The postcranial skeleton of Monolophosaurus jiangi (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Middle Jurassic of Xinjiang, China, and a review of Middle Jurassic Chinese theropods

The Middle Jurassic was a critical time in the evolution of theropod dinosaurs, highlighted by the origination and radiation of the large-bodied and morphologically diverse Tetanurae. Middle Jurassic tetanurans are rare but have been described from Europe, South America and China. In particular, China has yielded a number of potential basal tetanurans, but these have received little detailed treatment in the literature. Here we redescribe the postcranial skeleton of one of the most complete Chinese Middle Jurassic theropods, Monolophosaurus. Several features confirmthe tetanuran affinities of Monolophosaurus, but the possession of ‘primitive’ traits such as a double-faceted pubic peduncle of the ilium and a hood-like supracetabular crest suggest a basal position within Tetanurae. This conflicts with most published cladistic analyses that place Monolophosaurus in a more derived position within Allosauroidea.We review the Middle Jurassic record of Chinese theropods and compare Monolophosaurus to other Middle Jurassic theropods globally. These comparisons suggest that Monolophosaurus and Chuandongocoelurus formed an endemic theropod clade limited to the Middle Jurassic of Asia. Other Middle Jurassic Chinese theropods deserve further study

XMM-Newton observations of ultraluminous X-ray sources in nearby galaxies

An XMM-Newton study of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) has been performed in a sample of 10 nearby Seyfert galaxies. Eighteen ULX have been found with positional uncertainty of about 4". The large collecting area of XMM-Newton makes the statistics sufficient to perform spectral fitting with simple models in 8 cases. The main results of the present minisurvey strengthen the theory that the ULX could be accreting black holes in hard or soft state. In some cases, the contribution of the ULX to the overall X-ray flux appears to be dominant with respect to that of the active nucleus. In addition, 6 ULX present probable counterparts at other wavelengths (optical/infrared, radio). A multiwavelength observing strategy is required to better assess the nature of these sources.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication by Astronomy and Astrophysics. If you want figures at full resolution, please send an email to Foschin

Celtic censure: representing Wales in eighteenth-century Germany

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of regionalist discourse as the performative legitimation of specific frontiers, this article examines how the English traveller Samuel Jackson Pratt mediated a picture of the Welsh to late eighteenth-century readers in his Gleanings Through Wales, Holland and Westphalia (1795). This process of mediation was further complicated by the translation of this work into German as the Aehrenlese auf einer Reise durch Wallis, which appeared with the Leipzig publisher Lincke in 1798. While this work made an important contribution to German Celtophilia in the Romantic period, the German translator was careful to omit its more Sternean passages, in favour of factual narrative. Pratt's account of his travel through Wales, mediated in turn to a German audience through its Leipzig translator, therefore embodies several layers of cultural transfer that generate a complex and multifaceted image of Wales at the close of the eighteenth century

The higher-level phylogeny of Archosauria (Tetrapoda:Diapsida)

Crown group Archosauria, which includes birds, dinosaurs, crocodylomorphs, and several extinct Mesozoic groups, is a primary division of the vertebrate tree of life. However, the higher-level phylogenetic relationships within Archosauria are poorly resolved and controversial, despite years of study. The phylogeny of crocodile-line archosaurs (Crurotarsi) is particularly contentious, and has been plagued by problematic taxon and character sampling. Recent discoveries and renewed focus on archosaur anatomy enable the compilation of a new dataset, which assimilates and standardizes character data pertinent to higher-level archosaur phylogeny, and is scored across the largest group of taxa yet analysed. This dataset includes 47 new characters (25% of total) and eight taxa that have yet to be included in an analysis, and total taxonomic sampling is more than twice that of any previous study. This analysis produces a well-resolved phylogeny, which recovers mostly traditional relationships within Avemetatarsalia, places Phytosauria as a basal crurotarsan clade, finds a close relationship between Aetosauria and Crocodylomorpha, and recovers a monophyletic Rauisuchia comprised of two major subclades. Support values are low, suggesting rampant homoplasy and missing data within Archosauria, but the phylogeny is highly congruent with stratigraphy. Comparison with alternative analyses identifies numerous scoring differences, but indicates that character sampling is the main source of incongruence. The phylogeny implies major missing lineages in the Early Triassic and may support a Carnian-Norian extinction event.Marshall Scholarship for study in the United KingdomJurassic FoundationUniversity of BristolPaleontological Societ

