Frontal subduction of the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf water at the onshore edge of a warm-core ring

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 123(11), (2018): 7795-7818. doi: 10.1029/2018JC013794.This work studies the subduction of the shelf water along the onshore edge of a warm‐core ring that impinges on the edge of the Mid‐Atlantic Bight continental shelf. The dynamical analysis is based on observations by satellites and from the Ocean Observatories Initiative Pioneer Array observatory as well as idealized numerical model simulations. They together show that frontogenesis‐induced submesoscale frontal subduction with order‐one Rossby and Froude numbers occurs on the onshore edge of the ring. The subduction flow results from the onshore migration of the warm‐core ring that intensifies the density front on the interface of the ring and shelf waters. The subduction is a part of the cross‐front secondary circulation trying to relax the intensifying density front. The dramatically different physical and biogeochemical properties of the ring and shelf waters provide a great opportunity to visualize the subduction phenomenon. Entrained by the ring‐edge current, the subducted shelf water is subsequently transported offshore below a surface layer of ring water and alongside of the surface‐visible shelf‐water streamer. It explains the historical observations of isolated subsurface packets of shelf water along the ring periphery in the slope sea. Model‐based estimate suggests that this type of subduction‐associated subsurface cross‐shelfbreak transport of the shelf water could be substantial relative to other major forms of shelfbreak water exchange. This study also proposes that outward spreading of the ring‐edge front by the frontal subduction may facilitate entrainment of the shelf water by the ring‐edge current and enhances the shelf‐water streamer transport at the shelf edge.W. G. Z. was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants OCE‐1657853, OCE‐1657803, and OCE 1634965. JP is grateful for the support of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Summer Student Fellow Program in 2016 and 2017. W. G. Z. thanks Kenneth Brink, Glen Gawarkiewicz, Rocky Geyer, Steven Lentz, Dennis McGillicuddy, Robert Todd, and John Trowbridge for helpful discussions during the course of the study or useful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. The satellite sea surface temperature data were obtained from the University of Delaware Ocean Exploration, Remote Sensing, Biogeography Lab (led by Matthew Oliver), through the Mid‐Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARACOOS) data server (http://tds.maracoos.org/thredds/catalog.html). The OOI Pioneer Array mooring and glider data presented in this paper were downloaded from the National Science Foundation OOI data portal (http://ooinet.oceanobservatories.org) in July–August 2016.2019-04-1

Een archeologische evaluatie en waardering van het slagveld van Oudenaarde 1708 (Oudenaarde, provincie Oost-Vlaanderen)

Het Ename Expertisecentrum voor Erfgoedontsluiting (EEC) heeft in 2011 en 2012 in opdracht van het agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed en in functie van de mogelijke opmaak van een beschermingsdossier een archeologische evaluatie en waardering uitgevoerd van het slagveld van Oudenaarde 1708. Een eerdere survey uit 2007 onder leiding van de Britse Battlefields Trust had via metaaldetectie het archeologisch potentieel van dit slagveld aangetoond en een doorgedreven onderzoek van het slagveld mogelijk en wenselijk gemaakt. Het veldwerk werd uitgevoerd van 12 september tot 31 oktober 2011. De studie maakte een aanzienlijke vooruitgang in het begrijpen van de veldslag en in het plaatsen van de actie op het terrein, en liet toe om de aard, de toestand en de verspreiding van de archeologische zone te bepalen en de problemen die dit oplevert. Terzelfdertijd heeft dit werk inzicht gegeven in de praktische problemen op het veld, en een strategie opgeleverd voor verder onderzoek. De belangrijkste primaire bronnen van de veldslag werden samengebracht en vertaald en de grafische en geschreven bronnen werden in een redelijk accurate weergave van het landschap geplaatst zoals het er ten tijde van de veldslag moet hebben uitgezien. Oudenaarde bleek een ongewoon complexe veldslag met een opmerkelijke wisselwerking tussen het terrein en de acties. Door de goede staat van bewaring van het merendeel van het slagveld kan Oudenaarde van aanzienlijk belang zijn bij de verdere ontwikkeling van slagveldarcheologie. De kogels zijn weliswaar relatief slecht bewaard, maar toch nog voldoende goed om een adequate analyse van de inslagschade te bekomen. Het gebruik als akkerland sinds de late 18e eeuw had een ernstige destructief effect op slagveldartefacten. Het losmaken van de grond en diep ploegen is wellicht ook zeer destructief voor eventuele massagraven. Het permanent grasland op een beperkt deel van het terrein tempert wel de snelheid van verval van de artefacten, aangezien zowel verluchting van de grond als mechanische schade hierdoor vermeden wordt. De studie eindigt met aanbevelingen over de mogelijke begrenzing van de archeologische zone en stelt ook maatregelen voor naar beheer en behoud van de site

