Publications by authors named "Whiteford C"

Relativistic charged-particle beams that generate intense longitudinal fields in accelerating structures also inherently couple to transverse modes. The effects of this coupling may lead to beam breakup instability and thus must be countered to preserve beam quality in applications such as linear colliders. Beams with highly asymmetric transverse sizes (flat beams) have been shown to suppress the initial instability in slab-symmetric structures.

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We present overall process for developing terahertz (THz) corrugated structure and its beam-based measurement results. 0.2-THz corrugated structures were fabricated by die stamping method as the first step demonstration towards GW THz radiation source and GV/m THz wakefield accelerator.

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Many of the most significant advances in accelerator science have been due to improvements in our ability to manipulate beam phase space. Despite steady progress in beam phase-space manipulation over the last several decades, future accelerator applications continue to outpace the ability to manipulate the phase space. This situation is especially pronounced for longitudinal beam phase-space manipulation, and is now getting increased attention.

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Modern zoos are increasingly taking a leading role in emergency management and wildlife recovery. In the face of climate change and the predicted increase in frequency and magnitude of catastrophic events, zoos provide specialised expertise to assist wildlife welfare and endangered species recovery. In the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season, now called Australia's Black Summer, a state government-directed response was developed, assembling specialised individuals and organisations from government, non-government organisations, research institutions, and others.

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Plasma wakefields can enable very high accelerating gradients for frontier high energy particle accelerators, in excess of 10  GeV/m. To overcome limits on single stage acceleration, specially shaped drive beams can be used in both linear and nonlinear plasma wakefield accelerators (PWFA), to increase the transformer ratio, implying that the drive beam deceleration is minimized relative to acceleration obtained in the wake. In this Letter, we report the results of a nonlinear PWFA, high transformer ratio experiment using high-charge, longitudinally asymmetric drive beams in a plasma cell.

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Article Synopsis
  • Collinear wakefield acceleration can produce very high acceleration gradients, prompting research to improve the transformer ratio (TR), which measures the efficiency of acceleration behind a drive bunch.
  • To maximize TR, researchers have shifted focus to creating asymmetrical drive bunch distributions since conventional symmetrical ones limit TR to below 2.
  • This study showcases the use of an emittance-exchange method to shape the drive bunch, achieving an experimental TR of about 5 in a dielectric wakefield accelerator.
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We report on the experimental generation of relativistic electron bunches with a tunable longitudinal bunch shape. A longitudinal bunch-shaping (LBS) beam line, consisting of a transverse mask followed by a transverse-to-longitudinal emittance exchange (EEX) beam line, is used to tailor the longitudinal bunch shape (or current profile) of the electron bunch. The mask shapes the bunch's horizontal profile, and the EEX beam line converts it to a corresponding longitudinal profile.

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Background: Ear, nose and throat complaints are very common and can cause significant disruption to patients' lives. Many conditions are of a chronic nature and are not currently managed in a timely manner by general practitioners in the community. This may be due to a lack of specialized knowledge, necessary diagnostic equipment or time for lengthy patient education on management of their condition.

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Field emission from a solid metal surface has been continuously studied for a century over macroscopic to atomic scales. It is general knowledge that, other than the surface properties, the emitted current is governed solely by the applied electric field. A pin cathode has been used to study the dependence of field emission on stored energy in an L-band rf gun.

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Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are critical components of innate immunity. This study was designed to evaluate differential expression of genes for TLR and associated signal transduction molecules in critically ill patients developing sepsis compared with those with sterile inflammation. Uninfected critically ill patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome were prospectively followed daily for development of sepsis.

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Background: Systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) represents a host response to various insults. Recent advances have demonstrated an interconnection between inflammation, complement, and coagulation. This experiment was designed to evaluate differences in plasma protein profiles between clinically identical patients: septic versus uninfected SIRS patients, prior to clinical diagnosis of infection.

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Human tumor xenografts have been used extensively for rapid screening of the efficacy of anticancer drugs for the past 35 years. The selection of appropriate xenograft models for drug testing has been largely empirical and has not incorporated a similarity to the tumor type of origin at the molecular level. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the transcriptome of a large set of pediatric xenografts, which are currently used for preclinical drug testing.

