Pressure Collapse of the Magnetic Ordering in MnSi via Thermal Expansion

The itinerant quasi-ferromagnetic metal MnSi has been studied by detailed thermal expansion measurements under pressures and magnetic fields. A sudden decrease of the volume at the critical pressure Pc ~1.6 GPa has been observed and is in good agreement with the pressure variation of the volume fraction of the spiral magnetic ordering. This confirms that the magnetic order disappears by a first order phase transition. The energy change estimated by the volume discontinuity on crossing Pc is of similar order as the Zeeman energy of the transition from the spiral ground state to a polarized paramagnetic one under magnetic field. In contrast to the strong pressure dependence of the transition temperature, the characteristic fields are weakly pressure dependent, indicating that the strength of the ferromagnetic and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions do not change drastically around Pc. The evaluated results of the thermal expansion coefficient and the magnetostriction are analyzed thermodynamically. The Sommerfeld coefficient of the linear temperature term of the specific heat is enhanced just below Pc. The magnetic field-temperature phase diagrams in the ordered and paramagnetic phases are also compared. Comparison is made with other heavy fermion compounds with first order phase transition at 0 K.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, accepted to be published in JPS

Identification and Validation of Novel Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers for Staging Early Alzheimer's Disease

Ideally, disease modifying therapies for Alzheimer disease (AD) will be applied during the 'preclinical' stage (pathology present with cognition intact) before severe neuronal damage occurs, or upon recognizing very mild cognitive impairment. Developing and judiciously administering such therapies will require biomarker panels to identify early AD pathology, classify disease stage, monitor pathological progression, and predict cognitive decline. To discover such biomarkers, we measured AD-associated changes in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) proteome.CSF samples from individuals with mild AD (Clinical Dementia Rating [CDR] 1) (n = 24) and cognitively normal controls (CDR 0) (n = 24) were subjected to two-dimensional difference-in-gel electrophoresis. Within 119 differentially-abundant gel features, mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) identified 47 proteins. For validation, eleven proteins were re-evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). Six of these assays (NrCAM, YKL-40, chromogranin A, carnosinase I, transthyretin, cystatin C) distinguished CDR 1 and CDR 0 groups and were subsequently applied (with tau, p-tau181 and Aβ42 ELISAs) to a larger independent cohort (n = 292) that included individuals with very mild dementia (CDR 0.5). Receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses using stepwise logistic regression yielded optimal biomarker combinations to distinguish CDR 0 from CDR>0 (tau, YKL-40, NrCAM) and CDR 1 from CDR<1 (tau, chromogranin A, carnosinase I) with areas under the curve of 0.90 (0.85-0.94 95% confidence interval [CI]) and 0.88 (0.81-0.94 CI), respectively.Four novel CSF biomarkers for AD (NrCAM, YKL-40, chromogranin A, carnosinase I) can improve the diagnostic accuracy of Aβ42 and tau. Together, these six markers describe six clinicopathological stages from cognitive normalcy to mild dementia, including stages defined by increased risk of cognitive decline. Such a panel might improve clinical trial efficiency by guiding subject enrollment and monitoring disease progression. Further studies will be required to validate this panel and evaluate its potential for distinguishing AD from other dementing conditions

Competition for food in swans: an experimental test of the truncated phenotype distribution

1. Ideal free models for unequal competitors predict a truncated competitor phenotype distribution among patches when relative payoffs of phenotypes vary across patches. Partial truncation is expected under field conditions. This prediction was tested in a field experiment with an overwintering population of mute swans (Cygnus olor). 2. Two food patches were generated in which adult and subadult swans were expected to have different relative success. In one patch ('clumped'), pieces of bread were thrown over a small area on the water surface. In the other patch, pieces of bread were scattered over a larger area. 3. When only one patch was offered at a time (no choice situation), adult swans were more successful than subadult swans in the 'clumped' patch, but were similarly successful in the 'scattered' patch. Relative payoffs of adult and subadult swans differed significantly between patches. 4. When the two patches were offered simultaneously, black-headed gulls (Larns ridibundus) competed with the swans to a considerable extent in some replicates. The gulls appeared to be the poorest competitors. They snatched more bread in the scattered than in the clumped patch. Both classes of swans avoided the scattered patch but not the clumped patch with increasing competition from gulls. Gulls preferred the scattered patch and swans increasingly preferred the clumped patch under gull competition, creating a partially truncated distribution. 5. Without the four replicates in which the gulls had consumed more than 25% of the bread, the percentage of adult swans that chose the clumped patch was significantly higher than the percentage of subadult swans that chose that patch. This is the first experimental verification of a partially truncated phenotype distribution. Subadult swans significantly preferred the scattered patch whereas adults tended to prefer the clumped patch. This distribution was predicted from the 'no choice' experiment, where competition by gulls had been similarly weak