Mathematical model of a two-stage process of laser fragmentation of nitrocompound molecules and subsequent laser-induced fluorescence of characteristic fragments

The paper presents a mathematical model describing the kinetics of the two-stage process of laser fragmentation of vapors of nitrocompounds and subsequent nitric oxide (NO-fragments) laser-induced fluorescence. The use of the developed model in the lidar equation for the case of fluorescent objects allows to calculate the expected value of the lidar signal for a particular nitrocompound on the basis of spectroscopic information about the object of detection, parameters of the radiation propagation medium, and transceiver equipment parameter

Enhancement of the Raman lidar sensitivity using overtones of vibrational-rotational Raman bands of oxygen or nitrogen as the reference signals

Influence of the vibrational-rotational Raman bands of molecules of the main components of the atmosphere (oxygen and nitrogen) on the sensitivity of Raman lidar is considered. A method is proposed of using the first overtones of the vibrational-rotational Raman bands of oxygen and nitrogen molecules as the reference signals for the measurement of low concentrations of chemicals in the atmosphere by the Raman method

Remote detection of traces of high energetic materials

The possibility of remote detection of traces of high energetic materials using laser fragmentation/laser-induced fluorescence (LF/LIF) method is studied. Experimental data on the remote visualization of traces of trinitrotoluene, hexogen, composition B, octogen, and tetryl obtained at a distance of 5 m with a scanning lidar detector of traces of high energetic materials are presented

Analysis of the efficiency of production of whole-muscle turkey products with vegetable sprinkles

Human health is largely determined by the nature, level and structure of nutrition. A promising direction in the development of new food products is the expansion of the base of used ingredients used to partially replace meat raw materials with vegetable ones, in order to maximize the saturation of products with nutrients that contribute to the maintenance of normal life of the consumer. The use of new food ingredients contributes to the actual task set by the State policy in the field of healthy eating — expanding the range of enriched and functional food products. The work is devoted to the study of baked whole-muscle products using turkey meat and vegetable dressing as sources of high protein content, which solves the problem of deficiency of this component in the diet. A recipe for brine with the addition of the food additive “Glimalask”, which has a complex effect on the products under study, has been presented. The evaluation of quality indicators of finished products has been carried out, the article presents the results of a comparative analysis of baked whole-muscle turkey meat products, calculations of the product cost price. The comparative analysis has shown that, in comparison with the control sample, the baked whole-muscle products from turkey meat with vegetative dressing have improved physical and chemical properties, outstanding organoleptic characteristics, the yield of the product increases by 9.0–12.0%, depending on the formulation. Differences in the dynamics of microbial growth in the experimental and control samples were insignificant, the vegetable dressing helps to slow the growth of microorganisms on the surface of the product. The presented baked whole-muscle turkey meat products using optimized brine and vegetable sprinkles of chickpeas, sesame and paprika are recommended to a wide range of consumers of different age groups

Identification of gene expression levels in primary melanoma associated with clinically meaningful characteristics

Factors influencing melanoma survival include sex, age, clinical stage, lymph node involvement, as well as Breslow thickness, presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes based on histological analysis of primary melanoma, mitotic rate, and ulceration. Identification of genes whose expression in primary tumors is associated with these key tumor/patient characteristics can shed light on molecular mechanisms of melanoma survival. Here, we show results from a gene expression analysis of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded primary melanomas with extensive clinical annotation. The Cancer Genome Atlas data on primary melanomas were used for validation of nominally significant associations. We identified five genes that were significantly associated with the presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in the joint analysis after adjustment for multiple testing: IL1R2, PPL, PLA2G3, RASAL1, and SGK2. We also identified two genes significantly associated with melanoma metastasis to the regional lymph nodes (PIK3CG and IL2RA), and two genes significantly associated with sex (KDM5C and KDM6A). We found that LEF1 was significantly associated with Breslow thickness and CCNA2 and UBE2T with mitosis. RAD50 was the gene most significantly associated with survival, with a higher level of expression associated with worse survival

FastPop: a rapid principal component derived method to infer intercontinental ancestry using genetic data.

