Filaments of the radio cosmic web: opportunities and challenges for SKA

The detection of the diffuse gas component of the cosmic web remains a formidable challenge. In this work we study synchrotron emission from the cosmic web with simulated SKA1 observations, which can represent an fundamental probe of the warm-hot intergalactic medium. We investigate radio emission originated by relativistic electrons accelerated by shocks surrounding cosmic filaments, assuming diffusive shock acceleration and as a function of the (unknown) large-scale magnetic fields. The detection of the brightest parts of large ($>10 \rm Mpc$) filaments of the cosmic web should be within reach of the SKA1-LOW, if the magnetic field is at the level of a $\sim 10$ percent equipartition with the thermal gas, corresponding to $\sim 0.1 \mu G$ for the most massive filaments in simulations. In the course of a 2-years survey with SKA1-LOW, this will enable a first detection of the "tip of the iceberg" of the radio cosmic web, and allow for the use of the SKA as a powerful tool to study the origin of cosmic magnetism in large-scale structures. On the other hand, the SKA1-MID and SKA1-SUR seem less suited for this science case at low redshift ($z \leq 0.4$), owing to the missing short baselines and the consequent lack of signal from the large-scale brightness fluctuations associated with the filaments. In this case only very long exposures ($\sim 1000$ hr) may enable the detection of $\sim 1-2$ filament for field of view in the SKA1-SUR PAF Band1.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Proceedings of 'Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA (AASKA14) - Cosmic Magnetism' Chapter

Prmt5 is a regulator of muscle stem cell expansion in adult mice.

Skeletal muscle stem cells (MuSC), also called satellite cells, are indispensable for maintenance and regeneration of adult skeletal muscles. Yet, a comprehensive picture of the regulatory events controlling the fate of MuSC is missing. Here, we determine the proteome of MuSC to design a loss-of-function screen, and identify 120 genes important for MuSC function including the arginine methyltransferase Prmt5. MuSC-specific inactivation of Prmt5 in adult mice prevents expansion of MuSC, abolishes long-term MuSC maintenance and abrogates skeletal muscle regeneration. Interestingly, Prmt5 is dispensable for proliferation and differentiation of Pax7(+) myogenic progenitor cells during mouse embryonic development, indicating significant differences between embryonic and adult myogenesis. Mechanistic studies reveal that Prmt5 controls proliferation of adult MuSC by direct epigenetic silencing of the cell cycle inhibitor p21. We reason that Prmt5 generates a poised state that keeps MuSC in a standby mode, thus allowing rapid MuSC amplification under disease conditions

Where does all the phosphorus go? Mass balance modelling of phosphorus in the Swedish long-term soil fertility experiments

To gain insights into phosphorus (P) dynamics in soils and the ability to predict soil responses to varying fertilizer inputs, mass balance models prove to be valuable tools. In this study, a new dynamic mass balance model, PBalD8, was used to describe the change in extracted P in the A horizon of soils subjected to diverse fertilizer treatments over a period of 50 to 60 years in five soil fertility experiments. The model employed a Freundlich equation to describe soil-solution partitioning of P and assumed that acid-lactate-extractable P represented a labile pool of P in instant equilibrium with soil solution P. Additionally, oxalate-extractable inorganic P was presumed to comprise the sum of the labile and stable pools of P, with mass flux to and from the latter described by Fick's first law. The model was evaluated using results from extractions and P K-edge XANES spectroscopy. Notably, organic P, as revealed by P K-edge XANES, did not substantially contribute to long-term changes in soil P content and was therefore excluded from consideration. In general, the model offered reasonable fits to the extracted P concentrations. However, for the P-depleted treatments, a prerequisite was that the P removal through harvest was lower compared to measurements. Conversely, in three of the soils, the modelled fertilizer inputs needed to be reduced to 70 % to 85 % of the known additions. These discrepancies may be attributed to the involvement of deeper soil horizons, including deep crop uptake and mixing with lower soil layers, although other factors such as lateral dispersion and inaccuracies in estimating applied fertilizers cannot be discounted. These results underscore the necessity of gaining a more comprehensive understanding of how deeper soil horizons influence P mass balances in agricultural soils. In one of the soils, Fja center dot rdingslo center dot v, P K-edge XANES results demonstrated the formation of calcium phosphate over time in the highest fertilization treatment, consistent with the model. Additionally, in two soils, Kungsa center dot ngen and the P-depleted Vreta Kloster soil, the model predicted a significant contribution from mineral weathering. However, the PBalD8 model also projected higher P leaching rates than those observed, suggesting that the model may not fully capture this P output term

