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The convective storm initiation project
Copyright @ 2007 AMSThe Convective Storm Initiation Project (CSIP) is an international project to understand precisely where, when, and how convective clouds form and develop into showers in the mainly maritime environment of southern England. A major aim of CSIP is to compare the results of the very high resolution Met Office weather forecasting model with detailed observations of the early stages of convective clouds and to use the newly gained understanding to improve the predictions of the model. A large array of ground-based instruments plus two instrumented aircraft, from the U.K. National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the German Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK), Karlsruhe, were deployed in southern England, over an area centered on the meteorological radars at Chilbolton, during the summers of 2004 and 2005. In addition to a variety of ground-based remote-sensing instruments, numerous rawin-sondes were released at one- to two-hourly intervals from six closely spaced sites. The Met Office weather radar network and Meteosat satellite imagery were used to provide context for the observations made by the instruments deployed during CSIP. This article presents an overview of the CSIP field campaign and examples from CSIP of the types of convective initiation phenomena that are typical in the United Kingdom. It shows the way in which certain kinds of observational data are able to reveal these phenomena and gives an explanation of how the analyses of data from the field campaign will be used in the development of an improved very high resolution NWP model for operational use.This work is funded by the National Environment Research Council following an initial award from the HEFCE Joint Infrastructure Fund
Mental health research priorities for Europe
Mental and brain disorders represent the greatest health burden to Europeβnot only for directly affected individuals, but also for their caregivers and the wider society. They incur substantial economic costs through direct (and indirect) health-care and welfare spending, and via productivity losses, all of which substantially affect European development. Funding for research to mitigate these effects lags far behind the cost of mental and brain disorders to society. Here, we describe a comprehensive, coordinated mental health research agenda for Europe and worldwide. This agenda was based on systematic reviews of published work and consensus decision making by multidisciplinary scientific experts and affected stakeholders (more than 1000 in total): individuals with mental health problems and their families, health-care workers, policy makers, and funders. We generated six priorities that will, over the next 5β10 years, help to close the biggest gaps in mental health research in Europe, and in turn overcome the substantial challenges caused by mental disorders
Decreased olfactory discrimination is associated with impulsivity in healthy volunteers
In clinical populations, olfactory abilities parallel executive function, implicating shared
neuroanatomical substrates within the ventral prefrontal cortex. In healthy individuals, the relationship
between olfaction and personality traits or certain cognitive and behavioural characteristics remains
unexplored. We therefore tested if olfactory function is associated with trait and behavioural impulsivity
in nonclinical individuals. Eighty-three healthy volunteers (50 females) underwent quantitative
assessment of olfactory function (odour detection threshold, discrimination, and identifcation). Each
participant was rated for trait impulsivity index using the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale and performed
a battery of tasks to assess behavioural impulsivity (Stop Signal Task, SST; Information Sampling
Task, IST; Delay Discounting). Lower odour discrimination predicted high ratings in non-planning
impulsivity (Barratt Non-Planning impulsivity subscale); both, lower odour discrimination and detection
threshold predicted low inhibitory control (SST; increased motor impulsivity). These fndings extend
clinical observations to support the hypothesis that defcits in olfactory ability are linked to impulsive
tendencies within the healthy population. In particular, the relationship between olfactory abilities and
behavioural inhibitory control (in the SST) reinforces evidence for functional overlap between neural
networks involved in both processes. These fndings may usefully inform the stratifcation of people at
risk of impulse-control-related problems and support planning early clinical interventions
Noninertial effects on a Dirac neutral particle inducing an analogue of the Landau quantization in the cosmic string spacetime
We discuss the behaviour of external fields that interact with a Dirac
neutral particle with a permanent electric dipole moment in order to achieve
