Anthropogenic alteration of nutrient supply increases the global freshwater carbon sink

Lakes have a disproportionate effect on the global carbon (C) cycle relative to their area, mediating C transfer from land to atmosphere, and burying organic-C in their sediments. The magnitude and temporal variability of C burial is, however, poorly constrained, and the degree to which humans have influenced lake C cycling through landscape alteration has not been systematically assessed. Here, we report global and biome specific trajectories of lake C sequestration based on 516 lakes and show that some lake C burial rates (i.e., those in tropical forest and grassland biomes) have quadrupled over the last 100 years. Global lake C-sequestration (~0.12 Pg year−1) has increased by ~72 Tg year−1 since 1900, offsetting 20% of annual CO2 freshwater emissions rising to ~30% if reservoirs are included and contributing to the residual continental C sink. Nutrient availability explains ~70% of the observed increase, while rising temperatures have a minimal effect

Light Unstable Sterile Neutrino

The three massless active (doublet) neutrinos may mix with two heavy and one \underline {light} sterile (singlet) neutrinos so that the induced masses and mixings among the former are able to explain the present data on atmospheric and solar neutrino oscillations. If the LSND result is also to be explained, one active neutrino mass eigenstate must mix with the light sterile neutrino. A specific model is proposed with the spontaneous and soft explicit breaking of a new global $U(1)_S$ symmetry so that a sterile neutrino will decay into an active antineutrino and a nearly massless pseudo-Majoron.Comment: Discussion and references adde

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in autism spectrum disorder: protocol for a multicentre randomised controlled clinical trial

Introduction There are no well-established biomedical treatments for the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A small number of studies suggest that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, may improve clinical and cognitive outcomes in ASD. We describe here the protocol for a funded multicentre randomised controlled clinical trial to investigate whether a course of rTMS to the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), which has demonstrated abnormal brain activation in ASD, can improve social communication in adolescents and young adults with ASD. Methods and analysis This study will evaluate the safety and efficacy of a 4-week course of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS, a variant of rTMS) in ASD. Participants meeting criteria for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition ASD (n=150, aged 14–40 years) will receive 20 sessions of either active iTBS (600 pulses) or sham iTBS (in which a sham coil mimics the sensation of iTBS, but no active stimulation is delivered) to the rTPJ. Participants will undergo a range of clinical, cognitive, epi/genetic, and neurophysiological assessments before and at multiple time points up to 6 months after iTBS. Safety will be assessed via a structured questionnaire and adverse event reporting. The study will be conducted from November 2020 to October 2024. Ethics and dissemination The study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Monash Health (Melbourne, Australia) under Australia’s National Mutual Acceptance scheme. The trial will be conducted according to Good Clinical Practice, and findings will be written up for scholarly publication. Trial registration number Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12620000890932)

Methane and nitrous oxide emissions from Canadian dairy farms and mitigation options: An updated review

This review examined methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) mitigation strategies for Canadian dairy farms. The primary focus was research conducted in Canada and cold climatic regions with similar dairy systems. Meta-analyses were conducted to assess the impact of a given strategy when sufficient data were available. Results indicated that options to reduce enteric CH4 from dairy cows were increasing the dietary starch content and dietary lipid supplementation. Replacing barley or alfalfa silage with corn silage with higher starch content decreased enteric CH4 per unit of milk by 6%. Increasing dietary lipids from 3% to 6% of dry matter (DM) reduced enteric CH4 yield by 9%. Strategies such as nitrate supplementation and 3-nitrooxypropanol additive indicated potential for reducing enteric CH4 by about 30% but require extensive research on toxicology and consumer acceptance. Strategies to reduce emissions from manure are anaerobic digestion, composting, solid-liquid separation, covering slurry storage and flaring CH4, and reducing methanogen inoculum by complete emptying of slurry storage at spring application. These strategies have potential to reduce emissions from manure by up to 50%. An integrated approach of combining strategies through diet and manure management is necessary for significant GHG mitigation and lowering carbon footprint of milk produced in Canada

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Solubilization of Proteins in 2DE: An Outline

Protein solubilization for two-dimensional electrophoresis (2DE) has to break molecular interactions to separate the biological contents of the material of interest into isolated and intact polypeptides. This must be carried out in conditions compatible with the first dimension of 2DE, namely isoelectric focusing. In addition, the extraction process must enable easy removal of any nonprotein component interfering with the isoelectric focusing. The constraints brought in this process by the peculiar features of isoelectric focusing are discussed, as well as their consequences in terms of possible solutions and limits for the solubilization process

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters