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Carbon isotopic analysis has been challenging our ideas about hominin diet for nearly 30 years. The first study in 1994 revealed that Paranthropus robustus from South Africa consumed principally C3 foods (e.g., tree fruits and leaves) but also about 25% C4/CAM resources (e.g., tropical grasses and sedges). This result was largely consistent with morphological and dental microwear evidence suggesting P. robustus had a diet which included hard objects like nuts and seeds. Decades later, however, P. boisei from eastern Africa was shown to have eaten nearly 80% C4/CAM plants like the contemporaneous grass-eating primate Theropithecus. Moreover, dental microwear revealed no evidence of hard object consumption in P. boisei, suggesting a diet of tough foods such as grass or sedge leaf and stem. So Paranthropus presents us with two central problems: 1) Why do dietary proxies suggest different diets for the two robust australopiths despite their morphological congruity; and 2) How could P. boisei have consumed tough foods with teeth that seem unsuited to the task. Here we review these questions and more with a particular focus on new isotopic data from the Omo and insights that can be gleaned from mammals outside the haplorrhine primates. We argue that extant Primates do not capture the ecomorphological diversity of P. boisei and other extinct primates and should not narrowly circumscribe the behaviors we ascribe to extinct taxa. We also discuss possible digestive strategies for P. boisei in light of its morphology, dietary proxy data, food mechanical properties, and comparative data on mammalian digestive kinetics. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Phylogenetic analyses of nuclear and mitochondrial genomes indicate that polar bears captured the brown bear mitochondrial genome 160,000 years ago, leading to an extinction of the original polar bear mitochondrial genome. However, mitochondrial DNA occasionally integrates into the nuclear genome, forming pseudogenes called numts (nuclear mitochondrial integrations). Screening the polar bear genome identified only 13 numts. Genomic analyses of two additional ursine bears and giant panda indicate that all except one of the discovered numts entered the bear lineage at least 14 million years ago. However, short read genome assemblies might lead to an under-representation of numts or other repetitive sequences. Our findings suggest low integration rates of numts in bears and a loss of the original polar bear mitochondrial genome.

A feasibility study has been performed in order to investigate the performance of the HADES detector to measure the electromagnetic decays of the hyperon resonances $\Sigma(1385)^0$, $\Lambda(1405)$ and $\Lambda{\Lambda}(1520)$ as well as the production of double strange baryon systems $\Xi^-$ and $\Lambda\Lambda$ in p+p reactions at a beam kinetic energy of 4.5 GeV. The existing HADES detector will be upgraded by a new Forward Detector, which extends the detector acceptance into a range of polar angles that plays a crucial role for these investigations. The analysis of each channel is preceded by a consideration of the production cross-sections. Afterwards the expected signal count rates using a target consisting of either liquid hydrogen or polyethylene are summarized., Comment: Draft prepared by Rafa{\l} Lalik, James Ritman, Piotr Salabura, 19 pages, 21 figures, 4 tables

PANDA (anti-Proton ANnihiliation at DArmstadt) is planned to be one of the four main experiments at the future international accelerator complex FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany. It is going to address fundamental questions of hadron physics and quantum chromodynamics using cooled antiproton beams with a high intensity and and momenta between 1.5 and 15 GeV/c. PANDA is designed to reach a maximum luminosity of 2x10^32 cm^2 s. Most of the physics programs require an excellent particle identification (PID). The PID of hadronic states at the forward endcap of the target spectrometer will be done by a fast and compact Cherenkov detector that uses the detection of internally reflected Cherenkov light (DIRC) principle. It is designed to cover the polar angle range from 5{\deg} to 22{\deg} and to provide a separation power for the separation of charged pions and kaons up to 3 standard deviations (s.d.) for particle momenta up to 4 GeV/c in order to cover the important particle phase space. This document describes the technical design and the expected performance of the novel PANDA Disc DIRC detector that has not been used in any other high energy physics experiment (HEP) before. The performance has been studied with Monte-Carlo simulations and various beam tests at DESY and CERN. The final design meets all PANDA requirements and guarantees suffcient safety margins., Comment: TDR for Panda/Fair to be published

We present a new cryptanalysis approach to analyze the security of a class of authenticated encryption schemes, which shares similarity with the previous length extension attack against hash-function-based MACs. Hence we name our approach by message extension attack. For an authenticated encryption from the target class, it consists of three phases; initialization with nonce and key as input, state update function with associated data and message as input and tag generation with updated state as input. We will show how to mount a forgery attack in the nonce-repeating model under the chosen-plaintext scenario, when both state update function and tag generation is built based on the same function. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our message extension attack approach, we apply it to a dedicated authenticated encryption called PANDA, which is a candidate of the ongoing CAESAR cryptographic competition. We successfully found an existential forgery attack on PANDA with 25 chosen plaintexts, 264 computations, and a negligible memory, and it breaks the claimed 128-bit security for the nonce-repeating model. We note that this is the first result that breaks the security claim of PANDA, which makes it withdrawn from the CAESAR competition by its designer. NRF (Natl Research Foundation, S’pore) Published version

A crucial component of distributed computing systems is network infrastructure. While networking forms the backbone of such systems, it is often the invisible partner to storage and computing resources. We propose to integrate Network Elements directly into distributed systems through the workload management layer. There are many reasons for this approach. As the complexity and demand for distributed systems grow, it is important to use existing infrastructure efficiently. For example, one could use network performance measurements in the decision making mechanisms of workload management systems. New advanced technologies allow one to programmatically define network configuration, for example SDN - Software Defined Networks. We will describe how these methods are being used within the PanDA workload management system of the ATLAS collaboration.

