Sr. Vice President, R&D at Biocept, commented, “The sensitivity and precision of this technology will enable completely new analyses. We expect to be able to detect and track the rise of a clonal group of cancer cells harboring a specific mutation even before it becomes clinically significant, allowing treatment at a very early stage.”
A second presentation is entitled “Estrogen Receptor and Progesterone Receptor Immunochemistry Staining in Circulating Tumor Cells as Compared to Primary Tumor or Metastatic Biopsy” (Mayer, JA, et al), which will take place on Tuesday, April 3rd, from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm (Abstract #4568) and will cover a study performed in collaboration with researchers at Columbia University Medical Center demonstrating high concordance of hormone status in breast cancer patients between CTCs and tumor tissue by staining with fluorescently labeled antibodies. The third poster, entitled “Increased Detection of Circulating Prostate Epithelial Tumor Cells on Microfluidic Channels Using Enhanced Staining and Automated Scanning” (Pircher, TJ, et al), addresses technology developed by the company to detect cytokeratin negative CTCs with a new staining technique called CEE-EnhancedTM as well as with anti-PSA antibodies, and to automate the detection of these cells with scanning technology and microscopy, and will take place on Monday, April 2nd, from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm (Abstract #2390). These abstracts reflect technology that is being added to Biocept’s platform and test products to enhance CTC capture, detection and analysis.
Biocept’s first CTC test, OncoCEE-BRTM for breast cancer, is now available through Biocept and its commercialization partner, Clarient, Inc., a GE Healthcare Company. The test includes CTC enumeration and determination of HER2 status by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) from a blood sample. Determination of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) status by immunocytochemical staining will be added to the test later this year, and early next year, respectively. OncoCEE-BR is the first commercially available CTC test to include analysis of a specific, treatment-associated biomarker (HER2).
About Biocept, Inc.
Biocept, Inc., headquartered in San Diego, California, is an advanced laboratory services company specializing in the capture, isolation, detection and analysis of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs). Biocept’s mission is to enhance the lives of cancer patients through the development of innovative diagnostic products and services. Biocept utilizes patented and innovative technologies to deliver clinically relevant and actionable information to physicians that enable better patient care. This includes clinical assessments of CTCs, both prognostic and predictive, which may provide physicians with important information for the treatment of their patients with cancer.
Contact: Biocept, Inc.
Michael Dunn
1 858 320-8200
Web site: http://www.biocept.com/
Posted: April 2012
Scientists say earth makeup differs from sun – Daily News & Analysis
pc(1670411);Published: Monday, Apr 2, 2012, 11:28 IST
Place: Sydney | Agency: IANS art_imgs = 0; cur_art_img = 1; function prev(){ for (i=1;iScientists are rejecting a century-old assumption that the earth has the same chemical makeup as the sun.
“This theory is based on the idea that everything in the solar system in general has the same composition,” said Hugh O’Neill, professor at the Research School of Earth Sciences at The Australian National University and study co-author.
“Since the sun comprises 99 percent of the solar system, this composition is essentially that of the Sun,” O’Neill said.
As it is easier to measure the chemical makeup of chondritic (stony) meteorites, geologists have long used these to more precisely determine the sun’s composition – and therefore the composition of the earth, the journal Nature reported.
From this, scientists have concluded that the earth has a ‘chondritic’ composition,according to a university statement.
“Recent discoveries have shown that the ratio of two of the rare earth elements in earth’s volcanic rocks is higher than in chondritic meteorites,” said Ian Campbell, professor and study co-author from Research School of Earth Sciences.
Campbell spent 20 years researching mantle plumes – columns of hot rock that rise from the boundary of the earth’s core and are the mechanism that removes heat from the earth’s centre.
“However, mantle plumes simply don’t release enough heat for these reservoirs to exist. As a consequence the earth simply does not have the same composition as chondrites or the sun,” he added.
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Black holes `eat binary star partners` to grow – Daily News & Analysis
Researchers have come up with a new explanation for the growth of supermassive black holes in the centre of most galaxies asserting that they constantly capture and swallow single stars from pairs of stars that wander too close.
Using new calculations and previous observations of our own Milky Way and other galaxies, “we found black holes grow enormously as a result of sucking in captured binary star partners,” said physics and astronomy Professor Ben Bromley, lead author of the study.
“I believe this has got to be the dominant method for growing supermassive black holes,” he said.
“There are two ways to grow a supermassive black hole: with gas clouds and with stars. Sometimes there’s gas and sometimes there is not. We know that from observations of other galaxies. But there are always stars.”
“Our mechanism is an efficient way to bring a star to a black hole,” Bromley said.
“It’s really hard to target a single star at a black hole. It’s a lot easier to throw a binary at it,” just as it’s more difficult to hit a target using a slingshot, which hurls a single stone, than with a bola, which hurls two weights connected by a cord.
A binary pair of stars orbiting each other “is essentially a single object much bigger than the size of the individual stars, so it is going to interact with the black hole more efficiently,” he explained.
“The binary doesn’t have to get nearly as close for one of the stars to get ripped away and captured.”
But to prove the theory will require more powerful telescopes to find three key signs: large numbers of small stars captured near supermassive black holes, more observations of stars being “shredded” by gravity from black holes, and large numbers of “hypervelocity stars” that are flung from galaxies at more than 1 million mph when their binary partners are captured.
Bromley, a University of Utah astrophysicist, refers to the process of a supermassive black hole capturing stars from binary pairs as “filling the bathtub.”
Once the tub ” the area near the black hole ” is occupied by a cluster of captured stars, they go “down the drain” into the black hole over millions of years.
His study shows the “tub” fills at about the same rate it drains, meaning stars captured by a supermassive black hole eventually are swallowed.
The study has been recently published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
OMICS 