Deep Impact Mission to Tempel 1 Favours New Explosive Cosmogony of Comets

The assumption that short-period (SP) comets are fragments of massive icy envelopes of Ganymede-like bodies saturated by products of ice electrolysis that underwent global explosions provides a plausible explanation of all known manifestations of comets, including the jet character of outflows, the presence of ions in the vicinity of the nucleus, the bursts and splitting of cometary nuclei, etc., with solar radiation initiating burning of the products of electrolysis in the nucleus. As shown persuasively by numerical simulation carried out in hydrodynamic approximation, the shock wave initiated by the Deep Impact (DI) impactor in the cometary ice saturated originally by the electrolysis products 2H2 + O2 is capable of activating under certain conditions exothermal reactions (of the type O2 + H2 + organics = H2O + CO + HCN + other products of incomplete burning of organics including its light and heavy pyrolyzed compounds, soot, etc.), which will slow down shock wave damping (forced detonation) and increase many times the energy release. As a result, the measured energetics of ejections and outflows from the crater have to exceed the DI energetics. Analysis of different clusters of the DI experiment data confirms these conclusions and expectations and thus it favours the planetary origin of comets.Comment: 21 pages incluging 3 figure

Disruption of Ant-Aphid Mutualism in Canopy Enhances the Abundance of Beetles on the Forest Floor

Ant-aphid mutualism is known to play a key role in the structure of the arthropod community in the tree canopy, but its possible ecological effects for the forest floor are unknown. We hypothesized that aphids in the canopy can increase the abundance of ants on the forest floor, thus intensifying the impacts of ants on other arthropods on the forest floor. We tested this hypothesis in a deciduous temperate forest in Beijing, China. We excluded the aphid-tending ants Lasius fuliginosus from the canopy using plots of varying sizes, and monitored the change in the abundance of ants and other arthropods on the forest floor in the treated and control plots. We also surveyed the abundance of ants and other arthropods on the forest floor to explore the relationships between ants and other arthropods in the field. Through a three-year experimental study, we found that the exclusion of ants from the canopy significantly decreased the abundance of ants on the forest floor, but increased the abundance of beetles, although the effect was only significant in the large ant-exclusion plot (80*60 m). The field survey showed that the abundance of both beetles and spiders was negatively related to the abundance of ants. These results suggest that aphids located in the tree canopy have indirect negative effects on beetles by enhancing the ant abundance on the forest floor. Considering that most of the beetles in our study are important predators, the ant-aphid mutualism can have further trophic cascading effects on the forest floor food web

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field