Digital solar system geology

All available synoptic maps of the solid-surface bodies of the Solar System were digitized for presentation in the planned Atlas of the Solar System by Greeley and Batson. Since the last report (Batson et al., 1990), preliminary Uranian satellite maps were replaced with improved versions, Galilean satellite geology was simplified and digitized, structure was added to many maps, and the maps were converted to a standard format, with corresponding standing colors for the mapped units. Following these changes, the maps were re-reviewed by their authors and are now undergoing final editing before preparation for publication. In some cases (for Mercury, Venus, and Mars), more detailed maps were digitized and then simplified for the Atlas. Other detailed maps are planned to be digitized in the coming year for the Moon and the Galilean satellites. For most of the remaining bodies such as the Uranian satellites, the current digitized versions contain virtually all the detail that can be mapped given the available data; those versions will be unchanged for the Atlas. These digital geologic maps are archived at the digital scale of 1/16 degree/ pixel, in sinusoidal format. The availability of geology of the Solar System in a digital database will facilitate comparisons and integration with other data: digitized lunar geologic maps have already been used in a comparison with Galileo SSI observations of the Moon

The myogymnastics complex as an element of rehabilitation in the process of adaptation to orthopedic appliances in patients after stroke

Introduction. Stroke has become the second leading cause of long-term disability and cognitive impairment. The disease can cause debilitating neurological disorders that lead to motor, sensory and cognitive deficits and impaired psychosocial functioning. Many researchers have established an association between dental status, infections, and systemic diseases such as acute cerebrovascular disorder.The aim of the research was to determine the impact of dental health on the quality of life in patients with cerebral circulatory disorders complicated with neurological deficits by hemitype before and 30 days after orthopedic treatment by questionnaire survey.Materials and methods. The study involved 25 people with the course of ACVD complicated with neurological deficiency by hemitype, aged from 40 to 65 years, who underwent prosthetics with partial removable laminar dentures with acrylic base and retaining bent, metal clasps according to clinical indications. The first group, where the process of adaptation to the orthopedic appliance was normal, consisted of 13 people, including 7 women and 6 men. In the second group, the adaptation process took place using the proposed rehabilitation complex, and it comprised 12 patients, including 7 women and 5 men.The changes that occurred 30 days after applying a partial removable laminar denture were as follows:The value of the indicator of restricted masticatory function in subjects of the first study group was worse by 1.375 points as compared to the second group. The value of the indicator of physical pain in the process of adaptation to the orthopedic appliance was noteworthy, since it decreased significantly in the second group and amounted to 14.404 points, which was by 1.335 points higher than in patients of the first group.The level of psychological discomfort in patients of the first group was 32.412 points, which was 1.183 points different from that of patients in the second group, in favor of the latter. At the same time, a comparison of the level of psychological inferiority showed that this indicator was higher in the first group than in the second study group by 0.988 points, i.e., the dynamics of changes in this indicator was better in the second one.Comparison of the level of social inferiority showed that in the first study group it was higher by 2.106 points than in the third group. Comparison of the level of disability showed a difference of this indicator by 1.226 points in favor of patients of the second groupThe above data suggest a general trend of improving the basic health indicators of patients in the process of orthopedic rehabilitation. At the same time, there was a clear difference between the results of the questionnaire survey between patients of the first and second groups, and these indicators were better in the latter.Conclusions. The effectiveness of the proposed rehabilitation complex for patients with cerebral circulatory disorders complicated with neurological deficiency by hemitype after prosthetics with partial removable laminar appliances was confirmed by a decrease in numerical data from the questionnaire survey by 15%, indicating an improvement in quality of life in this category of patients