relativistic bound states solutions in a noninertial frame and in the presence
of a topological defect spacetime. We show that the noninertial effects of the
Fermi-Walker reference frame induce a radial magnetic field even in the absence
of magnetic charges, which is influenced by the topology of the cosmic string
spacetime. We then discuss the conditions that the induced fields must satisfy
to yield the relativistic bound states corresponding to the
Landau-He-McKellar-Wilkens quantization in the cosmic string spacetime. Finally
we obtain the Dirac spinors for positive-energy solutions and the Gordon
decomposition of the Dirac probability current.Comment: 15 pages, no figure, this paper will be published in volume 42 of the
Brazilian Journal of Physic
Systematic Genetic Nomenclature for Type VII Secretion Systems
CITATION: Bitter, W., et al. 2009. Systematic genetic nomenclature for type VII secretion systems. PLoS Pathogens, 5(10): 1-6, doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1000507.The original publication is available at http://journals.plos.org/plospathogensMycobacteria, such as the etiological
agent of human tuberculosis, Mycobacterium
tuberculosis, are protected by an impermeable
cell envelope composed of an inner
cytoplasmic membrane, a peptidoglycan
layer, an arabinogalactan layer, and an
outer membrane. This second membrane
consists of covalently linked, tightly packed
long-chain mycolic acids [1,2] and noncovalently
bound shorter lipids involved in
pathogenicity [3β5]. To ensure protein
transport across this complex cell envelope,
mycobacteria use various secretion pathways,
such as the SecA1-mediated general
secretory pathway [6,7], an alternative
SecA2-operated pathway [8], a twin-arginine
translocation system [9,10], and a
specialized secretion pathway variously
named ESAT-6-, SNM-, ESX-, or type
VII secretion [11β16]. The latter pathway,
hereafter referred to as type VII secretion
(T7S), has recently become a large and
competitive research topic that is closely
linked to studies of hostβpathogen interactions
of M. tuberculosis [17] and other
pathogenic mycobacteria [16]. Molecular
details are just beginning to be revealed
[18β22] showing that T7S systems are
complex machineries with multiple components
and multiple substrates. Despite
their biological importance, there has been
a lack of a clear naming policy for the
components and substrates of these systems.
As there are multiple paralogous T7S
systems within the Mycobacteria and
orthologous systems in related bacteria,
we are concerned that, without a unified
nomenclature system, a multitude of redundant
and obscure gene names will be
used that will inevitably lead to confusion
and hinder future progress. In this opinion
piece we will therefore propose and introduce
a systematic nomenclature with
guidelines for name selection of new
components that will greatly facilitate
communication and understanding in this
rapidly developing field of research.http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1000507Publisher's versio
A quantitative analysis of complexity of human pathogen-specific CD4 T cell responses in healthy M. tuberculosis infected South Africans
Author Summary: Human pathogen-specific immune responses are tremendously complex and the techniques to study them ever expanding. There is an urgent need for a quantitative analysis and better understanding of pathogen-specific immune responses. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is one of the leading causes of mortality due to an infectious agent worldwide. Here, we were able to quantify the Mtb-specific response in healthy individuals with Mtb infection from South Africa. The response is highly diverse and 66 epitopes are required to capture 80% of the total reactivity. Our study also show that the majority of the identified epitopes are restricted by multiple HLA alleles. Thus, technical advances are required to capture and characterize the complete pathogen-specific response. This study demonstrates further that the approach combining identified epitopes into "megapools" allows capturing a large fraction of the total reactivity. This suggests that this technique is generally applicable to the characterization of immunity to other complex pathogens. Together, our data provide for the first time a quantitative analysis of the complex pathogen-specific T cell response and provide a new understanding of human infections in a natural infection setting
Contrasting Transcriptional Responses of a Virulent and an Attenuated Strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infecting Macrophages
Along with the recent identification of single nucleotide polymorphisms in H37Ra when compared to H37Rv, our demonstration of differential expression of PhoP-regulated and ESX-1 region-related genes during macrophage infection further highlights the significance of these genes in the attenuation of H37Ra
Subcortical volumetric abnormalities in bipolar disorder.
