HIGH-VELOCITY BIPOLAR MOLECULAR EMISSION from AN AGN TORUS

We have detected in ALMA observations CO J = 6 - 5 emission from the nucleus of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068. The low-velocity (up to +/- 70 km/s relative to systemic) CO emission resolves into a 12x7 pc structure, roughly aligned with the nuclear radio source. Higher-velocity emission (up to +/- 400 km/s) is consistent with a bipolar outflow in a direction nearly perpendicular (roughly 80 degrees) to the nuclear disk. The position-velocity diagram shows that in addition to the outflow, the velocity field may also contain rotation about the disk axis. These observations provide compelling evidence in support of the disk-wind scenario for the AGN obscuring torus.FONDECYT (Grant ID: 3140436), Science and Technology Facilities CouncilThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Institute of Physics Publishing via http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8205/829/1/L

Counter-rotation and High-velocity Outflow in the Parsec-scale Molecular Torus of NGC 1068

We present 1.4 pc resolution observations of 256 GHz nuclear radio continuum and HCN ($J=3 \to 2$) in the molecular torus of NGC 1068. The integrated radio continuum emission has a flat spectrum consistent with free-free emission and resolves into an X-shaped structure resembling an edge-brightened bicone. HCN is detected in absorption against the continuum, and the absorption spectrum shows a pronounced blue wing that suggests a high-velocity molecular outflow with speeds reaching 450 km/s. Analysis of the off-nucleus emission line kinematics and morphology reveals two nested, rotating disk components. The inner disk, inside $r\sim 1.2$ pc, has kinematics consistent with the nearly edge-on, geometrically thin water megamaser disk in Keplerian rotation around a central mass of 1.66\times 10^7\,\mbox{M}_\odot. The outer disk, which extends to $\sim 7$~pc radius, counter-rotates relative to the inner disk. The rotation curve of the outer disk is consistent with rotation around the same central mass as the megamaser disk but in the opposite sense. The morphology of the molecular gas is asymmetric around the nuclear continuum source. We speculate that the outer disk formed from more recently introduced molecular gas falling out of the host galaxy or from a captured dwarf satellite galaxy. In NGC 1068, we find direct evidence that the molecular torus consists of counter-rotating and misaligned disks on parsec scales.ERC grant 695671 'QUENCH

Green Plants in the Red: A Baseline Global Assessment for the IUCN Sampled Red List Index for Plants

Plants provide fundamental support systems for life on Earth and are the basis for all terrestrial ecosystems; a decline in plant diversity will be detrimental to all other groups of organisms including humans. Decline in plant diversity has been hard to quantify, due to the huge numbers of known and yet to be discovered species and the lack of an adequate baseline assessment of extinction risk against which to track changes. The biodiversity of many remote parts of the world remains poorly known, and the rate of new assessments of extinction risk for individual plant species approximates the rate at which new plant species are described. Thus the question ‘How threatened are plants?’ is still very difficult to answer accurately. While completing assessments for each species of plant remains a distant prospect, by assessing a randomly selected sample of species the Sampled Red List Index for Plants gives, for the first time, an accurate view of how threatened plants are across the world. It represents the first key phase of ongoing efforts to monitor the status of the world’s plants. More than 20% of plant species assessed are threatened with extinction, and the habitat with the most threatened species is overwhelmingly tropical rain forest, where the greatest threat to plants is anthropogenic habitat conversion, for arable and livestock agriculture, and harvesting of natural resources. Gymnosperms (e.g. conifers and cycads) are the most threatened group, while a third of plant species included in this study have yet to receive an assessment or are so poorly known that we cannot yet ascertain whether they are threatened or not. This study provides a baseline assessment from which trends in the status of plant biodiversity can be measured and periodically reassessed

Reliability of Therapist Effects in Practice-Based Psychotherapy Research : A Guide for the Planning of Future Studies

This paper aims to provide researchers with practical information on sample sizes for accurate estimations of therapist effects (TEs). The investigations are based on an integrated sample of 48,648 patients treated by 1800 therapists. Multilevel modeling and resampling were used to realize varying sample size conditions to generate empirical estimates of TEs. Sample size tables, including varying sample size conditions, were constructed and study examples given. This study gives an insight into the potential size of the TE and provides researchers with a practical guide to aid the planning of future studies in this field

Sequence-defined multifunctional polyethers via liquid-phase synthesis with molecular sieving

Synthetic chemists have devoted tremendous effort towards the production of precision synthetic polymers with defined sequences and specific functions. However, the creation of a general technology that enables precise control over monomer sequence, with efficient isolation of the target polymers, is highly challenging. Here, we report a robust strategy for the production of sequence-defined synthetic polymers through a combination of liquid-phase synthesis and selective molecular sieving. The polymer is assembled in solution with real-time monitoring to ensure couplings proceed to completion, on a three-armed star-shaped macromolecule to maximize efficiency during the molecular sieving process. This approach is applied to the construction of sequence-defined polyethers, with side-arms at precisely defined locations that can undergo site-selective modification after polymerization. Using this versatile strategy, we have introduced structural and functional diversity into sequence-defined polyethers, unlocking their potential for real-life applications in nanotechnology, healthcare and information storage

Presentation of the 9th Edition of the Model Checking Contest.

