UMA and the UNCITRAL Model Rule: An Emerging Consensus on Mediation and Conciliation, The

In this article, we describe how these two efforts have come together to forge an international consensus on mediation and conciliation. In Part I, we look at how some of the different ways that domestic nationals treat the confidentiality of conciliation communications. The disparity of these treatments leads to considerable uncertainty among parties to a conciliation. In Part II, we note the essential features of the UNCITRAL Model Law, and how it addresses this uncertainty through model rules that will harmonize international standards among adopting nations, at least on core issues, while at the same time preserving the flexibility that is necessary for conciliation practices and respecting the autonomy of domestic sovereigns. Finally, in Part III, we compare the UNCITRAL Model Law to the UMA, and discuss the current effort to draft an amendment to the Uniform Mediation Act that will permit states in the United States to assure the harmony between the UMA and the UNCITRAL Model La

Evolution of Nova-dependent splicing regulation in the brain

A large number of alternative exons are spliced with tissue-specific patterns, but little is known about how such patterns have evolved. Here, we study the conservation of the neuron-specific splicing factors Nova1 and Nova2 and of the alternatively spliced exons they regulate in mouse brain. Whereas Nova RNA binding domains are 94% identical across vertebrate species, Nova-dependent splicing silencer and enhancer elements (YCAY clusters) show much greater divergence, as less than 50% of mouse YCAY clusters are conserved at orthologous positions in the zebrafish genome. To study the relation between the evolution of tissue-specific splicing and YCAY clusters, we compared the brain-specific splicing of Nova-regulated exons in zebrafish, chicken, and mouse. The presence of YCAY clusters in lower vertebrates invariably predicted conservation of brain-specific splicing across species, whereas their absence in lower vertebrates correlated with a loss of alternative splicing. We hypothesize that evolution of Nova-regulated splicing in higher vertebrates proceeds mainly through changes in cis-acting elements, that tissue-specific splicing might in some cases evolve in a single step corresponding to evolution of a YCAY cluster, and that the conservation level of YCAY clusters relates to the functions encoded by the regulated RNAs

Charm meson resonances in D→PℓνD \to P \ell \nu decays

Motivated by recent experimental results we reconsider semileptonic $D \to P \ell \nu_{\ell}$ decays within a model which combines heavy quark symmetry and properties of the chiral Lagrangian. We include excited charm meson states, some of them recently observed, in our Lagrangian and determine their impact on the charm meson semileptonic form factors. We find that the inclusion of excited charm meson states in the model leads to a rather good agreement with the experimental results on the $q^2$ shape of the $F_+(q^2)$ form factor. We also calculate branching ratios for all $D \to P \ell \nu_{\ell}$ decays.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; minor corrections, added some discussion, version as publishe

On the Origin of the Oklad Breccia on the Island of Brac (Southern Croatia)

The Oklad carbonate polymictic breccia from Novo Selo on the island of Brac is a product of the partial destruction of Upper Cretaceous deposits during the Maastrichtian. From a comparison of the lithostratigraphic units of the Upper Cretaceous with the textural and structural features of breccia, it is possible to determine the palaeomorphological pattern of its origin. At the end of the Maastrichtian plicative and disjunctive deformation took place on this part of the Adriatic carbonate platform, resulting in a steep palaeorelief, adequate for formation of the breccia

Climate–Growth Relationships in Laurus azorica—A Dominant Tree in the Azorean Laurel Forest

Forests on oceanic islands, such as the Azores archipelago, enable interesting dendroclimatic research, given their pronounced climatic gradients over short geographical distances, despite the less pronounced seasonality. The Lauraceae play an essential ecological role in Macaronesian natural forests. An example is Laurus azorica (Seub.) Franco, a relevant species given its high frequency and physiognomic dominance in Azorean laurel forests. This study aims to quantify climate–growth relationships in L. azorica using a dendroecological approach. We sampled four stands at São Miguel and two stands at Terceira islands, for a total of 206 trees. Following standard dendrochronological methods and rigorous sample selection procedures, we obtained relatively low rbar values and high temporal autocorrelation. Using a stepwise Random Forest analysis followed by Generalized Linear Models calculation, we found prominent effects of present and previous year temperature, but a low precipitation signal on growth rings, with some model variation between stands. Our results agreed with previous observations for broad-leaved species with diffuse porous wood, contributing to increase the baseline dendroecological knowledge about Azorean forests. Due to the high levels of within- and between-stand variation, and to refine the climatic signal analysis, complementary approaches should be explored in the future.FUNDING: D.C.P. is currently supported by a PhD studentship grant (SFRH/BD/136336/2018) from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education. This research was also supported by national funds through the FCT under (FCT) UIDB/50027/2020 (CIBIO). J.J. was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship and the Slovenian Research Agency (“Forest Biology, Ecology and Technology—P4-0107”).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Quantum-Informed Recursive Optimization Algorithms

