Inferring Phytoplankton, Terrestrial Plant and Bacteria Bulk delta C-13 Values from Compound Specific Analyses of Lipids and Fatty Acids

Stable isotope mixing models in aquatic ecology require delta C-13 values for food web end members such as phytoplankton and bacteria, however it is rarely possible to measure these directly. Hence there is a critical need for improved methods for estimating the delta C-13 ratios of phytoplankton, bacteria and terrestrial detritus from within mixed seston. We determined the delta C-13 values of lipids, phospholipids and biomarker fatty acids and used these to calculate isotopic differences compared to the whole-cell delta C-13 values for eight phytoplankton classes, five bacterial taxa, and three types of terrestrial organic matter (two trees and one grass). The lipid content was higher amongst the phytoplankton (9.5 +/- 4.0%) than bacteria (7.3 +/- 0.8%) or terrestrial matter (3.9 +/- 1.7%). Our measurements revealed that the delta C-13 values of lipids followed phylogenetic classification among phytoplankton (78.2% of variance was explained by class), bacteria and terrestrial matter, and there was a strong correlation between the delta C-13 values of total lipids, phospholipids and individual fatty acids. Amongst the phytoplankton, the isotopic difference between biomarker fatty acids and bulk biomass averaged -10.7 +/- 1.1 parts per thousand for Chlorophyceae and Cyanophyceae, and -6.1 +/- 1.7 parts per thousand for Cryptophyceae, Chrysophyceae and Diatomophyceae. For heterotrophic bacteria and for type I and type II methane-oxidizing bacteria our results showed a -1.3 +/- 1.3 parts per thousand, -8.0 +/- 4.4 parts per thousand, and -3.4 +/- 1.4 parts per thousand delta C-13 difference, respectively, between biomarker fatty acids and bulk biomass. For terrestrial matter the isotopic difference averaged -6.6 +/- 1.2 parts per thousand. Based on these results, the delta C-13 values of total lipids and biomarker fatty acids can be used to determine the delta C-13 values of bulk phytoplankton, bacteria or terrestrial matter with +/- 1.4 parts per thousand uncertainty (i.e., the pooled SD of the isotopic difference for all samples). We conclude that when compound-specific stable isotope analyses become more widely available, the determination of delta C-13 values for selected biomarker fatty acids coupled with established isotopic differences, offers a promising way to determine taxa-specific bulk delta C-13 values for the phytoplankton, bacteria, and terrestrial detritus embedded within mixed seston.Peer reviewe

MSSM Higgs boson searches at the LHC: benchmark scenarios for Run 2 and beyond

We propose six new benchmark scenarios for Higgs boson searches in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. Our calculations follow the recommendations of the LHC Higgs Cross Section Working Group, and benefit from recent developments in the predictions for the Higgs-boson masses and mixing. All of the proposed scenarios are compatible with the most recent results from Run 2 of the LHC. In particular, they feature a scalar with mass and couplings compatible with those of the observed Higgs boson, and a significant portion of their parameter space is allowed by the limits from the searches for SUSY particles and additional Higgs bosons. We define a scenario where all SUSY particles are relatively heavy, and two scenarios with light colorless SUSY particles (charginos, neutralinos and, in one case, staus). In addition, we present two scenarios featuring alignment without decoupling, realized with either the lighter or the heavier scalar being SM-like, and a scenario with CP violation

Tinjauan hukum pidana Islam terhadap tindak pidana tanpa hak mentransmisikan informasi elektronik yang memiliki muatan penghinaan: Studi Putusan Nomor 111/Pid.Sus/2014/PN Mln ITE