The changing nature of shelf-break exchange revealed by the OOI Pioneer Array

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 31, no. 1 (2018): 60–70, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.110.Although the continental shelf and slope south of New England have been the subject of recent studies that address decadal-scale warming and interannual variability of water mass properties, it is not well understood how these changes affect shelf-break exchange processes. In recent years, observations of anomalous shelf and slope conditions obtained from the Ocean Observatories Initiative Pioneer Array and other regional observing programs suggest that onshore intrusions of warm, salty waters are becoming more prevalent. Mean cross-shelf transects constructed from Pioneer Array glider observations collected from April 2014 through December 2016 indicate that slope waters have been warmer and saltier. We examine shelf-break exchange events and anomalous onshore intrusions of warm, salty water associated with warm core rings located near the shelf break in spring 2014 and winter 2017 using observations from the Pioneer Array and other sources. We also describe an additional cross-shelf intrusion of ring water in September 2014 to demonstrate that the occurrence of high-salinity waters extending across the continental shelf is rare. Observations from the Pioneer Array and other sources show warm core ring and Gulf Stream water masses intrude onto the continental shelf more frequently and penetrate further onshore than in previous decades.GG, WZ, RT, and MD were supported by the National Science Foundation under grant OCE-1657853. WZ was also supported by grant OCE-1634965. JP is grateful for the support of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Summer Student Fellow Program. AMM was supported by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. GG and AMM were also supported by a grant from the van Beuren Charitable Foundation for collection and analysis of hydrographic data collected by the CFRF Shelf Research Fleet

Autologous whole ram seminal plasma and its vesicle-free fraction improve motility characteristics and membrane status but not in vivo fertility of frozen-thawed ram spermatozoa

Motility characteristics (assessed subjectively and with computer-assisted semen analysis) and membrane status (after staining with chlortetracycline) of washed and non-washed frozen-thawed ram spermatozoa were evaluated after incubation in buffer and buffer containing autologous whole seminal plasma or one of its two fractions: the pellet of membrane vesicles obtained by ultracentrifugation (and used at three times normal protein concentration) or the vesicle-free supernatant fraction. Whole seminal plasma and supernatant, but not membrane vesicles, improved the motility characteristics of spermatozoa after 3 and 6 h of post-thaw incubation compared with the control buffer. Resuspension and incubation with whole seminal plasma, supernatant or membrane vesicles lowered the proportion of acrosome-reacted frozen-thawed spermatozoa compared with the control buffer. Unwashed frozen-thawed semen from three rams, incubated with autologous whole seminal plasma or its fractions and inseminated using cervical or intrauterine artificial insemination, had no effect on pregnancy rates of ewes in synchronized oestrus. However, fertility was higher after laparoscopic than cervical insemination (44.9 vs 12.3%, p < 0.001). In conclusion, resuspension and incubation of frozen-thawed ram spermatozoa in autologous whole seminal plasma or its vesicle-free supernatant fraction improved their motility characteristics and, with membrane vesicles, membrane status, but these benefits were not reflected in improved fertility after cervical or intrauterine insemination. © 2007 The Authors

