The fast response of volcano-seismic activity to intense precipitation: Triggering of primary volcanic activity by rainfall at Soufrière Hills Volcano, Montserrat

One-minute resolution time series of rainfall and seismic data from the Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat are analysed to explore the mechanism of external forcing of volcanic eruptions by rainfall over three years of activity. The real-time seismic amplitude (RSAM) shows a narrow, statistically significant, peak within 30 min after the start of intense rainfall events, and a much broader peak with a lag of 6?40 h. The classified seismic events indicate that the volcanic response to rainfall begins at the surface and gradually penetrates deeper into the dome, as there is an increase in the pseudo-magnitude of: surface rockfall events (including pyroclastic flows) with lags from the first 30 min to 40 h, long-period rockfalls (from shallow degassing) at lags of 4 and 14 h, and long-period and hybrid events (source depth approximately 1 km) with lags at 14 and 24 h after the start of rainfall events. There was no rainfall-related change in deeper, volcano-tectonic activity. There was no change in the frequency of any type of classified event, indicating that the rainfall acts to modulate existing, internal processes, rather than generating new events itself. These robust results are due to many (229) different rainfall events, and not just to a few, large magnitude cases. The rainfalltriggered volcanic activity examined here is consistent with a model of fast, shallow interactions with rainfall at the dome surface, after which, a deeper dome collapse follows

Capital and Punishment: Resource Scarcity Increases Endorsement of the Death Penalty

Faced with punishing severe offenders, why do some prefer imprisonment whereas others impose death? Previous research exploring death penalty attitudes has primarily focused on individual and cultural factors. Adopting a functional perspective, we propose that environmental features may also shape our punishment strategies. Individuals are attuned to the availability of resources within their environments. Due to heightened concerns with the costliness of repeated offending, we hypothesize that individuals tend toward elimination-focused punishments during times of perceived scarcity. Using global and United States data sets (studies 1 and 2), we find that indicators of resource scarcity predict the presence of capital punishment. In two experiments (studies 3 and 4), we find that activating concerns about scarcity causes people to increase their endorsement for capital punishment, and this effect is statistically mediated by a reduced willingness to risk repeated offenses. Perceived resource scarcity shapes our punishment preferences, with important policy implications

Comparison of frozen and RNALater solid tissue storage methods for use in RNA expression microarrays

BACKGROUND: Primary human tissues are an invaluable widely used tool for discovery of gene expression patterns which characterize disease states. Tissue processing methods remain unstandardized, leading to unanswered concerns of how to best store collected tissues and maintain reproducibility between laboratories. We subdivided uterine myometrial tissue specimens and stored split aliquots using the most common tissue processing methods (fresh, frozen, RNALater) before comparing quantitative RNA expression profiles on the Affymetrix U133 human expression array. Split samples and inclusion of duplicates within each processing group allowed us to undertake a formal genome-wide analysis comparing the magnitude of result variation contributed by sample source (different patients), processing protocol (fresh vs. frozen vs. 24 or 72 hours RNALater), and random background (duplicates). The dataset was randomly permuted to define a baseline pattern of ANOVA test statistic values against which the observed results could be interpreted. RESULTS: 14,639 of 22,283 genes were expressed in at least one sample. Patient subjects provided the greatest sources of variation in the mixed model ANOVA, with replicates and processing method the least. The magnitude of variation conferred by processing method (24 hours RNALater vs 72 hours RNALater vs. fresh vs frozen) was similar to the variability seen within replicates. Subset analysis of the test statistic according to gene functional class showed that the frequency of "outlier" ANOVA results within each functional class is overall no greater than expected by chance. CONCLUSIONS: Ambient storage of tissues for 24 or 72 hours in RNALater did not contribute any systematic shift in quantitative RNA expression results relative to the alternatives of fresh or frozen tissue. This nontoxic preservative enables decentralized tissue collection for expression array analysis without a requirement for specialized equipment

Monitoring SO2 emission at the Soufriere Hills Volcano: implications for changes in erruptive conditions

FLWINinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

CD40L-Tri, a novel formulation of recombinant human CD40L that effectively activates B cells

CD40L has a well-established role in enhancing the immunostimulatory capacity of normal and malignant B cells, but a formulation suitable for clinical use has not been widely available. Like other TNF family members, in vivo and in vitro activity of CD40L requires a homotrimeric configuration, and growing evidence suggests that bioactivity depends on higher-order clustering of CD40. We generated a novel formulation of human recombinant CD40L (CD40L-Tri) in which the CD40L extracellular domain and a trimerization motif are connected by a long flexible peptide linker. We demonstrate that CD40L-Tri significantly expands normal CD19+ B cells by over 20- to 30-fold over 14 days and induces B cells to become highly immunostimulatory antigen-presenting cells (APCs). Consistent with these results, CD40L-Tri-activated B cells could effectively stimulate antigen-specific T responses (against the influenza M1 peptide) from normal volunteers. In addition, CD40L-Tri could induce malignant B cells to become effective APCs, such that tumor-directed immune responses could be probed. Together, our studies demonstrate the potent immune-stimulatory effects of CD40L-Tri on B cells that enable their expansion of antigen-specific human T cells. The potent bioactivity of CD40L-Tri is related to its ability to self-multimerize, which may be facilitated by its long peptide linker. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00262-012-1331-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Increased entropy of signal transduction in the cancer metastasis phenotype

