Safety Of \u3ci\u3eBrucella Abortus\u3c/i\u3e Strain Rb51 In Black Bears

In two studies conducted from October 1999 to March 2000 and December 2000 to April 2001, adult black bears (Ursus americanus) were orally inoculated with 1.4–3.1X1010 colony-forming units (CFU) of Brucella abortus strain RB51 (SRB51, n=12) or 2 ml of 0.15 M NaCl solution (saline, n=11). We did not detect a difference (P\u3e0.05) in antibody titers to SRB51 in serum obtained before vaccination, at 8 wk after vaccination, or at necropsy at 21 or 23 wk after vaccination between SRB51-vaccinated and nonvaccinated bears. The SRB51 vaccine strain was recovered from tissues obtained at necropsy from one of six SRB51-vaccinated bears in study 1, but none of the six SRB51-vaccinated bears in study 2. Vaccination of black bears with SRB51 did not appear to influence (P\u3e0.05) reproductive performance

Response Function of the Fractional Quantized Hall State on a Sphere I: Fermion Chern-Simons Theory

Using a well known singular gauge transformation, certain fractional quantized Hall states can be modeled as integer quantized Hall states of transformed fermions interacting with a Chern-Simons field. In previous work we have calculated the electromagnetic response function of these states at arbitrary frequency and wavevector by using the Random Phase Approximation (RPA) in combination with a Landau Fermi Liquid approach. We now adopt these calculations to a spherical geometry in order to facilitate comparison with exact diagonalizations performed on finite size systems.Comment: 39 pages (REVTeX 3.0). Postscript file for this paper are available on the World Wide Web at http://cmtw.harvard.edu/~simon/ ; Preprint number HU-CMT-94S0

A primary care, multi-disciplinary disease management program for opioid-treated patients with chronic non-cancer pain and a high burden of psychiatric comorbidity

BACKGROUND: Chronic non-cancer pain is a common problem that is often accompanied by psychiatric comorbidity and disability. The effectiveness of a multi-disciplinary pain management program was tested in a 3 month before and after trial. METHODS: Providers in an academic general medicine clinic referred patients with chronic non-cancer pain for participation in a program that combined the skills of internists, clinical pharmacists, and a psychiatrist. Patients were either receiving opioids or being considered for opioid therapy. The intervention consisted of structured clinical assessments, monthly follow-up, pain contracts, medication titration, and psychiatric consultation. Pain, mood, and function were assessed at baseline and 3 months using the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale scale (CESD) and the Pain Disability Index (PDI). Patients were monitored for substance misuse. RESULTS: Eighty-five patients were enrolled. Mean age was 51 years, 60% were male, 78% were Caucasian, and 93% were receiving opioids. Baseline average pain was 6.5 on an 11 point scale. The average CESD score was 24.0, and the mean PDI score was 47.0. Sixty-three patients (73%) completed 3 month follow-up. Fifteen withdrew from the program after identification of substance misuse. Among those completing 3 month follow-up, the average pain score improved to 5.5 (p = 0.003). The mean PDI score improved to 39.3 (p < 0.001). Mean CESD score was reduced to 18.0 (p < 0.001), and the proportion of depressed patients fell from 79% to 54% (p = 0.003). Substance misuse was identified in 27 patients (32%). CONCLUSIONS: A primary care disease management program improved pain, depression, and disability scores over three months in a cohort of opioid-treated patients with chronic non-cancer pain. Substance misuse and depression were common, and many patients who had substance misuse identified left the program when they were no longer prescribed opioids. Effective care of patients with chronic pain should include rigorous assessment and treatment of these comorbid disorders and intensive efforts to insure follow up

A multi-decade record of high quality fCO2 data in version 3 of the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT)

The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis of quality-controlled fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) values for the global surface oceans and coastal seas with regular updates. Version 3 of SOCAT has 14.7 million fCO2 values from 3646 data sets covering the years 1957 to 2014. This latest version has an additional 4.6 million fCO2 values relative to version 2 and extends the record from 2011 to 2014. Version 3 also significantly increases the data availability for 2005 to 2013. SOCAT has an average of approximately 1.2 million surface water fCO2 values per year for the years 2006 to 2012. Quality and documentation of the data has improved. A new feature is the data set quality control (QC) flag of E for data from alternative sensors and platforms. The accuracy of surface water fCO2 has been defined for all data set QC flags. Automated range checking has been carried out for all data sets during their upload into SOCAT. The upgrade of the interactive Data Set Viewer (previously known as the Cruise Data Viewer) allows better interrogation of the SOCAT data collection and rapid creation of high-quality figures for scientific presentations. Automated data upload has been launched for version 4 and will enable more frequent SOCAT releases in the future. High-profile scientific applications of SOCAT include quantification of the ocean sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide and its long-term variation, detection of ocean acidification, as well as evaluation of coupled-climate and ocean-only biogeochemical models. Users of SOCAT data products are urged to acknowledge the contribution of data providers, as stated in the SOCAT Fair Data Use Statement. This ESSD (Earth System Science Data) “living data” publication documents the methods and data sets used for the assembly of this new version of the SOCAT data collection and compares these with those used for earlier versions of the data collection (Pfeil et al., 2013; Sabine et al., 2013; Bakker et al., 2014). Individual data set files, included in the synthesis product, can be downloaded here: doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.849770. The gridded products are available here: doi:10.3334/CDIAC/OTG.SOCAT_V3_GRID

