Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide: The Reality of Being a Law Library Director in Times of Great Opportunity and Significant Challenges

This is an edited version of remarks presented at \u27Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide\u27: The Reality of Being a Law Library Director in Times of Great Opportunity and Significant Challenges, January 5, 2015, at the Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C

Wind-Current Feedback Is an Energy Sink For Oceanic Internal Waves

Internal waves contain a large amount of energy in the ocean and are an important source of turbulent mixing. Ocean mixing is relevant for climate because it drives vertical transport of water, heat, carbon and other tracers. Understanding the life cycle of internal waves, from generation to dissipation, is therefore important for improving the representation of ocean mixing in climate models. Here, we provide evidence from a regional realistic numerical simulation in the northeastern Pacific that the wind can play an important role in damping internal waves through current feedback. This results in a reduction of 67% of wind power input at near-inertial frequencies in the region of study. Wind-current feedback also provides a net energy sink for internal tides, removing energy at a rate of 0.2 mW/m2 on average, corresponding to 8% of the local internal tide generation at the Mendocino ridge. The temporal variability and modal distribution of this energy sink are also investigated

A member of the Whirly family is a multifunctional RNA- and DNA-binding protein that is essential for chloroplast biogenesis

‘Whirly’ proteins comprise a plant-specific protein family whose members have been described as DNA-binding proteins that influence nuclear transcription and telomere maintenance, and that associate with nucleoids in chloroplasts and mitochondria. We identified the maize WHY1 ortholog among proteins that coimmunoprecipitate with CRS1, which promotes the splicing of the chloroplast atpF group II intron. ZmWHY1 localizes to the chloroplast stroma and to the thylakoid membrane, to which it is tethered by DNA. Genome-wide coimmunoprecipitation assays showed that ZmWHY1 in chloroplast extract is associated with DNA from throughout the plastid genome and with a subset of plastid RNAs that includes atpF transcripts. Furthermore, ZmWHY1 binds both RNA and DNA in vitro. A severe ZmWhy1 mutant allele conditions albino seedlings lacking plastid ribosomes; these exhibit the altered plastid RNA profile characteristic of ribosome-less plastids. Hypomorphic ZmWhy1 mutants exhibit reduced atpF intron splicing and a reduced content of plastid ribosomes; aberrant 23S rRNA metabolism in these mutants suggests that a defect in the biogenesis of the large ribosomal subunit underlies the ribosome deficiency. However, these mutants contain near normal levels of chloroplast DNA and RNAs, suggesting that ZmWHY1 is not directly required for either DNA replication or for global plastid transcription

Remote Internal Wave Forcing of Regional Ocean Simulations Near the U.S. West Coast

Low mode internal waves are able to propagate across ocean basins and modulate ocean dynamics thousands of kilometers away from their generation sites. In this study, the impact of remotely generated internal waves on the internal wave energetics near the U.S. West Coast is investigated with realistically forced regional ocean simulations. At the open boundaries, we impose high-frequency oceanic state variables obtained from a global ocean simulation with realistic atmospheric and astronomical tidal forcing. We use the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) technique in separating ingoing and outgoing internal tide energy fluxes at the open boundaries in order to quantify internal tide reflections. Although internal tide reflections are reduced with increasing sponge viscosity and/or sponge layer width, reflection coefficients (λ) can be as high as 73%. In the presence of remote internal waves, the model variance and spatial correlations become more in agreement with both mooring and altimetry datasets. The results confirm that an improved internal wave continuum can be achieved in regional models with remote internal wave forcing at the open boundaries. However, care should be taken to avoid excessive reflections of internal waves from the interior at these boundaries

Proof of concept for robot-aided upper limb rehabilitation using disturbance observers

This paper presents a wearable upper body exoskeleton system with a model-based compensation control framework to support robot-aided shoulder-elbow rehabilitation and power assistance tasks. To eliminate the need for EMG and force sensors, we exploit off-the-shelf compensation techniques developed for robot manipulators. Thus, target rehabilitation tasks are addressed by using only encoder readings. A proof-of-concept evaluation was conducted with live able-bodied participants. The patient-active rehabilitation task was realized via observer-based user torque estimation, in which resistive forces were adjusted using virtual impedance. In the patient-passive rehabilitation task, the proposed controller enabled precise joint tracking with a maximum positioning error of 0.25°. In the power assistance task, the users' muscular activities were reduced up to 85% while exercising with a 5 kg dumbbell. Therefore, the exoskeleton system was regarded as being useful for the target tasks, indicating that it has a potential to promote robot-aided therapy protocols.Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japanpost-prin

Hyperglycemia does not affect antigen specific activation and cytolytic killing by CD8+ T cells in vivo

Metabolism is of central importance to T cell survival and differentiation. It is well known that T cells cannot function in the absence of glucose, but it is less clear how they respond to excessive levels of glucose. In this study we investigated how increasing levels of glucose affect T cell-mediated immune responses. We examined the effects of increased levels of glucose on CD8⁺ T cell behaviour in vitro by assessing activation and cytokine production, as well as oxygen consumption rate, extracellular acidification rate and intracellular signalling. In addition, we assessed in vivo proliferation, cytokine production and cytolytic activity of cells in chemically induced diabetic C57BL6 mice. Elevated levels of glucose in in vitro cultures had modest effects on proliferation and cytokine production, while in vivo hyperglycemia had no effect on CD8⁺ T cell proliferation, interferon gamma production or cytolytic killing.This work was supported by the NC3Rs [grant number NC/M001083/1]; the BBSRC [grant number BB/M00015X/2]; the Leverhulme Trust [grant number EM-2015-030]; the Medical Research Council [grant number G0901155]; the Diabetes U.K. [grant number BDA 09/0003840]; the BBSRC-funded Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (MIBTP) (K.B.); and the Lollipop Foundation (M.W. as the main grant applicant and A.R. as a co-applicant)

Long-range attraction between particles in dusty plasma and partial surface tension of dusty phase boundary

Effective potential of a charged dusty particle moving in homogeneous plasma has a negative part that provides attraction between similarly charged dusty particles. A depth of this potential well is great enough to ensure both stability of crystal structure of dusty plasma and sizable value of surface tension of a boundary surface of dusty region. The latter depends on the orientation of the surface relative to the counter-ion flow, namely, it is maximal and positive for the surface normal to the flow and minimal and negative for the surface along the flow. For the most cases of dusty plasma in a gas discharge, a value of the first of them is more than sufficient to ensure stability of lenticular dusty phase void oriented across the counter-ion flow.Comment: LATEX, REVTEX4, 7 pages, 6 figure