The Mother of the Girl I Love

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Half-Earth or Whole Earth? Radical ideas for conservation, and their implications

AbstractWe question whether the increasingly popular, radical idea of turning half the Earth into a network of protected areas is either feasible or just. We argue that this Half-Earth plan would have widespread negative consequences for human populations and would not meet its conservation objectives. It offers no agenda for managing biodiversity within a human half of Earth. We call instead for alternative radical action that is both more effective and more equitable, focused directly on the main drivers of biodiversity loss by shifting the global economy from its current foundation in growth while simultaneously redressing inequality.</jats:p

A powerful bursting radio source towards the Galactic Centre

Transient astronomical sources are typically powered by compact objects and usually signify highly explosive or dynamic events. While radio astronomy has an impressive record of obtaining high time resolution observations, usually it is achieved in quite narrow fields-of-view. Consequently, the dynamic radio sky is poorly sampled, in contrast to the situation in the X- and gamma-ray bands in which wide-field instruments routinely detect transient sources. Here we report a new transient source, GCRT J1745-3009, detected in 2002 during a moderately wide-field radio transient monitoring program of the Galactic center (GC) region at 0.33 GHz. The characteristics of its bursts are unlike those known for any other class of radio transient. If located in or near the GC, its brightness temperature (~10^16 K) and the implied energy density within GCRT J1745-3009 vastly exceeds that observed in most other classes of radio astronomical sources, and is consistent with coherent emission processes rarely observed. We conclude that GCRT J1745-3009 is the first member of a new class of radio transient sources, the first of possibly many new classes to be identified through current and upcoming radio surveys.Comment: 16 pages including 3 figures. Appears in Nature, 3 March 200

Protein Pattern Formation

Protein pattern formation is essential for the spatial organization of many intracellular processes like cell division, flagellum positioning, and chemotaxis. A prominent example of intracellular patterns are the oscillatory pole-to-pole oscillations of Min proteins in \textit{E. coli} whose biological function is to ensure precise cell division. Cell polarization, a prerequisite for processes such as stem cell differentiation and cell polarity in yeast, is also mediated by a diffusion-reaction process. More generally, these functional modules of cells serve as model systems for self-organization, one of the core principles of life. Under which conditions spatio-temporal patterns emerge, and how these patterns are regulated by biochemical and geometrical factors are major aspects of current research. Here we review recent theoretical and experimental advances in the field of intracellular pattern formation, focusing on general design principles and fundamental physical mechanisms.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, review articl

Information transmission in oscillatory neural activity

Periodic neural activity not locked to the stimulus or to motor responses is usually ignored. Here, we present new tools for modeling and quantifying the information transmission based on periodic neural activity that occurs with quasi-random phase relative to the stimulus. We propose a model to reproduce characteristic features of oscillatory spike trains, such as histograms of inter-spike intervals and phase locking of spikes to an oscillatory influence. The proposed model is based on an inhomogeneous Gamma process governed by a density function that is a product of the usual stimulus-dependent rate and a quasi-periodic function. Further, we present an analysis method generalizing the direct method (Rieke et al, 1999; Brenner et al, 2000) to assess the information content in such data. We demonstrate these tools on recordings from relay cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the cat.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Biological Cybernetic

Pneumococcal carriage in sub-Saharan Africa--a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Pneumococcal epidemiology varies geographically and few data are available from the African continent. We assess pneumococcal carriage from studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa (sSA) before and after the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) era. METHODS: A search for pneumococcal carriage studies published before 2012 was conducted to describe carriage in sSA. The review also describes pneumococcal serotypes and assesses the impact of vaccination on carriage in this region. RESULTS: Fifty-seven studies were included in this review with the majority (40.3%) from South Africa. There was considerable variability in the prevalence of carriage between studies (I-squared statistic = 99%). Carriage was higher in children and decreased with increasing age, 63.2% (95% CI: 55.6-70.8) in children less than 5 years, 42.6% (95% CI: 29.9-55.4) in children 5-15 years and 28.0% (95% CI: 19.0-37.0) in adults older than 15 years. There was no difference in the prevalence of carriage between males and females in 9/11 studies. Serotypes 19F, 6B, 6A, 14 and 23F were the five most common isolates. A meta-analysis of four randomized trials of PCV vaccination in children aged 9-24 months showed that carriage of vaccine type (VT) serotypes decreased with PCV vaccination; however, overall carriage remained the same because of a concomitant increase in non-vaccine type (NVT) serotypes. CONCLUSION: Pneumococcal carriage is generally high in the African continent, particularly in young children. The five most common serotypes in sSA are among the top seven serotypes that cause invasive pneumococcal disease in children globally. These serotypes are covered by the two PCVs recommended for routine childhood immunization by the WHO. The distribution of serotypes found in the nasopharynx is altered by PCV vaccination