LSST Science Book, Version 2.0

A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over 20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo

Modeling Peripheral Olfactory Coding in Drosophila Larvae

The Drosophila larva possesses just 21 unique and identifiable pairs of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), enabling investigation of the contribution of individual OSN classes to the peripheral olfactory code. We combined electrophysiological and computational modeling to explore the nature of the peripheral olfactory code in situ. We recorded firing responses of 19/21 OSNs to a panel of 19 odors. This was achieved by creating larvae expressing just one functioning class of odorant receptor, and hence OSN. Odor response profiles of each OSN class were highly specific and unique. However many OSN-odor pairs yielded variable responses, some of which were statistically indistinguishable from background activity. We used these electrophysiological data, incorporating both responses and spontaneous firing activity, to develop a Bayesian decoding model of olfactory processing. The model was able to accurately predict odor identity from raw OSN responses; prediction accuracy ranged from 12%–77% (mean for all odors 45.2%) but was always significantly above chance (5.6%). However, there was no correlation between prediction accuracy for a given odor and the strength of responses of wild-type larvae to the same odor in a behavioral assay. We also used the model to predict the ability of the code to discriminate between pairs of odors. Some of these predictions were supported in a behavioral discrimination (masking) assay but others were not. We conclude that our model of the peripheral code represents basic features of odor detection and discrimination, yielding insights into the information available to higher processing structures in the brain

Genetic association study of QT interval highlights role for calcium signaling pathways in myocardial repolarization.

The QT interval, an electrocardiographic measure reflecting myocardial repolarization, is a heritable trait. QT prolongation is a risk factor for ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death (SCD) and could indicate the presence of the potentially lethal mendelian long-QT syndrome (LQTS). Using a genome-wide association and replication study in up to 100,000 individuals, we identified 35 common variant loci associated with QT interval that collectively explain ∼8-10% of QT-interval variation and highlight the importance of calcium regulation in myocardial repolarization. Rare variant analysis of 6 new QT interval-associated loci in 298 unrelated probands with LQTS identified coding variants not found in controls but of uncertain causality and therefore requiring validation. Several newly identified loci encode proteins that physically interact with other recognized repolarization proteins. Our integration of common variant association, expression and orthogonal protein-protein interaction screens provides new insights into cardiac electrophysiology and identifies new candidate genes for ventricular arrhythmias, LQTS and SCD

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Disease Dynamics and Bird Migration—Linking Mallards Anas platyrhynchos and Subtype Diversity of the Influenza A Virus in Time and Space

The mallard Anas platyrhynchos is a reservoir species for influenza A virus in the northern hemisphere, with particularly high prevalence rates prior to as well as during its prolonged autumn migration. It has been proposed that the virus is brought from the breeding grounds and transmitted to conspecifics during subsequent staging during migration, and so a better understanding of the natal origin of staging ducks is vital to deciphering the dynamics of viral movement pathways. Ottenby is an important stopover site in southeast Sweden almost halfway downstream in the major Northwest European flyway, and is used by millions of waterfowl each year. Here, mallards were captured and sampled for influenza A virus infection, and positive samples were subtyped in order to study possible links to the natal area, which were determined by a novel approach combining banding recovery data and isotopic measurements (δ2H) of feathers grown on breeding grounds. Geographic assignments showed that the core natal areas of studied mallards were in Estonia, southern and central Finland, and northwestern Russia. This study demonstrates a clear temporal succession of latitudes of natal origin during the course of autumn migration. We also demonstrate a corresponding and concomitant shift in virus subtypes. Acknowledging that these two different patterns were based in part upon different data, a likely interpretation worth further testing is that the early arriving birds with more proximate origins have different influenza A subtypes than the more distantly originating late autumn birds. If true, this knowledge would allow novel insight into the origins and transmission of the influenza A virus among migratory hosts previously unavailable through conventional approaches

CCR5 Haplotypes and Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission in Malawi

CCR5 and CCR2 gene polymorphisms (SNPs) have been associated with protection against HIV transmission in adults and with delayed progression to AIDS. The CCR5 Delta32 deletion and SNP -2459G are associated with reduced expression of the CCR5 protein.We investigated the association between infant CCR2/CCR5 diplotype and HIV mother to child transmission (MTCT) in Malawi. Blood samples from infants (n = 552) of HIV positive women who received nevirapine were genotyped using a post-PCR multiplex ligase detection reaction and haplotypes were identified based on 8 CCR2/CCR5 SNPs and the open reading frame 32 base pair deletion. Following verification of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, log linear regression was performed to examine the association between mutations and MTCT. Overall, protection against MTCT was weakly associated with two CCR5 SNPs, -2459G (Risk ratio [RR], 0.78; confidence interval [CI], 0.54-1.12), and the linked CCR5 -2135T (RR, 0.78; CI, 0.54-1.13). No child carried the CCR5 Delta32 SNP. Maternal Viral Load (MVL) was found to be an effect measure modifier. Among mothers with low MVL, statistically significant protection against MTCT was observed for -2459G (RR, 0.50; CI, 0.27-0.91), and -2135T (RR, 0.51; CI, 0.28-0.92). Statistically significant protection was not found at high MVL.Results from this study suggest that CCR5 SNPs -2459G and -2135T associated with reduced receptor expression protect against MTCT of HIV at low MVLs, whereas high MVLs may over-ride differences in coreceptor availability