Birds of Sarcpa Lake, Melville Peninsula, Northwest Territories: Breeding Phenologies, Densities and Biogeography

Forty species of birds were observed during field studies at Sarcpa Lake, Melville Peninsula, N.W.T. during the summers of 1981 and 1982. Evidence of breeding was found for 22 species and the first definite breeding records for the Melville Peninsula were obtained for Glaucous Gull, Pectoral Sandpiper and Semipalmated Sandpiper and Semipalmated Sandpiper. A hybrid pair of gulls (Glaucous x Herring Gull) also nested and this appears to be the first definite North American record of such a hybrid nesting. Fourteen additional breeding species expected to be present, based on maps in Godfrey (1966), were not found. Average breeding bird density (35 pr/sq km) was comparable to that on Bylot Island, but considerably higher than that measured at other High Arctic sites. Neither average breeding bird densities nor phenologies changed appreciably from year to year despite a late spring melt in 1982. In both years birds began their breeding activities as soon as suitable nesting and feeding habitat became available. A biogeographic analysis based on the occurrence of breeding birds at 25 other sites across the Canadian Arctic indicates that the avifauna at Sarcpa Lake is more similar to those of High Arctic island sites than to those of mainland sites, but includes none of the species whose ranges are mainly within the Arctic Archipelago.Key words: arctic biogeography, birds, phenology, nesting density, Melville Peninsula, multivariate analysisMots clés: biogéographie arctique, oiseaux, phénologie, densité des nids, presqu'île Mclville, analyse à plusieurs variante

Probing the C-H Activation of Linear and Cyclic Ethers at (PNP)Ir

Interaction of the amido/bis(phosphine)-supported (PNP)Ir fragment with a series of linear and cyclic ethers is shown to afford, depending on substrate, products of α,α-dehydrogenation (carbenes), α,β-dehydrogenation (vinyl ethers), or decarbonylation. While carbenes are exclusively obtained from tert-amyl methyl ether, sec-butyl methyl ether (SBME), n-butyl methyl ether (NBME), and tetrahydrofuran (THF), vinyl ethers or their adducts are observed upon reaction with diethyl ether and 1,4-dioxane. Decarbonylation occurs upon interaction of (PNP)Ir with benzyl methyl ether, and a mechanism is proposed for this unusual transformation, which occurs via a series of C−H, C−O, and C−C bond cleavage events. The intermediates characterized for several of these reactions as well as the α,α-dehydrogenation of tert-butyl methyl ether (MTBE) are used to outline a reaction pathway for the generation of PNP-supported iridium(I) carbene complexes, and it is shown that the long-lived, observable intermediates are substrate-dependent and differ for the related cases of MTBE and THF. Taken together, these findings highlight the variety of pathways utilized by the electron-rich, unsaturated (PNP)Ir fragment to stabilize itself by transferring electron density to ethereal substrates through oxidative addition and/or the formation of π-acidic ligands

Photoelectrochemical Behavior of Hierarchically Structured Si/WO_3 Core–Shell Tandem Photoanodes

WO_3 thin films have been deposited in a hierarchically structured core–shell morphology, with the cores consisting of an array of Si microwires and the shells consisting of a controlled morphology WO_3 layer. Porosity was introduced into the WO_3 outer shell by using a self-assembled microsphere colloidal crystal as a mask during the deposition of the WO_3 shell. Compared to conformal, unstructured WO_3 shells on Si microwires, the hierarchically structured core–shell photoanodes exhibited enhanced near-visible spectral response behavior, due to increased light absorption and reduced distances over which photogenerated carriers were collected. The use of structured substrates also improved the growth rate of microsphere-based colloidal crystals and suggests strategies for the use of colloidal materials in large-scale applications

A novel landscape of nuclear human CDK2 substrates revealed by in situ phosphorylation.

Cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) controls cell division and is central to oncogenic signaling. We used an in situ approach to identify CDK2 substrates within nuclei isolated from cells expressing CDK2 engineered to use adenosine 5\u27-triphosphate analogs. We identified 117 candidate substrates, ~40% of which are known CDK substrates. Previously unknown candidates were validated to be CDK2 substrates, including LSD1, DOT1L, and Rad54. The identification of many chromatin-associated proteins may have been facilitated by labeling conditions that preserved nuclear architecture and physiologic CDK2 regulation by endogenous cyclins. Candidate substrates include proteins that regulate histone modifications, chromatin, transcription, and RNA/DNA metabolism. Many of these proteins also coexist in multi-protein complexes, including epigenetic regulators, that may provide new links between cell division and other cellular processes mediated by CDK2. In situ phosphorylation thus revealed candidate substrates with a high validation rate and should be readily applicable to other nuclear kinases

