Articular cartilage collagen: an irreplaceable framework?

Adult articular cartilage by dry weight is two-thirds collagen. The collagen has a unique molecular phenotype. The nascent type II collagen fibril is a heteropolymer, with collagen IX molecules covalently linked to the surface and collagen XI forming the filamentous template of the fibril as a whole. The functions of collagens IX and XI in the heteropolymer are far from clear but, evidently, they are critically important since mutations in COLIX and COLXI genes can result in chondrodysplasia syndromes. Here we review what is known of the collagen assembly and present new evidence that collagen type III becomes covalently added to the polymeric fabric of adult human articular cartilage, perhaps as part of a matrix repair or remodelling process

Reaching a 1.5 degrees C target: socio-technical challenges for a rapid transition to low-carbon electricity systems

A 1.5°C global average target implies that we should no longer focus on merely incremental emissions reductions from the electricity system, but rather on fundamentally re-envisaging a system that, sooner rather than later, becomes carbon free. Many low-carbon technologies are surpassing mainstream predictions for both uptake and cost reduction. Their deployment is beginning to be disruptive within established systems. ‘Smart technologies’ are being developed to address emerging challenges of system integration, but their rates of future deployment remain uncertain. We argue that transition towards a system that can fully displace carbon generation sources will require expanding the focus of our efforts beyond technical solutions. Recognizing that change has social and technical dimensions, and that these interact strongly, we set out a socio-technical review that covers electricity infrastructure, citizens, business models and governance. It describes some of the socio-technical challenges that need to be addressed for the successful transition of the existing electricity systems. We conclude that a socio-technical understanding of electricity system transitions offers new and better insights into the potential and challenges for rapid decarbonization. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The Paris Agreement: understanding the physical and social challenges for a warming world of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels'

Fluctuating selection models and Mcdonald-Kreitman type analyses

It is likely that the strength of selection acting upon a mutation varies through time due to changes in the environment. However, most population genetic theory assumes that the strength of selection remains constant. Here we investigate the consequences of fluctuating selection pressures on the quantification of adaptive evolution using McDonald-Kreitman (MK) style approaches. In agreement with previous work, we show that fluctuating selection can generate evidence of adaptive evolution even when the expected strength of selection on a mutation is zero. However, we also find that the mutations, which contribute to both polymorphism and divergence tend, on average, to be positively selected during their lifetime, under fluctuating selection models. This is because mutations that fluctuate, by chance, to positive selected values, tend to reach higher frequencies in the population than those that fluctuate towards negative values. Hence the evidence of positive adaptive evolution detected under a fluctuating selection model by MK type approaches is genuine since fixed mutations tend to be advantageous on average during their lifetime. Never-the-less we show that methods tend to underestimate the rate of adaptive evolution when selection fluctuates

The use of laser scanning as a method for measuring stairways following an accident

Copyright: 2015 Survey Review Ltd.MORE OpenChoice: Open Access ArticleStairs present significant potential for harm to their users. A fall on stairs, particularly in descent, often leads to serious injury or even death. The authors have been involved in the investigation of many workplace stair accidents. Proper forensic investigation into the cause of a stair accident has often found the incident to be wholly or partly caused by poor stair design. In order to establish the relationship between the stair design and a given fall, an onsite survey has to be conducted, determining the rises and goings along with other key dimensions. The Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL), Buxton, UK, regularly undertake this type of survey using a digital inclinometer, a steel rule and a tape measure. Laser scanning is an emerging technique that is now accessible to the surveyor to complement or replace traditional approaches. The laser scanner and associated software produces a dense point survey in 3D, allowing dimensional analysis of the features. The authors used both traditional and laser scanning techniques to study the scenes of two fatal stair falls. The analysis presented allows the suitability of laser scanning for stair-fall investigation to be considered. Identification and classification of errors are needed in order to consider if the error is acceptable or can be mitigated. Laser scanners are impressive instruments providing data from which can be used to create a virtual 3D environment that can be used to reconstruct and explain an event and contributing factors. The use of both survey methods currently provides the investigator with complimentary data that allows accurate measurements to be presented in the context of the three-dimensional environment.European Social Fund (ESF

A non-linear optimal estimation inverse method for radio occultation measurements of temperature, humidity and surface pressure

An optimal estimation inverse method is presented which can be used to retrieve simultaneously vertical profiles of temperature and specific humidity, in addition to surface pressure, from satellite-to-satellite radio occultation observations of the Earth's atmosphere. The method is a non-linear, maximum {\it a posteriori} technique which can accommodate most aspects of the real radio occultation problem and is found to be stable and to converge rapidly in most cases. The optimal estimation inverse method has two distinct advantages over the analytic inverse method in that it accounts for some of the effects of horizontal gradients and is able to retrieve optimally temperature and humidity simultaneously from the observations. It is also able to account for observation noise and other sources of error. Combined, these advantages ensure a realistic retrieval of atmospheric quantities. A complete error analysis emerges naturally from the optimal estimation theory, allowing a full characterisation of the solution. Using this analysis a quality control scheme is implemented which allows anomalous retrieval conditions to be recognised and removed, thus preventing gross retrieval errors. The inverse method presented in this paper has been implemented for bending angle measurements derived from GPS/MET radio occultation observations of the Earth. Preliminary results from simulated data suggest that these observations have the potential to improve NWP model analyses significantly throughout their vertical range.Comment: 18 (jgr journal) pages, 7 figure