International audience; The production of strange particles (kaons, hyperons) and hypernuclei in light charged-particle-induced reactions in the energy range of a few GeV (2-15 GeV) has become a topic of active research in several facilities (e.g., HypHI and PANDA at GSI and/or FAIR (Germany), JLab (USA), and JPARC (Japan)). This energy range represents the low-energy limit of the string models (degree of freedom: quark and gluon) or the high-energy limit of the so-called spallation models (degree of freedom: hadrons). A well-known spallation model is INCL, the Liège intranuclear cascade model (combined with a de-excitation model to complete the reaction). INCL, known to give good results up to 2-3GeV, was recently upgraded by the implementation of multiple pion emission to extend the energy range of applicability up to roughly 15GeV. The next step, to account also for strange particle production, both for refining the high-energy domain and making it usable when strangeness appears, requires the following main ingredients: i) the relevant elementary cross sections (production, scattering, and absorption) and ii) the characteristics of the associated final states. Some of those ingredients are already known and, sometimes, already used in models of the same type (e.g., Bertini, GiBUU), but this paper aims at reviewing the situation by compiling, updating, and comparing the necessary elementary information which are independent of the model used.

The International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) is building a catalogue of mammalian gene function by producing and phenotyping a knockout mouse line for every protein-coding gene. To date, the IMPC has generated and characterised 5186 mutant lines. One-third of the lines have been found to be non-viable and over 300 new mouse models of human disease have been identified thus far. While current bioinformatics efforts are focused on translating results to better understand human disease processes, IMPC data also aids understanding genetic function and processes in other species. Here we show, using gorilla genomic data, how genes essential to development in mice can be used to help assess the potentially deleterious impact of gene variants in other species. This type of analyses could be used to select optimal breeders in endangered species to maintain or increase fitness and avoid variants associated to impaired-health phenotypes or loss-of-function mutations in genes of critical importance. We also show, using selected examples from various mammal species, how IMPC data can aid in the identification of candidate genes for studying a condition of interest, deliver information about the mechanisms involved, or support predictions for the function of genes that may play a role in adaptation. With genotyping costs decreasing and the continued improvements of bioinformatics tools, the analyses we demonstrate can be routinely applied. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10592-018-1072-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Phylogenetic analyses of nuclear and mitochondrial genomes have shown that polar bears captured the mitochondrial genome of brown bears some 160,00 years ago. This hybridization event likely led to an extinction of the original polar bear mitochondrial genome. However, parts of the mitochondrial DNA occasionally integrates into the nuclear genome, forming pseudogenes called numts (nuclear mitochondrial integrations). Screening the polar bear genome for numts, we identified only 13 such integrations. Analyses of whole-genome sequences from additional polar bears, brown and American black bears as well as the giant panda indicates that the discovered numts entered the bear lineage before the initial ursid radiation some 14 million years ago. Our findings suggests a low integration rate of numts in the bear lineage and a complete loss of the original polar bear mitochondrial genome.

The advent of novel and high-throughput sequencing (next generation) technologies allowed for the sequencing of the genome at an unprecedented depth. The majority of transcribed RNAs have been classified as non-coding RNAs. Among them, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are emerging as important regulators in many biological processes. Here, we discuss the role of those lncRNAs which are under the control of p53 or that are able to regulate its activity, due to the central role of p53 pathway in many conditions. We also briefly discussed the emerging need of having novel strategies and computational tools to completely unravel the multifaceted roles of lncRNAs and to pave the way to the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic applications based on these peculiar molecules.

Due to the anti-proton annihilation at Darmstadt (PANDA) experiment has rich physics studies with different event selection criteria and very high interaction rate of 2x107 /s and data rates of 200 GB/s and more, a high performance and high bandwidth data acquisition system without hardware trigger has been proposed. The data from various sub-detector systems are tagged by a very precise timestamp in front-end electronics. Event selection based on real time feature extraction, filtering and high level correlations will be executed on Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) compliant compute nodes. As a key element, the compute node that features high bandwidth connectivity and large memory for data buffering will be detailed. A demonstrator system for the electromagnetic calorimeter has been built to set up a basic system that can be interfaced to front-end electronics.

