138 research outputs found
Coronaviruses and Australian bats: a review in the midst of a pandemic
Australia’s 81 bat species play vital ecological and economic roles via suppression of insect pests and maintenance of native forests through pollination and seed dispersal. Bats also host a wide diversity of coronaviruses globally, including several viral species that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2 and other emergent human respiratory coronaviruses. Although there are hundreds of studies of bat coronaviruses globally, there are only three studies of bat coronaviruses in Australian bat species, and no systematic studies of drivers of shedding. These limited studies have identified two betacoronaviruses and seven alphacoronaviruses, but less than half of Australian species are included in these studies and further research is therefore needed. There is no current evidence of spillover of coronaviruses from bats to humans in Australia, either directly or indirectly via intermediate hosts. The limited available data are inadequate to determine whether this lack of evidence indicates that spillover does not occur or occurs but is undetected. Conversely, multiple international agencies have flagged the potential transmission of human coronaviruses (including SARS CoV-2) from humans to bats, and the consequent threat to bat conservation and human health. Australia has a long history of bat research across a broad range of ecological and associated disciplines, as well as expertise in viral spillover from bats. This strong foundation is an ideal platform for developing integrative approaches to understanding bat health and sustainable protection of human health
Emerging Viruses: Coming in on a Wrinkled Wing and a Prayer
The role that bats have played in the emergence of several new infectious diseases has been under review. Bats have been identified as the reservoir hosts of newly emergent viruses such as Nipah virus, Hendra virus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome–like coronaviruses. This article expands on recent findings about bats and viruses and their relevance to human infections. It briefly reviews the history of chiropteran viruses and discusses their emergence in the context of geography, phylogeny, and ecology. The public health and trade impacts of several outbreaks are also discussed. Finally, we attempt to predict where, when, and why we may see the emergence of new chiropteran viruses
Fragmentation Function and Hadronic Production of the Heavy Supersymmetric Hadrons
The light top-squark \sto may be the lightest squark and its lifetime may
be `long enough' in a kind of SUSY models which have not been ruled out yet
experimentally, so colorless `supersymmetric hadrons (superhadrons)' (\sto
\bar{q}) ( is a quark except -quark) may be formed as long as the light
top-squark \sto can be produced. Fragmentation function of \sto to heavy
`supersymmetric hadrons (superhadrons)' (\sto \bar{Q}) ( or
) and the hadronic production of the superhadrons are investigated
quantitatively. The fragmentation function is calculated precisely. Due to the
difference in spin of the SUSY component, the asymptotic behavior of the
fragmentation function is different from those of the existent ones. The
fragmentation function is also applied to compute the production of heavy
superhadrons at hadronic colliders Tevatron and LHC under the so-called
fragmentation approach. The resultant cross-section for the heavy superhadrons
is too small to observe at Tevatron, but great enough at LHC, even when all the
relevant parameters in the SUSY models are taken within the favored region for
the heavy superhadrons. The production of `light superhadrons' (\sto \bar{q})
() is also roughly estimated. It is pointed out that the production
cross-sections of the light superhadrons (\sto \bar{q}) may be much greater
than those of the heavy superhadrons, so that even at Tevatron the light
superhadrons may be produced in great quantities.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure
Active Galactic Nuclei at the Crossroads of Astrophysics
Over the last five decades, AGN studies have produced a number of spectacular
examples of synergies and multifaceted approaches in astrophysics. The field of
AGN research now spans the entire spectral range and covers more than twelve
orders of magnitude in the spatial and temporal domains. The next generation of
astrophysical facilities will open up new possibilities for AGN studies,
especially in the areas of high-resolution and high-fidelity imaging and
spectroscopy of nuclear regions in the X-ray, optical, and radio bands. These
studies will address in detail a number of critical issues in AGN research such
as processes in the immediate vicinity of supermassive black holes, physical
conditions of broad-line and narrow-line regions, formation and evolution of
accretion disks and relativistic outflows, and the connection between nuclear
activity and galaxy evolution.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures; review contribution; "Exploring the Cosmic