The role of mutation rate variation and genetic diversity in the architecture of human disease

Background We have investigated the role that the mutation rate and the structure of genetic variation at a locus play in determining whether a gene is involved in disease. We predict that the mutation rate and its genetic diversity should be higher in genes associated with disease, unless all genes that could cause disease have already been identified. Results Consistent with our predictions we find that genes associated with Mendelian and complex disease are substantially longer than non-disease genes. However, we find that both Mendelian and complex disease genes are found in regions of the genome with relatively low mutation rates, as inferred from intron divergence between humans and chimpanzees, and they are predicted to have similar rates of non-synonymous mutation as other genes. Finally, we find that disease genes are in regions of significantly elevated genetic diversity, even when variation in the rate of mutation is controlled for. The effect is small nevertheless. Conclusions Our results suggest that gene length contributes to whether a gene is associated with disease. However, the mutation rate and the genetic architecture of the locus appear to play only a minor role in determining whether a gene is associated with disease

Relativistic Meson Spectroscopy and In-Medium Effects

We extend our earlier model of $q\bar q$ mesons using relativistic quasipotential (QP) wave equations to include open-flavor states and running quark-gluon coupling effects. Global fits to meson spectra are achieved with rms deviations from experiment of 43-50 MeV. We examine in-medium effects through their influence on the confining interaction and predict the confining strength at which the masses of certain mesons fall below the threshold of their dominant decay channel.Comment: 12 Pages, 2 Postscript figures (appended at the end with instructions, available also from [email protected]

Stellar Streams as Probes of Dark Halo Mass and Morphology: A Bayesian Reconstruction

Tidal streams provide a powerful tool by means of which the matter distribution of the dark matter halos of their host galaxies can be studied. However, the analysis is not straightforward because streams do not delineate orbits, and for most streams, especially those in external galaxies, kinematic information is absent. We present a method wherein streams are fit with simple corrections made to possible orbits of the progenitor, using a Bayesian technique known as Parallel Tempering to efficiently explore the parameter space. We show that it is possible to constrain the shape of the host halo potential or its density distribution using only the projection of tidal streams on the sky, if the host halo is considered to be axisymmetric. By adding kinematic data or the circular velocity curve of the host to the fitting data, we are able to recover other parameters of the matter distribution such as its mass and profile. We test our method on several simulated low mass stellar streams and also explore the cases for which additional data are required.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 20 pages, 18 figures and 3 table

The Tidal Tails of 47 Tucanae

The Galactic globular cluster 47 Tucanae (47 Tuc) shows a rare increase in its velocity dispersion profile at large radii, indicative of energetic, yet bound, stars at large radii dominating the velocity dispersion and, potentially, of ongoing evaporation. Escaping stars will form tidal tails, as seen with several Galactic globular clusters, however, the tidal tails of 47 Tuc are yet to be uncovered. We model these tails of 47 Tuc using the most accurate input data available, with the specific aim of determining their locations, as well as the densities of the epicyclic overdensities within the tails. The overdensities from our models show an increase of 3-4% above the Galactic background and, therefore, should be easily detectable using matched filtering techniques. We find that the most influential parameter with regard to both the locations and densities of the epicyclic overdensities is the Heliocentric distance to the cluster. Hence, uncovering these tidal features observationally will contribute greatly to the ongoing problem of determining the distance to 47 Tuc, tightly constraining the distance of the cluster independent of other methods. Using our streakline method for determining the locations of the tidal tails and their overdensities, we show how, in principle, the shape and extent of the tidal tails of any Galactic globular cluster can be determined without resorting to computationally expensive N-body simulations.Comment: Original paper has 10 pages, 10 figures and 2 tables. Please note that this now includes an erratum. Erratum has 6 pages, 8 figures and 2 tables. Ignore the exclamation marks in Section 2 of the erratum, these are an artifact of the LaTeX class file used to produce the manuscrip

Potential for the use of reconstructed IASI radiances in the detection of atmospheric trace gases

Principal component (PC) analysis has received considerable attention as a technique for the extraction of meteorological signals from hyperspectral infra-red sounders such as the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS). In addition to achieving substantial bit-volume reductions for dissemination purposes, the technique can also be used to generate reconstructed radiances in which random instrument noise has been reduced. Studies on PC analysis of hyperspectral infrared sounder data have been undertaken in the context of numerical weather prediction, instrument monitoring and geophysical variable retrieval, as well as data compression. This study examines the potential of PC analysis for chemistry applications. <br><br> A major concern in the use of PC analysis for chemistry is that the spectral features associated with trace gases may not be well represented in the reconstructed spectra, either due to deficiencies in the training set or due to the limited number of PC scores used in the radiance reconstruction. In this paper we show examples of reconstructed IASI radiances for several trace gases: ammonia, sulphur dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide. It is shown that care must be taken in the selection of spectra for the initial training set: an iterative technique, in which outlier spectra are added to a base training set, gives the best results. For the four trace gases examined, key features of the chemical signatures are retained in the reconstructed radiances, whilst achieving a substantial reduction in instrument noise. <br><br> A new regional re-transmission service for IASI is scheduled to start in 2010, as part of the EUMETSAT Advanced Retransmission Service (EARS). For this EARS-IASI service it is intended to include PC scores as part of the data stream. The paper describes the generation of the reference eigenvectors for this new service