Skripsi yang bejudul “Tinjauan Hukum Pidana Islam Terhadap Tindak Pidana Tanpa Hak Mentransmisikan Informasi Elektronik Yang Memiliki Muatan Penghinaan (Studi Putusan Nomor 111/Pid.Sus/2014/PN Mln (ITE)) adalah hasil penelitian pustaka untuk menjawab pertanyaan tentang, 1) Bagaimana dasar pertimbangan hukum hakim terhadap tindak pidana Tanpa Hak Mentransmisikan Informasi Elektronik Yang Memiliki Muatan Penghinaan dalam Putusan Nomor 111/Pid.Sus/2014/PN Mln (ITE))? 2) Bagaimana tinjauan hukum Pidana Islam terhadap tindak pidana Tanpa Hak Mentransmisikan Informasi Elektronik Yang Memiliki Muatan Penghinaan dalam putusan tersebut.Data penelitian yang berupa bahan hukum primer dan bahan hukum sekunder, yang dihimpun melalui studi pustaka yang selanjutnya akan dianalisis dengan menggunakan metode deskriptif-analisis dengan pola pikir deduktif, yaitu menggambarkan terlebih dahulu Putusan Nomor 111/Pid.Sus/2014/PN Mln (ITE), kemudian dianalisis menggunakan hukum pidana Islam.Hasil penelitian ini menyimpulkan: pertama, dalam memutuskan perkara Nomor 111/ Pid. Sus/2014/PN Mln (ITE) dengan terdakwa Yohanis Jon Mangguali atas kasus pencemaran nama baik Putra daerah pedalaman Malinau dengan menggunakan media sosial, hakim menggunakan pasal 27 Ayat (3) UU Nomor 11 Tahun 2008 jo Pasal 45 ayat (1) Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik sebagai dasar hukumnya, disertai dengan pertimbangan hal yang memberatkan dan meringankan. Dengan dasar hukum dan pertimbangan tersebut, hakim akhirnya menjatuhi terdakwa dengan hukuman 1 tahun 2 (dua) bulan penjara dan denda perkara sebesar Rp. 2500 (dua ribu lima ratus); kedua, menurut Hukum Pidana Islam tindak pidana tanpa hak mentransmisikan Informasi Teknologi dan Elektronik termasuk dalam kategori jarimah ta’zir, yaitu tindak pidana terhadap kehormatan. Putusan Hakim Nomor 111/pid.sus/2014/PN Mln (ITE) telah seesuai dengan konsep ta’zir, yang ditentukan oleh hakim sebagai Ulil Amri berdasarkan UU Nomor Nomor 11 Tahun 2008 Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik. Sejalan dengan kesimpulan diatas maka disarankan: pertama, bagi hakim di Indonesia, hendaknya memberikan hukuman yang seadil-adilnya bukan hanya memberikan efek jera sesaat, karena kasus seperti ini banyak terjadi, baik yang telah diproses melalui hukum maupun tidak; kedua, bagi warga Negara Indonesia, hendaknya berhati-hati dan lebih bijak dalam menggunakan media sosial agar tidak terjerat kasus pidana sebagaimana yang telah dipaparkan dalam penelitian ini

The Future of Music Schools:European Perspectives

Music education in Europe reflects the colorful diversity and rich tradition of the cultural identities of our continent. Within the music education landscape music schools are institutions specially focused on the practices of music-making. The First European Music School Symposium, which took place at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in October 2017, brought together more than 150 researchers and practitioners from twenty-five European countries. The two cooperating partners, European Music School Union and Austrian Conference of Music School Associations, ensured a lively exchange between research and practitioners. This post-symposium publication presents contributions from twenty-nine researchers from thirteen European countries and paints a multicolored picture of music schools in Europe

Evaluation of Presumably Disease Causing SCN1A Variants in a Cohort of Common Epilepsy Syndromes

A. Palotie on työryhmän jäsen.Objective The SCN1A gene, coding for the voltage-gated Na+ channel alpha subunit NaV1.1, is the clinically most relevant epilepsy gene. With the advent of high-throughput next-generation sequencing, clinical laboratories are generating an ever-increasing catalogue of SCN1A variants. Variants are more likely to be classified as pathogenic if they have already been identified previously in a patient with epilepsy. Here, we critically re-evaluate the pathogenicity of this class of variants in a cohort of patients with common epilepsy syndromes and subsequently ask whether a significant fraction of benign variants have been misclassified as pathogenic. Methods We screened a discovery cohort of 448 patients with a broad range of common genetic epilepsies and 734 controls for previously reported SCN1A mutations that were assumed to be disease causing. We re-evaluated the evidence for pathogenicity of the identified variants using in silico predictions, segregation, original reports, available functional data and assessment of allele frequencies in healthy individuals as well as in a follow up cohort of 777 patients. Results and Interpretation We identified 8 known missense mutations, previously reported as pathogenic, in a total of 17 unrelated epilepsy patients (17/448; 3.80%). Our re-evaluation indicates that 7 out of these 8 variants (p.R27T; p.R28C; p.R542Q; p.R604H; p.T1250M; p.E1308D; p.R1928G; NP_001159435.1) are not pathogenic. Only the p. T1174S mutation may be considered as a genetic risk factor for epilepsy of small effect size based on the enrichment in patients (P = 6.60 x 10(-4); OR = 0.32, fishers exact test), previous functional studies but incomplete penetrance. Thus, incorporation of previous studies in genetic counseling of SCN1A sequencing results is challenging and may produce incorrect conclusions.Peer reviewe

