A Study of Late-Quaternary Plant-Bearing Beds in North-Central Baffin Island, Canada

Plant-bearing beds, exposed by downcutting of the Isortoq River at the northern end of the Barnes Icecap, have been folded, apparently by east-west moving overriding ice, truncated and overlain by horizontal alluvial sediments. Radiocarbon dates for plant material from the Isortoq River (folded unit), Flitaway Lake, and Lewis Glacier localities are >30,000 to >40,000 yr BP, from the horizontal beds, 14,000 ± 400 yr BP. The vegetation was probably similar to that of southern Baffin Island today; the Isortoq beds are assigned to the Sangamon interglacial. Pollen diagrams and description of the present vegetation and climate are included.Étude des dépôts végétaux fini-quaternaires dans le centre-nord de l'île de Baffin, Canada. On a daté à plus de 38,830 et 40,000 ans av. p. respectivement des horizons végétaux enfouis le long de la rivière Isortoq, à l'extrémité nord de la calotte de Barnes, sur l'île de Baffin. Des études palynologique et paléobotanique indiquent la présence d'espèces (comme le bouleau nain) qui se retrouvent aujourd'hui à plusieurs centaines de kilomètres au sud de cette localité. En déduisant des conditions climatiques plus favorables qu'à présent, on assigne à ces horizons un âge interglaciaire (Sangamon). Le plissement des horizons par de la glace de recouvrement et l'orientation de ces plis indiquent que l'accumulation d'une calotte initiale s'est produite à l'est de la localité

STELLA Facilitates Differentiation of Germ Cell and Endodermal Lineages of Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Stella is a developmentally regulated gene highly expressed in mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells and in primordial germ cells (PGCs). In human, the gene encoding the STELLA homologue lies on chromosome 12p, which is frequently amplified in long-term cultured human ES cells. However, the role played by STELLA in human ES cells has not been reported. In the present study, we show that during retinoic acid (RA)-induced differentiation of human ES cells, expression of STELLA follows that of VASA, a marker of germline differentiation. By contrast, human embryonal carcinoma cells express STELLA at a higher level compared with both karyotypically normal and abnormal human ES cell lines. We found that over-expression of STELLA does not interfere with maintenance of the stem cell state of human ES cells, but following retinoic acid induction it leads to up-regulation of germline- and endodermal-associated genes, whereas neural markers PAX6 and NEUROD1 are down-regulated. Further, STELLA over-expression facilitates the differentiation of human ES cells into BE12-positive cells, in which the expression of germline- and endodermal-associated genes is enriched, and suppresses differentiation of the neural lineage. Taken together, this finding suggests a role for STELLA in facilitating germline and endodermal differentiation of human ES cells

Some Combinatorial Properties of Hook Lengths, Contents, and Parts of Partitions

This paper proves a generalization of a conjecture of Guoniu Han, inspired originally by an identity of Nekrasov and Okounkov. The main result states that certain sums over partitions p of n, involving symmetric functions of the squares of the hook lengths of p, are polynomial functions of n. A similar result is obtained for symmetric functions of the contents and shifted parts of n.Comment: 20 pages. Correction of some inaccuracies, and a new Theorem 4.

Partitions with Prescribed Hook Differences

We investigate partition identities related to off-diagonal hook differences. Our results generalize previous extensions of the Rogers—Ramanujan identities. The identity of the related polynomials with constructs in statistical mechanics is discussed

Report on the Distribution of Dwarf Birches and Present Pollen Rain, Baffin Island, N.W.T., Canada

A distribution map for the dwarf birches is presented for the region from Frobisher Bay northward to Cumberland Peninsula. These shrubs are restricted to favourable habitats which, at the northern limit of the species (67 deg. 40 sec. N), are found on south-facing slopes above the immediate local cooling influence of the sea. Pollen studies within the zone of scattered dwarf birch indicate that pollen dispersal from these low, prostrate shrubs is minimal. Samples of moss collected beneath the bushes have 5-36% Betula pollen; whereas sites no more than 50 m away from Betula shrubs have percentages of <2%. These data will be useful in considering the Holocene and Pleistocene histories of these Low Arctic shrubs in the Eastern Canadian Arctic

A short history of pluripotent stem cells markers

The expression of one or more of a small number of molecules, typically cell surface-associated antigens, or transcription factors, is widely used for identifying pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) or for monitoring their differentiation. However, none of these marker molecules are uniquely expressed by PSCs and all are expressed by stem cells that have lost the ability to differentiate. Consequently, none are indicators of pluripotency, per se. Here we summarize the nature and characteristics of several markers that are in wide use, including the cell surface antigens, stage-specific embryonic antigen (SSEA)-1, SSEA-3, SSEA-4, TRA-1-60, TRA-1-81, GCTM2, and the transcription factors POUF5/OCT4, NANOG, and SOX2, highlighting issues that must be considered when interpreting data about their expression on putative PSCs

Noncolliding Squared Bessel Processes

We consider a particle system of the squared Bessel processes with index $\nu > -1$ conditioned never to collide with each other, in which if $-1 < \nu < 0$ the origin is assumed to be reflecting. When the number of particles is finite, we prove for any fixed initial configuration that this noncolliding diffusion process is determinantal in the sense that any multitime correlation function is given by a determinant with a continuous kernel called the correlation kernel. When the number of particles is infinite, we give sufficient conditions for initial configurations so that the system is well defined. There the process with an infinite number of particles is determinantal and the correlation kernel is expressed using an entire function represented by the Weierstrass canonical product, whose zeros on the positive part of the real axis are given by the particle-positions in the initial configuration. From the class of infinite-particle initial configurations satisfying our conditions, we report one example in detail, which is a fixed configuration such that every point of the square of positive zero of the Bessel function $J_{\nu}$ is occupied by one particle. The process starting from this initial configuration shows a relaxation phenomenon converging to the stationary process, which is determinantal with the extended Bessel kernel, in the long-term limit.Comment: v3: LaTeX2e, 26 pages, no figure, corrections made for publication in J. Stat. Phy

Nucleosides rescue replication-mediated genome instability of human pluripotent stem cells

Human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) are subject to the appearance of recurrent genetic variants on prolonged culture. We have now found that, compared with isogenic differentiated cells, PSCs exhibit evidence of considerably more DNA damage during the S phase of the cell cycle, apparently as a consequence of DNA replication stress marked by slower progression of DNA replication, activation of latent origins of replication, and collapse of replication forks. As in many cancers, which, like PSCs, exhibit a shortened G1 phase and DNA replication stress, the resulting DNA damage may underlie the higher incidence of abnormal and abortive mitoses in PSCs, resulting in chromosomal non-dysjunction or cell death. However, we have found that the extent of DNA replication stress, DNA damage, and consequent aberrant mitoses can be substantially reduced by culturing PSCs in the presence of exogenous nucleosides, resulting in improved survival, clonogenicity, and population growth

Multidimensional Data Visual Exploration by Interactive Information Segments

Visualization techniques provide an outstanding role in KDD process for data analysis and mining. However, one image does not always convey successfully the inherent information from high dimensionality, very large databases. In this paper we introduce VSIS (Visual Set of Information Segments), an interactive tool to visually explore multidimensional, very large, numerical data. Within the supervised learning, our proposal approaches the problem of classification by searching of meaningful intervals belonging to the most relevant attributes. These intervals are displayed as multi–colored bars in which the degree of impurity with respect to the class membership can be easily perceived. Such bars can be re–explored interactively with new values of user–defined parameters. A case study of applying VSIS to some UCI repository data sets shows the usefulness of our tool in supporting the exploration of multidimensional and very large data