A combinatorial TIR1/AFB–Aux/IAA co-receptor system for differential sensing of auxin

The plant hormone auxin regulates virtually every aspect of plant growth and development. Auxin acts by binding the F-box protein transport inhibitor response 1 (TIR1) and promotes the degradation of the AUXIN/INDOLE-3-ACETIC ACID (Aux/IAA) transcriptional repressors. Here we show that efficient auxin binding requires assembly of an auxin co-receptor complex consisting of TIR1 and an Aux/IAA protein. Heterologous experiments in yeast and quantitative IAA binding assays using purified proteins showed that different combinations of TIR1 and Aux/IAA proteins form co-receptor complexes with a wide range of auxin-binding affinities. Auxin affinity seems to be largely determined by the Aux/IAA. As there are 6 TIR1/AUXIN SIGNALING F-BOX proteins (AFBs) and 29 Aux/IAA proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana, combinatorial interactions may result in many co-receptors with distinct auxin-sensing properties. We also demonstrate that the AFB5–Aux/IAA co-receptor selectively binds the auxinic herbicide picloram. This co-receptor system broadens the effective concentration range of the hormone and may contribute to the complexity of auxin response

Dalitz Plot Analysis of Ds to K+K-pi+

We perform a Dalitz plot analysis of the decay Ds to K+K-pi+ with the CLEO-c data set of 586/pb of e+e- collisions accumulated at sqrt(s) = 4.17 GeV. This corresponds to about 0.57 million D_s+D_s(*)- pairs from which we select 14400 candidates with a background of roughly 15%. In contrast to previous measurements we find good agreement with our data only by including an additional f_0(1370)pi+ contribution. We measure the magnitude, phase, and fit fraction of K*(892) K+, phi(1020)pi+, K0*(1430)K+, f_0(980)pi+, f_0(1710)pi+, and f_0(1370)pi+ contributions and limit the possible contributions of other KK and Kpi resonances that could appear in this decay.Comment: 21 Pages,available through http://www.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLNS/, submitted to PR

Search for D0 to p e- and D0 to pbar e+

Using data recorded by CLEO-c detector at CESR, we search for simultaneous baryon and lepton number violating decays of the D^0 meson, specifically, D^0 --> p-bar e^+, D^0-bar --> p-bar e^+, D^0 --> p e^- and D^0-bar --> p e^-. We set the following branching fraction upper limits: D^0 --> p-bar e^+ (D^0-bar --> p-bar e^+) p e^- (D^0-bar --> p e^-) < 1.2 * 10^{-5}, both at 90% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, available through http://www.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLNS/, submitted to PRD. Comments: changed abstract, added reference for section 1, vertical axis in Fig.5 changed (starts from 1.5 rather than 2.0), fixed typo

Charmonium decays to gamma pi0, gamma eta, and gamma eta'

Using data acquired with the CLEO-c detector at the CESR e+e- collider, we measure branching fractions for J/psi, psi(2S), and psi(3770) decays to gamma pi0, gamma eta, and gamma eta'. Defining R_n = B[ psi(nS)-->gamma eta ]/B[ psi(nS)-->gamma eta' ], we obtain R_1 = (21.1 +- 0.9)% and, unexpectedly, an order of magnitude smaller limit, R_2 < 1.8% at 90% C.L. We also use J/psi-->gamma eta' events to determine branching fractions of improved precision for the five most copious eta' decay modes.Comment: 14 pages, available through http://www.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLNS/, published in Physical Review