The social and behavioral influences (SBI) study: study design and rationale for studying the effects of race and activation on cancer pain management

Background Racial disparities exist in the care provided to advanced cancer patients. This article describes an investigation designed to advance the science of healthcare disparities by isolating the effects of patient race and patient activation on physician behavior using novel standardized patient (SP) methodology. Methods/design The Social and Behavioral Influences (SBI) Study is a National Cancer Institute sponsored trial conducted in Western New York State, Northern/Central Indiana, and lower Michigan. The trial uses an incomplete randomized block design, randomizing physicians to see patients who are either black or white and who are “typical” or “activated” (e.g., ask questions, express opinions, ask for clarification, etc.). The study will enroll 91 physicians. Discussion The SBI study addresses important gaps in our knowledge about racial disparities and methods to reduce them in patients with advanced cancer by using standardized patient methodology. This study is innovative in aims, design, and methodology and will point the way to interventions that can reduce racial disparities and discrimination and draw links between implicit attitudes and physician behaviors

BL Lac Identification for the Ultraluminous X-ray Source Observed in the Direction of NGC 4698

We report the identification of the optical and radio counterparts of the ultraluminous X-ray (ULX) source XMMU J124825.9+083020 (NGC4698-ULX1). The optical spectrum taken with the VLT yields a redshift of z=0.43, which implies that the ULX is not associated with the nearby galaxy NGC4698. The spectral energy distribution calculated from the available data indicates that the source is likely to be a BL Lac object. The possible synchrotron peak at X-ray energies suggests that this source may be a gamma-ray emitter.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication by Astronomy and Astrophysic

Determination of intrinsic switching field distributions in perpendicular recording media: numerical study of the ΔH(M,ΔM)\Delta H(M, \Delta M) method

We present a numerical study of the $\Delta H(M,\Delta M)$ method and its ability to accurately determine intrinsic switching field distributions in interacting granular magnetic materials such as perpendicular recording media. In particular, we study how this methodology fails for large ferromagnetic inter-granular interactions, at which point the associated strongly correlated magnetization reversal cannot be properly represented by the mean-field approximation, upon which the $\Delta H(M,\Delta M)$ method is based. In this study, we use a 2-dimensional array of symmetric hysterons that have an intrinsic switching field distribution of standard deviation $\sigma$ and ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor interactions $J$. We find the $\Delta H(M,\Delta M)$ method to be very accurate for small $J/\sigma$ values, while substantial errors develop once the effective exchange field becomes comparable with $\sigma$, corroborating earlier results from micromagnetic simulations. We furthermore demonstrate that this failure is correlated with deviations from data set redundancy, which is a key property of the mean-field approximation. Thus, the $\Delta H(M,\Delta M)$ method fails in a well defined and quantifiable manner that can be easily assessed from the data sets alone.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

The structure of the bacterial oxidoreductase enzyme DsbA in complex with a peptide reveals a basis for substrate specificity in the catalytic cycle of DsbA enzymes

Oxidative protein folding in Gram-negative bacteria results in the formation of disulfide bonds between pairs of cysteine residues. This is a multistep process in which the dithiol-disulfide oxidoreductase enzyme, DsbA, plays a central role. The structure of DsbA comprises an all helical domain of unknown function and a thioredoxin domain, where active site cysteines shuttle between an oxidized, substrate-bound, reduced form and a DsbB-bound form, where DsbB is a membrane protein that reoxidizes DsbA. Most DsbA enzymes interact with a wide variety of reduced substrates and show little specificity. However, a number of DsbA enzymes have now been identified that have narrow substrate repertoires and appear to interact specifically with a smaller number of substrates. The transient nature of the DsbA-substrate complex has hampered our understanding of the factors that govern the interaction of DsbA enzymes with their substrates. Here we report the crystal structure of a complex between Escherichia coli DsbA and a peptide with a sequence derived from a substrate. The binding site identified in the DsbA-peptide complex was distinct from that observed for DsbB in the DsbA-DsbB complex. The structure revealed details of the DsbA-peptide interaction and suggested a mechanism by which DsbA can simultaneously show broad specificity for substrates yet exhibit specificity for DsbB. This mode of binding was supported by solution nuclear magnetic resonance data as well as functional data, which demonstrated that the substrate specificity of DsbA could be modified via changes at the binding interface identified in the structure of the comple