Federalism to an Advantage: The Demise of State Blue Sky Laws Under the Uniform Securities Act

They come at an opportune time. They are the changes to the Uniform Securities Act. Although some of the changes are perfunctory, the significant changes have a fascinating common thread running through them. That fascinating thread is federalism. Changes in the Act could move regulation away from the hands of the states and make federal registration, more or less, a ticket for sales without state approval. The changes are not without opposition. This article will discuss the changes, the reactions of particular concerned groups and the perceived effects of such changes

Global mapping of RNA homodimers in living cells

RNA homodimerization is important for various physiological processes, including the assembly of membraneless organelles, RNA subcellular localization, and packaging of viral genomes. However, understanding RNA dimerization has been hampered by the lack of systematic in vivo detection methods. Here, we show that CLASH, PARIS, and other RNA proximity ligation methods detect RNA homodimers transcriptome-wide as “overlapping” chimeric reads that contain more than one copy of the same sequence. Analyzing published proximity ligation data sets, we show that RNA:RNA homodimers mediated by direct base-pairing are rare across the human transcriptome, but highly enriched in specific transcripts, including U8 snoRNA, U2 snRNA, and a subset of tRNAs. Mutations in the homodimerization domain of U8 snoRNA impede dimerization in vitro and disrupt zebrafish development in vivo, suggesting an evolutionarily conserved role of this domain. Analysis of virus-infected cells reveals homodimerization of SARS-CoV-2 and Zika genomes, mediated by specific palindromic sequences located within protein-coding regions of N gene in SARS-CoV-2 and NS2A gene in Zika. We speculate that regions of viral genomes involved in homodimerization may constitute effective targets for antiviral therapies

Genome landscapes and bacteriophage codon usage

Across all kingdoms of biological life, protein-coding genes exhibit unequal usage of synonmous codons. Although alternative theories abound, translational selection has been accepted as an important mechanism that shapes the patterns of codon usage in prokaryotes and simple eukaryotes. Here we analyze patterns of codon usage across 74 diverse bacteriophages that infect E. coli, P. aeruginosa and L. lactis as their primary host. We introduce the concept of a `genome landscape,' which helps reveal non-trivial, long-range patterns in codon usage across a genome. We develop a series of randomization tests that allow us to interrogate the significance of one aspect of codon usage, such a GC content, while controlling for another aspect, such as adaptation to host-preferred codons. We find that 33 phage genomes exhibit highly non-random patterns in their GC3-content, use of host-preferred codons, or both. We show that the head and tail proteins of these phages exhibit significant bias towards host-preferred codons, relative to the non-structural phage proteins. Our results support the hypothesis of translational selection on viral genes for host-preferred codons, over a broad range of bacteriophages.Comment: 9 Color Figures, 5 Tables, 53 Reference

Using synthetic biological parts and microbioreactors to explore the protein expression characteristics of Escherichia coli

Synthetic biology has developed numerous parts for the precise control of protein expression. However, relatively little is known about the burden these place on a host, or their reliability under varying environmental conditions. To address this, we made use of synthetic transcriptional and translational elements to create a combinatorial library of constructs that modulated expression strength of a green fluorescent protein. Combining this library with a microbioreactor platform, we were able to perform a detailed large-scale assessment of transient expression and growth characteristics of two <i>Escherichia coli</i> strains across several temperatures. This revealed significant differences in the robustness of both strains to differing types of protein expression, and a complex response of transcriptional and translational elements to differing temperatures. This study supports the development of reliable synthetic biological systems capable of working across different hosts and environmental contexts. Plasmids developed during this work have been made publicly available to act as a reference set for future research

Pattern Comparator Trigger (PACT) for the muon system of the CMS experiment

The general scheme for the fast, pipelined first level trigger on high pt muons in the CMS detector at LHC is presented. The prototype PACT system was tested in the high momentum muon beams in the RD5 experiment during 1993/94 runs. The obtained efficiency curves are shown

On the appearance of Eisenstein series through degeneration

Let $\Gamma$ be a Fuchsian group of the first kind acting on the hyperbolic upper half plane $\mathbb H$, and let $M = \Gamma \backslash \mathbb H$ be the associated finite volume hyperbolic Riemann surface. If $\gamma$ is parabolic, there is an associated (parabolic) Eisenstein series, which, by now, is a classical part of mathematical literature. If $\gamma$ is hyperbolic, then, following ideas due to Kudla-Millson, there is a corresponding hyperbolic Eisenstein series. In this article, we study the limiting behavior of parabolic and hyperbolic Eisenstein series on a degenerating family of finite volume hyperbolic Riemann surfaces. In particular, we prove the following result. If $\gamma \in \Gamma$ corresponds to a degenerating hyperbolic element, then a multiple of the associated hyperbolic Eisenstein series converges to parabolic Eisenstein series on the limit surface.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. This paper has been accepted for publication in Commentarii Mathematici Helvetic

Gravitational Waves From Known Pulsars: Results From The Initial Detector Era

We present the results of searches for gravitational waves from a large selection of pulsars using data from the most recent science runs (S6, VSR2 and VSR4) of the initial generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors LIGO (Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory) and Virgo. We do not see evidence for gravitational wave emission from any of the targeted sources but produce upper limits on the emission amplitude. We highlight the results from seven young pulsars with large spin-down luminosities. We reach within a factor of five of the canonical spin-down limit for all seven of these, whilst for the Crab and Vela pulsars we further surpass their spin-down limits. We present new or updated limits for 172 other pulsars (including both young and millisecond pulsars). Now that the detectors are undergoing major upgrades, and, for completeness, we bring together all of the most up-to-date results from all pulsars searched for during the operations of the first-generation LIGO, Virgo and GEO600 detectors. This gives a total of 195 pulsars including the most recent results described in this paper.United States National Science FoundationScience and Technology Facilities Council of the United KingdomMax-Planck-SocietyState of Niedersachsen/GermanyAustralian Research CouncilInternational Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of AustraliaCouncil of Scientific and Industrial Research of IndiaIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of ItalySpanish Ministerio de Economia y CompetitividadConselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovacio of the Govern de les Illes BalearsNetherlands Organisation for Scientific ResearchPolish Ministry of Science and Higher EducationFOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish ScienceRoyal SocietyScottish Funding CouncilScottish Universities Physics AllianceNational Aeronautics and Space AdministrationOTKA of HungaryLyon Institute of Origins (LIO)National Research Foundation of KoreaIndustry CanadaProvince of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and InnovationNational Science and Engineering Research Council CanadaCarnegie TrustLeverhulme TrustDavid and Lucile Packard FoundationResearch CorporationAlfred P. Sloan FoundationAstronom