The Best Things in Life Come From Stretching Ourselves

How often do you get uncomfortable? A couple of years ago I bought a shirt as part of an adoption fundraiser. The front of the shirt said: “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Using Gyroscopes to Enhance Motion Detection

Gyroscopes are used to stabilize, guide, and measure rotational motion. How can these devices be used to enhance motion detectors, and what benefits do they possess? We will explore these answers through analyzing the functionality and usage of gyroscopes in this trade article

Adoption Has Been the Most Wonderfully Difficult Thing We’ve Ever Done

My wife and I have decided to toss common sense out the window – and adopt a second child from China with Down syndrome

How the Rise in Social Media Use Impacts the Mental Health of Adolescents

Social media is more available now than ever before. More platforms are available and access to each platform is just one click away for anyone with a cell phone, tablet, iPad, or computer. Since social media was introduced, there has also been a steady rise in mental health concerns, especially in adolescents (Ellis et al., 2020). This leads to the question, how does social media impact mental health of adolescents? The potential implications of this question impact both educators, parents, and adolescents. This literature review examined how the rise in social media use has impacted mental health of adolescents, both positively and negatively, and the factors that potentially play a role in how mental health is impacted. After reviewing the fifteen peer-reviewed studies, it was shown that the increased use social media negatively impacts mental health of adolescents today. Keywords: adolescents, mental health, social medi

What if We All Treated Life Like One Big Improvisation Skit?

Whenever I need a good laugh or a light TV moment, I find relief by watching Whose Line is it Anyway

A PCA-based approach for subtracting thermal background emission in high-contrast imaging data

Ground-based observations at thermal infrared wavelengths suffer from large background radiation due to the sky, telescope and warm surfaces in the instrument. This significantly limits the sensitivity of ground-based observations at wavelengths longer than 3 microns. We analyzed this background emission in infrared high contrast imaging data, show how it can be modelled and subtracted and demonstrate that it can improve the detection of faint sources, such as exoplanets. We applied principal component analysis to model and subtract the thermal background emission in three archival high contrast angular differential imaging datasets in the M and L filter. We describe how the algorithm works and explain how it can be applied. The results of the background subtraction are compared to the results from a conventional mean background subtraction scheme. Finally, both methods for background subtraction are also compared by performing complete data reductions. We analyze the results from the M dataset of HD100546 qualitatively. For the M band dataset of beta Pic and the L band dataset of HD169142, which was obtained with an annular groove phase mask vortex vector coronagraph, we also calculate and analyze the achieved signal to noise (S/N). We show that applying PCA is an effective way to remove spatially and temporarily varying thermal background emission down to close to the background limit. The procedure also proves to be very successful at reconstructing the background that is hidden behind the PSF. In the complete data reductions, we find at least qualitative improvements for HD100546 and HD169142, however, we fail to find a significant increase in S/N of beta Pic b. We discuss these findings and argue that in particular datasets with strongly varying observing conditions or infrequently sampled sky background will benefit from the new approach.Comment: 12 pages, 17 figures, 1 table, Accepted for publication in A&

The evolution and engineering of T7 RNA polymerase

textT7 RNA polymerase is a single protein capable of driving transcription from a simple promoter in virtually any context. This has made it a powerful tool in a range of biotechnology applications. In this work, previous efforts to evolve or engineer T7 RNA polymerase are reviewed. This work is then expanded upon, first with the development of a method for the cell-free evolution of T7 RNA polymerase based on the functioning of an autogene. The autogene is a transcriptional feedback circuit in which active T7 RNA polymerase proteins transcribe their own gene, resulting in exponential amplification of their genetic information. While this system is doomed by an error catastrophe, this can be delayed by the use of in vitro compartmentalization. In response to the limits of the autogene, a novel directed evolution approach termed compartmentalized partnered replication (CPR) is presented. CPR couples the in vivo functionality of a gene to its subsequent in vitro amplification by emulsion PCR. The use of CPR to generate a panel of six versions of T7 RNA polymerase, each specific to one of six promoters, is described. Separately, a rational engineering approach, taken to facilitate the high-yield transcription of fully 2′-modified RNA, is detailed. Two sets of mutations to T7 RNA polymerase, previously known to confer thermal stability and enhance promoter clearance respectively, can be used to enhance the activity of existing T7 RNA polymerase mutants that utilize non-standard nucleotides as their substrates. Next, CPR and random mutagenesis is used to populate the functional fitness landscape of T7 RNA polymerase. This neutral drift library is then challenged to increase the processivity of T7 RNA polymerase, enabling long-range transcription. Finally, the lessons that can be learned about T7 RNA polymerase specifically and molecular evolution and protein engineering generally are discussed.Cellular and Molecular Biolog

Towards hydrodynamics without an entropy current

We present a generating functional which describes the equilibrium thermodynamic response of a relativistic system to external sources. A variational principle gives rise to constraints on the response parameters of relativistic hydrodynamics without making use of an entropy current. Our method reproduces and extends results available in the literature. It also provides a technique for efficiently computing n-point zero-frequency hydrodynamic correlation functions without the need to solve the equations of hydrodynamics.Comment: 4+epsilon pages, v2: comments and references adde