EXCASAFEZONE

Excavation work takes place almost continually in most cities around the Western hemisphere. Many cities are already full of infrastructures, buried networks, and street furniture, so excavation work is not without any thread to the operator and surrounding environment. Small construction sites, for example, are often constrained by operating infrastructure on surface level and underground. Although different agencies and network owners have information about the location of the objects that put excavation work at risk, this information is not centralized. Different organizations manage location information of buried cables, unexploded ordnance, and pollution, for example. This significantly complicates the early-stage planning and last minute risk assessment processes because professionals need to manually collect, assess, and integrate data about subsurface objects into a comprehensive risk assessment. To smoothen this process, ExcaSafeZone project, therefore, develops a system that collects location data, defines expert-based rules for safety risk assessment, and that synthesizes this into an open source prototype that visualized safety risks on a heat map. &nbsp

Progress in Three-Dimensional Coherent X-Ray Diffraction Imaging

The Fourier inversion of phased coherent diffraction patterns offers images without the resolution and depth-of-focus limitations of lens-based tomographic systems. We report on our recent experimental images inverted using recent developments in phase retrieval algorithms, and summarize efforts that led to these accomplishments. These include ab-initio reconstruction of a two-dimensional test pattern, infinite depth of focus image of a thick object, and its high-resolution (~10 nm resolution) three-dimensional image. Developments on the structural imaging of low density aerogel samples are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, X-Ray Microscopy 2005, Himeji, Japa

Protostars and Outflows in the NGC7538 - IRS9 Cloud Core

New high resolution observations of HCO+ J=1-0, H13CN J=1-0, SO 2,2 - 1,1, and continuum with BIMA at 3.4 mm show that the NGC7538 - IRS9 cloud core is a site of active ongoing star formation. Our observations reveal at least three young bipolar molecular outflows, all ~ 10,000 -- 20,000 years old. IRS9 drives a bipolar, extreme high velocity outflow observed nearly pole on. South of IRS9 we find a cold, protostellar condensation with a size of ~ 14" x 6" with a mass > 250 Msun. This is the center of one of the outflows and shows deep, red-shifted self absorption in HCO+, suggesting that there is a protostar embedded in the core, still in a phase of active accretion. This source is not detected in the far infrared, suggesting that the luminosity < 10^4 Lsun; yet the mass of the outflow is ~ 60 Msun. The red-shifted HCO+ self-absorption profiles observed toward the southern protostar and IRS9 predict accretion rates of a few times 10^-4 to 10^-3 Msun/yr. Deep VLA continuum observations at 3.6 cm show that IRS9 coincides with a faint thermal VLA source, but no other young star in the IRS9 region has any detectable free-free emission at a level of ~ 60 microJy at 3.6 cm. The HCO+ abundance is significantly enhanced in the hot IRS9 outflow. A direct comparison of mass estimates from HCO+ and CO for the well-characterized red-shifted IRS9 outflow predicts an HCO+ enhancement of more than a factor of 30, or [HCO+/H2] >= 6 10^-8.Comment: 40 pages, 3 tables and 10 figures included; to appear in Ap

Autosomal dominant hereditary spastic paraplegia: Novel mutations in the REEP1 gene (SPG31)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mutations in the <it>SPG4 </it>gene (spastin) and in the <it>SPG3A </it>gene (atlastin) account for the majority of 'pure' autosomal dominant form of hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP). Recently, mutations in the <it>REEP1 </it>gene were identified to cause autosomal dominant HSP type SPG31. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of <it>REEP1 </it>mutations in a cohort of 162 unrelated Caucasian index patients with 'pure' HSP and a positive family history (at least two persons per family presented symptoms).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>162 patients were screened for mutations by, both, DHPLC and direct sequencing.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Ten mutations were identified in the <it>REEP1 </it>gene, these included eight novel mutations comprising small insertions/deletions causing frame shifts and subsequently premature stop codons, one nonsense mutation and one splice site mutation as well as two missense mutations. Both missense mutations and the splice site mutation were not identified in 170 control subjects.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In our HSP cohort we found pathogenic mutations in 4.3% of cases with autosomal dominant inheritance. Our results confirm the previously observed mutation range of 3% to 6.5%, respectively, and they widen the spectrum of <it>REEP1 </it>mutations.</p

