Excitations in the Halo Nucleus He-6 Following The Li-7(gamma,p)He-6 Reaction

A broad excited state was observed in 6-He with energy E_x = 5 +/- 1 MeV and width Gamma = 3 +/- 1 MeV, following the reaction Li-7(gamma,p)He-6. The state is consistent with a number of broad resonances predicted by recent cluster model calculations. The well-established reaction mechanism, combined with a simple and transparent analysis procedure confers considerable validity to this observation.Comment: 3 pages of LaTeX, 3 figures in PostScript, approved for publication in Phys. Rev. C, August, 200

RNA interference in Lepidoptera: an overview of successful and unsuccessful studies and implications for experimental design

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How to select a chiropractor for the management of athletic conditions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chiropractors are an integral part of the management of musculoskeletal injuries. A considerable communication gap between the chiropractic and medical professions exists. Subsequently referring allopathic practitioners lack confidence in picking a chiropractic practitioner with appropriate management strategies to adequately resolve sporting injuries. Subsequently, the question is often raised: "how do you find a good chiropractor?".</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Best practice guidelines are increasingly suggesting that musculoskeletal injuries should be managed with multimodal active and passive care strategies. Broadly speaking chiropractors may be subdivided into "modern multimodal" or "classical" (unimodal) in nature. The modern multimodal practitioner is better suited to managing sporting injuries by incorporating passive and active care management strategies to address three important phases of care in the continuum of injury from the acute inflammation/pain phase to the chronic/rehabilitation phase to the injury prevention phase. In contrast, the unimodal, manipulation only and typically spine only approach of the classical practitioner seems less suited to the challenges of the injured athlete. Identifying what part of the philosophical management spectrum a chiropractor falls is important as it is clearly not easily evident in most published material such as Yellow Pages advertisements.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>Identifying a chiropractic practitioner who uses multimodal treatment of adequate duration, who incorporates active and passive components of therapy including exercise prescription whilst using medical terminology and diagnosis without mandatory x-rays or predetermined treatment schedules or prepaid contracts of care will likely result in selection of a chiropractor with the approach and philosophy suited to appropriately managing athletic conditions. Sporting organizations and associations should consider using similar criteria as a minimum standard to allow participation in health care team selections.</p

Glastir Monitoring & Evaluation Programme. Second year annual report

What is the purpose of Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme? Glastir is the main scheme by which the Welsh Government pays for environmental goods and services whilst the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (GMEP) evaluates the scheme’s success. Commissioning of the monitoring programme in parallel with the launch of the Glastir scheme provides fast feedback and means payments can be modified to increase effectiveness. The Glastir scheme is jointly funded by the Welsh Government (through the Rural Development Plan) and the EU. GMEP will also support a wide range of other national and international reporting requirements. What is the GMEP approach? GMEP collects evidence for the 6 intended outcomes from the Glastir scheme which are focussed on climate change, water and soil quality, biodiversity, landscape, access and historic environment, woodland creation and management. Activities include; a national rolling monitoring programme of 1km squares; new analysis of long term data from other schemes combining with GMEP data where possible; modelling to estimate future outcomes so that adjustments can be made to maximise impact of payments; surveys to assess wider socio-economic benefits; and development of novel technologies to increase detection and efficiency of future assessments. How has GMEP progressed in this 2nd year? 90 GMEP squares were surveyed in Year 2 to add to the 60 completed in Year 1 resulting in 50% of the 300 GMEP survey squares now being completed. Squares will be revisited on a 4 year cycle providing evidence of change in response to Glastir and other pressures such as changing economics of the farm business, climate change and air pollution. This first survey cycle collects the baseline against which future changes will be assessed. This is important as GMEP work this year has demonstrated land coming into the scheme is different in some respects to land outside the scheme. Therefore, future analysis to detect impact of Glastir will be made both against the national backdrop from land outside the scheme and this baseline data from land in scheme. A wide range of analyses of longterm data has been completed for all Glastir Outcomes with the exception of landscape quality and historic features condition for which limited data is available. This has involved combining data with 2013/14 GMEP data when methods allow. Overall analysis of long term data indicates one of stability but with little evidence of improvement with the exception of headwater quality, greenhouse gas emissions and woodland area for which there has been improvement over the last 20 years. Some headline statistics include: 51% of historic features in excellent or sound condition; two thirds of public rights of way fully open and accessible; improvement in hedgerow management with 85% surveyed cut in the last 3 years but < 1% recently planted; 91% of streams had some level of modification but 60% retained good ecological quality; no change topsoil carbon content over last 25 years. What is innovative? GMEP has developed various new metrics to allow for more streamlined reporting in the future. For example a new Priority Bird species Index for Wales which combines data from 35 species indicates at least half have stable or increasing populations. The new GMEP Visual Quality Landscape Index has been tested involving over 2600 respondents. Results have demonstrated its value as an objective and repeatable method for quantifying change in visual landscape quality. A new unified peat map for Wales has been developed which has been passed to Glastir Contract Managers to improve targeting of payments when negotiating Glastir contracts. An estimate of peat soil contribution to current greenhouse gas emissions due to human modification has been calculated. Models have allowed quantification of land area helping to mitigate rainfall runoff. We are using new molecular tools to explore the effects of Glastir on soil organisms and satellite technologies to quantify e.g. small woody features and landcover change. Finally we are using a community approach to develop a consensus on how to define and report change in High Nature Value Farmland which will be reported in the Year 3 GMEP report