Frontier: Astrophysical Instruments for the 21st Century", ESO Astrophysical
Symposia Serie
Genome‐wide association study of INDELs identified four novel susceptibility loci associated with lung cancer risk
Genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) have identified 45 susceptibility loci associated with lung cancer. Only less than SNPs, small insertions and deletions (INDELs) are the second most abundant genetic polymorphisms in the human genome. INDELs are highly associated with multiple human diseases, including lung cancer. However, limited studies with large‐scale samples have been available to systematically evaluate the effects of INDELs on lung cancer risk. Here, we performed a large‐scale meta‐analysis to evaluate INDELs and their risk for lung cancer in 23,202 cases and 19,048 controls. Functional annotations were performed to further explore the potential function of lung cancer risk INDELs. Conditional analysis was used to clarify the relationship between INDELs and SNPs. Four new risk loci were identified in genome‐wide INDEL analysis (1p13.2: rs5777156, Insertion, OR = 0.92, P = 9.10 × 10−8; 4q28.2: rs58404727, Deletion, OR = 1.19, P = 5.25 × 10−7; 12p13.31: rs71450133, Deletion, OR = 1.09, P = 8.83 × 10−7; and 14q22.3: rs34057993, Deletion, OR = 0.90, P = 7.64 × 10−8). The eQTL analysis and functional annotation suggested that INDELs might affect lung cancer susceptibility by regulating the expression of target genes. After conducting conditional analysis on potential causal SNPs, the INDELs in the new loci were still nominally significant. Our findings indicate that INDELs could be potentially functional genetic variants for lung cancer risk. Further functional experiments are needed to better understand INDEL mechanisms in carcinogenesis
Flavor Decomposition of the Polarized Quark Distributions in the Nucleon from Inclusive and Semi-inclusive Deep-inelastic Scattering
Spin asymmetries of semi-inclusive cross sections for the production of
positively and negatively charged hadrons have been measured in deep-inelastic
scattering of polarized positrons on polarized hydrogen and 3He targets, in the
kinematic range 0.023<x<0.6 and 1 GeV^2<Q^2<10 GeV^2. Polarized quark
distributions are extracted as a function of x for up $(u+u_bar) and down
(d+d_bar) flavors. The up quark polarization is positive and the down quark
polarization is negative in the measured range. The polarization of the sea is
compatible with zero. The first moments of the polarized quark distributions
are presented. The isospin non-singlet combination Delta_q_3 is consistent with
the prediction based on the Bjorken sum rule. The moments of the polarized
quark distributions are compared to predictions based on SU(3)_f flavor
symmetry and to a prediction from lattice QCD.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures (eps format), 10 tables in Latex New version
contains tables of asymmetries and correlation matri
Nucleosomes in gene regulation: theoretical approaches
This work reviews current theoretical approaches of biophysics and
bioinformatics for the description of nucleosome arrangements in chromatin and
transcription factor binding to nucleosomal organized DNA. The role of
nucleosomes in gene regulation is discussed from molecular-mechanistic and
biological point of view. In addition to classical problems of this field,
actual questions of epigenetic regulation are discussed. The authors selected
for discussion what seem to be the most interesting concepts and hypotheses.
Mathematical approaches are described in a simplified language to attract
attention to the most important directions of this field
Heavy flavor properties of jets produced in interactions at 1.8 TeV
We present a detailed examination of the heavy flavor properties of jets
produced at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data set, collected with the
Collider Detector at Fermilab, consists of events with two or more jets with
transverse energy GeV and pseudo-rapidity . The
heavy flavor content of the data set is enriched by requiring that at least one
of the jets (lepton-jet) contains a lepton with transverse momentum larger than
8 GeV/c. Jets containing hadrons with heavy flavor are selected via the
identification of secondary vertices.
The parton-level cross sections predicted by the {\sc herwig} Monte Carlo
generator program are tuned within theoretical and experimental uncertainties
to reproduce the secondary-vertex rates in the data.
The tuned simulation provides new information on the origin of the
discrepancy between the cross section measurements at the Tevatron
and the next-to-leading order QCD prediction. We also compare the rate of
away-jets (jets recoiling against the lepton-jet) containing a soft lepton
( GeV/c) in the data to that in the tuned simulation.
We find that this rate is larger than what is expected for the conventional
production and semileptonic decay of pairs of hadrons with heavy flavor.Comment: 65 pages, 14 tables, 14 figures. To be submitted to Phys. Rev.
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