The intermediate time of news consumption

Many accounts of contemporary mediated communication of various kinds emphasise speed, immediacy and simultaneity as overriding temporal characteristics, and accounts of journalism are no exception. Acceleration in journalistic practice and the associated changes in news content and its communication have a variety of consequences. In the most extreme accounts, this produces ever-shallower news content while the immediacy of its delivery collapses deliberative time for its interpretation. This article attempts to challenge some of the assumptions on which these assertions are based by taking an alternative starting point in analysing news time and temporality: the news audience. We argue that many accounts which emphasise the paralysing effects of fast communication and the acceleration of news in particular fail to acknowledge the complexities of news consumption, instead pessimistically reading off the effects of speed from communications technologies themselves. We go on to consider the value of social scientific audience research characterisation of practices of consuming the news in contemporary culture and suggest that these need to be accompanied by ethnographic approaches to the audience which engage with the ways in which meaning is produced from the resources that journalism provides in everyday lived contexts

Estimation of the spontaneous mutation rate in Heliconius melpomene

This is the final published version. It first appeared at mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/11/03/molbev.msu302.abstract.We estimated the spontaneous mutation rate in Heliconius melpomene by genome sequencing of\ud a pair of parents and 30 of their offspring, based on the ratio of number of de novo heterozygotes\ud to the number of callable site-individuals. We detected nine new mutations, each one affecting a\ud single site in a single offspring. This yields an estimated mutation rate of 2.9 x 10-9 (95%\ud confidence interval, 1.3 x 10-9 - 5.5 x 10-9), which is similar to recent estimates in Drosophila\ud melanogaster, the only other insect species in which the mutation rate has been directly estimated.\ud We infer that recent effective population size of H. melpomene is about 2 million, a substantially\ud lower value than its census size, suggesting a role for natural selection reducing diversity. We\ud estimate that H. melpomene diverged from its M?llerian co-mimic H. erato about 6 MYA, a\ud somewhat later date than estimates based on a local molecular clock.CJ was funded by BBSRC [H01439X/1], JWD was funded by the Herchel Smith Fund and PDK and\ud RWN were funded by the BBSRC

Evaluation of EC Measurement Comparison on Simulated Airborne Particulates - 137Cs in Air Filters

This report describes the full life cycle of the measurement comparison of 137Cs in air filters among 43 European laboratories monitoring radioactivity in the environment. Gravimetrically pipetting droplets of a gravimetrically diluted standardised 137Cs solution onto real air filters, SI-traceable reference values were established for intercomparison filters carrying a large range of activity close to the routine measurement conditions of the corresponding laboratory. The sample preparation and measurement processes applied in the participating laboratories are described and the results of the intercomparison are presented and discussed in detail. The results point at some problems of radioactivity measurement in air filters which need to be improved by several laboratories. Overall, with 41 out of 48 reported measurement results lying within +/- 33 % of the IRMM reference value, this comparison renders a rather fair result.JRC.D.4-Isotope measurement

New methods for inferring the distribution of fitness effects for INDELs and SNPs

Small insertions and deletions (INDELs; ≤50bp) are the most common type of variability after SNPs. However, compared to SNPs, we know little about the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) of new INDEL mutations and how prevalent adaptive INDEL substitutions are. Studying INDELs has been difficult partly because identifying ancestral states at these sites is error-prone and misidentification can lead to severely biased estimates of the strength of selection. To solve these problems, we develop new maximum likelihood methods, which use polymorphism data to simultaneously estimate the DFE, the mutation rate, and the misidentification rate. These methods are applicable to both INDELs and SNPs. Simulations show that they can provide highly accurate results. We applied the methods to an INDEL polymorphism dataset in Drosophila melanogaster. We found that the DFE for polymorphic INDELs in protein-coding regions is bimodal, with the variants being either nearly neutral or strongly deleterious. Based on the DFE, we estimated that 71.5% - 83.7% of the INDEL substitutions that took place along the D. melanogaster lineage were fixed by positive selection, which is comparable to the prevalence of adaptive substitutions at non-synonymous sites. The new methods have been implemented in the software package anavar

Evidence for variation in the effective population size of animal mitochondrial DNA