Structural Characterization of Covalently Stabilized Human Cystatin C Oligomers

Human cystatin C (HCC), a cysteine-protease inhibitor, exists as a folded monomer under physiological conditions but has the ability to self-assemble via domain swapping into multimeric states, including oligomers with a doughnut-like structure. The structure of the monomeric HCC has been solved by X-ray crystallography, and a covalently linked version of HCC (stab-1 HCC) is able to form stable oligomeric species containing 10−12 monomeric subunits. We have performed molecular modeling, and in conjunction with experimental parameters obtained from atomic force microscopy (AFM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) measurements, we observe that the structures are essentially flat, with a height of about 2 nm, and the distance between the outer edge of the ring and the edge of the central cavity is ~5.1 nm. These dimensions correspond to the height and diameter of one stab-1 HCC subunit and we present a dodecamer model for stabilized cystatin C oligomers using molecular dynamics simulations and experimentally measured parameters. Given that oligomeric species in protein aggregation reactions are often transient and very highly heterogeneous, the structural information presented here on these isolated stab-1 HCC oligomers may be useful to further explore the physiological relevance of different structural species of cystatin C in relation to protein misfolding disease

A Possible Constraint on Regional Precipitation Intensity Changes under Global Warming

Changes in daily precipitation versus intensity under a global warming scenario in two regional climate simulations of the United States show a well-recognized feature of more intense precipitation. More important, by resolving the precipitation intensity spectrum, the changes show a relatively simple pattern for nearly all regions and seasons examined whereby nearly all high-intensity daily precipitation contributes a larger fraction of the total precipitation, and nearly all low-intensity precipitation contributes a reduced fraction. The percentile separating relative decrease from relative increase occurs around the 70th percentile of cumulative precipitation, irrespective of the governing precipitation processes or which model produced the simulation. Changes in normalized distributions display these features much more consistently than distribution changes without normalization. Further analysis suggests that this consistent response in precipitation intensity may be a consequence of the intensity spectrum’s adherence to a gamma distribution. Under the gamma distribution, when the total precipitation or number of precipitation days changes, there is a single transition between precipitation rates that contribute relatively more to the total and rates that contribute relatively less. The behavior is roughly the same as the results of the numerical models and is insensitive to characteristics of the baseline climate, such as average precipitation, frequency of rain days, and the shape parameter of the precipitation’s gamma distribution. Changes in the normalized precipitation distribution give a more consistent constraint on how precipitation intensity may change when climate changes than do changes in the nonnormalized distribution. The analysis does not apply to extreme precipitation for which the theory of statistical extremes more likely provides the appropriate description

Dimer coverings on the Sierpinski gasket with possible vacancies on the outmost vertices

We present the number of dimers $N_d(n)$ on the Sierpinski gasket $SG_d(n)$ at stage $n$ with dimension $d$ equal to two, three, four or five, where one of the outmost vertices is not covered when the number of vertices $v(n)$ is an odd number. The entropy of absorption of diatomic molecules per site, defined as $S_{SG_d}=\lim_{n \to \infty} \ln N_d(n)/v(n)$, is calculated to be $\ln(2)/3$ exactly for $SG_2(n)$. The numbers of dimers on the generalized Sierpinski gasket $SG_{d,b}(n)$ with $d=2$ and $b=3,4,5$ are also obtained exactly. Their entropies are equal to $\ln(6)/7$, $\ln(28)/12$, $\ln(200)/18$, respectively. The upper and lower bounds for the entropy are derived in terms of the results at a certain stage for $SG_d(n)$ with $d=3,4,5$. As the difference between these bounds converges quickly to zero as the calculated stage increases, the numerical value of $S_{SG_d}$ with $d=3,4,5$ can be evaluated with more than a hundred significant figures accurate.Comment: 35 pages, 20 figures and 1 tabl

TISs-ST: a web server to evaluate polymorphic translation initiation sites and their reflections on the secretory targets

