Above and belowground community strategies respond to different global change drivers

Environmental changes alter the diversity and structure of communities. By shifting the range of species traits that will be successful under new conditions, environmental drivers can also dramatically impact ecosystem functioning and resilience. Above and belowground communities jointly regulate whole-ecosystem processes and responses to change, yet they are frequently studied separately. To determine whether these communities respond similarly to environmental changes, we measured taxonomic and trait-based responses of plant and soil microbial communities to four years of experimental warming and nitrogen deposition in a temperate grassland. Plant diversity responded strongly to N addition, whereas soil microbial communities responded primarily to warming, likely via an associated decrease in soil moisture. These above and belowground changes were associated with selection for more resource-conservative plant and microbe growth strategies, which reduced community functional diversity. Functional characteristics of plant and soil microbial communities were weakly correlated (P = 0.07) under control conditions, but not when above or belowground communities were altered by either global change driver. These results highlight the potential for global change drivers operating simultaneously to have asynchronous impacts on above and belowground components of ecosystems. Assessment of a single ecosystem component may therefore greatly underestimate the whole-system impact of global environmental changes

Paradoxical popups: Why are they hard to catch?

Even professional baseball players occasionally find it difficult to gracefully approach seemingly routine pop-ups. This paper describes a set of towering pop-ups with trajectories that exhibit cusps and loops near the apex. For a normal fly ball, the horizontal velocity is continuously decreasing due to drag caused by air resistance. But for pop-ups, the Magnus force (the force due to the ball spinning in a moving airflow) is larger than the drag force. In these cases the horizontal velocity decreases in the beginning, like a normal fly ball, but after the apex, the Magnus force accelerates the horizontal motion. We refer to this class of pop-ups as paradoxical because they appear to misinform the typically robust optical control strategies used by fielders and lead to systematic vacillation in running paths, especially when a trajectory terminates near the fielder. In short, some of the dancing around when infielders pursue pop-ups can be well explained as a combination of bizarre trajectories and misguidance by the normally reliable optical control strategy, rather than apparent fielder error. Former major league infielders confirm that our model agrees with their experiences.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures, sumitted to American Journal of Physic

Clonal kinetics and single-cell transcriptional profiling of CAR-T cells in patients undergoing CD19 CAR-T immunotherapy

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has produced remarkable anti-tumor responses in patients with B-cell malignancies. However, clonal kinetics and transcriptional programs that regulate the fate of CAR-T cells after infusion remain poorly understood. Here we perform TCRB sequencing, integration site analysis, and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to profile CD8+ CAR-T cells from infusion products (IPs) and blood of patients undergoing CD19 CAR-T immunotherapy. TCRB sequencing shows that clonal diversity of CAR-T cells is highest in the IPs and declines following infusion. We observe clones that display distinct patterns of clonal kinetics, making variable contributions to the CAR-T cell pool after infusion. Although integration site does not appear to be a key driver of clonal kinetics, scRNA-seq demonstrates that clones that expand after infusion mainly originate from infused clusters with higher expression of cytotoxicity and proliferation genes. Thus, we uncover transcriptional programs associated with CAR-T cell behavior after infusion.Published versio

The anatomical distribution of genetic associations

Deeper understanding of the anatomical intermediaries for disease and other complex genetic traits is essential to understanding mechanisms and developing new interventions. Existing ontology tools provide functional, curated annotations for many genes and can be used to develop mechanistic hypotheses; yet information about the spatial expression of genes may be equally useful in interpreting results and forming novel hypotheses for a trait. Therefore, we developed an approach for statistically testing the relationship between gene expression across the body and sets of candidate genes from across the genome. We validated this tool and tested its utility on three applications. First, we show that the expression of genes in associated loci from GWA studies implicates specific tissues for 57 out of 98 traits. Second, we tested the ability of the tool to identify novel relationships between gene expression and phenotypes. Specifically, we experimentally confirmed an underappreciated prediction highlighted by our tool: that white blood cell count – a quantitative trait of the immune system – is genetically modulated by genes expressed in the skin. Finally, using gene lists derived from exome sequencing data, we show that human genes under selective constraint are disproportionately expressed in nervous system tissues

ISSUES IN REFORMING TARIFF-RATE IMPORT QUOTAS IN THE AGREEMENT ON AGRICULTURE IN THE WTO

Contents: The Economics of Tariff Rate Quotas and the Effects of Trade Liberalization; TRQs and GATT Rules; An Overview of Tariffs, Quotas and Imports Worldwide; TRQs in the European Union; U.S. TRQs for Sugar, Tobacco and Peanuts; Dairy TRQs in the United States; Tariff Rate Quota Implementation and Administration by Developing Countries; Management of Tariff Rate Quotas in Korea and Japan; Tariff Rate Quota Administration in Canadian Agriculture; The Case of Australia and New Zealand Facing TRQs; The 1999 WTO Panel Report on the EU's Common Market Organization for Bananas; AssessmentInternational Relations/Trade,

Is Household Air Pollution a Risk Factor for Eye Disease?

In developing countries, household air pollution (HAP) resulting from the inefficient burning of coal and biomass (wood, charcoal, animal dung and crop residues) for cooking and heating has been linked to a number of negative health outcomes, mostly notably respiratory diseases and cancers. While ocular irritation has been associated with HAP, there are sparse data on adverse ocular outcomes that may result from acute and chronic exposures. We consider that there is suggestive evidence, and biological plausibility, to hypothesize that HAP is associated with some of the major blinding, and painful, eye conditions seen worldwide. Further research on this environmental risk factor for eye diseases is warranted

Training of Instrumentalists and Development of New Technologies on SOFIA

This white paper is submitted to the Astronomy and Astrophysics 2010 Decadal Survey (Astro2010)1 Committee on the State of the Profession to emphasize the potential of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to contribute to the training of instrumentalists and observers, and to related technology developments. This potential goes beyond the primary mission of SOFIA, which is to carry out unique, high priority astronomical research. SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP aircraft with a 2.5 meter telescope. It will enable astronomical observations anywhere, any time, and at most wavelengths between 0.3 microns and 1.6 mm not accessible from ground-based observatories. These attributes, accruing from the mobility and flight altitude of SOFIA, guarantee a wealth of scientific return. Its instrument teams (nine in the first generation) and guest investigators will do suborbital astronomy in a shirt-sleeve environment. The project will invest $10M per year in science instrument development over a lifetime of 20 years. This, frequent flight opportunities, and operation that enables rapid changes of science instruments and hands-on in-flight access to the instruments, assure a unique and extensive potential - both for training young instrumentalists and for encouraging and deploying nascent technologies. Novel instruments covering optical, infrared, and submillimeter bands can be developed for and tested on SOFIA by their developers (including apprentices) for their own observations and for those of guest observers, to validate technologies and maximize observational effectiveness.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, White Paper for Astro 2010 Survey Committee on State of the Professio