The Superfluid State of Atomic Li6 in a Magnetic Trap

We report on a study of the superfluid state of spin-polarized atomic Li6 confined in a magnetic trap. Density profiles of this degenerate Fermi gas, and the spatial distribution of the BCS order parameter are calculated in the local density approximation. The critical temperature is determined as a function of the number of particles in the trap. Furthermore we consider the mechanical stability of an interacting two-component Fermi gas, both in the case of attractive and repulsive interatomic interactions. For spin-polarized Li6 we also calculate the decay rate of the gas, and show that within the mechanically stable regime of phase space, the lifetime is long enough to perform experiments on the gas below and above the critical temperature if a bias magnetic field of about 5 T is applied. Moreover, we propose that a measurement of the decay rate of the system might signal the presence of the superfluid state.Comment: 16 pages Revtex including 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

B799: Field Appraisal of Resource Management Systems Farms Crop Yield and Quality Relationships with Soil Erosion

This document presents objectives and preliminary results of the Field Appraisal of Resource Management Systems (FARMS) study. This study assumes that estimates of soil erosion using the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) represent long-term rather than short- term effects. The FARMS study randomly sampled 2400 plots over a three year period, 1980-82, for: crop management, soils, conservation practices and management, crop yields, soil chemistry, and sociological data. This report presents analyses from the 800 plots sampled in 1980. Statistics of rill and sheet soil erosion, as estimated by the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), are presented. Data are presented for each of the factors in the USLE, for potato yields and quality, for yield of other field crops, and for soil nutrient analyses. A significant response of yield to erosion was found when the dataset was limited to the most commonly found soil, Caribou (144 plots). Data analyses including potato yields for all varieties and soils (429 plots) do not show any relation to predicted erosion. Regression analysis predicts that for each ton increase in soil erosion per acre per year up to 12 tons, a decrease of 2.3 hundred- weight of potatoes per acre will occur. The cover and management factor (C) was found to be the most important variable in the USLE in predicting potato yield decreases. With each increase of 0.1 C, the predicted yield decrease amounted to 17 hundredweight gross for potatoes, and 20 hundredweight decrease for US-1 potatoes per acre.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1113/thumbnail.jp

Olfactomedin 4 Serves as a Marker for Disease Severity in Pediatric Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Infection

Funding: Statement of financial support: The study was financially supported by the VIRGO consortium, an Innovative Cluster approved by the Netherlands Genomics Initiative and partially funded by the Dutch Government (BSIK 03012). The authors have indicated they have no personal financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose. Data Availability Statement: The data is accessible at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE69606.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Radiative energy transfer in disordered photonic crystals

The difficulty of description of the radiative transfer in disordered photonic crystals arises from the necessity to consider on the equal footing the wave scattering by periodic modulations of the dielectric function and by its random inhomogeneities. We resolve this difficulty by approaching this problem from the standpoint of the general multiple scattering theory in media with arbitrary regular profile of the dielectric function. We use the general asymptotic solution of the Bethe-Salpeter equation in order to show that for a sufficiently weak disorder the diffusion limit in disordered photonic crystals is presented by incoherent superpositions of the modes of the ideal structure with weights inversely proportional to the respective group velocities. The radiative transfer and the diffusion equations are derived as a relaxation of long-scale deviations from this limiting distribution. In particular, it is shown that in general the diffusion is anisotropic unless the crystal has sufficiently rich symmetry, say, the square lattice in 2D or the cubic lattice in 3D. In this case, the diffusion is isotropic and only in this case the effect of the disorder can be characterized by the single mean-free-path depending on frequency.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figure

Activation of the innate immune receptor Dectin-1 upon formation of a 'phagocytic synapse'.

