CADMIUM GEOCHEMISTRY OF SOILS AND WILLOW IN A METAMORPHIC BEDROCK TERRAIN AND ITS POSSIBLE RELATION TO MOOSE HEALTH, SEWARD PENINSULA, ALASKA

The regional geochemistry of soil and willow over Paleozoic metamorphic rocks in the Seward Peninsula, Alaska is potentially high in cadmium (Cd), and willow, a preferred browse of moose, bioaccumulates Cd. Local moose show clinical signs of tooth wear and breakage and have been declining in population for unknown reasons. Willow leaves (all variants of Salix pulchra) and A-, B-, and C-horizon soils were sampled near 2 mining prospects suspected to be high in Cd. Although Al, Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, Mo, Ni, Pb, and Zn were examined, our focus in this exploratory study was on the level of Cd in the 3 soil horizons and willow between and within the 2 prospects and their vicinity. We used an unbalanced, one-way, hierarchical analysis of variance (ANOVA) to investigate the geochemistry of soils and willow at various distance scales across the 2 prospect areas that were separated by ~80 km; sites within a location were approximately 0.5 km apart and replicate samples were separated by ~0.05 km. Cd concentration was significantly different in willow between and within sites, and within sites for all soil horizons. Specifically, this exploratory study identified highly elevated levels of Cd in willow growing over Paleozoic bedrock in the Seward Peninsula at both prospects and over the Paleozoic geologic unit in general. Potential negative effects for moose are discussed

Insights into the influence of solvent polarity on the crystallization of poly(ethylene oxide) spin-coated thin films via in situ grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering

Controlling polymer thin-film morphology and crystallinity is crucial for a wide range of applications, particularly in thin-film organic electronic devices. In this work, the crystallization behavior of a model polymer, poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO), during spin-coating is studied. PEO films were spun-cast from solvents possessing different polarities (chloroform, THF, and methanol) and probed via in situ grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering. The crystallization behavior was found to follow the solvent polarity order (where chloroform chloroform > methanol). When spun-cast from nonpolar chloroform, crystallization largely followed Avrami kinetics, resulting in the formation of morphologies comprising large spherulites. PEO solutions cast from more polar solvents (THF and methanol) do not form well-defined highly crystalline morphologies and are largely amorphous with the presence of small crystalline regions. The difference in morphological development of PEO spun-cast from polar solvents is attributed to clustering phenomena that inhibit polymer crystallization. This work highlights the importance of considering individual components of polymer solubility, rather than simple total solubility, when designing processing routes for the generation of morphologies with optimum crystallinities or morphologies

B and D Meson Decay Constants in Lattice QCD

We have calculated the decay constants of B and $D$ mesons with lattice QCD. We use an $O(a)$ improved action that takes light quark actions as a starting point, tuned so that it can be directly applied at the physical masses of the $b$ and $c$ quarks. Our results are f_B = 164 \err{+14}{-11} \pm 8 MeV, f_{B_s} = 185 \err{+13}{-8} \pm 9 MeV, f_D = 194 \err{+14}{-10} \pm 10 MeV, and f_{D_s} = 213 \err{+14}{-11} \pm 11 MeV in the quenched approximation. The first error in each case is statistical, and the second is from perturbation theory. We show that discretization errors are under control in our approach, and smaller than our statistical errors. The effects of the quenched approximation may raise our quenched result by up to 10%.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

