Atypical radio pulsations from magnetar SGR 1935+2154

Magnetars are neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, frequently powering high-energy activity in X-rays. Pulsed radio emission following some X-ray outbursts have been detected, albeit its physical origin is unclear. It has long been speculated that the origin of magnetars' radio signals is different from those from canonical pulsars, although convincing evidence is still lacking. Five months after magnetar SGR 1935+2154's X-ray outburst and its associated Fast Radio Burst (FRB) 20200428, a radio pulsar phase was discovered. Here we report the discovery of X-ray spectral hardening associated with the emergence of periodic radio pulsations from SGR 1935+2154 and a detailed analysis of the properties of the radio pulses. The complex radio pulse morphology, which contains both narrow-band emission and frequency drifts, has not been seen before in other magnetars, but is similar to those of repeating FRBs - even though the luminosities are many orders of magnitude different. The observations suggest that radio emission originates from the outer magnetosphere of the magnetar, and the surface heating due to the bombardment of inward-going particles from the radio emission region is responsible for the observed X-ray spectral hardening.Comment: 47 pages, 11 figure

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Optofluidic Tunable Lenses for In-Plane Light Manipulation

Optofluidics incorporates optics and microfluidics together to construct novel devices for microsystems, providing flexible reconfigurability and high compatibility. Among many novel devices, a prominent one is the in-plane optofluidic lens. It manipulates the light in the plane of the substrate, upon which the liquid sample is held. Benefiting from the compatibility, the in-plane optofluidic lenses can be incorporated into a single chip without complicated manual alignment and promises high integration density. In term of the tunability, the in-plane liquid lenses can be either tuned by adjusting the fluidic interface using numerous microfluidic techniques, or by modulating the refractive index of the liquid using temperature, electric field and concentration. In this paper, the in-plane liquid lenses will be reviewed in the aspects of operation mechanisms and recent development. In addition, their applications in lab-on-a-chip systems are also discussed

Effects of Chlorothalonil Application on the Physio-Biochemical Properties and Microbial Community of a Yellow–Brown Loam Soil

To gain better knowledge of the effects of residual chlorothalonil on soil characteristics and soil microbial communities, we evaluated the dissipation of chlorothalonil and the effects of different chlorothalonil concentrations on soil respiration, enzyme activities, and microbial community structure in yellow–brown loam soils. Bacterial and fungal soil communities were examined using traditional plate counting and polymerase chain reaction–denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR–DGGE) methods. Soil properties and the results of DGGE band analysis were both used to estimate the status of the soil microbial ecosystem. The results show that residual chlorothalonil has considerable effects on soil respiration, enzymatic activities, and microbial community structure. In particular, soil respiration and phosphatase activities were increased, while saccharase activity, microbial biomass, and microbial community diversity were decreased by increasing levels of chlorothalonil treatment. Correlation analyses revealed that the application of chlorothalonil was significantly correlated with the change of the soil respiration, urease activity, sucrase activity, soil culturable bacteria, and culturable fungi biomass. We conclude that residual chlorothalonil is directly related to soil respiration, enzyme activities, and microbial community structure

Comparative analysis of prophages in Streptococcus mutans genomes

Prophages have been considered genetic units that have an intimate association with novel phenotypic properties of bacterial hosts, such as pathogenicity and genomic variation. Little is known about the genetic information of prophages in the genome of Streptococcus mutans, a major pathogen of human dental caries. In this study, we identified 35 prophage-like elements in S. mutans genomes and performed a comparative genomic analysis. Comparative genomic and phylogenetic analyses of prophage sequences revealed that the prophages could be classified into three main large clusters: Cluster A, Cluster B, and Cluster C. The S. mutans prophages in each cluster were compared. The genomic sequences of phismuN66-1, phismuNLML9-1, and phismu24-1 all shared similarities with the previously reported S. mutans phages M102, M102AD, and ϕAPCM01. The genomes were organized into seven major gene clusters according to the putative functions of the predicted open reading frames: packaging and structural modules, integrase, host lysis modules, DNA replication/recombination modules, transcriptional regulatory modules, other protein modules, and hypothetical protein modules. Moreover, an integrase gene was only identified in phismuNLML9-1 prophages

Effects of Chlorothalonil Application on the Physio-Biochemical Properties and Microbial Community of a Yellow&ndash;Brown Loam Soil

To gain better knowledge of the effects of residual chlorothalonil on soil characteristics and soil microbial communities, we evaluated the dissipation of chlorothalonil and the effects of different chlorothalonil concentrations on soil respiration, enzyme activities, and microbial community structure in yellow&ndash;brown loam soils. Bacterial and fungal soil communities were examined using traditional plate counting and polymerase chain reaction&ndash;denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR&ndash;DGGE) methods. Soil properties and the results of DGGE band analysis were both used to estimate the status of the soil microbial ecosystem. The results show that residual chlorothalonil has considerable effects on soil respiration, enzymatic activities, and microbial community structure. In particular, soil respiration and phosphatase activities were increased, while saccharase activity, microbial biomass, and microbial community diversity were decreased by increasing levels of chlorothalonil treatment. Correlation analyses revealed that the application of chlorothalonil was significantly correlated with the change of the soil respiration, urease activity, sucrase activity, soil culturable bacteria, and culturable fungi biomass. We conclude that residual chlorothalonil is directly related to soil respiration, enzyme activities, and microbial community structure

Production of higher toxic intermediates of organic pollutants during chemical oxidation processes: A review

Incomplete degradation of organic pollutants might lead to the increased environmental risk because of the potentially toxic intermediates, especially during chemical treatment processes. However, toxicity changes of common pollutants during chemical oxidation are still unclear because the toxicity results were easily influenced by oxidation means, reaction condition, toxicity assessment method, etc. This review summarized and evaluated the toxicity test and prediction methods commonly used in oxidation process, and then the potential toxic intermediates and their possible producing pathways was proposed as for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, phenols, azo dyes, organophosphorus, organonitrogens, organochlorine pesticides, pharmaceuticals of different classes. Various intermediates, especially the oxygen-containing ones, such as hydroquinone-, benzoquinone-, catechol-like products and halogenated ones are prone to have higher toxicity while some of the dimers and polymers are highly toxic and refractory. In addition, environmental elements such as DOM and halogen ion have the potential to enhance the toxicity. The strategies to reduce the residual toxicity were usually to strengthen the reaction, for example, to increase the oxidant concentration or prolong reaction time. Coupling of multiple technologies is also an effective strategy