The MCL-1 BH3 helix is an exclusive MCL-1 inhibitor and apoptosis sensitizer

available in PMC 2011 February 3.MCL-1 has emerged as a major oncogenic and chemoresistance factor. A screen of stapled peptide helices identified the MCL-1 BH3 domain as selectively inhibiting MCL-1 among the related anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members, providing insights into the molecular determinants of binding specificity and a new approach for sensitizing cancer cells to apoptosis.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH award 5RO1GM084181)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH grant 5P01CA92625)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award 1F31CA144566)Burroughs Wellcome Fund (Career Award

How do you say ‘hello’? Personality impressions from brief novel voices

On hearing a novel voice, listeners readily form personality impressions of that speaker. Accurate or not, these impressions are known to affect subsequent interactions; yet the underlying psychological and acoustical bases remain poorly understood. Furthermore, hitherto studies have focussed on extended speech as opposed to analysing the instantaneous impressions we obtain from first experience. In this paper, through a mass online rating experiment, 320 participants rated 64 sub-second vocal utterances of the word ‘hello’ on one of 10 personality traits. We show that: (1) personality judgements of brief utterances from unfamiliar speakers are consistent across listeners; (2) a two-dimensional ‘social voice space’ with axes mapping Valence (Trust, Likeability) and Dominance, each driven by differing combinations of vocal acoustics, adequately summarises ratings in both male and female voices; and (3) a positive combination of Valence and Dominance results in increased perceived male vocal Attractiveness, whereas perceived female vocal Attractiveness is largely controlled by increasing Valence. Results are discussed in relation to the rapid evaluation of personality and, in turn, the intent of others, as being driven by survival mechanisms via approach or avoidance behaviours. These findings provide empirical bases for predicting personality impressions from acoustical analyses of short utterances and for generating desired personality impressions in artificial voices

The Evolution of Compact Binary Star Systems

We review the formation and evolution of compact binary stars consisting of white dwarfs (WDs), neutron stars (NSs), and black holes (BHs). Binary NSs and BHs are thought to be the primary astrophysical sources of gravitational waves (GWs) within the frequency band of ground-based detectors, while compact binaries of WDs are important sources of GWs at lower frequencies to be covered by space interferometers (LISA). Major uncertainties in the current understanding of properties of NSs and BHs most relevant to the GW studies are discussed, including the treatment of the natal kicks which compact stellar remnants acquire during the core collapse of massive stars and the common envelope phase of binary evolution. We discuss the coalescence rates of binary NSs and BHs and prospects for their detections, the formation and evolution of binary WDs and their observational manifestations. Special attention is given to AM CVn-stars -- compact binaries in which the Roche lobe is filled by another WD or a low-mass partially degenerate helium-star, as these stars are thought to be the best LISA verification binary GW sources.Comment: 105 pages, 18 figure

Relatedness between contemporary and subfossil cladoceran assemblages in Turkish lakes

Cladocerans are valuable indicators of environmental change in lakes. Their fossils provide information on past changes in lake environments. However, few studies have quantitatively examined the relationships between contemporary and sub-fossil cladoceran assemblages and no investigations are available from Mediterranean lakes where salinity, eutrophication and top-down control of large-bodied cladocerans are known to be important. Here we compared contemporary Cladocera assemblages, sampled in summer, from both littoral and pelagic zones, with their sub-fossil remains from surface sediment samples from 40 Turkish, mainly shallow, lakes. A total of 20 and 27 taxa were recorded in the contemporary and surface sediment samples, respectively. Procrustes rotation was applied to both the principal components analysis (PCA) and redundancy analysis (RDA) ordinations in order to explore the relationship between the cladoceran community and the environmental variables. Procrustes rotation analysis based on PCA showed a significant accord between both littoral and combined pelagic-littoral contemporary and sedimentary assemblages. RDA ordinations indicated that a similar proportion of variance was explained by environmental variation for the contemporary and fossil Cladocera data. Total phosphorus and salinity were significant explanatory variables for the contemporary assemblage, whereas salinity emerged as the only significant variable for the sedimentary assemblage. The residuals from the Procrustes rotation identified a number of lakes with a high degree of dissimilarity between modern and sub-fossil assemblages. Analysis showed that high salinity, deep water and high macrophyte abundance were linked to a lower accord between contemporary and sedimentary assemblages. This low accord was, generally the result of poor representation of some salinity tolerant, pelagic and macrophyte-associated taxa in the contemporary samples. This study provides further confirmation that there is a robust relationship between samples of modern cladoceran assemblages and their sedimentary remains. Thus, sub-fossil cladoceran assemblages from sediment cores can be used with confidence to track long-term changes in this environmentally sensitive group and in Mediterranean lakes, subjected to large inter-annual variation in water level, salinity and nutrients