Waste Form Release Data Package for the 2001 Immobilized Low-Activity Waste Performance Assessment

This data package documents the experimentally derived input data on the representative waste glasses LAWABP1 and HLP-31 that will be used for simulations of the immobilized lowactivity waste disposal system with the Subsurface Transport Over Reactive Multiphases (STORM) code. The STORM code will be used to provide the near-field radionuclide release source term for a performance assessment to be issued in March of 2001. Documented in this data package are data related to 1) kinetic rate law parameters for glass dissolution, 2) alkali-H ion exchange rate, 3) chemical reaction network of secondary phases that form in accelerated weathering tests, and 4) thermodynamic equilibrium constants assigned to these secondary phases. The kinetic rate law and Na+-H+ ion exchange rate were determined from single-pass flow-through experiments. Pressurized unsaturated flow and vapor hydration experiments were used for accelerated weathering or aging of the glasses. The majority of the thermodynamic data were extracted from the thermodynamic database package shipped with the geochemical code EQ3/6. However, several secondary reaction products identified from laboratory tests with prototypical LAW glasses were not included in this database, nor are the thermodynamic data available in the open literature. One of these phases, herschelite, was determined to have a potentially significant impact on the release calculations and so a solubility product was estimated using a polymer structure model developed for zeolites. Although this data package is relatively complete, final selection of ILAW glass compositions has not been done by the waste treatment plant contractor. Consequently, revisions to this data package to address new ILAW glass formulations are to be regularly expected

Evidence for Exotic J^{PC}=1^{-+} Meson Production in the Reaction pi- p --> eta pi- p at 18 GeV/c

Details of the analysis of the eta pi- system studied in the reaction pi^{-} p --> eta pi^{-} p at 18 GeV/c are given. Separate analyses for the 2 gamma and pi+ pi- pi0 decay modes of the eta are presented. An amplitude analysis of the data indicates the presence of interference between the a(2)(1320)- and a J^{PC}=1^{-+} wave between 1.2 and 1.6 GeV/c^2. The phase difference between these waves shows phase motion not attributable solely to the a(2)(1320)-. The data can be fitted by interference between the a(2)(1320)- and an exotic 1^{-+} resonance with M = 1370 +-16 +50 -30} MeV/c^2 and Gamma = 385 +- 40 +65 -105 MeV/c^2. Our results are compared with those of other experiments.Comment: 50 pages of text and 34 figure

Biofuel Blending Reduces Aircraft Engine Particle Emissions at Cruise Conditions

Aviation aerosol emissions have a disproportionately large climatic impact because they are emitted high in the relatively pristine upper troposphere where they can form linear contrails and influence cirrus clouds. Research aircraft from NASA, DLR, and NRC Canada made airborne measurements of gaseous and aerosol composition and contrail microphysical properties behind the NASA DC-8 aircraft at cruise altitudes. The DC-8 CFM-56-2C engines burned traditional medium-sulfur Jet A fuel as well as a low-sulfur Jet A fuel and a 50:50 biofuel blend. Substantial, two-to-three-fold emissions reductions are found for both particle number and mass emissions across the range of cruise thrust operating conditions. These observations provide direct and compelling evidence for the beneficial impacts of biojet fuel blending under real-world conditions

The Curse of Tourism?

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of tourism on economic growth. Our analysis covers 133 countries over the period 1995 to 2007, including 32 countries highly dependent on tourism during that period. The results show that specialization in tourism per se had no significant effects on economic growth. However, countries that are both highly dependent on trade and on tourism tend to report significantly lower growth. These findings are consistent with tourism having an effect analogous to the Dutch disease

Genome-wide association study identifies a variant in HDAC9 associated with large vessel ischemic stroke

Genetic factors have been implicated in stroke risk but few replicated associations have been reported. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in ischemic stroke and its subtypes in 3,548 cases and 5,972 controls, all of European ancestry. Replication of potential signals was performed in 5,859 cases and 6,281 controls. We replicated reported associations between variants close to PITX2 and ZFHX3 with cardioembolic stroke, and a 9p21 locus with large vessel stroke. We identified a novel association for a SNP within the histone deacetylase 9(HDAC9) gene on chromosome 7p21.1 which was associated with large vessel stroke including additional replication in a further 735 cases and 28583 controls (rs11984041, combined P = 1.87×10−11, OR=1.42 (95% CI) 1.28-1.57). All four loci exhibit evidence for heterogeneity of effect across the stroke subtypes, with some, and possibly all, affecting risk for only one subtype. This suggests differing genetic architectures for different stroke subtypes

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Identification of the PTPN22 functional variant R620W as susceptibility genetic factor for giant cell arteritis

Objective: To analyse the role of the PTPN22 and CSK genes, previously associated with autoimmunity, in the predisposition and clinical phenotypes of giant cell arteritis (GCA). Methods: Our study population was composed of 911 patients diagnosed with biopsy-proven GCA and 8136 unaffected controls from a Spanish discovery cohort and three additional independent replication cohorts from Germany, Norway and the UK. Two functional PTPN22 polymorphisms (rs2476601/R620W and rs33996649/R263Q) and two variants of the CSK gene (rs1378942 and rs34933034) were genotyped using predesigned TaqMan assays. Results: The analysis of the discovery cohort provided evidence of association of PTPN22 rs2476601/R620W with GCA (PFDR=1.06E-04, OR=1.62, CI 95% 1.29 to 2.04). The association did not appear to follow a specific GCA subphenotype. No statistically significant differences between allele frequencies for the other PTPN22 and CSK genetic variants were evident either in the case/control or in stratified case analysis. To confirm the detected PTPN22 association, three replication cohorts were genotyped, and a consistent association between the PTPN22 rs2476601/R620W variant and GCA was evident in the overall meta-analysis (PMH=2.00E-06, OR=1.51, CI 95% 1.28 to 1.79). Conclusions: Our results suggest that the PTPN22 polymorphism rs2476601/R620W plays an important role in the genetic risk to GCA