Considerable uncertainty exists about the defining brain changes associated with bipolar disorder (BD). Understanding and quantifying the sources of uncertainty can help generate novel clinical hypotheses about etiology and assist in the development of biomarkers for indexing disease progression and prognosis. Here we were interested in quantifying case-control differences in intracranial volume (ICV) and each of eight subcortical brain measures: nucleus accumbens, amygdala, caudate, hippocampus, globus pallidus, putamen, thalamus, lateral ventricles. In a large study of 1710 BD patients and 2594 healthy controls, we found consistent volumetric reductions in BD patients for mean hippocampus (Cohen's d=-0.232; P=3.50 Γ 10(-7)) and thalamus (d=-0.148; P=4.27 Γ 10(-3)) and enlarged lateral ventricles (d=-0.260; P=3.93 Γ 10(-5)) in patients. No significant effect of age at illness onset was detected. Stratifying patients based on clinical subtype (BD type I or type II) revealed that BDI patients had significantly larger lateral ventricles and smaller hippocampus and amygdala than controls. However, when comparing BDI and BDII patients directly, we did not detect any significant differences in brain volume. This likely represents similar etiology between BD subtype classifications. Exploratory analyses revealed significantly larger thalamic volumes in patients taking lithium compared with patients not taking lithium. We detected no significant differences between BDII patients and controls in the largest such comparison to date. Findings in this study should be interpreted with caution and with careful consideration of the limitations inherent to meta-analyzed neuroimaging comparisons.Molecular Psychiatry advance online publication, 9 February 2016; doi:10.1038/mp.2015.227
The vestibular system modulates the contributions of head and torso to egocentric spatial judgements
Egocentric representations allow us to describe the external world as experienced from an individualβs bodily location. We recently developed a novel method of quantifying the weight given to different body parts in egocentric judgments (the Misalignment Paradigm). We found that both head and torso contribute to simple alter-egocentric spatial judgments. We hypothesised that artificial stimulation of the vestibular system would provide a head-related signal, which might affect the weighting given to the head in egocentric spatial judgments. Bipolar Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS) was applied during the Misalignment Paradigm. A sham stimulation condition was also included to control for non-specific effects. Our data show that the weight given to the head was increased during left anodal and right cathodal GVS, compared to the opposite GVS polarity and sham stimulation. That is, the polarity of GVS, which preferentially activates vestibular areas in the right cerebral hemisphere, influenced the relative weightings of head and torso in spatial judgments
Sequencing and Comparative Genome Analysis of Two Pathogenic Streptococcus gallolyticus Subspecies: Genome Plasticity, Adaptation and Virulence
Streptococcus gallolyticus infections in humans are often associated with bacteremia, infective endocarditis and colon cancers. The disease manifestations are different depending on the subspecies of S. gallolyticus causing the infection. Here, we present the complete genomes of S. gallolyticus ATCC 43143 (biotype I) and S. pasteurianus ATCC 43144 (biotype II.2). The genomic differences between the two biotypes were characterized with comparative genomic analyses. The chromosome of ATCC 43143 and ATCC 43144 are 2,36 and 2,10 Mb in length and encode 2246 and 1869 CDS respectively. The organization and genomic contents of both genomes were most similar to the recently published S. gallolyticus UCN34, where 2073 (92%) and 1607 (86%) of the ATCC 43143 and ATCC 43144 CDS were conserved in UCN34 respectively. There are around 600 CDS conserved in all Streptococcus genomes, indicating the Streptococcus genus has a small core-genome (constitute around 30% of total CDS) and substantial evolutionary plasticity. We identified eight and five regions of genome plasticity in ATCC 43143 and ATCC 43144 respectively. Within these regions, several proteins were recognized to contribute to the fitness and virulence of each of the two subspecies. We have also predicted putative cell-surface associated proteins that could play a role in adherence to host tissues, leading to persistent infections causing sub-acute and chronic diseases in humans. This study showed evidence that the S. gallolyticus still possesses genes making it suitable in a rumen environment, whereas the ability for S. pasteurianus to live in rumen is reduced. The genome heterogeneity and genetic diversity among the two biotypes, especially membrane and lipoproteins, most likely contribute to the differences in the pathogenesis of the two S. gallolyticus biotypes and the type of disease an infected patient eventually develops
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