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

MAGIC and H.E.S.S. detect VHE gamma rays from the blazar OT081 for the first time: a deep multiwavelength study

https://pos.sissa.it/395/815/pdfPublished versio

Analysis of the isolated surgical aortic valve replacement at the University Hospital of Wuerzburg with emphasis on gender

Ziel der Arbeit war die Analyse von prä -, intra – und postoperativen Patientendaten vergleichend bei beiden Geschlechtern nach isoliertem chirurgischen Aortenklappenersatz und das Herausfinden von beeinflussenden Faktoren für den kurzfristigen postoperativen Outcome. In zweiter Linie sollte die Bedeutung des Patientenalters bei Männern und Frauen für o.g. Punkte untersucht werden. In der Klinik und Poliklinik für Thorax-, Herz- und thorakale Gefäßchirurgie der Universitätsklinik Würzburg wurden im Zeitraum von 2007 bis 2015 insgesamt 657 Patienten mit einem isolierten chirurgischen Aortenklappenersatz versorgt. Die Studienpopulation bestand zu 60,6 % aus Männern und 39,4 % aus Frauen. Die ungleiche geschlechtliche Verteilung zugunsten der männlichen Patienten entsprach den nationalen Daten. Die Untersuchung ergab, dass weibliche Patienten durchschnittlich knapp vier Jahre älter waren als die männlichen Patienten, einen signifikant höheren BMI hatten, eine kürzere Bypasszeit und OP-Zeit, sowie einen längeren Krankenhausaufenthalt. Der längere Krankenhausaufenthalt der Frauen könnte durch das höhere Alter der Patientinnen bedingt sein. TK-Transfusionen wurden bei Frauen insgesamt seltener durchgeführt und elektive Operationen in der 6. Altersdekade bei Frauen häufiger. Keine wesentlichen Unterschiede im Geschlechtervergleich zeigten die Variablen Aortenabklemmzeit, Anzahl transfundierter EK und FFP und Intensivdauer. Der Vergleich der Altersgruppen der männlichen und weiblichen Patienten untereinander zeigte, dass der BMI, die Dringlichkeit des Eingriffs, die Anzahl transfundierter EK, die Intensivdauer und die Dauer des Krankenhausaufenthalts sich signifikant zwischen den Altersgruppen des Gesamtkollektivs und hauptsächlich der Männergruppe unterschied. Ältere Patienten hatten im Durchschnitt den niedrigsten BMI, keine notfallmäßigen Operationen, die meisten EK-Transfusionen und die längsten Aufenthaltsdauern auf Intensivstation und in der Klinik insgesamt. Die Aortenabklemmzeit, Bypasszeit, OP-Zeit, Transfusion von FFP und TK und die 30-Tage-Mortalität waren im Altersvergleich nicht signifikant verschieden. Das Alter und die Dringlichkeit hatten einen Einfluss auf die postoperative Erholung. Mortalitätsbeeinflussend waren die unabhängigen Variablen Dringlichkeit, Bypasszeit und Aortenabklemmzeit. Ein Einfluss des Geschlechts auf die 30-Tage-Mortalität war zwar vorhanden, jedoch zu schwach, um einen signifikanten Mortalitätsunterschied zwischen Männern und Frauen aufzuzeigen. Die Ergebnisse geben einen Einblick in die geschlechts- und altersspezifischen Unterschiede der Patienten, die mit einem isolierten konventionellen Aortenklappenersatz in der Uniklinik Würzburg versorgt wurden.The aim of the study was to analyze the pre-, intra- and postoperative data of patients undergoing an isolated surgical aortic valve replacement, to compare the data between both sexes and to investigate influencing factors on the short-term postoperative outcome. The second aim of the study was to assess the importance of patient age on the aforementioned data. In the clinic and outpatient department for cardiac, thoracic and thoracic vascular surgery at the University Hospital of Wuerzburg 657 patients underwent an isolated surgical aortic valve replacement from 2007 until 2015. The study consisted of 60,6% male patients and 39,4% female patients. The unequal distribution between the sexes matched nationwide data. The results of the analysis showed that female patients were four years older than male patients, had a significantly higher body mass index level, a shorter bypass- and procedure time and a longer hospitalization. The longer hospitalization might be attributed to the higher age of the women. The transfusion of platelets was less common in female compared to male patients. Elective procedures were more common in female than in male patients at the age of 60 - 69. There were no considerable differences between the sexes for aortic cross clamp time, the amount of transfused red blood cell concentrates and units of fresh frozen plasma as well as the duration of stay in the intensive care unit. The comparison of different age groups resulted in differences between the age groups of the whole study group and mostly the male population for body mass index, urgency of the procedure, amount of transfused red blood cell concentrates, stay in the intensive care unit and duration of hospitalization. The elderly patients had the lowest body mass index levels, no emergency procedures, the highest transfusion rates of red blood cell concentrates, the longest stay in intensive care units and in hospital. The aortic cross clamp time, bypass time, procedure time, transfusion of fresh frozen plasma and platelets were equal between the age groups. Age and urgency of the procedure also influenced the postoperative recovery. Urgency of the procedure, bypass time and aortic cross clamp time influenced the 30-day-mortality. The influence of sex on 30-day-mortality was too weak to result in a significantly higher mortality of female patients. The results of the study give an insight into the sex- and age-specific differences in patients, who underwent an isolated surgical aortic valve replacement at the University Hospital of Wuerzburg