The PANDA spectrometer will be a state of the art universal detector for strong interaction studies at the High-Energy Storage Ring (HESR) in the future international Facility for Anti-proton and Ion Research (FAIR) at GSI, Darmstadt. The detector is designed to take advantage of the extraordinary physics potential which will be available utilizing high intensity, phase space cooled anti-proton beams. This facility will provide a cooled anti-proton beam−2with momenta of 1.5-15 GeV/c, a maximal luminosity of 2×1032cms−1 that translates into 2×107 pp annihilations per second. A GEM based Time Projection Chamber (TPC) was one of the central tracker candidates for the PANDA experiment. To check the feasibility of such a detector system, a large prototype GEM-TPC was built and tested inside the FOPI Spectrometer at GSI. A set of three Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) foils were used as amplification stage instead of Multi Wire Proportional Chambers. In this report, the design, construction, characterization of the prototype-detector system will be discussed in detail along with the results of recent beam tests.

Since few experiments prove the effectiveness of idea generation methods and tools, designers often base their choice on anecdotal evidence or personal experience. However, recently developed metrics enable a more fine-grained analysis of an ideation method's effectiveness. This research presents the results of applying such metrics on the ideation tool PAnDA and discusses how to effectively use PAnDA together with its benefits and limitations. The results indicate that PAnDA increases the variety and novelty of the produced ideas especially for a variant or adaptive design task, and increases the effectiveness for designers with self-indicated preference to think logical and analytical.

The study of the double hypernuclei will be possible inside the future facility FAIR. A new technique for their production was recently proposed, based on high intensity antiproton beams in connection with a two‐target set‐up, for the future PANDA experiment at HESR. In particular, the production technique and optimized parameters for the primary target where the hyperon Ξ− is produced as well as the expected rates for the stoped Ξ− will be discussed.

The PANDA collaboration intends to build a state-of-the-art detector to study the physics of antiproton annihilation in the charm mass region at the future FAIR facility at GSI, Darmstadt. One major part of the PANDA detector is the straw tube tracker. It will consist of about 6000 individual straws grouped in 11 double layers and filled with an Ar+10%CO_2 gas mixture. The required radial spatial resolution is about 150 micron. Two different methods are considered for longitudinal coordinate measurements - skewed double layers and a novel method based on the time-dependent charge asymmetry. The latter method is presented in this article., Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, Preprint submitted to NIM A

The physics program of the (anti-Proton ANhiliation ar DArmstadt) experiment will address various questions related to the strong interactions by employing a multi-purpose detector system at the High Energy Storage Ring (HESR) for anti-protons of the upcoming Facility for Anti-proton and Ion Research (FAIR). The excellent antiproton beam resolution of Δp/p ~ 10−5 and the high luminosity =2×1032cm−2 s−1 will allow the precise measurement of the charmonium and open charm spectroscopy, the search for exotic hadrons like multiquarks, glueballs and hybrids, the study of in-medium modifications of hadrons and the nucleon structure.

International audience; Exclusive binary annihilation reactions induced by antiprotons of momentum from 1.5 to 15 GeV/c can be extensively investigated at FAIR/PANDA [1]. We are especially interested in the channel of charged pion pairs. Whereas this very probable channel constitutes the major background for other processes of interest in the PANDA experiment, it carries unique physical information on the quark content of proton, allowing to test different models (quark counting rules, statistical models,..). To study the binary reactions of light meson formation, we are developing an effective Lagrangian model based on Feynman diagrams which takes into account the virtuality of the exchanged particles. Regge factors [2] and form factors are introduced with parameters which may be adjusted on the existing data. We present preliminary results of our formalism for different reactions of light meson production leading to reliable predictions of cross sections, energy and angular dependencies in the PANDA kinematical range.

6 pages, 3 figures., [EN] We describe for the first time the radial sesamoid or “false thumb” of the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), showing its great morphological similarities with that of the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) and the differences with that of the rest of the Ursidae. This points to the existence of a common origin for this structure in both species, but considering the accepted phylogenies of ursids, the sharing of a “false thumb” in T. ornatus and A. melanoleuca would be a plesiomorphy for these groups, whereas in the rest of the ursids the radial sesamoid was probably reduced, lacking the specialised function that this bone has in Tremarctinae and Ailuropodinae., [ES] Se describe por primera vez el sesamoideo radial o “falso pulgar” del oso de anteojos (Tremarctos ornatus), mostrando la gran similitud morfológica con el del panda gigante (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) y las diferencias que presenta con el resto de los Ursidae. Esto apunta a la existencia de un origen común para esta estructura en ambas especies, pero considerando las filogenias aceptadas de Ursidae, la presencia de falso pulgar en T. ornatus y A. melanoleuca sería una simplesiomorfía respecto al resto de úrsidos, en los cuales el sesamoideo radial nunca aumentó de tamaño, careciendo de la especializada función que posee en Tremarctinae y Ailuropodinae., This study is part of the research projects CGL2004-02094/BTE and CGL2005-03900/BTE (Secretaría de Estado de Universidades e Investigación, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia). We thank Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid for the funding support (Research Group UCM-CAM 910607).