Health and safety: Preliminary comparative assessment of the Satellite Power System (SPS) and other energy alternatives

Data readily available from the literature were used to make an initial comparison of the health and safety risks of a fission power system with fuel reprocessing; a combined-cycle coal power system with a low-Btu gasifier and open-cycle gas turbine; a central-station, terrestrial, solar photovoltaic power system; the satellite power system; and a first-generation fusion system. The assessment approach consists of the identification of health and safety issues in each phase of the energy cycle from raw material extraction through electrical generation, waste disposal, and system deactivation; quantitative or qualitative evaluation of impact severity; and the rating of each issue with regard to known or potential impact level and level of uncertainty

Comparative health and safety assessment of the SPS and alternative electrical generation systems

A comparative analysis of health and safety risks is presented for the Satellite Power System and five alternative baseload electrical generation systems: a low-Btu coal gasification system with an open-cycle gas turbine combined with a steam topping cycle; a light water fission reactor system without fuel reprocessing; a liquid metal fast breeder fission reactor system; a central station terrestrial photovoltaic system; and a first generation fusion system with magnetic confinement. For comparison, risk from a decentralized roof-top photovoltaic system with battery storage is also evaluated. Quantified estimates of public and occupational risks within ranges of uncertainty were developed for each phase of the energy system. The potential significance of related major health and safety issues that remain unquantitied are also discussed

Essential oils as antioxidants of different coloured carrot cultivars (Daucus carota L. ssp. sativus Hoffm.)

Eight different coloured carrot cultivars, in orange, white, yellow, purple with orange or yellow and cream core, and red colour, were examined for their content and composition of essential oils and for their antioxidant capacity. For this purpose, two biochemical test systems were chosen (ABTS-test, MDA-test for lipid peroxidation). White and yellow carrot cultivars contained higher amounts of essential oils than orange cultivars. ‘Nutri Red’ had very high content of essential oils. There were significant differences between the cultivars in composition of their essential oils as shown by nine monoterpenes and two sesquiterpenes.In both test systems essential oils of carrots showed antioxidant activity. The essential oils of purple and yellow coloured carrots had higher TEAC values than the essential oils of orange, white and red carrots

Assessment of a satellite power system and six alternative technologies

The satellite power system is assessed in comparison to six alternative technologies. The alternatives are: central-station terrestrial photovoltaic systems, conventional coal-fired power plants, coal-gasification/combined-cycle power plants, light water reactor power plants, liquid-metal fast-breeder reactors, and fusion. The comparison is made regarding issues of cost and performance, health and safety, environmental effects, resources, socio-economic factors, and institutional issues. The criteria for selecting the issues and the alternative technologies are given, and the methodology of the comparison is discussed. Brief descriptions of each of the technologies considered are included

Methodology for the comparative assessment of the Satellite Power System (SPS) and alternative technologies

The energy systems concerned are the satellite power system, several coal technologies, geothermal energy, fission, fusion, terrestrial solar systems, and ocean thermal energy conversion. Guidelines are suggested for the characterization of these systems, side-by-side analysis, alternative futures analysis, and integration and aggregation of data. A description of the methods for assessing the technical, economic, environmental, societal, and institutional issues surrounding the development of the selected energy technologies is presented

A Coscaling Grid for Athena++

We present a coscaling-grid formalism and its implementation in the magnetohydrodynamics code Athena++. The formalism relies on flow symmetries in astrophysical problems involving expansion, contraction, and center-of-mass motion. The grid is evolved at the same time order as the fluid variables. The user specifies grid evolution laws, which can be independent of the fluid motion. Applying our implementation to standard hydrodynamic test cases leads to improved results and higher efficiency, compared to the fixed-grid solutions

Analysis of variable retroduplications in human populations suggests coupling of retrotransposition to cell division