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Fenretinide (4-HPR) is a synthetic retinoid whose apoptosis-inducing effects have been demonstrated in many tumor types. The precise mechanism of its apoptotic action is not fully understood. To further study the mechanism by which 4-HPR exerts its biological effects in neuroblastoma (NB) and to identify the genes that contribute to the induction of apoptosis, we determined the sensitivity of eight NB cell lines to 4-HPR.

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Genome-wide expression profiling of normal tissue may facilitate our understanding of the etiology of diseased organs and augment the development of new targeted therapeutics. Here, we have developed a high-density gene expression database of 18,927 unique genes for 158 normal human samples from 19 different organs of 30 different individuals using DNA microarrays. We report four main findings.

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In this study, gene expression profiling was performed on 103 neuroblastoma (NB) tumors, stages 1-4 with and without MYCN amplification, using cDNA microarrays containing 42,578 elements. Using principal component analysis (PCA) to analyse the relationships among these samples, we confirm that the global patterns of gene expression reflect the phenotype of the tumors. To explore the biological processes that may contribute to increasing aggressive phenotype of the tumors, we utilized a statistical approach based on PCA.

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Motivation: The accumulation of genomic alterations is an important process in tumor formation and progression. Comparative genomic hybridization performed on cDNA arrays (cDNA aCGH) is a common method to investigate the genomic alterations on a genome-wide scale. However, when detecting low-level DNA copy number changes this technology requires the use of noise reduction strategies due to a low signal to noise ratio.

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Currently, patients with neuroblastoma are classified into risk groups (e.g., according to the Children's Oncology Group risk-stratification) to guide physicians in the choice of the most appropriate therapy.

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Background: Recurrent non-random genomic alterations are the hallmarks of cancer and the characterization of these imbalances is critical to our understanding of tumorigenesis and cancer progression.

Results: We performed array-comparative genomic hybridization (A-CGH) on cDNA microarrays containing 42,000 elements in neuroblastoma (NB). We found that only two chromosomes (2p and 12q) had gene amplifications and all were in the MYCN amplified samples.

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Treatment of Wilms tumor has a high success rate, with some 85% of patients achieving long-term survival. However, late effects of treatment and management of relapse remain significant clinical problems. If accurate prognostic methods were available, effective risk-adapted therapies could be tailored to individual patients at diagnosis.

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The p53 tumor suppressor protein plays a critical role in mediating cellular response to stress. Upon DNA damage, post-translational modifications stabilize and activate this nuclear phosphoprotein. To determine the effect of phosphorylation site mutants in the context of the whole p53 protein, we performed reporter assays in p53 and MDM2 knockout mouse embryonic fibroblasts transfected with full-length p53 constructs.

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The export of mRNA from the nucleus to the cytoplasm involves interactions of proteins with mRNA and the nuclear pore complex. We isolated Crp79p, a novel mRNA export factor from the same synthetic lethal screen that led to the identification of spMex67p in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Crp79p is a 710-amino-acid-long protein that contains three RNA recognition motif domains in tandem and a distinct C-terminus.

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Human T-cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I) is the etiologic agent for adult T-cell leukemia and the neurological disorder tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-I-associated myelopathy. CD4+ T lymphocytes, the primary hosts for HTLV-I, undergo a series of changes that lead to T-cell activation, immortalization, and transformation. To gain insight into the genetic differences between activated and HTLV-I-infected lymphocytes, we performed Affymetrix GeneChip analysis of activated and HTLV-I-infected cells.

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Peptide-class II complexes are assembled in endocytic, lysosome-like compartments where newly synthesized class II molecules are targeted from the trans-Golgi network (TGN). Recent studies have implicated phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3-kinase) as an essential component in membrane trafficking from the TGN to lysosomes. Here, using subcellular fractionation, we show PI3-kinase activity associated with subcellular fractions which contain the class II peptide-loading compartment (IIPLC) in B cells.

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