Assessing the Economical and Environmental Impact of Cultivating Genetically Modified (GM) crops in Ireland

End of Project ReportAt present, there is no GM crop cultivation in Ireland. This could change in the near future however, following the inclusion of several GM maize varieties on the EU Common Seed Catalogue in 2004. Before an Irish GM tillage sector develops, information must be provided to farmers/regulators in regard to the potential economic impact of the technology and the environmental issues associated with GM crops. This project (RMIS 5211) has examined: 1. The economic cost-benefit of cultivating several GM crops (Phytophthora resistant potato, Septoria resistant wheat, Rhynchosporium resistant barley, Fusarium resistant wheat and herbicide tolerant sugar beet) 2. The environmental issue of gene flow by modelling the propensity of seven crop species (wheat, barley, sugar beet, oilseed rape, maize, potato and ryegrass) to spread their genetic material (be it GM/non-GM) through pollen/seed-mediated gene flow. The cost-benefit analysis specifically examined the impact of reduced chemical input and indicated that each GM crop tested would be more cost efficient than their conventional equivalent. Inputting the regimes and subsequent costs for the 2002 and 2003 growing season into the analysis, farmers would have returned a greater cost savings in 2002 for each of the GM crops, with the exception of potato. While a significant increase in gross margin was recorded for all GM crops, the greatest savings (€ha-1) occurred in the case of herbicide tolerant sugar beet in the absence (9.8% saving) or presence (23.2% saving) of a yield effect. Modelling a crop’s propensity to spread its genetic material (‘gene flow’) was achieved through the creation of a composite gene flow index (GFI) model. Taking into account both pollen and seed mediated data, presence/absence of interfertile wild relatives and current farming practises, a GFI value was returned for each crop. Unless the GM event altered the seed/pollen production of the crop, it can be anticipated that the same GFI value will apply to a GM/non-GM variety of the particular crop. Crops that returned the highest GFI values were ryegrass, oilseed rape and sugar beet. Importantly, a high GFI score does not imply the prohibition of GM varieties of that crop. Rather, it highlights those crops that possess a higher propensity for gene flow and thus require greater management precautions in light of coexistence regulations. To facilitate the provision of this and other relevant research information, a website (www.gmoinfo.ie) has been provided to further public understanding of the issues. Structured in a non-scientific format, this resource will be updated on a regular basis in response to public requests for further information and with research findings from the risk assessment programme at Oak park

Black holes as mirrors: quantum information in random subsystems

We study information retrieval from evaporating black holes, assuming that the internal dynamics of a black hole is unitary and rapidly mixing, and assuming that the retriever has unlimited control over the emitted Hawking radiation. If the evaporation of the black hole has already proceeded past the "half-way" point, where half of the initial entropy has been radiated away, then additional quantum information deposited in the black hole is revealed in the Hawking radiation very rapidly. Information deposited prior to the half-way point remains concealed until the half-way point, and then emerges quickly. These conclusions hold because typical local quantum circuits are efficient encoders for quantum error-correcting codes that nearly achieve the capacity of the quantum erasure channel. Our estimate of a black hole's information retention time, based on speculative dynamical assumptions, is just barely compatible with the black hole complementarity hypothesis.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures. (v2): discussion of decoding complexity clarifie

The fully differential single-top-quark cross section in next-to-leading order QCD

We present a new next-to-leading order calculation for fully differential single-top-quark final states. The calculation is performed using phase space slicing and dipole subtraction methods. The results of the methods are found to be in agreement. The dipole subtraction method calculation retains the full spin dependence of the final state particles. We show a few numerical results to illustrate the utility and consistency of the resulting computer implementations.Comment: 37 pages, latex, 2 ps figure

Next-to-Leading Order Cross Sections for Tagged Reactions

We extend the phase space slicing method of Giele, Glover and Kosower for performing next-to-leading order jet cross section calculations in two important ways: we show how to include fragmentation functions and how to include massive particles. These extensions allow the application of this method to not just jet cross sections but also to cross sections in which a particular final state particle, including a $D$ or $B$-meson, is tagged.Comment: 36 pages, Latex Small corrections to text. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Upregulation of Haploinsufficient Gene Expression in the Brain by Targeting a Long Non-coding RNA Improves Seizure Phenotype in a Model of Dravet Syndrome

AbstractDravet syndrome is a devastating genetic brain disorder caused by heterozygous loss-of-function mutation in the voltage-gated sodium channel gene SCN1A. There are currently no treatments, but the upregulation of SCN1A healthy allele represents an appealing therapeutic strategy. In this study we identified a novel, evolutionary conserved mechanism controlling the expression of SCN1A that is mediated by an antisense non-coding RNA (SCN1ANAT). Using oligonucleotide-based compounds (AntagoNATs) targeting SCN1ANAT we were able to induce specific upregulation of SCN1A both in vitro and in vivo, in the brain of Dravet knock-in mouse model and a non-human primate. AntagoNAT-mediated upregulation of Scn1a in postnatal Dravet mice led to significant improvements in seizure phenotype and excitability of hippocampal interneurons. These results further elucidate the pathophysiology of Dravet syndrome and outline a possible new approach for the treatment of this and other genetic disorders with similar etiology

Role of electromagnetically induced transparency in resonant four-wave-mixing schemes.