We propose and implement a family of quantum-informed recursive optimization (QIRO) algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems. Our approach leverages quantum resources to obtain information that is used in problem-specific classical reduction steps that recursively simplify the problem. These reduction steps address the limitations of the quantum component and ensure solution feasibility in constrained optimization problems. Additionally, we use backtracking techniques to further improve the performance of the algorithm without increasing the requirements on the quantum hardware. We demonstrate the capabilities of our approach by informing QIRO with correlations from classical simulations of shallow (depth $p=1$) circuits of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA), solving instances of maximum independent set and maximum satisfiability problems with hundreds of variables. We also demonstrate how QIRO can be deployed on a neutral atom quantum processor available online on Amazon Braket to find large independent sets of graphs. In summary, our scheme achieves results comparable to classical heuristics, such as simulated annealing and greedy algorithms, even with relatively weak quantum resources. Furthermore, enhancing the quality of these quantum resources improves the performance of the algorithms, highlighting the potential of QIRO. Notably, the modular nature of QIRO offers various avenues for modifications, positioning our work as a blueprint for designing a broader class of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for combinatorial optimization.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures. Revised Figs. 1 and

Nuclear matrix protein Matrin3 regulates alternative splicing and forms overlapping regulatory networks with PTB.

Matrin3 is an RNA- and DNA-binding nuclear matrix protein found to be associated with neural and muscular degenerative diseases. A number of possible functions of Matrin3 have been suggested, but no widespread role in RNA metabolism has yet been clearly demonstrated. We identified Matrin3 by its interaction with the second RRM domain of the splicing regulator PTB. Using a combination of RNAi knockdown, transcriptome profiling and iCLIP, we find that Matrin3 is a regulator of hundreds of alternative splicing events, principally acting as a splicing repressor with only a small proportion of targeted events being co-regulated by PTB. In contrast to other splicing regulators, Matrin3 binds to an extended region within repressed exons and flanking introns with no sharply defined peaks. The identification of this clear molecular function of Matrin3 should help to clarify the molecular pathology of ALS and other diseases caused by mutations of Matrin3.We thank Nejc Haberman (UCL) for assisting in the generation of the splicing maps and preparation of the iCLIP data. This work was supported by Wellcome Trust programme grants to CWJS (077877 and 092900), and by grants to EE and NB BIO2011-23920 and RNAREG (CSD2009-00080) from the Spanish Government and by the Sandra Ibarra Foundation for Cancer (FSI2013). JA was supported by a Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds studentship.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from EMBO Press/Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.15252/embj.20148985

Common Molecular Pathways Mediate Long-Term Potentiation of Synaptic Excitation and Slow Synaptic Inhibition

SummarySynaptic plasticity, the cellular correlate for learning and memory, involves signaling cascades in the dendritic spine. Extensive studies have shown that long-term potentiation (LTP) of the excitatory postsynaptic current (EPSC) through glutamate receptors is induced by activation of N-methyl-D-asparate receptor (NMDA-R)—the coincidence detector—and Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII). Here we report that the same signaling pathway in the postsynaptic CA1 pyramidal neuron also causes LTP of the slow inhibitory postsynaptic current (sIPSC) mediated by metabotropic GABAB receptors (GABAB-Rs) and G protein-activated inwardly rectifying K+ (GIRK) channels, both residing in dendritic spines as well as shafts. Indicative of intriguing differences in the regulatory mechanisms for excitatory and inhibitory synaptic plasticity, LTP of sIPSC but not EPSC was abolished in mice lacking Nova-2, a neuronal-specific RNA binding protein that is an autoimmune target in paraneoplastic opsoclonus myoclonus ataxia (POMA) patients with latent cancer, reduced inhibitory control of movements, and dementia

Charming CP Violation and Dipole Operators from RS Flavor Anarchy

Recently the LHCb collaboration reported evidence for direct CP violation in charm decays. The value is sufficiently large that either substantially enhanced Standard Model contributions or non-Standard Model physics is required to explain it. In the latter case only a limited number of possibilities would be consistent with other existing flavor-changing constraints. We show that warped extra dimensional models that explain the quark spectrum through flavor anarchy can naturally give rise to contributions of the size required to explain the the LHCb result. The D meson asymmetry arises through a sizable CP-violating contribution to a chromomagnetic dipole operator. This happens naturally without introducing inconsistencies with existing constraints in the up quark sector. We discuss some subtleties in the loop calculation that are similar to those in Higgs to \gamma\gamma. Loop-induced dipole operators in warped scenarios and their composite analogs exhibit non-trivial dependence on the Higgs profile, with the contributions monotonically decreasing when the Higgs is pushed away from the IR brane. We show that the size of the dipole operator quickly saturates as the Higgs profile approaches the IR brane, implying small dependence on the precise details of the Higgs profile when it is quasi IR localized. We also explain why the calculation of the coefficient of the lowest dimension 5D operator is guaranteed to be finite. This is true not only in the charm sector but also with other radiative processes such as electric dipole moments, b to s\gamma, \epsilon'/\epsilon_K and \mu\ to e\gamma. We furthermore discuss the interpretation of this contribution within the framework of partial compositeness in four dimensions and highlight some qualitative differences between the generic result of composite models and that obtained for dynamics that reproduces the warped scenario.Comment: 14 page

Sixty years of genome biology

Sixty years after Watson and Crick published the double helix model of DNA's structure, thirteen members of Genome Biology's Editorial Board select key advances in the field of genome biology subsequent to that discovery