1,019 research outputs found
A questionnaire elicitation of surgeons' belief about learning within a surgical trial
PMID: 23145113 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] PMCID: PMC3493499 Free PMC ArticlePeer reviewedPublisher PD
Basal topographic controls on rapid retreat of Humboldt Glacier, northern Greenland
This is the final version of the article. Available from CUP via the DOI in this record.Discharge from marine-terminating outlet glaciers accounts for up to half the recent mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet, yet the causal factors are not fully understood. Here we assess the factors controlling the behaviour of Humboldt Glacier (HG), allowing us to evaluate the influence of basal topography on outlet glacier response to external forcing since part of HG’s terminus occupies a large overdeepening. HG’s retreat accelerated dramatically after 1999, coinciding with summer atmospheric warming of up to 0.19°C a–1 and sea-ice decline. Retreat was an order of magnitude greater in the northern section of the terminus, underlain by a major basal trough, than in the southern section, where the bedrock is comparatively shallow. Velocity change following retreat was spatially non-uniform, potentially due to a pinning point near HG’s northern lateral margin. Consistent with observations, numerical modelling demonstrates an order-of-magnitude greater sensitivity to sea-ice buttressing and crevasse depth (used as a proxy for atmospheric warming) in the northern section. The trough extends up to 72 km inland, so it is likely to facilitate sustained retreat and ice loss from HG during the 21st century.Funding for this work was provided by a Durham Doctoral
Studentship to J.R.C. Radio-echo sounding data were
acquired and processed through UK Natural Environment
Research Council (NERC) grant NE/H020667 to J.A.D. and
P.C. and a G. Unger Vetlesen grant to the University of
Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). GrOGG laser altimetry
was supported by NNXAD33G to D.D.B. This paper is
UTIG contribution No. 2733. S.S.R.J. was supported by UK
NERC fellowship NE/J018333/1
Oceanography : plankton in a warmer world
Author Posting. © Nature Publishing Group, 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature 444 (2006): 695-696, doi:10.1038/444695a.Satellite data show that phytoplankton biomass and growth generally decline as the
oceans’ surface waters warm up. Is this trend, seen over the past decade, a harbinger of
the future for marine ecosystems
Primordial Black Holes: sirens of the early Universe
Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) are, typically light, black holes which can
form in the early Universe. There are a number of formation mechanisms,
including the collapse of large density perturbations, cosmic string loops and
bubble collisions. The number of PBHs formed is tightly constrained by the
consequences of their evaporation and their lensing and dynamical effects.
Therefore PBHs are a powerful probe of the physics of the early Universe, in
particular models of inflation. They are also a potential cold dark matter
candidate.Comment: 21 pages. To be published in "Quantum Aspects of Black Holes", ed. X.
Calmet (Springer, 2014
The Sec1/Munc18 protein Vps45 regulates cellular levels of its SNARE binding partners Tlg2 and Snc2 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Intracellular membrane trafficking pathways must be tightly regulated to ensure proper functioning of all eukaryotic cells. Central to membrane trafficking is the formation of specific SNARE (soluble N-ethylmeleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor) complexes between proteins on opposing lipid bilayers. The Sec1/Munc18 (SM) family of proteins play an essential role in SNARE-mediated membrane fusion, and like the SNAREs are conserved through evolution from yeast to humans. The SM protein Vps45 is required for the formation of yeast endosomal SNARE complexes and is thus essential for traffic through the endosomal system. Here we report that, in addition to its role in regulating SNARE complex assembly, Vps45 regulates cellular levels of its SNARE binding partners: the syntaxin Tlg2 and the v-SNARE Snc2: Cells lacking Vps45 have reduced cellular levels of Tlg2 and Snc2; and elevation of Vps45 levels results in concomitant increases in the levels of both Tlg2 and Snc2. As well as regulating traffic through the endosomal system, the Snc v-SNAREs are also required for exocytosis. Unlike most vps mutants, cells lacking Vps45 display multiple growth phenotypes. Here we report that these can be reversed by selectively restoring Snc2 levels in vps45 mutant cells. Our data indicate that as well as functioning as part of the machinery that controls SNARE complex assembly, Vps45 also plays a key role in determining the levels of its cognate SNARE proteins; another key factor in regulation of membrane traffic
Partisan Asymmetries in Online Political Activity
We examine partisan differences in the behavior, communication patterns and
social interactions of more than 18,000 politically-active Twitter users to
produce evidence that points to changing levels of partisan engagement with the
American online political landscape. Analysis of a network defined by the
communication activity of these users in proximity to the 2010 midterm
congressional elections reveals a highly segregated, well clustered partisan
community structure. Using cluster membership as a high-fidelity (87% accuracy)
proxy for political affiliation, we characterize a wide range of differences in
the behavior, communication and social connectivity of left- and right-leaning
Twitter users. We find that in contrast to the online political dynamics of the
2008 campaign, right-leaning Twitter users exhibit greater levels of political
activity, a more tightly interconnected social structure, and a communication
network topology that facilitates the rapid and broad dissemination of
political information.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 6 table
Nanoscale imaging reveals laterally expanding antimicrobial pores in lipid bilayers
Antimicrobial peptides are postulated to disrupt microbial phospholipid membranes. The prevailing molecular model is based on the formation of stable or transient pores although the direct observation of the fundamental processes is lacking. By combining rational peptide design with topographical (atomic force microscopy) and chemical (nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry) imaging on the same samples, we show that pores formed by antimicrobial peptides in supported lipid bilayers are not necessarily limited to a particular diameter, nor they are transient, but can expand laterally at the nano-to-micrometer scale to the point of complete membrane disintegration. The results offer a mechanistic basis for membrane poration as a generic physicochemical process of cooperative and continuous peptide recruitment in the available phospholipid matrix
Dipolar collisions of polar molecules in the quantum regime
Ultracold polar molecules offer the possibility of exploring quantum gases
with interparticle interactions that are strong, long-range, and spatially
anisotropic. This is in stark contrast to the dilute gases of ultracold atoms,
which have isotropic and extremely short-range, or "contact", interactions. The
large electric dipole moment of polar molecules can be tuned with an external
electric field; this provides unique opportunities such as control of ultracold
chemical reactions, quantum information processing, and the realization of
novel quantum many-body systems. In spite of intense experimental efforts aimed
at observing the influence of dipoles on ultracold molecules, only recently
have sufficiently high densities been achieved. Here, we report the observation
of dipolar collisions in an ultracold molecular gas prepared close to quantum
degeneracy. For modest values of an applied electric field, we observe a
dramatic increase in the loss rate of fermionic KRb molecules due to ultrcold
chemical reactions. We find that the loss rate has a steep power-law dependence
on the induced electric dipole moment, and we show that this dependence can be
understood with a relatively simple model based on quantum threshold laws for
scattering of fermionic polar molecules. We directly observe the spatial
anisotropy of the dipolar interaction as manifested in measurements of the
thermodynamics of the dipolar gas. These results demonstrate how the long-range
dipolar interaction can be used for electric-field control of chemical reaction
rates in an ultracold polar molecule gas. The large loss rates in an applied
electric field suggest that creating a long-lived ensemble of ultracold polar
molecules may require confinement in a two-dimensional trap geometry to
suppress the influence of the attractive dipolar interactions
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