362 research outputs found
Calculation of magnetic anisotropy energy in SmCo5
SmCo5 is an important hard magnetic material, due to its large magnetic
anisotropy energy (MAE). We have studied the magnetic properties of SmCo5 using
density functional theory (DFT) calculations where the Sm f-bands, which are
difficult to include in DFT calculations, have been treated within the LDA+U
formalism. The large MAE comes mostly from the Sm f-shell anisotropy, stemming
from an interplay between the crystal field and the spin-orbit coupling. We
found that both are of similar strengths, unlike some other Sm compounds,
leading to a partial quenching of the orbital moment (f-states cannot be
described as either pure lattice harmonics or pure complex harmonics), an
optimal situation for enhanced MAE. A smaller portion of the MAE can be
associated with the Co-d band anisotropy, related to the peak in the density of
states at the Fermi energy. Our result for the MAE of SmCo5, 21.6 meV/f.u.,
agrees reasonably with the experimental value of 13-16 meV/f.u., and the
calculated magnetic moment (including the orbital component) of 9.4 mu_B agrees
with the experimental value of 8.9 mu_B.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.
A Universal System for Highly Efficient Cardiac Differentiation of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells That Eliminates Interline Variability
The production of cardiomyocytes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) holds great promise for patient-specific cardiotoxicity drug testing, disease modeling, and cardiac regeneration. However, existing protocols for the differentiation of hiPSC to the cardiac lineage are inefficient and highly variable. We describe a highly efficient system for differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) and hiPSC to the cardiac lineage. This system eliminated the variability in cardiac differentiation capacity of a variety of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC), including hiPSC generated from CD34(+) cord blood using non-viral, non-integrating methods.We systematically and rigorously optimized >45 experimental variables to develop a universal cardiac differentiation system that produced contracting human embryoid bodies (hEB) with an improved efficiency of 94.7±2.4% in an accelerated nine days from four hESC and seven hiPSC lines tested, including hiPSC derived from neonatal CD34(+) cord blood and adult fibroblasts using non-integrating episomal plasmids. This cost-effective differentiation method employed forced aggregation hEB formation in a chemically defined medium, along with staged exposure to physiological (5%) oxygen, and optimized concentrations of mesodermal morphogens BMP4 and FGF2, polyvinyl alcohol, serum, and insulin. The contracting hEB derived using these methods were composed of high percentages (64-89%) of cardiac troponin I(+) cells that displayed ultrastructural properties of functional cardiomyocytes and uniform electrophysiological profiles responsive to cardioactive drugs.This efficient and cost-effective universal system for cardiac differentiation of hiPSC allows a potentially unlimited production of functional cardiomyocytes suitable for application to hPSC-based drug development, cardiac disease modeling, and the future generation of clinically-safe nonviral human cardiac cells for regenerative medicine
Integrating Diverse Datasets Improves Developmental Enhancer Prediction
Gene-regulatory enhancers have been identified using various approaches, including evolutionary conservation, regulatory protein binding, chromatin modifications, and DNA sequence motifs. To integrate these different approaches, we developed EnhancerFinder, a two-step method for distinguishing developmental enhancers from the genomic background and then predicting their tissue specificity. EnhancerFinder uses a multiple kernel learning approach to integrate DNA sequence motifs, evolutionary patterns, and diverse functional genomics datasets from a variety of cell types. In contrast with prediction approaches that define enhancers based on histone marks or p300 sites from a single cell line, we trained EnhancerFinder on hundreds of experimentally verified human developmental enhancers from the VISTA Enhancer Browser. We comprehensively evaluated EnhancerFinder using cross validation and found that our integrative method improves the identification of enhancers over approaches that consider a single type of data, such as sequence motifs, evolutionary conservation, or the binding of enhancer-associated proteins. We find that VISTA enhancers active in embryonic heart are easier to identify than enhancers active in several other embryonic tissues, likely due to their uniquely high GC content. We applied EnhancerFinder to the entire human genome and predicted 84,301 developmental enhancers and their tissue specificity. These predictions provide specific functional annotations for large amounts of human non-coding DNA, and are significantly enriched near genes with annotated roles in their predicted tissues and lead SNPs from genome-wide association studies. We demonstrate the utility of EnhancerFinder predictions through in vivo validation of novel embryonic gene regulatory enhancers from three developmental transcription factor loci. Our genome-wide developmental enhancer predictions are freely available as a UCSC Genome Browser track, which we hope will enable researchers to further investigate questions in developmental biology. © 2014 Erwin et al
GWAS of Follicular Lymphoma Reveals Allelic Heterogeneity at 6p21.32 and Suggests Shared Genetic Susceptibility with Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) represents a diverse group of hematological
malignancies, of which follicular lymphoma (FL) is a prevalent subtype. A
previous genome-wide association study has established a marker, rs10484561 in
the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II region on 6p21.32 associated with
increased FL risk. Here, in a three-stage genome-wide association study,
starting with a genome-wide scan of 379 FL cases and 791 controls followed by
validation in 1,049 cases and 5,790 controls, we identified a second independent
FLâassociated locus on 6p21.32, rs2647012
(ORcombinedâ=â0.64,
Pcombinedâ=â2Ă10â21)
located 962 bp away from rs10484561 (r2<0.1 in controls). After
mutual adjustment, the associations at the two SNPs remained genome-wide
significant (rs2647012:ORadjustedâ=â0.70,
Padjustedâ=â4Ă10â12;
rs10484561:ORadjustedâ=â1.64,
Padjustedâ=â5Ă10â15).
