Southampton no.1 (Western Esplanade) geothermal well: geological well completion report

Southampton No 1 (Western Esplanade) was drilled as a geothermal development well, on behalf of the Department of Energy in association with Southampton City Council, following the successful testing of Marchwood No 1 Borehole and studies of the geothermal potential of the Wessex Basin area by the Institute of Geological Sciences. The site was selected near Southampton city centre, with the aim of providing space heating for the proposed Western Esplanade development area. The nearby Marchwood No 1 Borehole is situated 1.8 km to the south-west, and the south-east part of NERC 81-1 seismic line is adjacent to the site (Figure 1.2). Southampton No 1 is situated in an -area of negative gravity anomaly as indicated on the regional Bouguer anomaly map (Figure 1.4)

How to Capture Reciprocal Communication Dynamics: Comparing Longitudinal Statistical Approaches in Order to Analyze Within- and Between-Person Effects

Choosing an appropriate statistical model to analyze reciprocal relations between individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors over time can be challenging. Often, decisions for or against specific models are rather implicit and it remains unclear whether the statistical approach fits the theory of interest. For longitudinal models, this is problematic since within- and between-person processes can be confounded leading to wrong conclusions. Taking the perspective of the reinforcing spirals model (RSM) focusing on media effects and selection, we compare six statistical models that were recently used to analyze the RSM and show their ability to separate within- and between-person components. Using empirical data capturing respondents’ development during adolescence, we show that results vary across statistical models. Further, Monte Carlo simulations indicate that some approaches might lead to wrong conclusions if specific communication dynamics are present. In sum, we recommend using approaches that explicitly model and clearly separate within- and between-person effects

Bias and temperature dependence of the 0.7 conductance anomaly in Quantum Point Contacts

The 0.7 (2e^2/h) conductance anomaly is studied in strongly confined, etched GaAs/GaAlAs quantum point contacts, by measuring the differential conductance as a function of source-drain and gate bias as well as a function of temperature. We investigate in detail how, for a given gate voltage, the differential conductance depends on the finite bias voltage and find a so-called self-gating effect, which we correct for. The 0.7 anomaly at zero bias is found to evolve smoothly into a conductance plateau at 0.85 (2e^2/h) at finite bias. Varying the gate voltage the transition between the 1.0 and the 0.85 (2e^2/h) plateaus occurs for definite bias voltages, which defines a gate voltage dependent energy difference $\Delta$. This energy difference is compared with the activation temperature T_a extracted from the experimentally observed activated behavior of the 0.7 anomaly at low bias. We find \Delta = k_B T_a which lends support to the idea that the conductance anomaly is due to transmission through two conduction channels, of which the one with its subband edge \Delta below the chemical potential becomes thermally depopulated as the temperature is increased.Comment: 9 pages (RevTex) with 9 figures (some in low resolution

Cationic lipid-based nanoparticles mediate functional delivery of acetate to tumor cells in vivo leading to significant anticancer effects

Metabolic reengineering using nanoparticle delivery represents an innovative therapeutic approach to normalizing the deregulation of cellular metabolism underlying many diseases, including cancer. Here, we demonstrated a unique and novel application to the treatment of malignancy using a short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-encapsulated lipid-based delivery system – liposome-encapsulated acetate nanoparticles for cancer applications (LITA-CAN). We assessed chronic in vivo administration of our nanoparticle in three separate murine models of colorectal cancer. We demonstrated a substantial reduction in tumor growth in the xenograft model of colorectal cancer cell lines HT-29, HCT-116 p53+/+ and HCT-116 p53-/-. Nanoparticle-induced reductions in histone deacetylase gene expression indicated a potential mechanism for these anti-proliferative effects. Together, these results indicated that LITA-CAN could be used as an effective direct or adjunct therapy to treat malignant transformation in vivo

Chromosome‐level reference genome of the soursop (Annona muricata) : a new resource for Magnoliid research and tropical pomology

The flowering plant family Annonaceae includes important commercially grown tropical crops, but development of promising species is hindered by a lack of genomic resources to build breeding programs. Annonaceae are part of the magnoliids, an ancient lineage of angiosperms for which evolutionary relationships with other major clades remain unclear. To provide resources to breeders and evolutionary researchers, we report a chromosome-level genome assembly of the soursop (Annona muricata). We assembled the genome using 444.32 Gb of DNA sequences (676x sequencing depth) from PacBio and Illumina short-reads, in combination with 10x Genomics and Bionano data (v1). A total of 949 scaffolds were assembled to a final size of 656.77 Mb, with a scaffold N50 of 3.43 Mb (v1), and then further improved to seven pseudo-chromosomes using Hi-C sequencing data (v2; scaffold N50: 93.2 Mb, total size in chromosomes: 639.6 Mb). Heterozygosity was very low (0.06%), while repeat sequences accounted for 54.87% of the genome, and 23,375 protein-coding genes with an average of 4.79 exons per gene were annotated using de novo, RNA-seq and homology-based approaches. Reconstruction of the historical population size showed a slow continuous contraction, probably related to Cenozoic climate changes. The soursop is the first genome assembled in Annonaceae, supporting further studies of floral evolution in magnoliids, providing an essential resource for delineating relationships of ancient angiosperm lineages. Both genome-assisted improvement and conservation efforts will be strengthened by the availability of the soursop genome. As a community resource, this assembly will further strengthen the role of Annonaceae as model species for research on the ecology, evolution and domestication potential of tropical species in pomology and agroforestry

Acoustic communication within ant societies and its mimicry by mutualistic and socially parasitic myrmecophiles

This review focuses on the main acoustic adaptations that have evolved to enhance social communication in ants. We also describe how other invertebrates mimic these acoustic signals in order to coexist with ants in the case of mutualistic myrmecophiles, or, in the case of social parasites, corrupt them in order to infiltrate ant societies and exploit their resources. New data suggest that the strength of each ant myrmecophile interaction leads to distinctive sound profiles and may be a better predictor of the similarity of sound between different myrmecophilous species than their phylogenetic distance. Finally, we discuss the evolutionary significance of vibrations produced by specialized myrmecophiles in the context of ant multimodal communication involving the use of chemical and acoustic signals in combination and identify future challenges for research including how new technology might allow a better understanding of the study systems

Nonergodic Behavior of Interacting Bosons in Harmonic Traps

We study the time evolution of a system of interacting bosons in a harmonic trap. In the low-energy regime, the quantum system is not ergodic and displays rather large fluctuations of the ground state occupation number. In the high energy regime of classical physics we find nonergodic behavior for modest numbers of trapped particles. We give two conditions that assure the ergodic behavior of the quantum system even below the condensation temperature.Comment: 11 pages, 3 PS-figures, uses psfig.st