International audience; The Model Checking Contest (MCC) is an annual competition of software tools for model checking. Tools must process an increasing benchmark gathered from the whole community and may participate in various examinations: state space generation, computation of global properties, computation of some upper bounds in the model, evaluation of reachability formulas, evaluation of CTL formulas, and evaluation of LTL formulas.For each examination and each model instance, participating tools are provided with up to 3600 s and 16 gigabyte of memory. Then, tool answers are analyzed and confronted to the results produced by other competing tools to detect diverging answers (which are quite rare at this stage of the competition, and lead to penalties).For each examination, golden, silver, and bronze medals are attributed to the three best tools. CPU usage and memory consumption are reported, which is also valuable information for tool developers

Varicella vaccination coverage of children under two years of age in Germany

Background: Since July 2004, routine varicella vaccination is recommended by the German Standing Vaccination Committee in Germany. Health Insurance Funds started to cover vaccination costs at different time points between 2004 and 2006 in the Federal States. Nationwide representative data on vaccination coverage against varicella of children under two years of age are not available. We aimed to determine varicella vaccination coverage in statutory health insured children under two years of age in twelve German Federal States using data from associations of statutory health insurance physicians (ASHIPs), in order to investigate the acceptance of the recommended routine varicella vaccination programme. Methods: We analysed data on varicella vaccination from 13 of 17 ASHIPs of the years 2004 to 2007. The study population consisted of all statutory health insured children under two years of age born in 2004 (cohort 2004) or 2005 (cohort 2005) in one of the studied regions. Vaccination coverage was determined by the number of children vaccinated under 2 years of age within the study population. Results: Varicella vaccination coverage of children under two years of age with either one dose of the monovalent varicella vaccine or two doses of the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine increased from 34% (cohort 2004) to 51% (cohort 2005) in the studied regions (p < 0.001). More than half of the vaccinated children of cohort 2004 and two third of cohort 2005 were immunised at the recommended age 11 to 14 months. The level of vaccination coverage of cohort 2004 was significantly associated with the delay in introduction of cost coverage since the recommendation of varicella vaccination (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Our study shows increasing varicella vaccination coverage of young children, indicating a growing acceptance of the routine varicella vaccination programme by the parents and physicians. We recommend further monitoring of vaccination coverage using data from ASHIPs to investigate acceptance of the routine vaccination programmes over time

The Induction of APC with a Distinct Tolerogenic Phenotype via Contact-Dependent STAT3 Activation

BACKGROUND: Activation of the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) within antigen presenting cells (APCs) is linked to abnormal APCs differentiation and function. We have previously shown that STAT3 is activated within APC by a novel contact-dependent mechanism, which plays a key role in mediating the immunomodulatory effects of hMSC. In order to better understand the underlying mechanisms that control APC maturation in a contact dependent manner, we extended our observation to tumor cells. Tumors were shown to secrete a variety of tumor-derived factors that activate STAT3 within infiltrating APCs. We now tested whether tumor cells can activate STAT3 within APC using the contact-dependent mechanism, in addition to soluble factors, and compared these two STAT3 activating pathways. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We demonstrate that in addition to tumor-derived secreted factors tumor cells activate STAT3 by a mechanism that is based on cell-cell interaction. We further demonstrate that these two STAT3 activating mechanisms differ in their JAK usage and their susceptibility to JSI-124 inhibition thereby representing two distinct pathways. Significantly, although both pathways activate STAT3, they modulate DCs maturation in a different manner that results in disparate phenotypic outcomes. Whereas the soluble-dependent pathway results in an immature phenotype, the contact-dependent pathway results in an apparently mature phenotype. Albeit their mature-like phenotype these latter cells express the tolerogenic markers ILT3 and ILT4 and possess T cell inhibitory activity. SIGNIFICANCE: This data suggests that, in at least certain cellular microenvironments, cell:cell interactions represent a novel way to activate STAT3 signaling, uncouple APC activation events and consequently regulate immunity and tolerance. Significantly, we have now demonstrated that this contact-dependent signaling pathway differs from that mediated by soluble factors and cytokines, inducing disparate phenotypic outcome, suggesting these two mechanisms have different and possibly complementary biological functions