Seasonal Changes in the Ratio of Microbial Biomass P to Total P in Soils of Grazed Pastures

Phosphorus (P) utilisation efficiency in pasture soils is higher than in arable soils. Because there is a considerable amount of microbial biomass in the root mat layer, which is peculiar to permanent pasture, the microbial biomass P (MBP) contribution may be important in supplying soil P to pasture plants (Chen et al., 2000; He et al., 1997). In the present study, we investigated seasonal changes in MBP and other forms of P relative to total soil P in two pastures in which P uptake was estimated to be different

Removal of forbidden states in a three-α\alpha system

The ground and excited 0$^+$ states of $^{12}$C are investigated in a 3$\alpha$ macroscopic model using the deep potential of Buck, Friedrich and Wheatley. The elimination of forbidden states is performed either by constructing the allowed state space explicitly or by using the orthogonalizing pseudopotential. The well-known enigmatic behavior of the latter approach is resolved. It is safe to define the forbidden states referring to the underlying microscopic model.Comment: 18pages, 2figure

Persuasive Communication and Feedback of Attitude Change

This study examined how subjects who were persuaded to change their attitudes, actually changed their attitude after being told the degree of their changed attitudes. At first, 133 college students (Men : 27,Women : 106) were recorded for their initial attitudes (first session). After one week, the subjects were told opposite persuasion messages against their initial attitudes and their attitudes were measured again (second session). After another two weeks, the subjects were told how much they had changed their attitudes between the first session and the second session (third session). After reading the persuasion messages of the second session again, they filled out the third attitude measurement form. The results support the hypothesis that the more they were told they had changed their attitudes, the more their attitudes reverted to their initial attitudes. The relation of the degree of subjects' self acceptance or rejection regarding changes of their initial attitudes, causal attributions for self acceptance and rejection, and degree of the subjects' reconsidering the persuasion message were studied. The reactance against self persuasion and attitudinal change were studied in terms of self-awareness and impression management theory

C. elegans PlexinA PLX-1 mediates a cell contact-dependent stop signal in vulval precursor cells

AbstractPLX-1 is a PlexinA transmembrane protein in Caenorhabditis elegans, and the transmembrane-type semaphorin, SMP-1, is a ligand for PLX-1. The SMP-1/PLX-1 system has been shown to be necessary for proper epidermal morphogenesis in the male tail and seam cells. Here, we show that the SMP-1/PLX-1 system also regulates vulval morphogenesis. In plx-1 and smp-1 mutants, hermaphrodites sometimes exhibit a protruding vulva or multiple vulva-like protrusions. Throughout the vulval development of plx-1 and smp-1 mutants, the arrangement of vulval cells is often disrupted. In the initial step of vulval morphogenesis, vulval precursor cells (VPCs) are generated normally but are subsequently arranged abnormally in mutants. Continuous observation revealed that plx-1 VPC fails to terminate longitudinal extension after making contact with neighbor VPCs. The arrangement defects of VPCs in plx-1 and smp-1 mutants are rescued by expressing the respective cDNA in VPCs. plx-1::egfp and smp-1::egfp transgenes are both expressed in all vulval cells, including VPCs, throughout vulval development. We propose that the SMP-1/PLX-1 system is responsible for a cell contact-mediated stop signal for VPC extension. Analyses using cell fate-specific markers showed that the arrangement defects of VPCs also affect cell fate specification and cell lineages, but in a relatively small fraction of plx-1 mutants

Distribution of β2-adrenergic receptor mRNA expression along the hamster nephron segments

AbstractDistribution of β2-adrenergic receptor mRNA expression along the microdissected hamster nephron segments was examined by the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique. Conventional RT-PCR using a set of primers on separate exons could not be applied for the detection of β2-adrenergic receptor mRNA because of its intronless nature. We used the ‘rapid amplification of cDNA ends’ protocol [(1985) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 85, 8998-9002] as a maneuver for RT-PCR of an intronless gene. Using this method, we successfully located hamster β2-adrenergic receptor mRNA only in glomeruli and early proximal convoluted tubule along the nephron segments tested

The binding specificity of Translocated in LipoSarcoma/FUsed in Sarcoma with lncRNA transcribed from the promoter region of cyclin D1

Background: Translocated in LipoSarcoma (TLS, also known as FUsed in Sarcoma) is an RNA/DNA binding protein whose mutation cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In previous study, we demonstrated that TLS binds to long noncoding RNA, promoter-associated ncRNA-D (pncRNA-D), transcribed from the 5' upstream region of cyclin D1 (CCND1), and inhibits the expression of CCND1. Results: In order to elucidate the binding specificity between TLS and pncRNA-D, we divided pncRNA-D into seven fragments and examined the binding with full-length TLS, TLS-RGG2-zinc finger-RGG3, and TLS-RGG3 by RNA pull down assay. As a result, TLS was able to bind to all the seven fragments, but the fragments containing reported recognition motifs (GGUG and GGU) tend to bind more solidly. The full-length TLS and TLS-RGG2-zinc finger-RGG3 showed a similar interaction with pncRNA-D, but the binding specificity of TLS-RGG3 was lower compared to the full-length TLS and TLS-RGG2-zinc finger-RGG3. Mutation in GGUG and GGU motifs dramatically decreased the binding, and unexpectedly, we could only detect weak interaction with the RNA sequence with stem loop structure. Conclusion: The binding of TLS and pncRNA-D was affected by the presence of GGUG and GGU sequences, and the C terminal domains of TLS function in the interaction with pncRNA-D

More about the axial anomaly on the lattice

We study the axial anomaly defined on a finite-size lattice by using a Dirac operator which obeys the Ginsparg-Wilson relation. When the gauge group is U(1), we show that the basic structure of axial anomaly on the infinite lattice, which can be deduced by a cohomological analysis, persists even on (sufficiently large) finite-size lattices. For non-abelian gauge groups, we propose a conjecture on a possible form of axial anomaly on the infinite lattice, which holds to all orders in perturbation theory. With this conjecture, we show that a structure of the axial anomaly on finite-size lattices is again basically identical to that on the infinite lattice. Our analysis with the Ginsparg-Wilson Dirac operator indicates that, in appropriate frameworks, the basic structure of axial anomaly is quite robust and it persists even in a system with finite ultraviolet and infrared cutoffs.Comment: 12 pages, uses JHEP.cls and amsfonts.sty, the final version to appear in Nucl. Phys.