A 19-channel d.c. SQUID magnetometer system for brain research

A 19-channel d.c. SQUID magnetometer system for neuromagnetic investigations is under constuction. The first-order gradiometers for sensing the signal are placed in a hexagonal configuration. D.c. SQUIDs based on niobium/aluminium technology have been developed, leading to a field sensitivity of about 5 fT/ Hz. SQUID read-out is realized with a resonant transformer circuit at 100 kHz. The multichannel control and detection electronics are compactly built

Control system for a superconducting rectifier using a microcomputer

Within the scope of a research program of superconducting rectifiers software is being developed to take care of the control of such systems. The hard-ware architecture which interferes with the in and output signals is based on a LSI-11/2 microprocessor with sufficient mass storage for data logging, console and printer. The flexibility inherent to this hardware configuration is desired for optimalisation of the rectifier concerning maximum current, power, efficiency and quench stability. The paper describes the structure of the program and the interaction between both computer hardware and software and the superconducting rectifier. However, because the reliability of computersystems is unsatisfactory an additional hardware protection system still handles the most important alarms

Identifying seasonal settlement sites and land use continuity in the prehistoric southern Siberian steppe – Zhelvak 5 (Tuva)

The identification of camp sites of Iron Age cultures on the Eurasian steppes has long been a problem as the traces of seasonal settlements are faint and often destroyed by agricultural activities. Recent research has found increasing evidence for less mobility and a larger role farming played in the mixed and locally adapted economies of peoples on the steppes. Here we present the results of the investigation of a settlement from the Uyuk Valley and contextualize it with data for seasonal camp sites and settlements in Iron Age South Siberia. Contrary to the long-held beliefs that Iron Age herding societies were truly nomadic and did not establish permanent settlements, archaeological research in South Siberia is gradually starting to reveal a different picture. Remote sensing and on-ground surveys uncovered six Scythian-period settlement sites in Tuva occupying southern hill slopes in sheltered topographic settings. Excavations at Zhelvak 5 revealed a stratified site with materials from the Bronze Age to the Late Iron Age and beyond. The archaeological material speaks towards continuity of economic exploitation of this landscape and the establishment of seasonal camp sites in the same place over a prolonged period of time

Science and Heritage Language Integrated Learning (SHLIL):Evidence of the effectiveness of an innovative science outreach program for migrant students

Migrant students tend to underperform in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and are less likely to pursue higher education in STEM when compared with their nonmigrant peers. Given the substantial increase in migration, this disparity has been a central concern in science education in many European countries. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of an innovative science outreach program that brings together migrant students and STEM professionals with the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The program consists of one-off workshops that follow an inquiry-based approach and include hands-on activities and science communication in the students' heritage language. Using surveys with adapted scales and open-ended questions, we applied a randomized block design with waitlist control groups and repeated measures. Eighty-three Portuguese-speaking migrant students aged 6–17 years participated in the workshops in Germany and the United Kingdom. Results indicate that both the students and STEM professionals evaluated the program positively and that students who participated in the workshops tended to demonstrate an increase in their attainment value for science and an increase in their self-concept of ability for the heritage language 4 weeks after the intervention when compared with students in the control condition. These effects were particularly pronounced for students with low prior motivation to study science or speak the heritage language. Our results thus show that it is possible to foster migrant students' attainment value for science and increase their self-concept of ability regarding the heritage language through a brief science outreach intervention

Checkpoints are blind to replication restart and recombination intermediates that result in gross chromosomal rearrangements

Replication fork inactivation can be overcome by homologous recombination, but this can cause gross chromosomal rearrangements that subsequently missegregate at mitosis, driving further chromosome instability. It is unclear when the chromosome rearrangements are generated and whether individual replication problems or the resulting recombination intermediates delay the cell cycle. Here we have investigated checkpoint activation during HR-dependent replication restart using a site-specific replication fork-arrest system. Analysis during a single cell cycle shows that HR-dependent replication intermediates arise in S phase, shortly after replication arrest, and are resolved into acentric and dicentric chromosomes in G2. Despite this, cells progress into mitosis without delay. Neither the DNA damage nor the intra-S phase checkpoints are activated in the first cell cycle, demonstrating that these checkpoints are blind to replication and recombination intermediates as well as to rearranged chromosomes. The dicentrics form anaphase bridges that subsequently break, inducing checkpoint activation in the second cell cycle

SUMO chain formation is required for response to replication arrest in S. pombe

SUMO is a ubiquitin-like protein that is post-translationally attached to one or more lysine residues on target proteins. Despite having only 18% sequence identity with ubiquitin, SUMO contains the conserved betabetaalphabetabetaalphabeta fold present in ubiquitin. However, SUMO differs from ubiquitin in having an extended N-terminus. In S. pombe the N-terminus of SUMO/Pmt3 is significantly longer than those of SUMO in S. cerevisiae, human and Drosophila. Here we investigate the role of this N-terminal region. We have used two dimensional gel electrophoresis to demonstrate that S. pombe SUMO/Pmt3 is phosphorylated, and that this occurs on serine residues at the extreme N-terminus of the protein. Mutation of these residues (in pmt3-1) results in a dramatic reduction in both the levels of high Mr SUMO-containing species and of total SUMO/Pmt3, indicating that phosphorylation of SUMO/Pmt3 is required for its stability. Despite the significant reduction in high Mr SUMO-containing species, pmt3-1 cells do not display an aberrant cell morphology or sensitivity to genotoxins or stress. Additionally, we demonstrate that two lysine residues in the N-terminus of S. pombe SUMO/Pmt3 (K14 and K30) can act as acceptor sites for SUMO chain formation in vitro. Inability to form SUMO chains results in aberrant cell and nuclear morphologies, including stretched and fragmented chromatin. SUMO chain mutants are sensitive to the DNA synthesis inhibitor, hydroxyurea (HU), but not to other genotoxins, such as UV, MMS or CPT. This implies a role for SUMO chains in the response to replication arrest in S. pomb