Studies into the statistical properties of biological networks have led to important biological insights, such as the presence of hubs and hierarchical modularity. There is also a growing interest in studying the statistical properties of networks in the context of cancer genomics. However, relatively little is known as to what network features differ between the cancer and normal cell physiologies, or between different cancer cell phenotypes. Based on the observation that frequent genomic alterations underlie a more aggressive cancer phenotype, we asked if such an effect could be detectable as an increase in the randomness of local gene expression patterns. Using a breast cancer gene expression data set and a model network of protein interactions we derive constrained weighted networks defined by a stochastic information flux matrix reflecting expression correlations between interacting proteins. Based on this stochastic matrix we propose and compute an entropy measure that quantifies the degree of randomness in the local pattern of information flux around single genes. By comparing the local entropies in the non-metastatic versus metastatic breast cancer networks, we here show that breast cancers that metastasize are characterised by a small yet significant increase in the degree of randomness of local expression patterns. We validate this result in three additional breast cancer expression data sets and demonstrate that local entropy better characterises the metastatic phenotype than other non-entropy based measures. We show that increases in entropy can be used to identify genes and signalling pathways implicated in breast cancer metastasis. Further exploration of such integrated cancer expression and protein interaction networks will therefore be a fruitful endeavour.Comment: 5 figures, 2 Supplementary Figures and Table

Photopolymerized micelles of diacetylene amphiphile: physical characterization and cell delivery properties:

A series of polydiacetylene (PDA) - based micelles were prepared from diacetylenic surfactant bearing polyethylene glycol, by increasing UV-irradiation times. These polymeric lipid micelles were analyzed by physicochemical methods, electron microscopy and NMR analysis. Cellular delivery of fluorescent dye suggests that adjusting the polymerization state is vital to reach the full in vitro potential of PDA-based delivery system

Mutations in epigenetic regulators including SETD2 are gained during relapse in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Relapsed pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has high rates of treatment failure. Epigenetic regulators have been proposed as modulators of chemoresistance, here we sequence genes encoding epigenetic regulators in matched diagnosis-remission-relapse ALL samples. We find significant enrichment of mutations in epigenetic regulators at relapse with recurrent somatic mutations in SETD2, CREBBP, MSH6, KDM6A and MLL2, mutations in signaling factors are not enriched. Somatic alterations in SETD2, including frameshift and nonsense mutations, are present at 12% in a large de novo ALL patient cohort. We conclude that the enrichment of mutations in epigenetic regulators at relapse is consistent with a role in mediating therapy resistance

Evolution of Mechanical Properties of Lava Dome Rocks Across the 1995–2010 Eruption of Soufrière Hills Volcano, Montserrat

Lava dome collapses pose a hazard to surrounding populations, but equally represent important processes for deciphering the eruptive history of a volcano. Models examining lava dome instability rely on accurate physical and mechanical properties of volcanic rocks. Here we focus on determining the physical and mechanical properties of a suite of temporally-constrained rocks from different phases of the 1995–2010 eruption at Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat. We determine the uniaxial compressive strength, tensile strength, density, porosity, permeability, and Young’s modulus using laboratory measurements, complemented by Schmidt hammer testing in the field. By viewing a snapshot of each phase, we find the highest tensile and compressive strengths in the samples attributed to Phase 4, corresponding to a lower permeability and an increasing proportion of isolated porosity. Samples from Phase 5 show lower compressive and tensile strengths, corresponding to the highest permeability and porosity of the tested materials. Overall, this demonstrates a reliance of mechanical properties primarily on porosity, however, a shift toward increasing prevalence of pore connectivity in weaker samples identified by microtextural analysis demonstrates that here pore connectivity also contributes to the strength and Young’s Modulus, as well as controlling permeability. The range in UCS strengths are supported using Schmidt hammer field testing. We determine a narrow range in mineralogy across the sample suite, but identify a correlation between increasing crystallinity and increasing strength. We correlate these changes to residency-time in the growing lava dome during the eruption, where stronger rocks have undergone more crystallization. In addition, subsequent recrystallization of silica polymorphs from the glass phase may further strengthen the material. We suggest the variation in physical and mechanical rock properties shown within the Soufrière Hills eruptive products be included in future structural stability models of the remaining over-steepened dome on Montserrat, and that consideration of rock heterogeneity and its temporal variation if possible, be made in other, similar systems