A Super-Earth Transiting a Naked-Eye Star

We have detected transits of the innermost planet "e" orbiting 55 Cnc (V=6.0), based on two weeks of nearly continuous photometric monitoring with the MOST space telescope. The transits occur with the period (0.74 d) and phase that had been predicted by Dawson & Fabrycky, and with the expected duration and depth for the crossing of a Sun-like star by a hot super-Earth. Assuming the star's mass and radius to be 0.963_{-0.029}^{+0.051} M_sun and 0.943 +/- 0.010 R_sun, the planet's mass, radius, and mean density are 8.63 +/- 0.35 Mearth, 2.00 +/- 0.14 Rearth, and 5.9_{-1.1}^{+1.5} g/cm^3. The mean density is comparable to that of Earth, despite the greater mass and consequently greater compression of the interior of 55 Cnc e. This suggests a rock-iron composition supplemented by a significant mass of water, gas, or other light elements. Outside of transits, we detected a sinusoidal signal resembling the expected signal due to the changing illuminated phase of the planet, but with a full range (168 +/- 70 ppm) too large to be reflected light or thermal emission. This signal has no straightforward interpretation and should be checked with further observations. The host star of 55 Cnc e is brighter than that of any other known transiting planet, which will facilitate future investigations.Comment: ApJ Letters, in press (v3) Minor changes/clarifications; (v2) Revised after fixing an error in the data reduction pipeline; for details see http://web.mit.edu/~jwinn/www/55cnc_response.tx

Absence of ectopic epithelial inclusions in 3,904 axillary lymph nodes examined in sentinel technique

Intraoperative examination of sentinel axillary lymph nodes can be done by imprint cytology, frozen section, or, most recently, by PCR-based amplification of a cytokeratin signal. Using this technique, benign epithelial inclusions, representing mammary tissue displaced along the milk line, will likely generate a positive PCR signal and lead to a false-positive diagnosis of metastatic disease. To better appreciate the incidence of ectopic epithelial inclusions in axillary lymph nodes, we have performed an autopsy study, examining on 100μm step sections3,904 lymph nodes obtained from 160 axillary dissections in 80 patients. The median number of lymph nodes per axilla was 23 (15, 6, and 1 in levels 1, 2, and 3, respectively). A total of 30,450 hematoxylin-eosin stained slides were examined, as well as 8,825 slides immunostained with pan-cytokeratin antibodies. Despite this meticulous work-up, not a single epithelial inclusion was found in this study, suggesting that the incidence of such inclusions is much lower than the assumed 5% reported in the literatur

NOA1, a Novel ClpXP Substrate, Takes an Unexpected Nuclear Detour Prior to Mitochondrial Import

The mitochondrial matrix GTPase NOA1 is a nuclear encoded protein, essential for mitochondrial protein synthesis, oxidative phosphorylation and ATP production. Here, we demonstrate that newly translated NOA1 protein is imported into the nucleus, where it localizes to the nucleolus and interacts with UBF1 before nuclear export and import into mitochondria. Mutation of the nuclear localization signal (NLS) prevented both nuclear and mitochondrial import while deletion of the N-terminal mitochondrial targeting sequence (MTS) or the C-terminal RNA binding domain of NOA1 impaired mitochondrial import. Absence of the MTS resulted in accumulation of NOA1 in the nucleus and increased caspase-dependent apoptosis. We also found that export of NOA1 from the nucleus requires a leptomycin-B sensitive, Crm1-dependent nuclear export signal (NES). Finally, we show that NOA1 is a new substrate of the mitochondrial matrix protease complex ClpXP. Our results uncovered an unexpected, mandatory detour of NOA1 through the nucleolus before uptake into mitochondria. We propose that nucleo-mitochondrial translocation of proteins is more widespread than previously anticipated providing additional means to control protein bioavailability as well as cellular communication between both compartments.Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Scienc

