Transposable Element Abundance and Variability in 28 Different Species in the Family Solanaceae

Transposable Elements (TEs) are small nucleic acid parasites that replicate and reinsert themselves into the genome of their host organism. These small genetic parasites have in recent times been seen as possible evolutionary drivers in the development and evolution of genomic adaptations as well as genomic architecture. While much is known about the possible effects of TEs on an individual organism, little is known about their dynamics on a family level scale. In order to investigate this relationship, TE types and abundances were analyzed for 28 species in the highly diverse plant family Solanaceae. Transposable Elements were identified and investigated by running the program RepeatExplorer on whole genome shotgun data sets from 28 different species in the Physaleae and Solanaea tribes in the Solanacea family. I identified the genomic proportion of repetitive elements in all species and found that on a family level, two TE types, LTR gypsy and unclassified repetitive content were the most abundant for all species. On a family level, class II TEs were found to be far less numerous in genomic proportion, but were far more variable on an individual level. These results indicated that while LTR gypsy and Unclassified TEs are more important for long-term genomic dynamics, Class II TEs act more significantly in the short term. Clades also appear to have a relationship on TE abundances with more closely related species having similar genomic percentage of TEs, but due to our lack of branch lengths in the phylogeny I was unable to calculate this metric. Finally, while these results are interesting, there is currently no all-encompassing biological explanation as to exactly why these family level genomic trends are being exhibited

Renormalization of the baryon axial vector current in large-N_c chiral perturbation theory

The baryon axial vector current is computed at one-loop order in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory in the large-N_c limit, where N_c is the number of colors. Loop graphs with octet and decuplet intermediate states cancel to various orders in N_c as a consequence of the large-N_c spin-flavor symmetry of QCD baryons. These cancellations are explicitly shown for the general case of N_f flavors of light quarks. In particular, a new generic cancellation is identified in the renormalization of the baryon axial vector current at one-loop order. A comparison with conventional heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory is performed at the physical values N_c=3, N_f=3.Comment: REVTex4, 29 pages, 2 figures, 6 tables. Equations (32) and (81) corrected. Some typos fixed. Results and conclusions remain unchange

Monumental snake engravings of the Orinoco River

Rock art of the Middle and Upper Orinoco River in South America is characterised by some of the largest and most enigmatic engravings in the world, including snakes exceeding 40m in length. Here, the authors map the geographic distribution of giant snake motifs and assess the visibility of this serpentine imagery within the Orinoco landscape and Indigenous myths. Occupying prominent outcrops that were visible from great distances, the authors argue that the rock art provided physical reference points for cosmogonic myths, acting as border agents that structured the environment and were central to Indigenous placemaking along the rivers of lowland South America

Integrating a QPSK Quantum Key Distribution Link

We present the integration of the optical and electronic subsystems of a BB84-QKD fiber link. A highspeed FPGA MODEM generates the random QPSK sequences for a fiber-optic delayed self-homodyne scheme using APD detectors.Comment: 2 pages, 4 figures, European Conference on Optical Communication 200

Planar measurements of spray-induced wall cooling using phosphor thermometry

The wall cooling induced by spray impingement is investigated using phosphor thermometry. Thin coatings of zinc oxide (ZnO) phosphor were applied with a transparent chemical binder onto a steel surface. Instantaneous spatially resolved temperatures were determined using the spectral intensity ratio method directly after the injection of UV-grade hexane onto the surface using a commercial gasoline injector. The investigations showed that 2D temperature measurements with high spatial and shot-to-shot precision of, respectively, 0.5 and 0.6 K can be achieved, allowing the accurate resolution of the cooling induced by the spray. The presence of a liquid film over the phosphor coating during measurements showed no noticeable influence on the measured temperatures. However, in some cases a change in the intensity ratio at the spray impingement area, in the form of a permanent “stain”, could be observed after multiple injections. The formation of this stain was less likely with increasing annealing time of the coating as well as lower plate operating temperatures during the injection experiments. Finally, the experimental results indicate a noticeable influence of the thickness of the phosphor coating on the measured spray-induced wall cooling history. Hence, for quantitative analysis, a compromise between coating thickness and measurement accuracy needs to be considered for similar applications where the heat transfer rates are very high

Novel Phase Detector Measurement Procedure Using Quasi-Synchronized RF Generator

This paper presents a new procedure for phase detector measurements that allows the use of generators that share a 10 MHz reference oscillator but do not synchronize in phase, in other words, quasi-synchronized RF generators. The objectives are taking advantage of the benefits of using two generators but recovering lower-cost generators that have worse synchronization performance and opening the door to the possibility of using a very simple control element based in Arduino Uno and cheaper instruments. The new procedure is characterized by continuously alternating calibration and measurement sequences to make up for the phase drift of quasisynchronized generators and guarantee a maximum phase error specification (+-1 grade in this paper). Data acquisition has been divided in two stages: measurement of detector curves without phase reference (in-phase and phase-shifted) and measurement of reference data. All the data is later combined to obtain correctly referenced in-phase detector curves. The technique can be reproduced with other equivalent instrumentation. The novel procedure that allows compensation for errors (amplitude, phase shift, mismatching, etc.) is detailed, and its relation to the required measurement accuracy is amply discussed. The proposed technique is applied to characterize a phase detector based on in-phase and phase-shifted multiplication from 3 to 8 GHz with 1 GHz step. Measurements have a final maximum error of +-2 grade for both frequency and calibrated input power, according to the accuracy specifications of the VNA used to calibrate the signal distribution network, added to the +-1 grade specified in this new procedure.Comment: copyright 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other work