Exotic Differentiable Structures and General Relativity

We review recent developments in differential topology with special concern for their possible significance to physical theories, especially general relativity. In particular we are concerned here with the discovery of the existence of non-standard (``fake'' or ``exotic'') differentiable structures on topologically simple manifolds such as $S^7$, \R and $S^3\times {\bf R^1}.$ Because of the technical difficulties involved in the smooth case, we begin with an easily understood toy example looking at the role which the choice of complex structures plays in the formulation of two-dimensional vacuum electrostatics. We then briefly review the mathematical formalisms involved with differentiable structures on topological manifolds, diffeomorphisms and their significance for physics. We summarize the important work of Milnor, Freedman, Donaldson, and others in developing exotic differentiable structures on well known topological manifolds. Finally, we discuss some of the geometric implications of these results and propose some conjectures on possible physical implications of these new manifolds which have never before been considered as physical models.Comment: 11 pages, LaTe

MDQC: a new quality assessment method for microarrays based on quality control reports

Motivation: The process of producing microarray data involves multiple steps, some of which may suffer from technical problems and seriously damage the quality of the data. Thus, it is essential to identify those arrays with low quality. This article addresses two questions: (1) how to assess the quality of a microarray dataset using the measures provided in quality control (QC) reports; (2) how to identify possible sources of the quality problems. Results: We propose a novel multivariate approach to evaluate the quality of an array that examines the ‘Mahalanobis distance' of its quality attributes from those of other arrays. Thus, we call it Mahalanobis Distance Quality Control (MDQC) and examine different approaches of this method. MDQC flags problematic arrays based on the idea of outlier detection, i.e. it flags those arrays whose quality attributes jointly depart from those of the bulk of the data. Using two case studies, we show that a multivariate analysis gives substantially richer information than analyzing each parameter of the QC report in isolation. Moreover, once the QC report is produced, our quality assessment method is computationally inexpensive and the results can be easily visualized and interpreted. Finally, we show that computing these distances on subsets of the quality measures in the report may increase the method's ability to detect unusual arrays and helps to identify possible reasons of the quality problems. Availability: The library to implement MDQC will soon be available from Bioconductor Contact: [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics onlin

Feasibility of direct digital sampling for diffuse optical frequency domain spectroscopy in tissue

Frequency domain optical spectroscopy in the diffusive regime is currently being investigated for biomedical applications including tumor detection, therapy monitoring, exercise metabolism, and others. Analog homodyne or heterodyne detection of sinusoidally modulated signals have been the predominant method for measuring phase and amplitude of photon density waves that have traversed through tissue. Here we demonstrate the feasibility of utilizing direct digital sampling of modulated signals using a 3.6 Gigasample/second 12 bit Analog to Digital Converter. Digitally synthesized modulated signals between 50MHz and 400MHz were measured on tissue simulating phantoms at six near-infrared wavelengths. An amplitude and phase precision of 1% and 0.6 degrees were achieved during drift tests. Amplitude, phase, scattering and absorption values were compared with a well-characterized network analyzer based diffuse optical device. Measured optical properties measured with both systems were within 3.6% for absorption and 2.8% for scattering over a range of biologically relevant values. Direct digital sampling represents a viable method for frequency domain diffuse optical spectroscopy and has the potential to reduce system complexity, size, and cost

Particulate organic carbon and nitrogen export from major Arctic rivers

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles 30 (2016): 629–643, doi:10.1002/2015GB005351.Northern rivers connect a land area of approximately 20.5 million km2 to the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas. These rivers account for ~10% of global river discharge and transport massive quantities of dissolved and particulate materials that reflect watershed sources and impact biogeochemical cycling in the ocean. In this paper, multiyear data sets from a coordinated sampling program are used to characterize particulate organic carbon (POC) and particulate nitrogen (PN) export from the six largest rivers within the pan-Arctic watershed (Yenisey, Lena, Ob', Mackenzie, Yukon, Kolyma). Together, these rivers export an average of 3055 × 109 g of POC and 368 × 109 g of PN each year. Scaled up to the pan-Arctic watershed as a whole, fluvial export estimates increase to 5767 × 109 g and 695 × 109 g of POC and PN per year, respectively. POC export is substantially lower than dissolved organic carbon export by these rivers, whereas PN export is roughly equal to dissolved nitrogen export. Seasonal patterns in concentrations and source/composition indicators (C:N, δ13C, Δ14C, δ15N) are broadly similar among rivers, but distinct regional differences are also evident. For example, average radiocarbon ages of POC range from ~2000 (Ob') to ~5500 (Mackenzie) years before present. Rapid changes within the Arctic system as a consequence of global warming make it challenging to establish a contemporary baseline of fluvial export, but the results presented in this paper capture variability and quantify average conditions for nearly a decade at the beginning of the 21st century.National Science Foundation Grant Numbers: 0229302, 0732985; U.S. Geological Survey; Department of Indian and Northern Affairs2016-11-1