Multi-strange baryon production in Au+Au collisions near threshold

The centrality dependence of Xi^- and Lambda production in Au+Au interactions at E_lab=6 AGeV is studied within a microscopic transport approach. In line with recent data, a slight enhancement of the Xi^-/(Lambda+Sigma^0) ratio toward central collisions is found. It is demonstrated that the observed production of multiple strange baryons can be traced back to multi-step meson-baryon interactions in the late stages of the collisions. Therefore, the present analysis supports an interpretation of the observed Xi abundance in terms of hadronic re-scattering.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

PCA2GO: a new multivariate statistics based method to identify highly expressed GO-Terms

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Several tools have been developed to explore and search Gene Ontology (GO) databases allowing efficient GO enrichment analysis and GO tree visualization. Nevertheless, identification of highly specific GO-terms in complex data sets is relatively complicated and the display of GO term assignments and GO enrichment analysis by simple tables or pie charts is not optimal. Valuable information such as the hierarchical position of a single GO term within the GO tree (topological ordering), or enrichment within a complex set of biological experiments is not displayed. Pie charts based on GO tree levels are, themselves, one-dimensional graphs, which cannot properly or efficiently represent the hierarchical specificity for the biological system being studied.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we present a new method, which we name PCA2GO, capable of GO analysis using complex multidimensional experimental settings. We employed principal component analysis (PCA) and developed a new score, which takes into account the relative frequency of certain GO terms and their specificity (hierarchical position) within the GO graph. We evaluated the correlation between our representation score <it>R </it>and a standard measure of enrichment, namely <it>p</it>-values to convey the versatility of our approach to other methods and point out differences between our method and commonly used enrichment analyses. Although <it>p </it>values and the <it>R </it>score formally measure different quantities they should be correlated, because relative frequencies of GO terms occurrences within a dataset are an indirect measure of protein numbers related to this term. Therefore they are also related to enrichment. We showed that our score enables us to identify more specific GO-terms i.e. those positioned further down the GO-graph than other common tools used for this purpose. PCA2GO allows visualization and detection of multidimensional dependencies both within the acyclic graph (GO tree) and the experimental settings. Our method is intended for the analysis of several experimental sets, not for one set, like standard enrichment tools. To demonstrate the usefulness of our approach we performed a PCA2GO analysis of a fractionated cardiomyocyte protein dataset, which was identified by enhanced liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (GeLC-MS). The analysis enabled us to detect distinct groups of proteins, which accurately reflect properties of biochemical cell fractions.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We conclude that PCA2GO is an alternative efficient GO analysis tool with unique features for detection and visualization of multidimensional dependencies within the dataset under study. PCA2GO reveals strongly correlated GO terms within the experimental setting (in this case different fractions) by PCA group formation and improves detection of more specific GO terms within experiment dependent GO term groups than standard <it>p </it>value calculations.</p

Tracking the fate of digesta 13C and 15N compositions along the ruminant gastrointestinal tract: Does digestion influence the relationship between diet and faeces?

Faecal stable isotope compositions reflect wildlife diets, if digestive processes along the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) do not alter diet-faeces isotopic relationships in an unpredictable way. We investigated 13C and 15N compositions of digesta along the ruminant GIT, using Saanen dairy goats kept on pure grass hay or browse for >20days. Isotopic changes occurred in the ventral rumen, and in the small intestine, where digesta had significantly higher δ13C and δ15N (associated with lower C or higher N content, respectively) values relative to other GIT sites. However, effects on isotope fractionation were small (∼1.0‰ for δ13C and ∼ 2.0‰ for δ15N), and were reversed in the hindgut such that faecal isotope compositions did not differ from the foregut. No other substantial isotopic changes occurred across GIT sites, despite the morphophysiological complexity of the ruminant GIT. We found similarly small differences across GIT components of rheem gazelles (Gazella leptoceros) fed a mixture of C3 lucerne and C4 grass, although in this case faeces were 15N-depleted relative to other GIT components. Along with differences in δ15N between goats fed browse or grass, this result implies a systematic difference in diet-faeces δ15N relationships, contingent on the botanical composition of ruminant diets. Thus, while our results support faecal δ13C as a reliable proxy for wildlife diets, further work on factors influencing faecal 15N abundance is needed. Finally, we note high levels of isotopic variability between individuals fed the same diets, even accounting for the relatively short duration of the experiments, suggesting an important influence of stochasticity on isotope fractionatio