2,971 research outputs found
The relationship between stressful life events, the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) genotype and major depression
Background. Serotonin is a good candidate for major depression. We attempted to replicate the study by Caspi and colleagues [Science (2003) 301, 386-389] which reported a significant interaction between serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) genotype and stressful life events when predicting major depression
Changes in recreational behaviors of outdoor enthusiasts during the COVID-19 pandemic: analysis across urban and rural communities
The COVID-19 pandemic presents not only a global health crisis but has also disrupted the daily lives of people around the world. From a leisure perspective, urban outdoor enthusiasts are one group particularly impacted by the pandemic and the subsequent institutional response. Stay-at-home orders and physical distancing recommendations serve as potential inhibitors to outdoor recreation activities central to the lifestyles and wellbeing of outdoor enthusiasts. In urban areas, where these orders and recommendations are most restrictive, the potential impacts on recreation behavior are most consequential. This study provides an empirical analysis of the COVID-19 pandemicâs impact on the recreational behaviors of outdoor enthusiasts across urban and rural communities. Results suggest that the frequency of outdoor recreation participation, distance travelled to participate in outdoor recreation and distance travelled beyond roads during outdoor recreation have declined significantly more among outdoor enthusiasts residing in urban areas than urban clusters or rural areas
Dramatic Shape Sensitivity of Directional Emission Patterns from Similarly Deformed Cylindrical Polymer Lasers
Recent experiments on similarly shaped polymer micro-cavity lasers show a
dramatic difference in the far-field emission patterns. We show for different
deformations of the ellipse, quadrupole and hexadecapole that the large
differences in the far-field emission patterns is explained by the differing
ray dynamics corresponding to each shape. Analyzing the differences in the
appropriate phase space for ray motion, it is shown that the differing
geometries of the unstable manifolds of periodic orbits are the decisive
factors in determining the far-field pattern. Surprisingly, we find that
strongly chaotic ray dynamics is compatible with highly directional emission in
the far-field.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures (eps), RevTeX 4, submitted to JOSA
A model for sequential evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX) data
A Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment (SELEX)
experiment begins in round one with a random pool of oligonucleotides in
equilibrium solution with a target. Over a few rounds, oligonucleotides having
a high affinity for the target are selected. Data from a high throughput SELEX
experiment consists of lists of thousands of oligonucleotides sampled after
each round. Thus far, SELEX experiments have been very good at suggesting the
highest affinity oligonucleotide, but modeling lower affinity recognition site
variants has been difficult. Furthermore, an alignment step has always been
used prior to analyzing SELEX data. We present a novel model, based on a
biochemical parametrization of SELEX, which allows us to use data from all
rounds to estimate the affinities of the oligonucleotides. Most notably, our
model also aligns the oligonucleotides. We use our model to analyze a SELEX
experiment containing double stranded DNA oligonucleotides and the
transcription factor Bicoid as the target. Our SELEX model outperformed other
published methods for predicting putative binding sites for Bicoid as indicated
by the results of an in-vivo ChIP-chip experiment.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AOAS537 the Annals of
Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Origin and evolution of the octoploid strawberry genome.
Cultivated strawberry emerged from the hybridization of two wild octoploid species, both descendants from the merger of four diploid progenitor species into a single nucleus more than 1 million years ago. Here we report a near-complete chromosome-scale assembly for cultivated octoploid strawberry (FragariaâĂâananassa) and uncovered the origin and evolutionary processes that shaped this complex allopolyploid. We identified the extant relatives of each diploid progenitor species and provide support for the North American origin of octoploid strawberry. We examined the dynamics among the four subgenomes in octoploid strawberry and uncovered the presence of a single dominant subgenome with significantly greater gene content, gene expression abundance, and biased exchanges between homoeologous chromosomes, as compared with the other subgenomes. Pathway analysis showed that certain metabolomic and disease-resistance traits are largely controlled by the dominant subgenome. These findings and the reference genome should serve as a powerful platform for future evolutionary studies and enable molecular breeding in strawberry
Development of high-affinity nanobodies specific for NaV1.4 and NaV1.5 voltage-gated sodium channel isoforms
