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- Hayes, A., et al.
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A European multicentre evaluation of detection and typing methods for human enteroviruses and parechoviruses using RNA transcripts
- 2020
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In: Journal of Medical Virology. - : Wiley. - 0146-6615 .- 1096-9071. ; 92:8, s. 1065-1074
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection has become the gold standard for diagnosis and typing of enterovirus (EV) and human parechovirus (HPeV) infections. Its effectiveness depends critically on using the appropriate sample types and high assay sensitivity as viral loads in cerebrospinal fluid samples from meningitis and sepsis clinical presentation can be extremely low. This study evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of currently used commercial and in-house diagnostic and typing assays. Accurately quantified RNA transcript controls were distributed to 27 diagnostic and 12 reference laboratories in 17 European countries for blinded testing. Transcripts represented the four human EV species (EV-A71, echovirus 30, coxsackie A virus 21, and EV-D68), HPeV3, and specificity controls. Reported results from 48 in-house and 15 commercial assays showed 98% detection frequencies of high copy (1000 RNA copies/5 µL) transcripts. In-house assays showed significantly greater detection frequencies of the low copy (10 copies/5 µL) EV and HPeV transcripts (81% and 86%, respectively) compared with commercial assays (56%, 50%; P = 7 × 10−5). EV-specific PCRs showed low cross-reactivity with human rhinovirus C (3 of 42 tests) and infrequent positivity in the negative control (2 of 63 tests). Most or all high copy EV and HPeV controls were successfully typed (88%, 100%) by reference laboratories, but showed reduced effectiveness for low copy controls (41%, 67%). Stabilized RNA transcripts provide an effective, logistically simple and inexpensive reagent for evaluation of diagnostic assay performance. The study provides reassurance of the performance of the many in-house assay formats used across Europe. However, it identified often substantially reduced sensitivities of commercial assays often used as point-of-care tests.
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- Gobel, K., et al.
(author)
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Coulomb dissociation of 16O into 4He and 12C
- 2020
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In: Journal of Physics: Conference Series. - : IOP Publishing. - 1742-6588 .- 1742-6596. ; 1668:1
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We measured the Coulomb dissociation of 16O into 4He and 12C at the R3B setup in a first campaign within FAIR Phase 0 at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt. The goal was to improve the accuracy of the experimental data for the 12C(a,?)16O fusion reaction and to reach lower center-ofmass energies than measured so far. The experiment required beam intensities of 109 16O ions per second at an energy of 500 MeV/nucleon. The rare case of Coulomb breakup into 12C and 4He posed another challenge: The magnetic rigidities of the particles are so close because of the same mass-To-charge-number ratio A/Z = 2 for 16O, 12C and 4He. Hence, radical changes of the R3B setup were necessary. All detectors had slits to allow the passage of the unreacted 16O ions, while 4He and 12C would hit the detectors' active areas depending on the scattering angle and their relative energies. We developed and built detectors based on organic scintillators to track and identify the reaction products with sufficient precision.
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- Huang, Chelsea X., et al.
(author)
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TESS Spots a Hot Jupiter with an Inner Transiting Neptune
- 2020
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In: Astrophysical Journal Letters. - : American Astronomical Society. - 2041-8213 .- 2041-8205. ; 892:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Hot Jupiters are rarely accompanied by other planets within a factor of a few in orbital distance. Previously, only two such systems have been found. Here, we report the discovery of a third system using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The host star, TOI-1130, is an eleventh magnitude K-dwarf in Gaia G-band. It has two transiting planets: a Neptune-sized planet (3.65 ± 0.10 R\oplus) with a 4.1 days period, and a hot Jupiter (1.50-0.22+0.27 RJ) with an 8.4 days period. Precise radial-velocity observations show that the mass of the hot Jupiter is 0.974-0.044+0.043 MJ. For the inner Neptune, the data provide only an upper limit on the mass of 0.17 MJ (3σ). Nevertheless, we are confident that the inner planet is real, based on follow-up ground-based photometry and adaptive-optics imaging that rule out other plausible sources of the TESS transit signal. The unusual planetary architecture of and the brightness of the host star make TOI-1130 a good test case for planet formation theories, and an attractive target for future spectroscopic observations.
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