Background: It has recently been shown that levels of diversity in mitochondrial DNA are remarkably constant across animals of diverse census population sizes and ecologies, which has led to the suggestion that the effective population of mitochondrial DNA may be relatively constant. Results: Here we present several lines of evidence that suggest, to the contrary, that the effective population size of mtDNA does vary, and that the variation can be substantial. First, we show that levels of mitochondrial and nuclear diversity are correlated within all groups of animals we surveyed. Second, we show that the effectiveness of selection on non-synonymous mutations, as measured by the ratio of the numbers of non-synonymous and synonymous polymorphisms, is negatively correlated to levels of mitochondrial diversity. Finally, we estimate the effective population size of mitochondrial DNA in selected mammalian groups and show that it varies by at least an order of magnitude. Conclusions: We conclude that there is variation in the effective population size of mitochondria. Furthermore we suggest that the relative constancy of DNA diversity may be due to a negative correlation between the effective population size and the mutation rate per generation

Estimation of the spontaneous nutation rate in Heliconius melpomene

This is the final published version. It first appeared at mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/11/03/molbev.msu302.abstract.We estimated the spontaneous mutation rate in Heliconius melpomene by genome sequencing of\ud a pair of parents and 30 of their offspring, based on the ratio of number of de novo heterozygotes\ud to the number of callable site-individuals. We detected nine new mutations, each one affecting a\ud single site in a single offspring. This yields an estimated mutation rate of 2.9 x 10-9 (95%\ud confidence interval, 1.3 x 10-9 - 5.5 x 10-9), which is similar to recent estimates in Drosophila\ud melanogaster, the only other insect species in which the mutation rate has been directly estimated.\ud We infer that recent effective population size of H. melpomene is about 2 million, a substantially\ud lower value than its census size, suggesting a role for natural selection reducing diversity. We\ud estimate that H. melpomene diverged from its M?llerian co-mimic H. erato about 6 MYA, a\ud somewhat later date than estimates based on a local molecular clock.CJ was funded by BBSRC [H01439X/1], JWD was funded by the Herchel Smith Fund and PDK and\ud RWN were funded by the BBSRC

Mediator Subunit 12 Is Required for Neutrophil Development in Zebrafish

Hematopoiesis requires the spatiotemporal organization of regulatory factors to successfully orchestrate diverse lineage specificity from stem and progenitor cells. Med12 is a regulatory component of the large Mediator complex that enables contact between the general RNA polymerase II transcriptional machinery and enhancer bound regulatory factors. We have identified a new zebrafish med12 allele, syr, with a single missense mutation causing a valine to aspartic acid change at position 1046. Syr shows defects in hematopoiesis, which predominantly affect the myeloid lineage. Syr has identified a hematopoietic cell-specific requirement for Med12, suggesting a new role for this transcriptional regulator

Ice-Age Climate Adaptations Trap the Alpine Marmot in a State of Low Genetic Diversity.

Some species responded successfully to prehistoric changes in climate [1, 2], while others failed to adapt and became extinct [3]. The factors that determine successful climate adaptation remain poorly understood. We constructed a reference genome and studied physiological adaptations in the Alpine marmot (Marmota marmota), a large ground-dwelling squirrel exquisitely adapted to the "ice-age" climate of the Pleistocene steppe [4, 5]. Since the disappearance of this habitat, the rodent persists in large numbers in the high-altitude Alpine meadow [6, 7]. Genome and metabolome showed evidence of adaptation consistent with cold climate, affecting white adipose tissue. Conversely, however, we found that the Alpine marmot has levels of genetic variation that are among the lowest for mammals, such that deleterious mutations are less effectively purged. Our data rule out typical explanations for low diversity, such as high levels of consanguineous mating, or a very recent bottleneck. Instead, ancient demographic reconstruction revealed that genetic diversity was lost during the climate shifts of the Pleistocene and has not recovered, despite the current high population size. We attribute this slow recovery to the marmot's adaptive life history. The case of the Alpine marmot reveals a complicated relationship between climatic changes, genetic diversity, and conservation status. It shows that species of extremely low genetic diversity can be very successful and persist over thousands of years, but also that climate-adapted life history can trap a species in a persistent state of low genetic diversity.This work was supported by the Francis Crick Institute which receives its core funding from Cancer Research UK (FC001134), the UK Medical Research Council (FC001134), and the Wellcome Trust (FC001134). CB and AC are supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (project ANR-13-JSV7-0005) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), CB is supported by the Rhône-Alpes region (Grant 15.005146.01). LD is supported by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (project ANR-12-ADAP-0009). TIG is supported by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (Grant ECF-2015-453) and a NERC grant (NE/N013832/1). JMG is supported by a Hertha Finberg Fellowship (FWF T703). LDR is supported by the Diabetes UK RD Lawrence Fellowship (16/0005382)