2,976 research outputs found
Seasonal and Spatial Variation in the Location and Reactivity of a NitrateâContaminated Groundwater Discharge Zone in a Lakebed
Groundwater discharge delivering anthropogenic N from surrounding watersheds can impact lake nutrient budgets. However, upgradient groundwater processes and changing dynamics in N biogeochemistry at the groundwaterâlake interface are complex. In this study, seasonal waterâlevel variations in a groundwater flowâthrough lake altered discharge patterns of a wastewaterâderived groundwater contaminant plume, thereby affecting biogeochemical processes controlling N transport. Pore water collected 15 cm under the lakebed along transects perpendicular to shore varied from oxic to anoxic with increasing nitrate concentrations (10â75 ÎŒM) and corresponding gradients in nitrite and nitrous oxide. Pore water depth profiles of nitrate concentrations and stable isotopic compositions largely reflected upgradient groundwater N sources and N cycle processes, with minor additional nitrate reduction in the nearâsurface lakebed sediments. Potential denitrification rates determined in laboratory microcosms were 10â100 times higher in nearâsurface sediments (0â5 cm) than in deeper sediments (5â30 cm) and were correlated with sediment carbon content and abundance of denitrification genes (nirS, nosZI, and nosZII). Potential anammoxâdriven N2 production was detectable in deeper anoxic sediments. Injection of bromide and nitrite in the lake sediments showed that the highest net nitrite consumption rates were within the top 10 cm. However, short transit times owing to rapid upward pore water velocities (4â5 cm hrâ1) limited removal of the contaminant nitrate transiting through the sediments. Results demonstrate that local hydrologic and biogeochemical processes at the point of discharge affect the distribution and discharge rate of N through lakebed sediments, but processes in the upgradient groundwater can be more important for affecting N speciation and concentration
Impact interaction of in-flight high-energy molten volcanic ash droplets with jet engines
© 2019 The turbine technology incorporated in jet engines is inherently vulnerable to attack by environmental silicate debris. Amongst the various kinds of such debris, volcanic ash is a particular threat as its glass softens to a liquid at temperatures of 500â800 °C, far below jet engine operating temperatures of âŒ1500 °C. As a result, ingested re-molten droplets impact and form splats on the protective thermal barrier coatings (TBCs). Investigation of the damage to jet engines ensuing from this process has, to date been restricted to forensic observations after critical encounters. Here, we employ a thermal spray technology to recreate the âin-situâ generation of molten volcanic ash droplets and observe their morphological evolution and interaction with TBCs. The mechanism of splat formation is found to depend both on substrate topography and on in-flight droplet characteristics, whereby splat circularity increases with surface roughness and with the product of the Weber and Reynolds numbers. The experiments reveal that the molten ash droplet adhesion rate is dictated by droplet temperature and viscosity, ash concentration and substrate roughness. A new dimensionless number, S, is developed to quantify the molten ash droplet adhesion rate to both substrate topography and in-flight droplet characteristics. These findings provide a greatly improved basis for the quantification of the hazard potential of volcanic ash to jet engines and should be incorporated into protocols for operational aviation response during volcanic crises
Evidence for Two Modes of Synergistic Induction of Apoptosis by Mapatumumab and Oxaliplatin in Combination with Hyperthermia in Human Colon Cancer Cells
Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the world-- the main cause of death from colorectal cancer is hepatic metastases, which can be treated with isolated hepatic perfusion (IHP). Searching for the most clinically relevant approaches for treating colorectal metastatic disease by isolated hepatic perfusion (IHP), we developed the application of oxaliplatin concomitantly with hyperthermia and humanized death receptor 4 (DR4) antibody mapatumumab (Mapa), and investigated the molecular mechanisms of this multimodality treatment in human colon cancer cell lines CX-1 and HCT116 as well as human colon cancer stem cells Tu-12, Tu-21 and Tu-22. We showed here, in this study, that the synergistic effect of the multimodality treatment-induced apoptosis was caspase dependent and activated death signaling via both the extrinsic apoptotic pathway and the intrinsic pathway. Death signaling was activated by c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) signaling which led to Bcl-xL phosphorylation at serine 62, decreasing the anti-apoptotic activity of Bcl-xL, which contributed to the intrinsic pathway. The downregulation of cellular FLICE inhibitory protein long isoform (c-FLIPL) in the extrinsic pathway was accomplished through ubiquitination at lysine residue (K) 195 and protein synthesis inhibition. Overexpression of c-FLIPL mutant (K195R) and Bcl-xL mutant (S62A) completely abrogated the synergistic effect. The successful outcome of this study supports the application of multimodality strategy to patients with colorectal hepatic metastases who fail to respond to standard chemoradiotherapy that predominantly targets the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway. © 2013 Song et al
Properties of Light Flavour Baryons in Hypercentral quark model
The light flavour baryons are studied within the quark model using the hyper
central description of the three-body system. The confinement potential is
assumed as hypercentral coulomb plus power potential () with power
index . The masses and magnetic moments of light flavour baryons are
computed for different power index, starting from 0.5 to 1.5. The
predicted masses and magnetic moments are found to attain a saturated value
with respect to variation in beyond the power index 1.0. Further
we computed transition magnetic moments and radiative decay width of light
flavour baryons. The results are in good agreement with known experimental as
well as other theoretical models.Comment: Accepted in Pramana J. of Physic
Virtual Immortality: Reanimating Characters from TV Shows.