Burnout and dependence among medical personnel timeless and during the COVID-19 pandemic, using surgery and anesthesia as examples

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic affects the mental health and professional behavior of surgeons and anesthesiologists and seems to have an impact on substance dependence. Question: What are the reasons for the occurrence of substance dependence and burnout in surgeons and anesthesiologists timelessly and during the COVID-19 pandemic and what improvement measures could help in the clinical practice? Material and methods: A literature search was conducted in the form of a systematic review of studies and review articles relevant to the topic. Results: Over the years it has been shown that surgeons and anesthesiologists are prone to drug dependence due to their direct access to medications in the clinical field and work-related stress. In particular, surgeons and anesthesiologists appeared to have an increased propensity for addictive diseases and an increased risk of burnout in the pandemic. Conclusion: Preventive measures in favor of better working conditions in surgery and anesthesia and better drug control (not only for dispensing but also for correct drug testing), as well as more treatment and reintegration programs under psychiatric supervision and in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team are meaningful

Formalizing psychological interventions through network control theory

Abstract Despite the growing deployment of network representation to comprehend psychological phenomena, the question of whether and how networks can effectively describe the effects of psychological interventions remains elusive. Network control theory, the engineering study of networked interventions, has recently emerged as a viable methodology to characterize and guide interventions. However, there is a scarcity of empirical studies testing the extent to which it can be useful within a psychological context. In this paper, we investigate a representative psychological intervention experiment, use network control theory to model the intervention and predict its effect. Using this data, we showed that: (1) the observed psychological effect, in terms of sensitivity and specificity, relates to the regional network control theoretic metrics (average and modal controllability), (2) the size of change following intervention negatively correlates with a whole-network topology that quantifies the “ease” of change as described by control theory (control energy), and (3) responses after intervention can be predicted based on formal results from control theory. These insights assert that network control theory has significant potential as a tool for investigating psychological interventions. Drawing on this specific example and the overarching framework of network control theory, we further elaborate on the conceptualization of psychological interventions, methodological considerations, and future directions in this burgeoning field