Global Carbon Budget: Ocean carbon sink.

CO2 emissions from human activities, the main contributor to global climate change, are set to rise again in 2014 reaching 40 billion tonnes CO2 The natural carbon ‘sinks’ on land and in the ocean absorb on average 55% of the total CO2 emissions, thus slowing the rate of global climate change Increasing CO2 in the oceans is causing ocean acidificatio

Demonstration of CoWDM using DPSK modulator array with injection-locked lasers

A practical implementation of coherent wavelength division multiplexing (CoWDM) is demonstrated for the first time using injection-locked lasers and a DPSK modulator array. For a 31.99 Gbit/s system (three subcarriers at 10.664 Gbit/s) the null-to-null spectral bandwidth was only 42.656 GHz and the average receiver sensitivity measured was -33.5 dBm when all subcarrier phases were optimised

Iron(III)-catalyzed chlorination of activated arenes

A general and regioselective method for the chlorination of activated arenes has been developed. The transformation uses iron(III) triflimide as a powerful Lewis acid for the activation of N-chlorosuccinimide and the subsequent chlorination of a wide range of anisole, aniline, acetanilide and phenol derivatives. The reaction was utilized for the late-stage mono- and di-chlorination of a range of target compounds such as the natural product nitrofungin, the antibacterial agent chloroxylenol and the herbicide chloroxynil. The facile nature of this transformation was demonstrated with the development of one-pot tandem iron-catalyzed dihalogenation processes allowing highly regioselective formation of different carbon-halogen bonds. The synthetic utility of the resulting dihalogenated aryl compounds as building blocks was established with the synthesis of natural products and pharmaceutically relevant targets

Plasma exchange in focal necrotizing glomerulonephritis without anti-GBM antibodies

Plasma exchange in focal necrotizing glomerulonephritis without anti-GBM antibodies. To determine whether plasma exchange was of additional benefit in patients treated with oral immunosuppressive drugs for focal necrotizing glomerulonephritis (without anti-GBM antibodies), we performed a randomized controlled trial with stratification for renal function on entry Forty-eight cases were analyzed, 25 in the treatment group (plasma exchange, prednisolone, cyclophosphamide and azathioprine) and 23 in the control group (drug therapy only). There was no difference in outcome in patients presenting with serum creatinine < 500 µmol/liter (N = 17), or > 500 µmol/liter but not on dialysis (N = 12), all but one of whom had improved by four weeks. However, patients who were initially dialysis-dependent (N = 19) were more likely to have recovered renal function (P = 0.041) if treated with plasma exchange as well as drugs (10 of 11) rather than with drugs alone (3 of 8). Long-term follow-up showed that improvement in renal function was generally maintained. The results of this trial confirm that focal necrotizing glomerulonephritis related to systemic vasculitis responds well to immunosuppressive drugs when treatment is started early, and suggest that plasma exchange is of additional benefit in dialysis-dependent cases

Towards a practical implementation of coherent WDM:analytical, numerical, and experimental studies

Future optical networks will require the implementation of very high capacity (and therefore spectral efficient) technologies. Multi-carrier systems, such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Coherent WDM (CoWDM), are promising candidates. In this paper, we present analytical, numerical, and experimental investigations of the impact of the relative phases between optical subcarriers of CoWDM systems, as well as the effect that the number of independently modulated subcarriers can have on the performance. We numerically demonstrate a five-subcarrier and three-subcarrier 10-GBd CoWDM system with direct detected amplitude shift keying (ASK) and differentially/coherently detected (D) phase shift keying (PSK). The simulation results are compared with experimental measurements of a 32-Gbit/s DPSK CoWDM system in two configurations. The first configuration was a practical 3-modulator array where all three subcarriers were independently modulated, the second configuration being a traditional 2-modulator odd/even configuration, where only odd and even subcarriers were independently modulated. Simulation and experimental results both indicate that the independent modulation implementation has a greater dependency on the relative phases between subcarriers, with a stronger penalty for the center subcarrier than the odd/even modulation scheme

