Seafloor deposit models, geochemistry, and petrology of the mafic-ultramafic hosted Big Lake VMS occurrence, Marathon, Ontario

The Big Lake volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) occurrence, located in the Schreiber-Hemlo belt of the Superior Province, was discovered in March 2006 near Marathon, Ontario. It is hosted in a mafic-ultramafic metavolcanic sequence lacking felsic volcanic or volcaniclastic rock, and consists of a thin, locally anastomosing sheet of veined pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite currently defined over a plan area of approximately 0.5x0.5 km, along the base of a series of peridotite and pyroxenite cumulates termed the Big Lake Ultramafic Complex (BLUC)

Testing gravitational-wave searches with numerical relativity waveforms: Results from the first Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project

The Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project is a collaborative effort between members of the numerical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The purpose of NINJA is to study the sensitivity of existing gravitational-wave search algorithms using numerically generated waveforms and to foster closer collaboration between the numerical relativity and data analysis communities. We describe the results of the first NINJA analysis which focused on gravitational waveforms from binary black hole coalescence. Ten numerical relativity groups contributed numerical data which were used to generate a set of gravitational-wave signals. These signals were injected into a simulated data set, designed to mimic the response of the Initial LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors. Nine groups analysed this data using search and parameter-estimation pipelines. Matched filter algorithms, un-modelled-burst searches and Bayesian parameter-estimation and model-selection algorithms were applied to the data. We report the efficiency of these search methods in detecting the numerical waveforms and measuring their parameters. We describe preliminary comparisons between the different search methods and suggest improvements for future NINJA analyses.Comment: 56 pages, 25 figures; various clarifications; accepted to CQ

Knockdown of the DNA repair and redox signaling protein Ape1/ Ref-1 blocks ovarian cancer cell and tumor growth

Apurinic endonuclease 1/redox effector factor-1 (Ape1/Ref-1 or Ape1) is an essential protein with two distinct functions. It is a DNA repair enzyme in the base excision repair (BER) pathway and a reduction–oxidation (redox) signaling factor maintaining transcription factors in an active reduced state. Our laboratory previously demonstrated that Ape1 is overexpressed in ovarian cancer and potentially contributes to resistance. Therefore, we utilized siRNA technology to knockdown protein levels of Ape1 in ovarian cancer cell line, SKOV-3x. Knocking Ape1 down had dramatic effects on cell growth in vitro but was not due to an increase in apoptosis and at least partially due to an extension in transit time through S-phase. Similarly, human ovarian tumor xenografts with reduced levels of Ape1 protein demonstrated a dramatic reduction in tumor volume (p < 0.01) and also statistically significant (p = 0.02) differences in 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake indicating reduced glucose metabolism and cellular proliferation. Ape1's role in DNA repair and redox signaling is important to our basic understanding of ovarian cancer cell growth and these findings strongly support Ape1 as a therapeutic target

RICORS2040 : The need for collaborative research in chronic kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a silent and poorly known killer. The current concept of CKD is relatively young and uptake by the public, physicians and health authorities is not widespread. Physicians still confuse CKD with chronic kidney insufficiency or failure. For the wider public and health authorities, CKD evokes kidney replacement therapy (KRT). In Spain, the prevalence of KRT is 0.13%. Thus health authorities may consider CKD a non-issue: very few persons eventually need KRT and, for those in whom kidneys fail, the problem is 'solved' by dialysis or kidney transplantation. However, KRT is the tip of the iceberg in the burden of CKD. The main burden of CKD is accelerated ageing and premature death. The cut-off points for kidney function and kidney damage indexes that define CKD also mark an increased risk for all-cause premature death. CKD is the most prevalent risk factor for lethal coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the factor that most increases the risk of death in COVID-19, after old age. Men and women undergoing KRT still have an annual mortality that is 10- to 100-fold higher than similar-age peers, and life expectancy is shortened by ~40 years for young persons on dialysis and by 15 years for young persons with a functioning kidney graft. CKD is expected to become the fifth greatest global cause of death by 2040 and the second greatest cause of death in Spain before the end of the century, a time when one in four Spaniards will have CKD. However, by 2022, CKD will become the only top-15 global predicted cause of death that is not supported by a dedicated well-funded Centres for Biomedical Research (CIBER) network structure in Spain. Realizing the underestimation of the CKD burden of disease by health authorities, the Decade of the Kidney initiative for 2020-2030 was launched by the American Association of Kidney Patients and the European Kidney Health Alliance. Leading Spanish kidney researchers grouped in the kidney collaborative research network Red de Investigación Renal have now applied for the Redes de Investigación Cooperativa Orientadas a Resultados en Salud (RICORS) call for collaborative research in Spain with the support of the Spanish Society of Nephrology, Federación Nacional de Asociaciones para la Lucha Contra las Enfermedades del Riñón and ONT: RICORS2040 aims to prevent the dire predictions for the global 2040 burden of CKD from becoming true

Climate control of terrestrial carbon exchange across biomes and continents

Peer reviewe

Twist exome capture allows for lower average sequence coverage in clinical exome sequencing

Background Exome and genome sequencing are the predominant techniques in the diagnosis and research of genetic disorders. Sufficient, uniform and reproducible/consistent sequence coverage is a main determinant for the sensitivity to detect single-nucleotide (SNVs) and copy number variants (CNVs). Here we compared the ability to obtain comprehensive exome coverage for recent exome capture kits and genome sequencing techniques. Results We compared three different widely used enrichment kits (Agilent SureSelect Human All Exon V5, Agilent SureSelect Human All Exon V7 and Twist Bioscience) as well as short-read and long-read WGS. We show that the Twist exome capture significantly improves complete coverage and coverage uniformity across coding regions compared to other exome capture kits. Twist performance is comparable to that of both short- and long-read whole genome sequencing. Additionally, we show that even at a reduced average coverage of 70× there is only minimal loss in sensitivity for SNV and CNV detection. Conclusion We conclude that exome sequencing with Twist represents a significant improvement and could be performed at lower sequence coverage compared to other exome capture techniques

Oscillation encoding of individual differences in speech perception

Individual differences in second language (L2) phoneme perception (within the normal population) have been related to/nspeech perception abilities, also observed in the native language, in studies assessing the electrophysiological response/nmismatch negativity (MMN). Here, we investigate the brain oscillatory dynamics in the theta band, the spectral correlate of/nthe MMN, that underpin success in phoneme learning. Using previous data obtained in an MMN paradigm, the dynamics of/ncortical oscillations while perceiving native and unknown phonemes and nonlinguistic stimuli were studied in two groups/nof participants classified as good and poor perceivers (GPs and PPs), according to their L2 phoneme discrimination abilities./nThe results showed that for GPs, as compared to PPs, processing of a native phoneme change produced a significant/nincrease in theta power. Stimulus time-locked analysis event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) showed differences for the/ntheta band within the MMN time window (between 70 and 240 ms) for the native deviant phoneme. No other significant/ndifference between the two groups was observed for the other phoneme or nonlinguistic stimuli. The dynamic patterns in/nthe theta-band may reflect early automatic change detection for familiar speech sounds in the brain. The behavioral/ndifferences between the two groups may reflect individual variations in activating brain circuits at a perceptual level.This research was supported by grants from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013): ERG grant agreement number 323961, the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI 2012 - 34071), and the Catalan Government (SGR 2009-1521) to N. Sebastián-Gallés, and the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’sSeventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under REA grant agreement n° 328671 to B. Díaz. N. Sebastián-Gallés received the “ICREA Acadèmia” Prize for Excellence in Research, funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript