The yield of charged particles associated with high-p_{t} trigger particles (8<p_{t}<15  GeV/c) is measured with the ALICE detector in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=2.76  TeV relative to proton-proton collisions at the same energy. The conditional per-trigger yields are extracted from the narrow jetlike correlation peaks in azimuthal dihadron correlations. In the 5% most central collisions, we observe that the yield of associated charged particles with transverse momenta p_{t}>3  GeV/c on the away side drops to about 60% of that observed in pp collisions, while on the near side a moderate enhancement of 20%-30% is found.

The ALICE Collaboration has studied J/ψ production in pp collisions at sqrt[s]=7  TeV at the LHC through its muon pair decay. The polar and azimuthal angle distributions of the decay muons were measured, and results on the J/ψ polarization parameters λ_{θ} and λ_{ϕ} were obtained. The study was performed in the kinematic region 2.5<y<4, 2<p_{t}<8  GeV/c, in the helicity and Collins-Soper reference frames. In both frames, the polarization parameters are compatible with zero, within uncertainties.

Flow coefficients v_{n} for n=2, 3, 4, characterizing the anisotropic collective flow in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200  GeV, are measured relative to event planes Ψ_{n}, determined at large rapidity. We report v_{n} as a function of transverse momentum and collision centrality, and study the correlations among the event planes of different order n. The v_{n} are well described by hydrodynamic models which employ a Glauber Monte Carlo initial state geometry with fluctuations, providing additional constraining power on the interplay between initial conditions and the effects of viscosity as the system evolves. This new constraint can serve to improve the precision of the extracted shear viscosity to entropy density ratio η/s.

We present measurements of J/ψ yields in d+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200  GeV recorded by the PHENIX experiment and compare them with yields in p+p collisions at the same energy per nucleon-nucleon collision. The measurements cover a large kinematic range in J/ψ rapidity (-2.2<y<2.4) with high statistical precision and are compared with two theoretical models: one with nuclear shadowing combined with final state breakup and one with coherent gluon saturation effects. In order to remove model dependent systematic uncertainties we also compare the data to a simple geometric model. The forward rapidity data are inconsistent with nuclear modifications that are linear or exponential in the density weighted longitudinal thickness, such as those from the final state breakup of the bound state.

BACKGROUND This study was designed to examine the influence of short delay to recompression and other risk factors associated with the development of severe neurological decompression sickness (DCS) in military divers. METHODS Fifty-nine divers with DCS treated in less than 6 hours from onset of symptoms to hyperbaric recompression were included retrospectively. Diving parameters, symptom latency and recompression delay were analysed. Clinical symptoms were evaluated for both the acute event and one month later. RESULTS Median delay to hyperbaric treatment was 35 min (2-350 min). Resolution was incomplete after one month in 25.4 % of divers with DCS. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that severe symptoms, classified as sensory and motor deficits or the presence of bladder dysfunction, were predictors of poor recovery with adjusted odds ratios (OR) of 4.1 (1.12 to 14.92) and 9.99 (1.5 to 66.34) respectively. There was a relationship between a longer delay to treatment and incomplete recovery, but the increased risk appeared negligible with an adjusted OR of 1.01 (1-1.02). CONCLUSION Our results suggest that neurological severity upon occurrence is the main independent risk factor associated with a poor outcome in military divers with DCS. Clinical recovery was not dramatically improved in this series when recompression treatment was performed promptly.

There is considerable variability in the susceptibility of individuals to the adverse effects of chronic stress. In humans and other mammals, individual traits such as high anxiety are proposed as a vulnerability factor for the development of stress-related disorders. In the present study, we tested whether a similar behavioural trait in birds, higher emotional reactivity, also favours the occurrence of chronic stress-related behavioural and physiological dysfunction. For this, lines of Japanese quail divergently selected for a typical fear response in birds, the duration of tonic immobility, were subjected to unpredictable aversive stimulation over 2 weeks. Previous studies demonstrate that the selection program modifies the general underlying emotionality of the birds rather than exerting its effect only on tonic immobility. Interestingly, only birds selected for their higher emotionality exhibited significantly enhanced latency to first step and decreased locomotor activity in the open-field test after exposure to chronic stress compared to non-stressed control birds. This effect of chronic stress was selective for the tested dimension of bird emotional reactivity because there was no observed effect on the tonic immobility response. Moreover, chronically stressed birds selected for their higher emotionality exhibited significantly decreased basal corticosterone levels, a physiological marker of stress. These findings show that chronic stress is associated with changes in emotional reactivity and related physiological markers in birds. They also highlight emotional reactivity as an important predisposing factor for the occurrence of the adverse effects of chronic stress in birds.

We report on the first measurement of the triangular v3, quadrangular v4, and pentagonal v5 charged particle flow in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(s(NN))= 2.76  TeV measured with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We show that the triangular flow can be described in terms of the initial spatial anisotropy and its fluctuations, which provides strong constraints on its origin. In the most central events, where the elliptic flow v2 and v3 have similar magnitude, a double peaked structure in the two-particle azimuthal correlations is observed, which is often interpreted as a Mach cone response to fast partons. We show that this structure can be naturally explained from the measured anisotropic flow Fourier coefficients.

Alzheimer's disease is a complex neurodegenerative disorder. Several genes have been suggested as Alzheimer's susceptibility factors, the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene being an established susceptibility gene and the genes coding angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) and apolipoprotein C1 (APOC1) being considered possible candidate genes for the disease. The objective of this study was to investigate the association of ACE and APOC1 gene polymorphisms with susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease and dementia in general, both alone and combined with the APOE gene. Forty-seven patients with dementia in general (35 of them with Alzheimer's disease) and 85 controls were investigated. The haplotypes E*3/-317*ins and E*4/-317*ins of APOE/APOC1 genes were significantly more frequent in the groups with Alzheimer's disease and dementia in general (P < 0.001). The frequency of the ACE*ins allele was also greater in the groups with Alzheimer's disease and dementia in general (P = 0.022; P = 0.045), but genotype frequencies were only different in groups without the E*4/-317*ins haplotype (P = 0.012 for Alzheimer's disease; P = 0.04 for dementia). Our data point to important genetic interactions involved in these diseases.