Inclusion of seasonal variation in river system microbial communities and phototroph activity increases environmental relevance of laboratory chemical persistence tests

Regulatory tests assess crop protection product environmental fate and toxicity before approval for commercial use. Although globally applied laboratory tests can assess biodegradation, they lack environmental complexity. Microbial communities are subject to temporal and spatial variation, but there is little consideration of these microbial dynamics in the laboratory. Here, we investigated seasonal variation in the microbial composition of water and sediment from a UK river across a two-year time course and determined its effect on the outcome of water-sediment (OECD 308) and water-only (OECD 309) biodegradation tests, using the fungicide isopyrazam. These OECD tests are performed under dark conditions, so test systems incubated under non-UV light:dark cycles were also included to determine the impact on both inoculum characteristics and biodegradation. Isopyrazam degradation was faster when incubated under non-UV light at all collection times in water-sediment microcosms, suggesting that phototrophic communities can metabolise isopyrazam throughout the year. Degradation rate varied seasonally between inoculum collection times only in microcosms incubated in the light, but isopyrazam mineralisation to 14CO2 varied seasonally under both light and dark conditions, suggesting that heterotrophic communities may also play a role in degradation. Bacterial and phototroph communities varied across time, but there was no clear link between water or sediment microbial composition and variation in degradation rate. During the test period, inoculum microbial community composition changed, particularly in non-UV light incubated microcosms. Overall, we show that regulatory test outcome is not influenced by temporal variation in microbial community structure; however, biodegradation rates from higher tier studies with improved environmental realism, e.g. through addition of non-UV light, may be more variable. These data suggest that standardised OECD tests can provide a conservative estimate of pesticide persistence end points and that additional tests including non-UV light could help bridge the gap between standard tests and field studies

Exciting dark matter in the galactic center

We reconsider the proposal of excited dark matter (DM) as an explanation for excess 511 keV gamma rays from positrons in the galactic center. We quantitatively compute the cross section for DM annihilation to nearby excited states, mediated by exchange of a new light gauge boson with off-diagonal couplings to the DM states. In models where both excited states must be heavy enough to decay into e^+ e^- and the ground state, the predicted rate of positron production is never large enough to agree with observations, unless one makes extreme assumptions about the local circular velocity in the Milky Way, or alternatively if there exists a metastable population of DM states which can be excited through a mass gap of less than 650 keV, before decaying into electrons and positrons.Comment: Dedicated to the memory of Lev Kofman; 16 pages, 9 figures; v3 added refs, minor changes, accepted to PR

Nonlinear dynamics of two coupled nano-electromechanical resonators

As a model of coupled nano-electromechanical resonantors we study two nonlinear driven oscillators with an arbitrary coupling strength between them. Analytical expressions are derived for the oscillation amplitudes as a function of the driving frequency and for the energy transfer rate between the two oscillators. The nonlinear restoring forces induce the expected nonlinear resonance structures in the amplitude-frequency characteristics with asymmetric resonance peaks. The corresponding multistable behavior is shown to be an efficient tool to control the energy transfer arising from the sensitive response to small changes in the driving frequency. Our results imply that the nonlinear response can be exploited to design precise sensors for mass or force detection experiments based on nano-electromechanical resonators.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figure

Book Reviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66290/1/j.1752-7325.1985.tb01140.x.pd

Calculation of Mass Transfer Coefficients in a Crystal Growth Chamber through Heat Transfer Measurements

The growth rate of a crystal in a supersaturated solution is limited by both reaction kinetics and the local concentration of solute. If the local mass transfer coefficient is too low, concentration of solute at the crystal-solution interface will drop below saturation, leading to a defect in the growing crystal. Here, mass transfer coefficients are calculated for a rotating crystal growing in a supersaturated solution of potassium diphosphate (KDP) in water. Since mass transfer is difficult to measure directly, the heat transfer coefficient of a scale model crystal in water is measured using temperature-sensitive paint (TSP). To the authors' knowledge this is the first use of TSP to measure temperatures in water. The corresponding mass transfer coefficient is then calculated using the Chilton- Colburn analogy. Measurements were made for three crystal sizes at two running conditions each. Running conditions include periodic reversals of rotation direction. Heat transfer coefficients were found to vary significantly both across the crystal faces and over the course of a rotation cycle, but not from one face to another. Mean heat transfer coefficients increased with both crystal size and rotation rate. Computed mass transfer coefficients were broadly in line with expectations from the full-scale crystal growth experiments. Additional experiments show that continuous rotation of the crystal results in about a 30% lower heat transfer compared to rotation with periodic reversals. The continuous rotation case also shows a periodic variation in heat transfer coefficient of about 15%, with a period about 1/20th of the rotation rate