Published versio

The First Magnetic Fields

We review current ideas on the origin of galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields. We begin by summarizing observations of magnetic fields at cosmological redshifts and on cosmological scales. These observations translate into constraints on the strength and scale magnetic fields must have during the early stages of galaxy formation in order to seed the galactic dynamo. We examine mechanisms for the generation of magnetic fields that operate prior during inflation and during subsequent phase transitions such as electroweak symmetry breaking and the quark-hadron phase transition. The implications of strong primordial magnetic fields for the reionization epoch as well as the first generation of stars is discussed in detail. The exotic, early-Universe mechanisms are contrasted with astrophysical processes that generate fields after recombination. For example, a Biermann-type battery can operate in a proto-galaxy during the early stages of structure formation. Moreover, magnetic fields in either an early generation of stars or active galactic nuclei can be dispersed into the intergalactic medium.Comment: Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews. Pdf can be also downloaded from http://canopus.cnu.ac.kr/ryu/cosmic-mag1.pd

Phenomenology of the Lense-Thirring effect in the Solar System

Recent years have seen increasing efforts to directly measure some aspects of the general relativistic gravitomagnetic interaction in several astronomical scenarios in the solar system. After briefly overviewing the concept of gravitomagnetism from a theoretical point of view, we review the performed or proposed attempts to detect the Lense-Thirring effect affecting the orbital motions of natural and artificial bodies in the gravitational fields of the Sun, Earth, Mars and Jupiter. In particular, we will focus on the evaluation of the impact of several sources of systematic uncertainties of dynamical origin to realistically elucidate the present and future perspectives in directly measuring such an elusive relativistic effect.Comment: LaTex, 51 pages, 14 figures, 22 tables. Invited review, to appear in Astrophysics and Space Science (ApSS). Some uncited references in the text now correctly quoted. One reference added. A footnote adde

Top-Quark Mediated Effects in Hadronic Higgs-Strahlung

Novel contributions to the total inclusive cross section for Higgs-Strahlung in the Standard Model at hadron colliders are evaluated. Although formally of order $\alpha_s^2$, they have not been taken into account in previous NNLO predictions. The terms under consideration are induced by Higgs radiation off top-quark loops and thus proportional to the top-quark Yukawa coupling. At the Tevatron, their effects to HW production are below 1% in the relevant Higgs mass range, while for HZ production, we find corrections between about 1% and 2%. At the LHC, the contribution of the newly evaluated terms to the cross section is typically of the order of 1%-3%. Based on these results, we provide updated predictions for the total inclusive Higgs-Strahlung cross section at the Tevatron and the LHC.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, 3 table

On the Perturbative Stability of the QCD Predictions for the Ratio R=FL/FTR=F_L/F_T in Heavy-Quark Leptoproduction

We analyze the perturbative and parametric stability of the QCD predictions for the Callan-Gross ratio $R(x,Q^2)=F_L/F_T$ in heavy-quark leptoproduction. We consider the radiative corrections to the dominant photon-gluon fusion mechanism. In various kinematic regions, the following contributions are investigated: exact NLO results at low and moderate $Q^2\lesssim m^2$, asymptotic NLO predictions at high $Q^2\gg m^2$, and both NLO and NNLO soft-gluon (or threshold) corrections at large Bjorken $x$. Our analysis shows that large radiative corrections to the structure functions $F_T(x,Q^2)$ and $F_L(x,Q^2)$ cancel each other in their ratio $R(x,Q^2)$ with good accuracy. As a result, the NLO contributions to the Callan-Gross ratio are less than 10% in a wide region of the variables $x$ and $Q^2$. We provide compact LO predictions for $R(x,Q^2)$ in the case of low $x\ll 1$. A simple formula connecting the high-energy behavior of the Callan-Gross ratio and low-$x$ asymptotics of the gluon density is derived. It is shown that the obtained hadron-level predictions for $R(x\to 0,Q^2)$ are stable under the DGLAP evolution of the gluon distribution function. Our analytic results simplify the extraction of the structure functions $F_2^c(x,Q^2)$ and $F_2^b(x,Q^2)$ from measurements of the corresponding reduced cross sections, in particular at DESY HERA.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, revtex4; minor correction