Transcriptional and immunohistological assessment of immune infiltration in pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is characterized by a complex tumor environment with a wide diversity of infiltrating stromal and immune cell types that impact the tumor response to conventional treatments. However, even in this poorly responsive tumor the extent of T cell infiltration as determined by quantitative immunohistology is a candidate prognostic factor for patient outcome. As such, even more comprehensive immunophenotyping of the tumor environment, such as immune cell type deconvolution via inference models based on gene expression profiling, holds significant promise. We hypothesized that RNA-Seq can provide a comprehensive alternative to quantitative immunohistology for immunophenotyping pancreatic cancer. We performed RNA-Seq on a prospective cohort of pancreatic tumor specimens and compared multiple approaches for gene expression-based immunophenotyping analysis compared to quantitative immunohistology. Our analyses demonstrated that while gene expression analyses provide additional information on the complexity of the tumor immune environment, they are limited in sensitivity by the low overall immune infiltrate in pancreatic cancer. As an alternative approach, we identified a set of genes that were enriched in highly T cell infiltrated pancreatic tumors, and demonstrate that these can identify patients with improved outcome in a reference population. These data demonstrate that the poor immune infiltrate in pancreatic cancer can present problems for analyses that use gene expression-based tools; however, there remains enormous potential in using these approaches to understand the relationships between diverse patterns of infiltrating cells and their impact on patient treatment outcomes

The Semileptonic Decays B→πlνB\to\pi l\nu and D→πlνD\to\pi l\nu from Lattice QCD

We present a lattice QCD calculation of the form factors and differential decay rates for semileptonic decays of the heavy-light mesons $B$ and $D$ to the final state $\pi l\nu$. The results are obtained with three methodological improvements over previous lattice calculations: a matching procedure that reduces heavy-quark lattice artifacts, the first study of lattice-spacing dependence, and the introduction of kinematic cuts to reduce model dependence. We show that the main systematics are controllable (within the quenched approximation) and outline how the calculations could be improved to aid current experiments in the determination of~$|V_{ub}|$ and~$|V_{cd}|$.Comment: 35 pp, 12 fig

City dynamics: mobility and livelihoods of urban residents

City dynamics: mobility and livelihoods of urban resident

Gravity modes as a way to distinguish between hydrogen- and helium-burning red giant stars

Red giants are evolved stars that have exhausted the supply of hydrogen in their cores and instead burn hydrogen in a surrounding shell. Once a red giant is sufficiently evolved, the helium in the core also undergoes fusion. Outstanding issues in our understanding of red giants include uncertainties in the amount of mass lost at the surface before helium ignition and the amount of internal mixing from rotation and other processes. Progress is hampered by our inability to distinguish between red giants burning helium in the core and those still only burning hydrogen in a shell. Asteroseismology offers a way forward, being a powerful tool for probing the internal structures of stars using their natural oscillation frequencies. Here we report observations of gravity-mode period spacings in red giants that permit a distinction between evolutionary stages to be made. We use high-precision photometry obtained with the Kepler spacecraft over more than a year to measure oscillations in several hundred red giants. We find many stars whose dipole modes show sequences with approximately regular period spacings. These stars fall into two clear groups, allowing us to distinguish unambiguously between hydrogen-shell-burning stars (period spacing mostly about 50 seconds) and those that are also burning helium (period spacing about 100 to 300 seconds).Comment: to appear as a Letter to Natur

Smoking, self-regulation and moral positioning: a focus group study with British smokers from a disadvantaged community

Smoking in many Western societies has become a both moral aand health issue in recent years, but little is known about how smokers position themselves and regulate their behaviour in this context. In this article, we report the findings from a study investigating how smokers from an economically disadvantaged community in the East Midlands (UK) respond to concerns about the health impact of smoking on others. We conducted ten focus group (FG) discussions with mixed groups (by smoking status and gender; N = 58 participants) covering a range of topics, including smoking norms, self-regulation, and smoking in diverse contexts. We transcribed all FG discussions before analysing the data using techniques from discourse anlysis. Smokers in general positioned themselves as socially responsible smokers and morally upstanding citizens. This position was bolstered in two main ways: ‘everyday accommodation', whereby everyday efforts to accommodate the needs of non-smokers were referenced, and ‘taking a stand', whereby proactive interventions to prevent smoking in (young) others were cited. We suggest that smoking cessation campaigns could usefully be informed by this ethic of care for others