Metrology for MRI Safety

. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has become an indispensable medical imaging modality with about 30 million patient exams in the EU every year and an excellent history of safe use. Nevertheless, it is continuously evolving and recent technological developments such as ultrahigh magnetic fields, parallel transmission, or MRI guided radiotherapy promise to significantly enhance the quality and the range of applicability of MRI. A major reason why these technological developments are not yet used in the clinical practice are unresolved safety issues. If the patient risk cannot be quantified reliably, a ‘safety first’ attitude naturally prevails preventing the routine use of new technologies or the scanning of subjects at high risk, e.g. carriers of metallic medical implants. The EMRP joint research project HLT 06 "Metrology for MRI Safety" aimed at providing such risk assessments for certain new developments or applications in MRI. The project was concluded in 2015 and some key results will be presented here

On the combination of omics data for prediction of binary outcomes

Enrichment of predictive models with new biomolecular markers is an important task in high-dimensional omic applications. Increasingly, clinical studies include several sets of such omics markers available for each patient, measuring different levels of biological variation. As a result, one of the main challenges in predictive research is the integration of different sources of omic biomarkers for the prediction of health traits. We review several approaches for the combination of omic markers in the context of binary outcome prediction, all based on double cross-validation and regularized regression models. We evaluate their performance in terms of calibration and discrimination and we compare their performance with respect to single-omic source predictions. We illustrate the methods through the analysis of two real datasets. On the one hand, we consider the combination of two fractions of proteomic mass spectrometry for the calibration of a diagnostic rule for the detection of early-stage breast cancer. On the other hand, we consider transcriptomics and metabolomics as predictors of obesity using data from the Dietary, Lifestyle, and Genetic determinants of Obesity and Metabolic syndrome (DILGOM) study, a population-based cohort, from Finland

Electromagnetic properties of non-Dirac particles with rest spin 1/2

We resolve a number of questions related to an analytic description of electromagnetic form factors of non-Dirac particles with the rest spin 1/2. We find the general structure of a matrix antisymmetric tensor operator. We obtain two recurrence relations for matrix elements of finite transformations of the proper Lorentz group and explicit formulas for a certain set of such elements. Within the theory of fields with double symmetry, we discuss writing the components of wave vectors of particles in the form of infinite continued fractions. We show that for $Q^{2} \leq 0.5$ (GeV/c)$^{2}$, where $Q^{2}$ is the transferred momentum squared, electromagnetic form factors that decrease as $Q^{2}$ increases and are close to those experimentally observed in the proton can be obtained without explicitly introducing an internal particle structure.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure

On Virtual Displacement and Virtual Work in Lagrangian Dynamics

The confusion and ambiguity encountered by students, in understanding virtual displacement and virtual work, is discussed in this article. A definition of virtual displacement is presented that allows one to express them explicitly for holonomic (velocity independent), non-holonomic (velocity dependent), scleronomous (time independent) and rheonomous (time dependent) constraints. It is observed that for holonomic, scleronomous constraints, the virtual displacements are the displacements allowed by the constraints. However, this is not so for a general class of constraints. For simple physical systems, it is shown that, the work done by the constraint forces on virtual displacements is zero. This motivates Lagrange's extension of d'Alembert's principle to system of particles in constrained motion. However a similar zero work principle does not hold for the allowed displacements. It is also demonstrated that d'Alembert's principle of zero virtual work is necessary for the solvability of a constrained mechanical problem. We identify this special class of constraints, physically realized and solvable, as {\it the ideal constraints}. The concept of virtual displacement and the principle of zero virtual work by constraint forces are central to both Lagrange's method of undetermined multipliers, and Lagrange's equations in generalized coordinates.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures. This article is based on an earlier article physics/0410123. It includes new figures, equations and logical conten

Postglacial colonization history reflects in the genetic structure of natural populations of Festuca rubra in Europe

We conducted a large-scale population genetic survey of genetic diversity of the host grass Festuca rubra s.l., which fitness can be highly dependent on its symbiotic fungus Epichloe festucae, to evaluate genetic variation and population structure across the European range. The 27 studied populations have previously been found to differ in frequencies of occurrence of the symbiotic fungus E. festucae and ploidy levels. As predicted, we found decreased genetic diversity in previously glaciated areas in comparison with nonglaciated regions and discovered three major maternal genetic groups: southern, northeastern, and northwestern Europe. Interestingly, host populations from Greenland were genetically similar to those from the Faroe Islands and Iceland, suggesting gene flow also between those areas. The level of variation among populations within regions is evidently highly dependent on the postglacial colonization history, in particular on the number of independent long-distance seed colonization events. Yet, also anthropogenic effects may have affected the population structure in F. rubra. We did not observe higher fungal infection rates in grass populations with lower levels of genetic variability. In fact, the fungal infection rates of E. festucae in relation to genetic variability of the host populations varied widely among geographical areas, which indicate differences in population histories due to colonization events and possible costs of systemic fungi in harsh environmental conditions. We found that the plants of different ploidy levels are genetically closely related within geographic areas indicating independent formation of polyploids in different maternal lineages.Peer reviewe