Roles of proton-neutron interactions in alpha-like four-nucleon correlations

An extended pairing plus QQ force model, which has been shown to successfully explain the nuclear binding energy and related quantities such as the symmetry energy, is applied to study the alpha-like four-nucleon correlations in 1f_{7/2} shell nuclei. The double difference of binding energies, which displays a characteristic behavior at $N \approx Z$, is interpreted in terms of the alpha-like correlations. Important roles of proton-neutron interactions forming the alpha-like correlated structure are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, RevTex, submitted to Phys. Rev.

The (im)materiality of literacy : the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research.

This article deconstructs the online and offline experience to show its complexities and idiosyncratic nature. It proposes a theoretical framework designed to conceptualise aspects of meaning-making across on- and offline contexts. In arguing for the ‘(im)materiality’ of literacy, it makes four propositions which highlight the complex and diverse relationships between the immaterial and material associated with meaning-making. Complementing existing sociocultural perspectives on literacy, the article draws attention to the significance of relationships between space, mediation, materiality and embodiment to literacy practices. This in turn emphasises the importance of the subjective in understanding how different locations, experiences and so forth inflect literacy practice. The article concludes by drawing on the Deleuzian concept of the ‘baroque’ to suggest that this focus on articulations between the material and immaterial helps us to see literacy as multiply and flexibly situated

A multi-ancestry genome-wide study incorporating gene-smoking interactions identifies multiple new loci for pulse pressure and mean arterial pressure

Elevated blood pressure (BP), a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality, is influenced by both genetic and lifestyle factors. Cigarette smoking is one such lifestyle factor. Across five ancestries, we performed a genome-wide gene–smoking interaction study of mean arterial pressure (MAP) and pulse pressure (PP) in 129 913 individuals in stage 1 and follow-up analysis in 480 178 additional individuals in stage 2. We report here 136 loci significantly associated with MAP and/or PP. Of these, 61 were previously published through main-effect analysis of BP traits, 37 were recently reported by us for systolic BP and/or diastolic BP through gene–smoking interaction analysis and 38 were newly identified (P < 5 × 10−8, false discovery rate < 0.05). We also identified nine new signals near known loci. Of the 136 loci, 8 showed significant interaction with smoking status. They include CSMD1 previously reported for insulin resistance and BP in the spontaneously hypertensive rats. Many of the 38 new loci show biologic plausibility for a role in BP regulation. SLC26A7 encodes a chloride/bicarbonate exchanger expressed in the renal outer medullary collecting duct. AVPR1A is widely expressed, including in vascular smooth muscle cells, kidney, myocardium and brain. FHAD1 is a long non-coding RNA overexpressed in heart failure. TMEM51 was associated with contractile function in cardiomyocytes. CASP9 plays a central role in cardiomyocyte apoptosis. Identified only in African ancestry were 30 novel loci. Our findings highlight the value of multi-ancestry investigations, particularly in studies of interaction with lifestyle factors, where genomic and lifestyle differences may contribute to novel findings

Multi-ancestry study of blood lipid levels identifies four loci interacting with physical activity

Many genetic loci affect circulating lipid levels, but it remains unknown whether lifestyle factors, such as physical activity, modify these genetic effects. To identify lipid loci interacting with physical activity, we performed genome-wide analyses of circulating HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglyceride levels in up to 120,979 individuals of European, African, Asian, Hispanic, and Brazilian ancestry, with follow-up of suggestive associations in an additional 131,012 individuals. We find four loci, in/near CLASP1, LHX1, SNTA1, and CNTNAP2, that are associated with circulating lipid levels through interaction with physical activity; higher levels of physical activity enhance the HDL cholesterol-increasing effects of the CLASP1, LHX1, and SNTA1 loci and attenuate the LDL cholesterol- increasing effect of the CNTNAP2 locus. The CLASP1, LHX1, and SNTA1 regions harbor genes linked to muscle function and lipid metabolism. Our results elucidate the role of physical activity interactions in the genetic contribution to blood lipid levels