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The nucleotide sequence flanking the translation initiation codon (start codon context) affects the translational efficiency of eukaryotic mRNAs, and may indicate the presence of an alternative translation initiation site (TIS) to produce proteins with different properties. Multi-targeting may reflect the translational variability of these other protein forms. In this paper we present a web server that performs computations to investigate the usage of alternative translation initiation sites for the synthesis of new protein variants that might have different functions.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>An efficient web-based tool entitled TISs-ST (Translation Initiation Sites and Secretory Targets) evaluates putative translation initiation sites and indicates the prediction of a signal peptide of the protein encoded from this site. The TISs-ST web server is freely available to both academic and commercial users and can be accessed at <url>http://ipe.cbmeg.unicamp.br/pub/TISs-ST</url>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The program can be used to evaluate alternative translation initiation site consensus with user-specified sequences, based on their composition or on many position weight matrix models. TISs-ST provides analytical and visualization tools for evaluating the periodic frequency, the consensus pattern and the total information content of a sequence data set. A search option allows for the identification of signal peptides from predicted proteins using the PrediSi software.</p

Low-energy electron-induced decomposition of 5-trifluoromethanesulfonyl-uracil: A potential radiosensitizer

Grant Nos. PD/BD/114447/2016 and PD/BD/114452/2016. researcher position No. IF-FCT IF/00380/2014. Doctoral Training Programme (RaBBiT, PD/00193/2012). S.D. acknowledges support from FWF (P30332). Polish National Science Center (NCN) under the Grant No. UMO-2014/14/A/ST4/00405 (J. R.).5-trifluoromethanesulfonyl-uracil (OTfU), a recently proposed radiosensitizer, is decomposed in the gas-phase by attachment of low-energy electrons. OTfU is a derivative of uracil with a triflate (OTf) group at the C5-position, which substantially increases its ability to undergo effective electron-induced dissociation. We report a rich assortment of fragments formed upon dissociative electron attachment (DEA), mostly by simple bond cleavages (e.g., dehydrogenation or formation of OTf-). The most favorable DEA channel corresponds to the formation of the triflate anion alongside with the reactive uracil-5-yl radical through the cleavage of the O-C5 bond, particularly at about 0 eV. Unlike for halouracils, the parent anion was not detected in our experiments. The experimental findings are accounted by a comprehensive theoretical study carried out at the M06-2X/aug-cc-pVTZ level. The latter comprises the thermodynamic thresholds for the formation of the observed anions calculated under the experimental conditions (383.15 K and 3 × 10-11 atm). The energy-resolved ion yield of the dehydrogenated parent anion, (OTfU-H)-, is discussed in terms of vibrational Feshbach resonances arising from the coupling between the dipole bound state and vibrational levels of the transient negative ion. We also report the mass spectrum of the cations obtained through ionization of OTfU by electrons with a kinetic energy of 70 eV. The current study endorses OTfU as a potential radiosensitizer agent with possible applications in radio-chemotherapy.publishersversionpublishe

A Novel Two-Channel Continuous-Time Time-Interleaved 3rd-order Sigma- Delta Modulator with Integrator-Sharing Topology

this paper presents a 3rd-order two-path Continuous-Time Time-Interleaved (CTTI) delta-sigma modulator which is implemented in standard 90nm CMOS technology. The architecture uses a novel method to resolve the delayless feedback path issue arising from the sharing of integrators between paths. By exploiting the concept of the time-interleaving techniques and through the use time domain equations, a conventional single path 3rd-order Discrete-Time (DT) ΔΣ modulator is converted into a corresponding two-path Discrete-Time Time-Interleaved (DTTI) counterpart. The equivalent Continuous-Time Time-Interleaved version derived from the DTTI ΔΣ modulator by determining the DT loop filters and converting them to the equivalent Continuous-Time (CT) loop filters through the use of the Impulse Invariant Transformation. Sharing the integrators between two paths of the reported modulator makes it robust to path mismatch effects compared to the typical Time-Interleaved (TI) modulators which have individual integrators in all paths. The modulator achieves a dynamic range of 12 bits with an OverSampling Ratio (OSR) of 16 over a bandwidth of 10MHz and dissipates only 28mW of power from a 1.8-V supply. The clock frequency of the modulator is 320MHz but integrators, quantizers and DACs operate at 160MHz