In primates and other animals, reverse transcription of mRNA followed by genomic integration creates retroduplications. Expressed retroduplications are either “retrogenes” coding for functioning proteins, or expressed “processed pseudogenes,” which can function as noncoding RNAs. To date, little is known about the variation in retroduplications in terms of their presence or absence across individuals in the human population. We have developed new methodologies that allow us to identify “novel” retroduplications (i.e., those not present in the reference genome), to find their insertion points, and to genotype them. Using these methods, we catalogued and analyzed 174 retroduplication variants in almost one thousand humans, which were sequenced as part of Phase 1 of The 1000 Genomes Project Consortium. The accuracy of our data set was corroborated by (1) multiple lines of sequencing evidence for retroduplication (e.g., depth of coverage in exons vs. introns), (2) experimental validation, and (3) the fact that we can reconstruct a correct phylogenetic tree of human subpopulations based solely on retroduplications. We also show that parent genes of retroduplication variants tend to be expressed at the M-to-G1 transition in the cell cycle and that M-to-G1 expressed genes have more copies of fixed retroduplications than genes expressed at other times. These findings suggest that cell division is coupled to retrotransposition and, perhaps, is even a requirement for it

DARIO: a ncRNA detection and analysis tool for next-generation sequencing experiments

Small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) such as microRNAs, snoRNAs and tRNAs are a diverse collection of molecules with several important biological functions. Current methods for high-throughput sequencing for the first time offer the opportunity to investigate the entire ncRNAome in an essentially unbiased way. However, there is a substantial need for methods that allow a convenient analysis of these overwhelmingly large data sets. Here, we present DARIO, a free web service that allows to study short read data from small RNA-seq experiments. It provides a wide range of analysis features, including quality control, read normalization, ncRNA quantification and prediction of putative ncRNA candidates. The DARIO web site can be accessed at http://dario.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/

α-cell glucokinase suppresses glucose-regulated glucagon secretion

Glucagon secretion by pancreatic α-cells is triggered by hypoglycemia and suppressed by high glucose levels; impaired suppression of glucagon secretion is a hallmark of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Here, we show that α-cell glucokinase (Gck) plays a role in the control of glucagon secretion. Using mice with α-cell-specific inactivation of Gck (αGckKO mice), we find that glucokinase is required for the glucose-dependent increase in intracellular ATP/ADP ratio and the closure of K javax.xml.bind.JAXBElement@dee6e8 channels in α-cells and the suppression of glucagon secretion at euglycemic and hyperglycemic levels. αGckKO mice display hyperglucagonemia in the fed state, which is associated with increased hepatic gluconeogenic gene expression and hepatic glucose output capacity. In adult mice, fed hyperglucagonemia is further increased and glucose intolerance develops. Thus, glucokinase governs an α-cell metabolic pathway that suppresses secretion at or above normoglycemic levels; abnormal suppression of glucagon secretion deregulates hepatic glucose metabolism and, over time, induces a pre-diabetic phenotype

A Computational Framework Discovers New Copy Number Variants with Functional Importance

Structural variants which cause changes in copy numbers constitute an important component of genomic variability. They account for 0.7% of genomic differences in two individual genomes, of which copy number variants (CNVs) are the largest component. A recent population-based CNV study revealed the need of better characterization of CNVs, especially the small ones (<500 bp).We propose a three step computational framework (Identification of germline Changes in Copy Number or IgC2N) to discover and genotype germline CNVs. First, we detect candidate CNV loci by combining information across multiple samples without imposing restrictions to the number of coverage markers or to the variant size. Secondly, we fine tune the detection of rare variants and infer the putative copy number classes for each locus. Last, for each variant we combine the relative distance between consecutive copy number classes with genetic information in a novel attempt to estimate the reference model bias. This computational approach is applied to genome-wide data from 1250 HapMap individuals. Novel variants were discovered and characterized in terms of size, minor allele frequency, type of polymorphism (gains, losses or both), and mechanism of formation. Using data generated for a subset of individuals by a 42 million marker platform, we validated the majority of the variants with the highest validation rate (66.7%) was for variants of size larger than 1 kb. Finally, we queried transcriptomic data from 129 individuals determined by RNA-sequencing as further validation and to assess the functional role of the new variants. We investigated the possible enrichment for variant's regulatory effect and found that smaller variants (<1 Kb) are more likely to regulate gene transcript than larger variants (p-value = 2.04e-08). Our results support the validity of the computational framework to detect novel variants relevant to disease susceptibility studies and provide evidence of the importance of genetic variants in regulatory network studies