Voltage-gated sodium channels, NaVs, are responsible for the rapid rise of action potentials in excitable tissues. NaV channel mutations have been implicated in several human genetic diseases, such as hypokalemic periodic paralysis, myotonia, and long-QT and Brugada syndromes. Here, we generated high-affinity anti-NaV nanobodies (Nbs), Nb17 and Nb82, that recognize the NaV1.4 (skeletal muscle) and NaV1.5 (cardiac muscle) channel isoforms. These Nbs were raised in llama (Lama glama) and selected from a phage display library for high affinity to the C-terminal (CT) region of NaV1.4. The Nbs were expressed in Escherichia coli, purified, and bio-physically characterized. Development of high-affinity Nbs specifically targeting a given human NaV isoform has been challenging because they usually show undesired cross-reactivity for different NaV isoforms. Our results show, however, that Nb17 and Nb82 recognize the CTNaV1.4 or CTNaV1.5 over other CTNav isoforms. Kinetic experiments by biolayer interferometry determined that Nb17 and Nb82 bind to the CTNaV1.4 and CTNaV1.5 with high affinity (KD ~ 40-60 nM). In addition, as proof of concept, we show that Nb82 could detect NaV1.4 and NaV1.5 channels in mammalian cells and tissues by Western blot. Furthermore, human embryonic kidney cells expressing holo NaV1.5 channels demonstrated a robust FRET-binding efficiency for Nb17 and Nb82. Our work lays the foundation for developing Nbs as anti-NaV reagents to capture NaVs from cell lysates and as molecular visualization agents for NaVs.Fil: Srinivasan, Lakshmi. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Alzogaray, Vanina Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Oficina de CoordinaciĂłn Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones BioquĂmicas de Buenos Aires. FundaciĂłn Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones BioquĂmicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Selvakumar, Dakshnamurthy. FortĂ©bio; Estados UnidosFil: Nathan, Sara. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Yoder, Jesse B.. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Wright, Katharine M.. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Klinke, Sebastian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Oficina de CoordinaciĂłn Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones BioquĂmicas de Buenos Aires. FundaciĂłn Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones BioquĂmicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Nwafor, Justin N.. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Labanda, MarĂa Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Oficina de CoordinaciĂłn Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones BioquĂmicas de Buenos Aires. FundaciĂłn Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones BioquĂmicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Goldbaum, Fernando Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Oficina de CoordinaciĂłn Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones BioquĂmicas de Buenos Aires. FundaciĂłn Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones BioquĂmicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Schön, Arne. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Freire, Ernesto. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Tomaselli, Gordon F.. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Amzel, LeĂłn Mario. University Johns Hopkins; Estados UnidosFil: Ben-Johny, Manu. Columbia University; Estados UnidosFil: Gabelli, Sandra. University Johns Hopkins; Estados Unido
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Implementation of U.K. Earth system models for CMIP6
We describe the scientific and technical implementation of two models for a core set of
experiments contributing to the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6).
The models used are the physical atmosphere-land-ocean-sea ice model HadGEM3-GC3.1 and the
Earth system model UKESM1 which adds a carbon-nitrogen cycle and atmospheric chemistry to
HadGEM3-GC3.1. The model results are constrained by the external boundary conditions (forcing data)
and initial conditions.We outline the scientific rationale and assumptions made in specifying these.
Notable details of the implementation include an ozone redistribution scheme for prescribed ozone
simulations (HadGEM3-GC3.1) to avoid inconsistencies with the model's thermal tropopause, and land use
change in dynamic vegetation simulations (UKESM1) whose influence will be subject to potential biases in
the simulation of background natural vegetation.We discuss the implications of these decisions for
interpretation of the simulation results. These simulations are expensive in terms of human and CPU
resources and will underpin many further experiments; we describe some of the technical steps taken to
ensure their scientific robustness and reproducibility
Gender Differences in Russian Colour Naming
In the present study we explored Russian colour naming in a web-based psycholinguistic experiment
(http://www.colournaming.com). Colour singletons representing the Munsell Color Solid (N=600 in total) were presented on a computer monitor and named using an unconstrained colour-naming method. Respondents were
Russian speakers (N=713). For gender-split equal-size samples (NF=333, NM=333) we estimated and compared (i)
location of centroids of 12 Russian basic colour terms (BCTs); (ii) the number of words in colour descriptors; (iii) occurrences of BCTs most frequent non-BCTs. We found a close correspondence between femalesâ and malesâ
BCT centroids. Among individual BCTs, the highest inter-gender agreement was for seryj âgreyâ and goluboj
âlight blueâ, while the lowest was for sinij âdark blueâ and krasnyj âredâ. Females revealed a significantly richer repertory of distinct colour descriptors, with great variety of monolexemic non-BCTs and âfancyâ colour names; in comparison, males offered relatively more BCTs or their compounds. Along with these measures, we gauged
denotata of most frequent CTs, reflected by linguistic segmentation of colour space, by employing a synthetic
observer trained by gender-specific responses. This psycholinguistic representation revealed femalesâ more
refined linguistic segmentation, compared to males, with higher linguistic density predominantly along the redgreen axis of colour space
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