The mysterious morphology of MRC0943-242 as revealed by ALMA and MUSE

© 2016 ESO. We present a pilot study of the z = 2.923 radio galaxy MRC0943-242, where we combine information from ALMA and MUSE data cubes for the first time. Even with modest integration times, we disentangle the AGN and starburst dominated components. These data reveal a highly complex morphology as the AGN, starburst, and molecular gas components show up as widely separated sources in dust continuum, optical continuum, and CO line emission observations. CO(1-0) and CO(8-7) line emission suggest that there is a molecular gas reservoir offset from both the dust and the optical continuum that is located ~90 kpc from the AGN. The UV line emission has a complex structure in emission and absorption. The line emission is mostly due to a large scale ionisation cone energised by the AGN, and a Lya emitting bridge of gas between the radio galaxy and a heavily star-forming set of components. Strangely, the ionisation cone has no Lya emission. We find this is due to an optically thick layer of neutral gas with unity covering fraction spread out over a region of at least ~100 kpc from the AGN. Other less thick absorption components are associated with Lya emitting gas within a few tens of kpc from the radio galaxy and are connected by a bridge of emission. We speculate that this linear structure of dust, Lya and CO emission, and the redshifted absorption seen in the circum nuclear region may represent an accretion flow feeding gas into this massive AGN host galaxy

Environmental and Demographic Determinants of Avian Influenza Viruses in Waterfowl across the Contiguous United States

Outbreaks of avian influenza in North American poultry have been linked to wild waterfowl. A first step towards understanding where and when avian influenza viruses might emerge from North American waterfowl is to identify environmental and demographic determinants of infection in their populations. Laboratory studies indicate water temperature as one determinant of environmental viral persistence and we explored this hypothesis at the landscape scale. We also hypothesized that the interval apparent prevalence in ducks within a local watershed during the overwintering season would influence infection probabilities during the following breeding season within the same local watershed. Using avian influenza virus surveillance data collected from 19,965 wild waterfowl across the contiguous United States between October 2006 and September 2009 We fit Logistic regression models relating the infection status of individual birds sampled on their breeding grounds to demographic characteristics, temperature, and interval apparent prevalence during the preceding overwintering season at the local watershed scale. We found strong support for sex, age, and species differences in the probability an individual duck tested positive for avian influenza virus. In addition, we found that for every seven days the local minimum temperature fell below zero, the chance an individual would test positive for avian influenza virus increased by 5.9 percent. We also found a twelve percent increase in the chance an individual would test positive during the breeding season for every ten percent increase in the interval apparent prevalence during the prior overwintering season. These results suggest that viral deposition in water and sub-freezing temperatures during the overwintering season may act as determinants of individual level infection risk during the subsequent breeding season. Our findings have implications for future surveillance activities in waterfowl and domestic poultry populations. Further study is needed to identify how these drivers might interact with other host-specific infection determinants, such as species phylogeny, immunological status, and behavioral characteristics

The contribution of X-linked coding variation to severe developmental disorders

Abstract: Over 130 X-linked genes have been robustly associated with developmental disorders, and X-linked causes have been hypothesised to underlie the higher developmental disorder rates in males. Here, we evaluate the burden of X-linked coding variation in 11,044 developmental disorder patients, and find a similar rate of X-linked causes in males and females (6.0% and 6.9%, respectively), indicating that such variants do not account for the 1.4-fold male bias. We develop an improved strategy to detect X-linked developmental disorders and identify 23 significant genes, all of which were previously known, consistent with our inference that the vast majority of the X-linked burden is in known developmental disorder-associated genes. Importantly, we estimate that, in male probands, only 13% of inherited rare missense variants in known developmental disorder-associated genes are likely to be pathogenic. Our results demonstrate that statistical analysis of large datasets can refine our understanding of modes of inheritance for individual X-linked disorders