Haplotype and coalescence analyses indicated that rs2647012 arose on an
evolutionarily distinct haplotype from that of rs10484561 and tags a novel
allele with an opposite (protective) effect on FL risk. Moreover, in a follow-up
analysis of the top 6 FLâassociated SNPs in 4,449 cases of other NHL
subtypes, rs10484561 was associated with risk of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
(ORcombinedâ=â1.36,
Pcombinedâ=â1.4Ă10â7).
Our results reveal the presence of allelic heterogeneity within the HLA class II
region influencing FL susceptibility and indicate a possible shared genetic
etiology with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. These findings suggest that the HLA
class II region plays a complex yet important role in NHL
SNAPSHOT USA 2019 : a coordinated national camera trap survey of the United States
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the United States. For our first annual survey, we compiled data across all 50 states during a 14-week period (17 August - 24 November of 2019). We sampled wildlife at 1509 camera trap sites from 110 camera trap arrays covering 12 different ecoregions across four development zones. This effort resulted in 166,036 unique detections of 83 species of mammals and 17 species of birds. All images were processed through the Smithsonian's eMammal camera trap data repository and included an expert review phase to ensure taxonomic accuracy of data, resulting in each picture being reviewed at least twice. The results represent a timely and standardized camera trap survey of the USA. All of the 2019 survey data are made available herein. We are currently repeating surveys in fall 2020, opening up the opportunity to other institutions and cooperators to expand coverage of all the urban-wild gradients and ecophysiographic regions of the country. Future data will be available as the database is updated at eMammal.si.edu/snapshot-usa, as well as future data paper submissions. These data will be useful for local and macroecological research including the examination of community assembly, effects of environmental and anthropogenic landscape variables, effects of fragmentation and extinction debt dynamics, as well as species-specific population dynamics and conservation action plans. There are no copyright restrictions; please cite this paper when using the data for publication.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
A framework for human microbiome research
A variety of microbial communities and their genes (the microbiome) exist throughout the human body, with fundamental roles in human health and disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Human Microbiome Project Consortium has established a population-scale framework to develop metagenomic protocols, resulting in a broad range of quality-controlled resources and data including standardized methods for creating, processing and interpreting distinct types of high-throughput metagenomic data available to the scientific community. Here we present resources from a population of 242 healthy adults sampled at 15 or 18 body sites up to three times, which have generated 5,177 microbial taxonomic profiles from 16S ribosomal RNA genes and over 3.5 terabases of metagenomic sequence so far. In parallel, approximately 800 reference strains isolated from the human body have been sequenced. Collectively, these data represent the largest resource describing the abundance and variety of the human microbiome, while providing a framework for current and future studies
Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in -tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV
Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton
collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against
a boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and
transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 GeV and in the pseudorapidity range . The
data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy
of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb. Triple
differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum
fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also
measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent
fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the
measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into
the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any
supplementary material and additional information, are available at
https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb
public pages
Study of the decay
The decay is studied
in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of TeV
using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5
collected by the LHCb experiment. In the system, the
state observed at the BaBar and Belle experiments is
resolved into two narrower states, and ,
whose masses and widths are measured to be where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second
systematic. The results are consistent with a previous LHCb measurement using a
prompt sample. Evidence of a new
state is found with a local significance of , whose mass and width
are measured to be and , respectively. In addition, evidence of a new decay mode
is found with a significance of
. The relative branching fraction of with respect to the
decay is measured to be , where the first
uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third originates from
the branching fractions of charm hadron decays.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and
additional information, are available at
https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-028.html (LHCb
public pages
Measurement of the ratios of branching fractions and
The ratios of branching fractions
and are measured, assuming isospin symmetry, using a
sample of proton-proton collision data corresponding to 3.0 fb of
integrated luminosity recorded by the LHCb experiment during 2011 and 2012. The
tau lepton is identified in the decay mode
. The measured values are
and
, where the first uncertainty is
statistical and the second is systematic. The correlation between these
measurements is . Results are consistent with the current average
of these quantities and are at a combined 1.9 standard deviations from the
predictions based on lepton flavor universality in the Standard Model.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and
additional information, are available at
https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-039.html (LHCb
public pages
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Elevated protein concentrations in newborn blood and the risks of autism spectrum disorder, and of social impairment, at age 10 years among infants born before the 28th week of gestation
Among the 1 of 10 children who are born preterm annually in the United States, 6% are born before the third trimester. Among children who survive birth before the 28th week of gestation, the risks of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and non-autistic social impairment are severalfold higher than in the general population. We examined the relationship between top quartile inflammation-related protein concentrations among children born extremely preterm and ASD or, separately, a high score on the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS total score â„65) among those who did not meet ASD criteria, using information only from the subset of children whose DAS-II verbal or non-verbal IQ was â„70, who were assessed for ASD, and who had proteins measured in blood collected on â„2 days (N = 763). ASD (N = 36) assessed at age 10 years is associated with recurrent top quartile concentrations of inflammation-related proteins during the first post-natal month (e.g., SAA odds ratio (OR); 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.5; 1.2â5.3) and IL-6 (OR; 95% CI: 2.6; 1.03â6.4)). Top quartile concentrations of neurotrophic proteins appear to moderate the increased risk of ASD associated with repeated top quartile concentrations of inflammation-related proteins. High (top quartile) concentrations of SAA are associated with elevated risk of ASD (2.8; 1.2â6.7) when Ang-1 concentrations are below the top quartile, but not when Ang-1 concentrations are high (1.3; 0.3â5.8). Similarly, high concentrations of TNF-α are associated with heightened risk of SRS-defined social impairment (N = 130) (2.0; 1.1â3.8) when ANG-1 concentrations are not high, but not when ANG-1 concentrations are elevated (0.5; 0.1â4.2)
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