The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape : A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 100 genetic variants contributing to BMI, a measure of body size, or waist-to-hip ratio (adjusted for BMI, WHRadjBMI), a measure of body shape. Body size and shape change as people grow older and these changes differ substantially between men and women. To systematically screen for age-and/or sex-specific effects of genetic variants on BMI and WHRadjBMI, we performed meta-analyses of 114 studies (up to 320,485 individuals of European descent) with genome-wide chip and/or Metabochip data by the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium. Each study tested the association of up to similar to 2.8M SNPs with BMI and WHRadjBMI in four strata (men 50y, women 50y) and summary statistics were combined in stratum-specific meta-analyses. We then screened for variants that showed age-specific effects (G x AGE), sex-specific effects (G x SEX) or age-specific effects that differed between men and women (G x AGE x SEX). For BMI, we identified 15 loci (11 previously established for main effects, four novel) that showed significant (FDR= 50y). No sex-dependent effects were identified for BMI. For WHRadjBMI, we identified 44 loci (27 previously established for main effects, 17 novel) with sex-specific effects, of which 28 showed larger effects in women than in men, five showed larger effects in men than in women, and 11 showed opposite effects between sexes. No age-dependent effects were identified for WHRadjBMI. This is the first genome-wide interaction meta-analysis to report convincing evidence of age-dependent genetic effects on BMI. In addition, we confirm the sex-specificity of genetic effects on WHRadjBMI. These results may providefurther insights into the biology that underlies weight change with age or the sexually dimorphism of body shape.Peer reviewe

Morphological, pharmacokinetic, and hematological studies of lead-exposed pigeons

Adult white Carneaux pigeons were orally dosed with inorganic lead (6.25 mg Pb/kg/day, gastric intubation) for up to 64 weeks and the following studies were carried out: (1) the subcellular distribution of lead in erythrocytes; (2) the changes in tissue lead levels with time; (3) morphological assessment of tissue responses to lead; and (4) hematological effects of lead, the major systemic evidence of toxicity. In the early stage of exposure, there is some lead accumulation in the erythrocyte nucleus relative to its proportion of total cell volume, but such accumulation disappears with time. The kinetic behavior of lead in seven tissues—blood, brain, kidney, liver, femur, sciatic nerve, and crop—was seen to conform to two mathematical methods of lead distribution; brain, kidney, and femur lead increased with dosing time and reached or appeared to approach an upper plateau; lead in blood, liver, sciatic nerve, and crop increased to a maximum, followed by a decline to a lower plateau level. Morphologically, renal tubule cells showed the presence of lead-containing inclusion bodies while CNS mitochondria appeared to have accumulated lead. No evidence of segmental demyelination was seen. Lead exposure induced a marked and rapid hypochromic normocytic anemia in these birds, as well as an elevation in erythrocyte porphyrin. No disturbance in mechanical fragility or osmotic resistance was noted

Cache Timing Analysis of RC4

Abstract. In this paper we present an attack that recovers the whole internal state of RC4 using a cache timing attack model first introduced in the cache timing attack of Osvik, Shamir and Tromer against some highly efficient AES implementations. In this model, the adversary can obtain some information related to the elements of a secret state used during the encryption process. Zenner formalized this model for LFSRbased stream ciphers. In this theoretical model inspired from practical attacks, we propose a new state recovery analysis on RC4 using a belief propagation algorithm. The algorithm works well and its soundness is proved for known or unknown plaintext and only requires that the attacker queries the RC4 encryption process byte by byte for a practical attack. Depending on the processor, our simulations show that we need between 300 to 1,300 keystream bytes and a computation time of less than a minute

Threshold implementations of all 3×3 and 4×4 S-boxes

Side-channel attacks have proven many hardware implementations of cryptographic algorithms to be vulnerable. A recently proposed masking method, based on secret sharing and multi-party computation methods, introduces a set of sufficient requirements for implementations to be provably resistant against first-order DPA with minimal assumptions on the hardware. The original paper doesn’t describe how to construct the Boolean functions that are to be used in the implementation. In this paper, we derive the functions for all invertible 3 ×3, 4 ×4 S-boxes and the 6 ×4 DES S-boxes. Our methods and observations can also be used to accelerate the search for sharings of larger (e.g. 8 ×8) S-boxes. Finally, we investigate the cost of such protection