BACKGROUND: Identifying subpopulations within a study and inferring intercontinental ancestry of the samples are important steps in genome wide association studies. Two software packages are widely used in analysis of substructure: Structure and Eigenstrat. Structure assigns each individual to a population by using a Bayesian method with multiple tuning parameters. It requires considerable computational time when dealing with thousands of samples and lacks the ability to create scores that could be used as covariates. Eigenstrat uses a principal component analysis method to model all sources of sampling variation. However, it does not readily provide information directly relevant to ancestral origin; the eigenvectors generated by Eigenstrat are sample specific and thus cannot be generalized to other individuals. RESULTS: We developed FastPop, an efficient R package that fills the gap between Structure and Eigenstrat. It can: 1, generate PCA scores that identify ancestral origins and can be used for multiple studies; 2, infer ancestry information for data arising from two or more intercontinental origins. We demonstrate the use of FastPop using 2318 SNP markers selected from the genome based on high variability among European, Asian and West African (African) populations. We conducted an analysis of 505 Hapmap samples with European, African or Asian ancestry along with 19661 additional samples of unknown ancestry. The results from FastPop are highly consistent with those obtained by Structure across the 19661 samples we studied. The correlations of the results between FastPop and Structure are 0.99, 0.97 and 0.99 for European, African and Asian ancestry scores, respectively. Compared with Structure, FastPop is more efficient as it finished ancestry inference for 19661 samples in 16 min compared with 21-24 h required by Structure. FastPop also provided scores based on SNP weights so the scores of reference population can be applied to other studies provided the same set of markers are used. We also present application of the method for studying four continental populations (European, Asian, African, and Native American). CONCLUSIONS: We developed an algorithm that can infer ancestries on data involving two or more intercontinental origins. It is efficient for analyzing large datasets. Additionally the PCA derived scores can be applied to multiple data sets to ensure the same ancestry analysis is applied to all studies

Human genes differ by their UV sensitivity estimated through analysis of UV-induced silent mutations in melanoma

We hypothesized that human genes differ by their sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) exposure. We used somatic mutations detected by genome-wide screens in melanoma and reported in the Catalog Of Somatic Mutations In Cancer. As a measure of UV sensitivity, we used the number of silent mutations generated by C>T transitions in pyrimidine dimers of a given transcript divided by the number of potential sites for this type of mutations in the transcript. We found that human genes varied by UV sensitivity by two orders of magnitude. We noted that the melanoma-associated tumor suppressor gene CDKN2A was among the top five most UV-sensitive genes in the human genome. Melanoma driver genes have a higher UV-sensitivity compared with other genes in the human genome. The difference was more prominent for tumor suppressors compared with oncogene. The results of this study suggest that differential sensitivity of human transcripts to UV light may explain melanoma specificity of some driver genes. Practical significance of the study relates to the fact that differences in UV sensitivity among human genes need to be taken into consideration whereas predicting melanoma-associated genes by the number of somatic mutations detected in a given gene

Collimation of a Circulating Beam in the U_70 Synchrotron by Use of Reflections in Axially - Oriented Crystals

The possibilities of the extraction and collimation of a circulating beam by a new method due to the reflection of particles in crystals with axial orientation were experimentally investigated in the Fall-2010 run at the U_70 synchrotron. Such crystals have positive features, because the axial potential is five times larger than the planar potential. It has been shown that the collimation efficiency can reach 90% due to axial effects in the crystal. Losses of the circulating beam on a collimator have been reduced by several times; this makes it possible to suppress the muon jet near the steel collimator of the circulating beam.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

A unified framework for multi-locus association analysis of both common and rare variants

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Common, complex diseases are hypothesized to result from a combination of common and rare genetic variants. We developed a unified framework for the joint association testing of both types of variants. Within the framework, we developed a union-intersection test suitable for genome-wide analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), candidate gene data, as well as medical sequencing data. The union-intersection test is a composite test of association of genotype frequencies and differential correlation among markers.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We demonstrated by computer simulation that the false positive error rate was controlled at the expected level. We also demonstrated scenarios in which the multi-locus test was more powerful than traditional single marker analysis. To illustrate use of the union-intersection test with real data, we analyzed a publically available data set of 319,813 autosomal SNPs genotyped for 938 cases of Parkinson disease and 863 neurologically normal controls for which no genome-wide significant results were found by traditional single marker analysis. We also analyzed an independent follow-up sample of 183 cases and 248 controls for replication.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We identified a single risk haplotype with a directionally consistent effect in both samples in the gene <it>GAK</it>, which is involved in clathrin-mediated membrane trafficking. We also found suggestive evidence that directionally inconsistent marginal effects from single marker analysis appeared to result from risk being driven by different haplotypes in the two samples for the genes <it>SYN3 </it>and <it>NGLY1</it>, which are involved in neurotransmitter release and proteasomal degradation, respectively. These results illustrate the utility of our unified framework for genome-wide association analysis of common, complex diseases.</p