Influence of dielectric thickness and electrode structure on the ion wind generation by micro fabricated plasma actuators

Abstract Surface dielectric barrier discharges are investigated in order to explore the combined effects of barrier thickness and microstructure of the exposed electrode on the ion wind generation. Actuators with straight and structured high voltage electrodes with characteristic sizes of 200 and 250 µm and dielectric thicknesses of 0.5, 1 and 2 mm are compared. It is observed that: i) actuator efficiency of ion wind generation strongly depends on the applied voltage amplitude; ii) operation voltage depends on the dielectric thickness logarithmically; iii) electrode microstructure slightly increases the dynamic pressure (few percent in maximum), however the effect decreases with thicker dielectrics and smaller electrode structures; iv) the pattern of the most intensive discharge parts as well as the dielectric erosion repeats the regular structure of the electrodes down to 200 µm. Several identical samples are tested during different days to estimate the impact of the air humidity and the degradation of the dielectric. The microscale precision of the sample manufacture was accomplished by a commercial facility for printed circuit boards

Asymmetrical Reinforcement and Wolbachia Infection in Drosophila

Reinforcement refers to the evolution of increased mating discrimination against heterospecific individuals in zones of geographic overlap and can be considered a final stage in the speciation process. One the factors that may affect reinforcement is the degree to which hybrid matings result in the permanent loss of genes from a species' gene pool. Matings between females of Drosophila subquinaria and males of D. recens result in high levels of offspring mortality, due to interspecific cytoplasmic incompatibility caused by Wolbachia infection of D. recens. Such hybrid inviability is not manifested in matings between D. recens females and D. subquinaria males. Here we ask whether the asymmetrical hybrid inviability is associated with a corresponding asymmetry in the level of reinforcement. The geographic ranges of D. recens and D. subquinaria were found to overlap across a broad belt of boreal forest in central Canada. Females of D. subquinaria from the zone of sympatry exhibit much stronger levels of discrimination against males of D. recens than do females from allopatric populations. In contrast, such reproductive character displacement is not evident in D. recens, consistent with the expected effects of unidirectional cytoplasmic incompatibility. Furthermore, there is substantial behavioral isolation within D. subquinaria, because females from populations sympatric with D. recens discriminate against allopatric conspecific males, whereas females from populations allopatric with D. recens show no discrimination against any conspecific males. Patterns of general genetic differentiation among populations are not consistent with patterns of behavioral discrimination, which suggests that the behavioral isolation within D. subquinaria results from selection against mating with Wolbachia-infected D. recens. Interspecific cytoplasmic incompatibility may contribute not only to post-mating isolation, an effect already widely recognized, but also to reinforcement, particularly in the uninfected species. The resulting reproductive character displacement not only increases behavioral isolation from the Wolbachia-infected species, but may also lead to behavioral isolation between populations of the uninfected species. Given the widespread occurrence of Wolbachia among insects, it thus appears that there are multiple ways by which these endosymbionts may directly and indirectly contribute to reproductive isolation and speciation

Contextual factors in shared decision making: a randomised controlled trial in women with a strong suspicion of breast cancer

Decision aids in North American breast cancer outpatients have been shown to assist with treatment decision making and reduce decisional conflict. To date, appropriate delivery formats to effectively increase patient participation in newly diagnosed breast cancer inpatients have not been investigated in the context of German health care provision. The impact of a decision aid intervention was studied in patients (n=111) with a strong suspicion of breast cancer in a randomised controlled trial. The primary outcome variable was decisional conflict. Participants were followed up 1 week post-intervention with a retention rate of 92%. Analyses revealed that the intervention group felt better informed (ηp2=0.06) but did not experience an overall reduction in decisional conflict as compared with the control group. The intervention had no effect on uptake rates of treatment options, length of consultation with the surgeon, time point of treatment decision making, perceived involvement in decision making, neither decision related nor general patient satisfaction. Patients who received the decision aid intervention experienced a small benefit with regards to how informed they felt about advantages and disadvantages of relevant treatment options. Results are discussed in terms of contextual factors and individual differences as moderators of treatment decision aid effectiveness

Consensus over Random Graph Processes: Network Borel-Cantelli Lemmas for Almost Sure Convergence

Distributed consensus computation over random graph processes is considered. The random graph process is defined as a sequence of random variables which take values from the set of all possible digraphs over the node set. At each time step, every node updates its state based on a Bernoulli trial, independent in time and among different nodes: either averaging among the neighbor set generated by the random graph, or sticking with its current state. Connectivity-independence and arc-independence are introduced to capture the fundamental influence of the random graphs on the consensus convergence. Necessary and/or sufficient conditions are presented on the success probabilities of the Bernoulli trials for the network to reach a global almost sure consensus, with some sharp threshold established revealing a consensus zero-one law. Convergence rates are established by lower and upper bounds of the $\epsilon$-computation time. We also generalize the concepts of connectivity/arc independence to their analogues from the $*$-mixing point of view, so that our results apply to a very wide class of graphical models, including the majority of random graph models in the literature, e.g., Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi, gossiping, and Markovian random graphs. We show that under $*$-mixing, our convergence analysis continues to hold and the corresponding almost sure consensus conditions are established. Finally, we further investigate almost sure finite-time convergence of random gossiping algorithms, and prove that the Bernoulli trials play a key role in ensuring finite-time convergence. These results add to the understanding of the interplay between random graphs, random computations, and convergence probability for distributed information processing.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, In Pres