Aquatic vertebrate locomotion:Wakes from body waves

Vertebrates swimming with undulations of the body and tail have inflection points where the curvature of the body changes from concave to convex or vice versa. These inflection paints travel down the body at the speed of the running wave of bending, In movements with increasing amplitudes, the body rotates around the inflection points, inducing semicircular flows in the adjacent water on both sides of the body that together form proto-vortices, Like the inflection points, the proto-vortices travel towards the end of the tail. In the experiments described here, the phase relationship between the tailbeat cycle and the inflection point cycle can be used as a first approximation of the phase between the proto-vortex and the tailbeat cycle. Protovortices are shed at the tail as body vortices at roughly the same time as the inflection points reach the tail tip. Thus, the phase between proto-vortex shedding and tailbeat cycle determines the interaction between body and tail vortices, which are shed when the tail changes direction. The shape of the body wave is under the control of the fish and determines the position of vortex shedding relative to the mean path of motion. This, in turn, determines whether and how the body vortex interacts with the tail vortex. The shape of the wake and the contribution of the body to thrust depend on this interaction between body vortex and tail vortex. So far, we have been able to describe two types of make. One has two vortices per tailbeat where each vortex consists of a tail vortex enhanced by a body vortex. A second, more variable, type of wake has four vortices per tailbeat: two tail vortices and two body vortices shed from the tail tip while it is moving from one extreme position to the next. The function of the second type is still enigmatic

The ErbB2ΔEx16 splice variant is a major oncogenic driver in breast cancer that promotes a pro-metastatic tumor microenvironment.

Amplification and overexpression of erbB2/neu proto-oncogene is observed in 20-30% human breast cancer and is inversely correlated with the survival of the patient. Despite this, somatic activating mutations within erbB2 in human breast cancers are rare. However, we have previously reported that a splice isoform of erbB2, containing an in-frame deletion of exon 16 (herein referred to as ErbB2ΔEx16), results in oncogenic activation of erbB2 because of constitutive dimerization of the ErbB2 receptor. Here, we demonstrate that the ErbB2ΔEx16 is a major oncogenic driver in breast cancer that constitutively signals from the cell surface. We further show that inducible expression of the ErbB2ΔEx16 variant in mammary gland of transgenic mice results in the rapid development of metastatic multifocal mammary tumors. Genetic and biochemical characterization of the ErbB2ΔEx16-derived mammary tumors exhibit several unique features that distinguish this model from the conventional ErbB2 ones expressing the erbB2 proto-oncogene in mammary epithelium. Unlike the wild-type ErbB2-derived tumors that express luminal keratins, ErbB2ΔEx16-derived tumors exhibit high degree of intratumoral heterogeneity co-expressing both basal and luminal keratins. Consistent with these distinct pathological features, the ErbB2ΔEx16 tumors exhibit distinct signaling and gene expression profiles that correlate with activation of number of key transcription factors implicated in breast cancer metastasis and cancer stem cell renewal

Why Some Interfaces Cannot be Sharp

A central goal of modern materials physics and nanoscience is control of materials and their interfaces to atomic dimensions. For interfaces between polar and non-polar layers, this goal is thwarted by a polar catastrophe that forces an interfacial reconstruction. In traditional semiconductors this reconstruction is achieved by an atomic disordering and stoichiometry change at the interface, but in multivalent oxides a new option is available: if the electrons can move, the atoms don`t have to. Using atomic-scale electron energy loss spectroscopy we find that there is a fundamental asymmetry between ionically and electronically compensated interfaces, both in interfacial sharpness and carrier density. This suggests a general strategy to design sharp interfaces, remove interfacial screening charges, control the band offset, and hence dramatically improving the performance of oxide devices.Comment: 12 pages of text, 6 figure

Acceleration of generalized hypergeometric functions through precise remainder asymptotics

We express the asymptotics of the remainders of the partial sums {s_n} of the generalized hypergeometric function q+1_F_q through an inverse power series z^n n^l \sum_k c_k/n^k, where the exponent l and the asymptotic coefficients {c_k} may be recursively computed to any desired order from the hypergeometric parameters and argument. From this we derive a new series acceleration technique that can be applied to any such function, even with complex parameters and at the branch point z=1. For moderate parameters (up to approximately ten) a C implementation at fixed precision is very effective at computing these functions; for larger parameters an implementation in higher than machine precision would be needed. Even for larger parameters, however, our C implementation is able to correctly determine whether or not it has converged; and when it converges, its estimate of its error is accurate.Comment: 36 pages, 6 figures, LaTeX2e. Fixed sign error in Eq. (2.28), added several references, added comparison to other methods, and added discussion of recursion stabilit