The objective of this work is to build virtual talking avatars of characters fully automatically from TV shows. From this unconstrained data, we show how to capture a character's style of speech, visual appearance and language in an e ort to construct an interactive avatar of the person and e ectively immortalize them in a computational model. We make three contributions (i) a complete framework for producing a generative model of the audiovisual and language of characters from TV shows; (ii) a novel method for aligning transcripts to video using the audio; and (iii) a fast audio segmentation system for silencing nonspoken audio from TV shows. Our framework is demonstrated using all 236 episodes from the TV series Friends [34] ( 97hrs of video) and shown to generate novel sentences as well as character specific speech and video
Two-dimensional forward-looking sonar image registration by maximization of peripheral mutual information
First report of the presence of hepatitis E virus in Scottish harvested shellfish purchased at retail level
Coupling bimolecular PARylation biosensors with genetic screens to identify PARylation targets
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018. Poly (ADP-ribose)ylation is a dynamic protein modification that regulates multiple cellular processes. Here, we describe a system for identifying and characterizing PARylation events that exploits the ability of a PBZ (PAR-binding zinc finger) protein domain to bind PAR with high-affinity. By linking PBZ domains to bimolecular fluorescent complementation biosensors, we developed fluorescent PAR biosensors that allow the detection of temporal and spatial PARylation events in live cells. Exploiting transposon-mediated recombination, we integrate the PAR biosensor en masse into thousands of protein coding genes in living cells. Using these PAR-biosensor âtaggedâ cells in a genetic screen we carry out a large-scale identification of PARylation targets. This identifies CTIF (CBP80/CBP20-dependent translation initiation factor) as a novel PARylation target of the tankyrase enzymes in the centrosomal region of cells, which plays a role in the distribution of the centrosomal satellites.Breast Cancer Now (BBC070X); Cancer Research UK through Program Grants (CRM059X)
Novel technologies and emerging biomarkers for personalized cancer immunotherapy
The culmination of over a century's work to understand the role of the immune system in tumor control has led to the recent advances in cancer immunotherapies that have resulted in durable clinical responses in patients with a variety of malignancies. Cancer immunotherapies are rapidly changing traditional treatment paradigms and expanding the therapeutic landscape for cancer patients. However, despite the current success of these therapies, not all patients respond to immunotherapy and even those that do often experience toxicities. Thus, there is a growing need to identify predictive and prognostic biomarkers that enhance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the complex interactions between the immune system and cancer. Therefore, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) reconvened an Immune Biomarkers Task Force to review state of the art technologies, identify current hurdlers, and make recommendations for the field. As a product of this task force, Working Group 2 (WG2), consisting of international experts from academia and industry, assembled to identify and discuss promising technologies for biomarker discovery and validation. Thus, this WG2 consensus paper will focus on the current status of emerging biomarkers for immune checkpoint blockade therapy and discuss novel technologies as well as high dimensional data analysis platforms that will be pivotal for future biomarker research. In addition, this paper will include a brief overview of the current challenges with recommendations for future biomarker discovery
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