Extended H? emission line sources from UWISH2

We present the extended source catalogue for the UKIRT Wide Field Infrared Survey for H2 (UWISH2). The survey is unbiased along the inner Galactic Plane from l ? 357° to l ? 65° and |b| ? 1.5° and covers 209 deg2. A further 42.0 and 35.5 deg2 of high dust column density regions have been targeted in Cygnus and Auriga. We have identified 33 200 individual extended H2 features. They have been classified to be associated with about 700 groups of jets and outflows, 284 individual (candidate) planetary nebulae, 30 supernova remnants and about 1300 photodissociation regions. We find a clear decline of star formation activity (traced by H2 emission from jets and photodissociation regions) with increasing distance from the Galactic Centre. About 60 per cent of the detected candidate planetary nebulae have no known counterpart and 25 per cent of all supernova remnants have detectable H2 emission associated with them

Fluctuation Dominated Josephson Tunneling with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope

We demonstrate Josephson tunneling in vacuum tunnel junctions formed between a superconducting scanning tunneling microscope tip and a Pb film, for junction resistances in the range 50-300 k$\Omega$. We show that the superconducting phase dynamics is dominated by thermal fluctuations, and that the Josephson current appears as a peak centered at small finite voltages. In the presence of microwave fields (f=15.0 GHz) the peak decreases in magnitude and shifts to higher voltages with increasing rf power, in agreement with theory.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX, submitted to PR

Further explorations of illness uncertainty: Carer’s experiences of Parkinson’s disease

Objective: Dominant models of illness uncertainty define uncertainty as ‘an inability to determine the meaning of illness-related events’. Recent research has shown patient uncertainty to be multidimensional encompassing personal issues indirectly affected by illness. The nature of carer uncertainty has yet to be fully explored. The present study aimed to investigate the nature of illness uncertainty in the carers of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Design: Eighteen carers of a spouse with PD participated in semi-structured interviews. Transcripts were thematically analysed, statements were coded as uncertain if they reflected ‘a lack of certainty, or a state of limited knowledge, understanding or worry regarding an existing or future outcome’. Results: The domains of uncertainty expressed by carers closely fitted the five domain framework of patient uncertainty: symptoms and prognosis, medical management, self-management, social functioning and impact. An additional ‘carer-role’ domain was identified. Conclusions: Carer uncertainty about PD went beyond issues directly related to the illness. The findings have implications for research into uncertainty suggesting that widely used measures may not be accurately capturing the nature of carer uncertainty about chronic illness. The breadth of uncertainty reported has implications for the provision of appropriate support to improve caregiver well-being

A method for determining venous contribution to BOLD contrast sensory activation

While BOLD contrast reflects haemodynamic changes within capillaries serving neural tissue, it also has a venous component. Studies that have determined the relation of large blood vessels to the activation map indicate that veins are the source of the largest response, and the most delayed in time. It would be informative if the location of these large veins could be extracted from the properties of the functional responses, since vessels are not visible in BOLD contrast images. The present study describes a method for investigating whether measures taken from the functional response can reliably predict vein location, or at least be useful in down-weighting the venous contribution to the activation response, and illustrates this method using data from one subject. We combined fMRI at 3 Tesla with high-resolution anatomical imaging and MR venography to test whether the intrinsic properties of activation time courses corresponded to tissue type. Measures were taken from a gamma fit to the functional response. Mean magnitude showed a significant effect of tissue type (P veins ≈ grey matter > white matter. Mean delays displayed the same ranking across tissue types (P grey matter. However, measures for all tissue types were distributed across an overlapping range. A logistic regression model correctly discriminated 72% of the veins from grey matter in the absence of independent information of macroscopic vessels (ROC=0.72). Whilst tissue classification was not perfect for this subject, weighting the T contrast by the predicted probabilities materially reduced the venous component to the activation map

Differential electrophysiological response during rest, self-referential, and non-self-referential tasks in human posteromedial cortex

The electrophysiological basis for higher brain activity during rest and internally directed cognition within the human default mode network (DMN) remains largely unknown. Here we use intracranial recordings in the human posteromedial cortex (PMC), a core node within the DMN, during conditions of cued rest, autobiographical judgments, and arithmetic processing. We found a heterogeneous profile of PMC responses in functional, spatial, and temporal domains. Although the majority of PMC sites showed increased broad gamma band activity (30-180 Hz) during rest, some PMC sites, proximal to the retrosplenial cortex, responded selectively to autobiographical stimuli. However, no site responded to both conditions, even though they were located within the boundaries of the DMN identified with resting-state functional imaging and similarly deactivated during arithmetic processing. These findings, which provide electrophysiological evidence for heterogeneity within the core of the DMN, will have important implications for neuroimaging studies of the DMN

The Politics of Commerce : The Congress of Chambers of Commerce of the Empire, 1886-1914

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Quinolone-resistant gyrase mutants demonstrate decreased susceptibility to triclosan

Objectives: Cross-resistance between antibiotics and biocides is a potentially important driver of MDR. A relationship between susceptibility of Salmonella to quinolones and triclosan has been observed. This study aimed to: (i) investigate the mechanism underpinning this; (ii) determine whether the phenotype is conserved in Escherichia coli; and (iii) evaluate the potential for triclosan to select for quinolone resistance. Methods: WT E. coli, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and gyrA mutants were used. These were characterized by determining antimicrobial susceptibility, DNA gyrase activity and sensitivity to inhibition. Expression of stress response pathways (SOS, RpoS, RpoN and RpoH) was measured, as was the fitness of mutants. The potential for triclosan to select for quinolone resistance was determined. Results: All gyrase mutants showed increased triclosan MICs and altered supercoiling activity. There was no evidence for direct interaction between triclosan and gyrase. Identical substitutions in GyrA had different impacts on supercoiling in the two species. For both, there was a correlation between altered supercoiling and expression of stress responses. This was more marked in E. coli, where an Asp87Gly GyrA mutant demonstrated greatly increased fitness in the presence of triclosan. Exposure of parental strains to low concentrations of triclosan did not select for quinolone resistance. Conclusions: Our data suggest gyrA mutants are less susceptible to triclosan due to up-regulation of stress responses. The impact of gyrA mutation differs between E. coli and Salmonella. The impacts of gyrA mutation beyond quinolone resistance have implications for the fitness and selection of gyrA mutants in the presence of non-quinolone antimicrobials

Using molecular gas observations to guide initial conditions for star cluster simulations

Interstellar matter and star formatio