Involvement of loops 2 and 3 of alpha-sarcin on its ribotoxic activity

Ribotoxins are a family of fungal ribosome-inactivating proteins displaying highly specific ribonucleolytic activity against the sarcin/ricin loop (SRL) of the larger rRNA, with a-sarcin as its best-characterized member. Their toxicity arises from the combination of this activity with their ability to cross cell membranes. The involvement of a-sarcin's loops 2 and 3 in SRL and ribosomal proteins recognition, as well as in the ribotoxin-lipid interactions involving cell penetration, has been suggested some time ago. In the work presented now different mutants have been prepared in order to study the role of these loops in their ribonucleolytic and lipid-interacting properties. The results obtained confirm that loop 3 residues Lys 111, 112, and 114 are key actors of the specific recognition of the SRL. In addition, it is also shown that Lys 114 and Tyr 48 conform a network of interactions which is essential for the catalysis. Lipid-interaction studies show that this Lys-rich region is indeed involved in the phospholipids recognition needed to cross cell membranes. Loop 2 is shown to be responsible for the conformational change which exposes the region establishing hydrophobic interactions with the membrane inner leaflets and eases penetration of ribotoxins target cells

Author Correction: Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases.

Emmanuelle Souzeau, who contributed to analysis of data, was inadvertently omitted from the author list in the originally published version of this Article. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Shared genetics underlying epidemiological association between endometriosis and ovarian cancer

Epidemiological studies have demonstrated associations between endometriosis and certain histotypes of ovarian cancer, including clear cell, low-grade serous and endometrioid carcinomas. We aimed to determine whether the observed associations might be due to shared genetic aetiology. To address this, we used two endometriosis datasets genotyped on common arrays with full-genome coverage (3194 cases and 7060 controls) and a large ovarian cancer dataset genotyped on the customized Illumina Infinium iSelect (iCOGS) arrays (10 065 cases and 21 663 controls). Previous work has suggested that a large number of genetic variants contribute to endometriosis and ovarian cancer (all histotypes combined) susceptibility. Here, using the iCOGS data, we confirmed polygenic architecture for most histotypes of ovarian cancer. This led us to evaluate if the polygenic effects are shared across diseases. We found evidence for shared genetic risks between endometriosis and all histotypes of ovarian cancer, except for the intestinal mucinous type. Clear cell carcinoma showed the strongest genetic correlation with endometriosis (0.51, 95% CI = 0.18-0.84). Endometrioid and low-grade serous carcinomas had similar correlation coefficients (0.48, 95% CI = 0.07-0.89 and 0.40, 95% CI = 0.05-0.75, respectively). High-grade serous carcinoma, which often arises from the fallopian tubes, showed a weaker genetic correlation with endometriosis (0.25, 95% CI = 0.11-0.39), despite the absence of a known epidemiological association. These results suggest that the epidemiological association between endometriosis and ovarian adenocarcinoma may be attributable to shared genetic susceptibility loci

ARHGEF12 influences the risk of glaucoma by increasing intraocular pressure

Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) is a blinding disease. Two important risk factors for this disease are a positive family history and elevated intraocular pressure (IOP), which is also highly heritable. Genes found to date associated with IOP and POAG are ABCA1, CAV1/CAV2, GAS7 and TMCO1. However, these genes explain only a small part of the heritability of IOP and POAG.We performed a genome-wide association study of IOP in the population-based RotterdamStudy I and Rotterdam Study II using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) imputed to 1000 Genomes. In this discovery cohort (n = 8105), we identified a newlocus associated with IOP. The most significantly associated SNPwas rs58073046 (ß = 0.44, P-value = 1.87 × 10-8, minor allele frequency = 0.12), within the gene ARHGEF12. Independent replication in five population-based studies (n = 7471) resulted in an effect size in the same direction that was significantly associated (ß = 0.16, P-value = 0.04). The SNP was also significantly associated with POAG in two independent case-control studies [n = 1225 cases and n = 4117 controls; odds ratio (OR) = 1.53, P-value = 1.99 × 10-8], especially with high-tension glaucoma (OR = 1.66, P-value = 2.81 × 10-9; for normal-tension glaucoma OR = 1.29, P-value = 4.23 × 10-2). ARHGEF12 plays an important role in the RhoA/RhoA kinase pathway, which has been implicated in IOP regulation. Furthermore, it binds to ABCA1 and links the ABCA1, CAV1/CAV2 and GAS7 pathway to Mendelian POAG genes (MYOC, OPTN, WDR36). In conclusion, this study identified a novel association between IOP and ARHGEF12