Innate immune cells must be able to distinguish between direct binding to microbes and detection of components shed from the surface of microbes located at a distance. Dectin-1 (also known as CLEC7A) is a pattern-recognition receptor expressed by myeloid phagocytes (macrophages, dendritic cells and neutrophils) that detects β-glucans in fungal cell walls and triggers direct cellular antimicrobial activity, including phagocytosis and production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). In contrast to inflammatory responses stimulated upon detection of soluble ligands by other pattern-recognition receptors, such as Toll-like receptors (TLRs), these responses are only useful when a cell comes into direct contact with a microbe and must not be spuriously activated by soluble stimuli. In this study we show that, despite its ability to bind both soluble and particulate β-glucan polymers, Dectin-1 signalling is only activated by particulate β-glucans, which cluster the receptor in synapse-like structures from which regulatory tyrosine phosphatases CD45 and CD148 (also known as PTPRC and PTPRJ, respectively) are excluded (Supplementary Fig. 1). The 'phagocytic synapse' now provides a model mechanism by which innate immune receptors can distinguish direct microbial contact from detection of microbes at a distance, thereby initiating direct cellular antimicrobial responses only when they are required

Lake-wide physical and biological trends associated with warming in Lake Baikal

Eutrophication and warming of lakes are occurring globally. Lake Baikal, a large ancient lake composed of three basins, has recently experienced benthic eutrophication at local sites and lake warming in the south basin. Here, we look for signals of warming and pelagic eutrophication across the entire lake using physical and biological data collected at a subset of 79 stations sampled ca. annually (1977–2003) during the period of summer stratification. Lake-wide, surface waters warmed 2.0 °C; and, consistent with this warming, the abundance of two warm-water, cosmopolitan zooplankton taxa increased between two (pelagic cladocerans) and 12-fold (Cyclops kolensis). C. kolensis increased throughout the lake, whereas cladocerans increased significantly only in the north basin. In contrast, abundance of the cold-water endemic copepod, Epischura baikalensis, that dominates the crustacean zooplankton community, did not change. With the exception of one coastal station in the north basin, there is no evidence of pelagic eutrophication. Although chlorophyll concentrations increased 46% lake-wide (0.82 to 1.20 μg/L), the increasing trend was significant only in the south basin. Surprisingly, mean Secchi transparency increased by 1.4 m lake-wide across the 26-year time series with significant deepening of water transparency occurring in the central and north basins. This suggests a decline in productivity in the north and middle basins, but an increase in the south basin. Taken together, these findings suggest that physical and biological changes associatedwithwarming have occurred in Lake Baikal, butwide-spread pelagic eutrophication in the lake\u27s three basins has not

Role of deficits in pathogen recognition receptors in infection susceptibility

This work was supported by the Northern Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013), and the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) (IF/00735/2014 to A.C. and SFRH/BPD/96176/2013 to C.C.

A preliminary study of genetic factors that influence susceptibility to bovine tuberculosis in the British cattle herd

Associations between specific host genes and susceptibility to Mycobacterial infections such as tuberculosis have been reported in several species. Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) impacts greatly the UK cattle industry, yet genetic predispositions have yet to be identified. We therefore used a candidate gene approach to study 384 cattle of which 160 had reacted positively to an antigenic skin test (‘reactors’). Our approach was unusual in that it used microsatellite markers, embraced high breed diversity and focused particularly on detecting genes showing heterozygote advantage, a mode of action often overlooked in SNP-based studies. A panel of neutral markers was used to control for population substructure and using a general linear model-based approach we were also able to control for age. We found that substructure was surprisingly weak and identified two genomic regions that were strongly associated with reactor status, identified by markers INRA111 and BMS2753. In general the strength of association detected tended to vary depending on whether age was included in the model. At INRA111 a single genotype appears strongly protective with an overall odds ratio of 2.2, the effect being consistent across nine diverse breeds. Our results suggest that breeding strategies could be devised that would appreciably increase genetic resistance of cattle to bTB (strictly, reduce the frequency of incidence of reactors) with implications for the current debate concerning badger-culling