Dark Energy from Mass Varying Neutrinos

We show that mass varying neutrinos (MaVaNs) can behave as a negative pressure fluid which could be the origin of the cosmic acceleration. We derive a model independent relation between the neutrino mass and the equation of state parameter of the neutrino dark energy, which is applicable for general theories of mass varying particles. The neutrino mass depends on the local neutrino density and the observed neutrino mass can exceed the cosmological bound on a constant neutrino mass. We discuss microscopic realizations of the MaVaN acceleration scenario, which involve a sterile neutrino. We consider naturalness constraints for mass varying particles, and find that both ev cutoffs and ev mass particles are needed to avoid fine-tuning. These considerations give a (current) mass of order an eV for the sterile neutrino in microscopic realizations, which could be detectable at MiniBooNE. Because the sterile neutrino was much heavier at earlier times, constraints from big bang nucleosynthesis on additional states are not problematic. We consider regions of high neutrino density and find that the most likely place today to find neutrino masses which are significantly different from the neutrino masses in our solar system is in a supernova. The possibility of different neutrino mass in different regions of the galaxy and the local group could be significant for Z-burst models of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. We also consider the cosmology of and the constraints on the ``acceleron'', the scalar field which is responsible for the varying neutrino mass, and briefly discuss neutrino density dependent variations in other constants, such as the fine structure constant.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures, refs added, typos corrected, comment added about possible matter effect

Patterns and Perceptions of Climate Change in a Biodiversity Conservation Hotspot

Quantifying local people's perceptions to climate change, and their assessments of which changes matter, is fundamental to addressing the dual challenge of land conservation and poverty alleviation in densely populated tropical regions To develop appropriate policies and responses, it will be important not only to anticipate the nature of expected changes, but also how they are perceived, interpreted and adapted to by local residents. The Albertine Rift region in East Africa is one of the world's most threatened biodiversity hotspots due to dense smallholder agriculture, high levels of land and resource pressures, and habitat loss and conversion. Results of three separate household surveys conducted in the vicinity of Kibale National Park during the late 2000s indicate that farmers are concerned with variable precipitation. Many survey respondents reported that conditions are drier and rainfall timing is becoming less predictable. Analysis of daily rainfall data for the climate normal period 1981 to 2010 indicates that total rainfall both within and across seasons has not changed significantly, although the timing and transitions of seasons has been highly variable. Results of rainfall data analysis also indicate significant changes in the intra-seasonal rainfall distribution, including longer dry periods within rainy seasons, which may contribute to the perceived decrease in rainfall and can compromise food security. Our results highlight the need for fine-scale climate information to assist agro-ecological communities in developing effective adaptive management