Neural changes following cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis: A longitudinal study

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that persistent positive symptoms, particularly delusions, can be improved by cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis. Heightened perception and processing of threat are believed to constitute the genesis of delusions. The present study aimed to examine functional brain changes following cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis. The study involved 56 outpatients with one or more persistent positive distressing symptoms of schizophrenia. Twenty-eight patients receiving cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis for 6–8 months in addition to their usual treatment were matched with 28 patients receiving treatment as usual. Patients’ symptoms were assessed by a rater blind to treatment group, and they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during an affect processing task at baseline and end of treatment follow-up. The two groups were comparable at baseline in terms of clinical and demographic parameters and neural and behavioural responses to facial and control stimuli. The cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis with treatment-as-usual group (22 subjects) showed significant clinical improvement compared with the treatment-as-usual group (16 subjects), which showed no change at follow-up. The cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis with treatment-as-usual group, but not the treatment-as-usual group, showed decreased activation of the inferior frontal, insula, thalamus, putamen and occipital areas to fearful and angry expressions at treatment follow-up compared with baseline. Reduction of functional magnetic resonance imaging response during angry expressions correlated directly with symptom improvement. This study provides the first evidence that cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis attenuates brain responses to threatening stimuli and suggests that cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis may mediate symptom reduction by promoting processing of threats in a less distressing way

Functional expression of human cathepsin S in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Purification and characterization of the recombinant enzyme.

A cDNA encoding the human lysosomal cysteine proteinase cathepsin S precursor has been expressed in yeast using the pVT100-U expression vector containing the alpha-factor promoter. The procathepsin S gene was expressed either as a fusion protein with the pre-region or with the prepro-region of the yeast alpha-factor precursor gene. Following in vitro processing both constructs gave an identical active mature enzyme with a molecular weight of 24,000. After prolonged cultivation of the cells the recombinant protein is also found as an active proteinase in the culture supernatant. The precursor can be activated in vitro at pH 4.5 and 40 degrees C under reducing conditions. The in vitro activated enzyme has a 6-amino acid NH2-terminal extension when compared with the native bovine enzyme. The purified enzyme displays a bell-shaped pH activity profile with a pH optimum of 6.5 and pK values of 4.5 and 7.8. The isoelectric point of the recombinant human cathepsin S is between 8.3 and 8.6 and about 1.5 pH units higher than for the bovine enzyme. The kinetic data for several synthetic substrates and inhibitors reveal a preference for smaller amino acid residues in the binding subsites S2 and S3 of cathepsin S. Like the bovine enzyme, the recombinant human cathepsin S is characterized by a broader range of pH stability (pH 5-7.5) than cathepsins B and L

Murine Anti-vaccinia Virus D8 Antibodies Target Different Epitopes and Differ in Their Ability to Block D8 Binding to CS-E

The IMV envelope protein D8 is an adhesion molecule and a major immunodominant antigen of vaccinia virus (VACV). Here we identified the optimal D8 ligand to be chondroitin sulfate E (CS-E). CS-E is characterized by a disaccharide moiety with two sulfated hydroxyl groups at positions 4′ and 6′ of GalNAc. To study the role of antibodies in preventing D8 adhesion to CS-E, we have used a panel of murine monoclonal antibodies, and tested their ability to compete with CS-E for D8 binding. Among four antibody specificity groups, MAbs of one group (group IV) fully abrogated CS-E binding, while MAbs of a second group (group III) displayed widely varying levels of CS-E blocking. Using EM, we identified the binding site for each antibody specificity group on D8. Recombinant D8 forms a hexameric arrangement, mediated by self-association of a small C-terminal domain of D8. We propose a model in which D8 oligomerization on the IMV would allow VACV to adhere to heterogeneous population of CS, including CS-C and potentially CS-A, while overall increasing binding efficiency to CS-E