Inherent Mosaicism and Extensive Mutation of Human Placentas

Approximately 1% to 2% of pregnancies involve chromosomal aberrations confined to the placenta. During the first few days of embryogenesis when fetal and placental lineages diverge, clonal expansion and mosaicism may occur, representing a potential pathological divergence from normal clonal dynamics of early embryogenesis. Mutations acquired during cell division may be identified and used to reconstruct embryonic lineage relationships that can reveal specific mutagenic processes affecting a tissue

Penerapan Business Continuity Pada Bank Central Asia

Banks are financial institutions that have a major impact on the economic system and can affect people\u27s lives. Hence, regulators concerned in organizing business continuity of the banking industries. PT. Bank Central Asia, Tbk. (BCA) represents businesses in the banking sector that can not escape from the natural and man threats which can interfere the bank\u27s business. This case study presents a glimpse of how the business continuity run in BCA. Moreover, business continuity in banking can not be generalized because each bank has a different strategy. Some disasters have been handled properly for their business continuity plan in BCA are catastrophic floods that hit Jakarta in 2013 and fires at several branch offices of BCA. BCA awares of the business continuity planning as an endless process that need to be refined over time. This case study described the roadmap to the awareness of business continuity planning in BCA and how the business continuity planning methodology is run in BCA

Ejection mechanisms in the sublayer of a turbulent channel

A possible model for the inception of vorticity ejections in the viscous sublayer of a turbulent rectangular channel is presented. It was shown that this part of the flow is dominated by protruding strong shear layers of z-vorticity, and it was proposed as a mechanism for their maintenance and reproduction which is essentially equivalent to that responsible for the instability of 2-D Tollmien-Schlichting waves. The efforts to isolate computationally a single structure for its study have failed up to now, since it appears that single structures decay in the absence of external forcing, but a convenient computation model was identified in the form of a long and narrow periodic computational box containing at each moment only a few structures. Further work in the identification of better reduced systems is in progress

Potentially Prebiotic Syntheses of Condensed Phosphates

In view of the importance of a prebiotic source of high energy phosphates, we have investigated a number of potentially prebiotic processes to produce condensed phosphates from orthophosphate and cyclic trimetaphosphate from tripolyphosphate. The reagents investigated include polymerizing nitriles, acid anhydrides, lactones, hexamethylene tetramine and carbon suboxide. A number of these processes give substantial yields of pyrophosphate from orthophosphate and trimetaphosphate from tripolyphosphate. Although these reactions may have been applicable in local areas, they are not sufficiently robust to have been of importance in the prebiotic open ocean

Was Ferrocyanide a Prebiotic Reagent?

Hydrogen cyanide is the starting material for a diverse array of prebiotic syntheses, including those of amino acids and purines. Hydrogen cyanide also reacts with ferrous ions to give ferrocyanide, and so it is possible that ferrocyanide was common in the early ocean. This can only be true if the hydrogen cyanide concentration was high enough and the rate of reaction of cyanide with ferrous ions was fast enough. We show experimentally that the rate of formation of ferrocyanide is rapid even at low concentrations of hydrogen cyanide in the pH range 6-8, and therefore an equilibrium calculation is valid. The equilibrium concentrations of ferrocyanide are calculated as a function of hydrogen cyanide concentration, pH and temperature. The steady state concentration of hydrogen cyanide depends on the rate of synthesis by electric discharges and ultraviolet light and the rate of hydrolysis, which depends on pH and temperature. Our conclusions show that ferrocyanide was a major species in the prebiotic ocean only at the highest production rates of hydrogen cyanide in a strongly reducing atmosphere and at temperatures of 0 C or less, although small amounts would have been present at lower hydrogen cyanide production rates. The prebiotic application of ferrocyanide as a source of hydrated electrons, as a photochemical replication process, and in semi-permeable membranes is discussed

Are Polyphosphates or Phosphate Esters Prebiotic Reagents?

It is widely held that there was a phosphate compound in prebiotic chemistry that played the role of adenosine triphosphate and that the first living organisms had ribose-phosphate in the backbone of their genetic material. However, there are no known efficient prebiotic synthesis of high-energy phosphates or phosphate esters. We review the occurrence of phosphates in nature, the efficiency of the volcanic synthesis of P4O10, the efficiency of polyphosphate synthesis by heating phosphate minerals under geological conditions, and the use of high-energy organic compounds such as cyanamide or hydrogen cyanide. These are shown to be inefficient processes especially when the hydrolysis of the polyphosphates is taken into account. For example, if a whole atmosphere of methane or carbon monoxide were converted to cyanide which somehow synthesized polyphosphates quantitatively, the polyphosphate concentration in the ocean would still have been insignificant. We also attempted to find more efficient high-energy polymerizing agents by spark discharge syntheses, but without success. There may still be undiscovered robust prebiotic syntheses of polyphosphates, or mechanisms for concentrating them, but we conclude that phosphate esters may not have been constituents of the first genetic material. Phosphoanhydrides are also unlikely as prebiotic energy sources

Round Table Discussion at the Workshop "New Directions in Modern Cosmology"

The workshop "New directions in modern cosmology", organized by Theo Nieuwenhuizen, Rudy Schild, Francesco Sylos Labini and Ruth Durrer, was held from September 27 until October 1, 2010, in the Lorentz Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. A transcript of the final round table discussion, chaired by Theo Nieuwenhuizen and Rudy Schild, is presented. The subjects are: 0) spread in data; 1) back reaction; 2) $N$-body simulations; 3) neutrinos as the dark matter; 4) gravitational hydrodynamics, 5) missing baryons and lensing in an inhomogeneous universe, and 6) final points.Comment: 14 page