Ecological networks: Pursuing the shortest path, however narrow and crooked

International audienceRepresenting data as networks cuts across all sub-disciplines in ecology and evolutionary biology. Besides providing a compact representation of the interconnections between agents, network analysis allows the identification of especially important nodes, according to various metrics that often rely on the calculation of the shortest paths connecting any two nodes. While the interpretation of a shortest paths is straightforward in binary, unweighted networks, whenever weights are reported, the calculation could yield unexpected results. We analyzed 129 studies of ecological networks published in the last decade that use shortest paths, and discovered a methodological inaccuracy related to the edge weights used to calculate shortest paths (and related centrality measures), particularly in interaction networks. Specifically, 49% of the studies do not report sufficient information on the calculation to allow their replication, and 61% of the studies on weighted networks may contain errors in how shortest paths are calculated. Using toy models and empirical ecological data, we show how to transform the data prior to calculation and illustrate the pitfalls that need to be avoided. We conclude by proposing a five-point checklist to foster best-practices in the calculation and reporting of centrality measures in ecology and evolution studies. The last two decades have witnessed an exponential increase in the use of graph analysis in ecological and conservation studies (see refs. 1,2 for recent introductions to network theory in ecology and evolution). Networks (graphs) represent agents as nodes linked by edges representing pairwise relationships. For instance, a food web can be represented as a network of species (nodes) and their feeding relationships (edges) 3. Similarly, the spatial dynamics of a metapopulation can be analyzed by connecting the patches of suitable habitat (nodes) with edges measuring dispersal between patches 4. Data might either simply report the presence/absence of an edge (binary, unweighted networks), or provide a strength for each edge (weighted networks). In turn, these weights can represent a variety of ecologically-relevant quantities, depending on the system being described. For instance, edge weights can quantify interaction frequency (e.g., visitation networks 5), interaction strength (e.g., per-capita effect of one species on the growth rate of another 3), carbon-flow between trophic levels 6 , genetic similarity 7 , niche overlap (e.g., number of shared resources between two species 8), affinity 9 , dispersal probabilities (e.g., the rate at which individuals of a population move between patches 10), cost of dispersal between patches (e.g., resistance 11), etc. Despite such large variety of ecological network representations, a common task is the identification of nodes of high importance, such as keystone species in a food web, patches acting as stepping stones in a dispersal network , or genes with pleiotropic effects. The identification of important nodes is typically accomplished through centrality measures 5,12. Many centrality measures has been proposed, each probing complementary aspects of node-to-node relationships 13. For instance, Closeness centrality 14,15 highlights nodes that are "near" to all othe

Nucleases as a barrier to gene silencing in the cotton boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis.

Made available in DSpace on 2018-01-04T23:23:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 journal.pone.0189600.pdf: 7131320 bytes, checksum: ece3da5d8a008843e58701868100618d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-01-04bitstream/item/170309/1/journal.pone.0189600.pd

Vesicular Stomatitis Virus-Based Ebola Vaccine Is Well-Tolerated and Protects Immunocompromised Nonhuman Primates

Ebola virus (EBOV) is a significant human pathogen that presents a public health concern as an emerging/re-emerging virus and as a potential biological weapon. Substantial progress has been made over the last decade in developing candidate preventive vaccines that can protect nonhuman primates against EBOV. Among these prospects, a vaccine based on recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is particularly robust, as it can also confer protection when administered as a postexposure treatment. A concern that has been raised regarding the replication-competent VSV vectors that express EBOV glycoproteins is how these vectors would be tolerated by individuals with altered or compromised immune systems such as patients infected with HIV. This is especially important as all EBOV outbreaks to date have occurred in areas of Central and Western Africa with high HIV incidence rates in the population. In order to address this concern, we evaluated the safety of the recombinant VSV vector expressing the Zaire ebolavirus glycoprotein (VSVΔG/ZEBOVGP) in six rhesus macaques infected with simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV). All six animals showed no evidence of illness associated with the VSVΔG/ZEBOVGP vaccine, suggesting that this vaccine may be safe in immunocompromised populations. While one goal of the study was to evaluate the safety of the candidate vaccine platform, it was also of interest to determine if altered immune status would affect vaccine efficacy. The vaccine protected 4 of 6 SHIV-infected macaques from death following ZEBOV challenge. Evaluation of CD4+ T cells in all animals showed that the animals that succumbed to lethal ZEBOV challenge had the lowest CD4+ counts, suggesting that CD4+ T cells may play a role in mediating protection against ZEBOV