MED12 regulates a transcriptional network of calcium-handling genes in the heart

The Mediator complex regulates gene transcription by linking basal transcriptional machinery with DNA-bound transcription factors. The activity of the Mediator complex is mainly controlled by a kinase submodule that is composed of 4 proteins, including MED12. Although ubiquitously expressed, Mediator subunits can differentially regulate gene expression in a tissue-specific manner. Here, we report that MED12 is required for normal cardiac function, such that mice with conditional cardiac-specific deletion of MED12 display progressive dilated cardiomyopathy. Loss of MED12 perturbs expression of calcium-handling genes in the heart, consequently altering calcium cycling in cardiomyocytes and disrupting cardiac electrical activity. We identified transcription factors that regulate expression of calcium-handling genes that are downregulated in the heart in the absence of MED12, and we found that MED12 localizes to transcription factor consensus sequences within calcium-handling genes. We showed that MED12 interacts with one such transcription factor, MEF2, in cardiomyocytes and that MED12 and MEF2 co-occupy promoters of calcium-handling genes. Furthermore, we demonstrated that MED12 enhances MEF2 transcriptional activity and that overexpression of both increases expression of calcium-handling genes in cardiomyocytes. Our data support a role for MED12 as a coordinator of transcription through MEF2 and other transcription factors. We conclude that MED12 is a regulator of a network of calcium-handling genes, consequently mediating contractility in the mammalian heart

Coherent X-ray Diffractive Imaging; applications and limitations

The inversion of a diffraction pattern offers aberration-free diffraction-limited 3D images without the resolution and depth-of-field limitations of lens-based tomographic systems, the only limitation being radiation damage. We review our experimental results, discuss the fundamental limits of this technique and future plans.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

An assessment of the resolution limitation due to radiation-damage in x-ray diffraction microscopy

X-ray diffraction microscopy (XDM) is a new form of x-ray imaging that is being practiced at several third-generation synchrotron-radiation x-ray facilities. Although only five years have elapsed since the technique was first introduced, it has made rapid progress in demonstrating high-resolution threedimensional imaging and promises few-nm resolution with much larger samples than can be imaged in the transmission electron microscope. Both life- and materials-science applications of XDM are intended, and it is expected that the principal limitation to resolution will be radiation damage for life science and the coherent power of available x-ray sources for material science. In this paper we address the question of the role of radiation damage. We use a statistical analysis based on the so-called "dose fractionation theorem" of Hegerl and Hoppe to calculate the dose needed to make an image of a lifescience sample by XDM with a given resolution. We conclude that the needed dose scales with the inverse fourth power of the resolution and present experimental evidence to support this finding. To determine the maximum tolerable dose we have assembled a number of data taken from the literature plus some measurements of our own which cover ranges of resolution that are not well covered by reports in the literature. The tentative conclusion of this study is that XDM should be able to image frozen-hydrated protein samples at a resolution of about 10 nm with "Rose-criterion" image quality.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Waveguide single-photon detectors for integrated quantum photonic circuits

The generation, manipulation and detection of quantum bits (qubits) encoded on single photons is at the heart of quantum communication and optical quantum information processing. The combination of single-photon sources, passive optical circuits and single-photon detectors enables quantum repeaters and qubit amplifiers, and also forms the basis of all-optical quantum gates and of linear-optics quantum computing. However, the monolithic integration of sources, waveguides and detectors on the same chip, as needed for scaling to meaningful number of qubits, is very challenging, and previous work on quantum photonic circuits has used external sources and detectors. Here we propose an approach to a fully-integrated quantum photonic circuit on a semiconductor chip, and demonstrate a key component of such circuit, a waveguide single-photon detector. Our detectors, based on superconducting nanowires on GaAs ridge waveguides, provide high efficiency (20%) at telecom wavelengths, high timing accuracy (60 ps), response time in the ns range, and are fully compatible with the integration of single-photon sources, passive networks and modulators.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure