Nanoscale magnetophotonics

This Perspective surveys the state-of-the-art and future prospects of science and technology employing the nanoconfined light (nanophotonics and nanoplasmonics) in combination with magnetism. We denote this field broadly as nanoscale magnetophotonics. We include a general introduction to the field and describe the emerging magneto-optical effects in magnetoplasmonic and magnetophotonic nanostructures supporting localized and propagating plasmons. Special attention is given to magnetoplasmonic crystals with transverse magnetization and the associated nanophotonic non-reciprocal effects, and to magneto-optical effects in periodic arrays of nanostructures. We give also an overview of the applications of these systems in biological and chemical sensing, as well as in light polarization and phase control. We further review the area of nonlinear magnetophotonics, the semiconductor spin-plasmonics, and the general principles and applications of opto-magnetism and nano-optical ultrafast control of magnetism and spintronics

Origin of the Laleaua Albă dacite (Baia Sprie volcanic area and Au-Pb-Zn ore district, Romania): evidence from study of melt inclusions

Crystal inclusions (plagioclase, biotite, magnetite) and melt inclusions were studied in minerals of the Laleaua Albă dacite (Baia Sprie, Romania). Electron microprobe analysis of 29 melt inclusions in the plagioclase, K-feldspar, and quartz confirm that crystallization of these minerals took place from typical silicic melts enriched in potassium relative to sodium (K2O/Na2O = 1.5). The sum of the petrogenic components is 92–99 wt%. This points to a possible change in water content from 8 to 1 wt% during crystallization of phenocrysts. According to ion microprobe analysis of 11 melt inclusions, the minimum water content is 0.5 wt%, and the maximum water content is 6.1 wt%. The presence of high-density water fluid segregation in one of the melt inclusions suggests that the primary water content in the melt could reach 8.4 wt%. Ion microprobe data revealed a high concentration of Cu (up to 1260 ppm) as well as higher U content (from 5.0 to 14.3 ppm; average 11.5 ppm) in some melt inclusions as compared to the average U contents in silicic melts (2.7 ppm in island-arc settings and 7.9 ppm in continental rift settings). Chondrite-normalized trace-element patterns in melt inclusions suggest a complex genesis of the studied magmatic melts. Contents of some elements (for instance Sr and Ba) are close to those in island-arc melts, while others (for instance Th, U, and Eu) resemble those in melts of continental settings

Radiation in Bythinella Moquin-Tandon,1856 (Mollusca : Gastropoda : Rissooidea) in the Balkans

61 sequences of cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COI), 570 bp long, from Central Europe (8), Slovenia (2), and from the Balkans (51: 6 from, Romania, 15 from Greece, 15 from Bulgaria, 6 from Serbia, and 9 from Montenegro), 33 of them new, together with 61 sequences of the ribosomal 18S, 450 bp long, all of them new, were analysed to infer the pattern of radiation of Bythinella in the Balkans. Thirty two nominal taxa of Bythinella (22 nominal species: B. austriaca, B. calimanica, B. charpentieri, B. compressa, B. dacica, B. dispersa, B. grossui, B. hansboetersi, B. luteola, B. micherdzinskii, B. molcsanyi, B. nonveilleri, B. pannonica, B. pesterica, B. radomani, B. rhodopensis, B. robiciana, B. schmidti, B. slaveyae, B. srednogorica, B. taraensis and B. viseuiana; one nominal subspecies: B. austriaca ehrmanni; and nine Greek species not yet described) were included, represented mostly by paratypes or at least topotypes, collected at 31 Balkan localities. The phylogeny, inferred on the combined data set with the ML approach, showed two large clades, although they were weakly supported. One of them comprised the Romanian and Montenegro populations, and one Serbian population, the other (less genetically diversified) consisted of one Serbian and all the Bulgarian/Greek populations. The origin of those two clades was dated, with the external data, to be more than 4.341±0753 MYA old, thus its origin was assigned to isolation by the Dacic Basin (part of Paratethys). All the Bulgarian populations presumably belong to one species, which may be assigned to the recent recolonisation of this territory from the south

Forest restitution and protected area effectiveness in post-socialist Romania

a b s t r a c t The effectiveness of protected areas can diminish during times of pronounced socio-economic and institutional change. Our goals were to assess the effectiveness of Romanian protected areas at stemming unsanctioned logging, and to assess post-socialist logging in their surrounding landscapes, during a time of massive socio-economic and institutional change. Our results suggest that forest cover remained fairly stable shortly before and after 1990, but forest disturbance rates increased sharply in two waves after 1995 and 2005. We found substantial disturbances inside protected areas, even within core reserve areas. Moreover, disturbances in the matrix surrounding protected areas were even lower than inside protected area boundaries. We suggest that these rates are largely the result of high logging rates, triggered by rapid ownership and institutional changes. These trends compromise the goals of Romania's protected area network, lead to an increasing loss of forest habitat, and more isolated and more fragmented protected areas. The effectiveness of Romania's protected area network in terms of its ability to safeguard biodiversity is therefore most likely decreasing

Genetic Contributions to the Association between Adult Height and Head and Neck Cancer : A Mendelian Randomization Analysis

Acknowledgements: The authors thank the Italian Association for Research on Cancer (AIRC, IG 2013 n. 14211) and the PRECeDI project (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange - RISE N°645740) for supporting the work of Roberta Pastorino and Anna Puggina.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A rare truncating BRCA2 variant and genetic susceptibility to upper aerodigestive tract cancer

© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected] Funding This work was supported the National Institutes of Health (R01CA092039 05/05S1) and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (1R03DE020116). Notes The authors thank all of the participants who took part in this research and the funders and technical staff who made this study possible. We acknowledge and thank Simone Benhamou (INSERM, France) for sample contributions. We also acknowledge and thank The Cancer Genome Atlas initiative, whose data contributed heavily to this study.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Using Prior Information from the Medical Literature in GWAS of Oral Cancer Identifies Novel Susceptibility Variant on Chromosome 4 - the AdAPT Method

Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) require large sample sizes to obtain adequate statistical power, but it may be possible to increase the power by incorporating complementary data. In this study we investigated the feasibility of automatically retrieving information from the medical literature and leveraging this information in GWAS. Methods: We developed a method that searches through PubMed abstracts for pre-assigned keywords and key concepts, and uses this information to assign prior probabilities of association for each single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) with the phenotype of interest - the Adjusting Association Priors with Text (AdAPT) method. Association results from a GWAS can subsequently be ranked in the context of these priors using the Bayes False Discovery Probability (BFDP) framework. We initially tested AdAPT by comparing rankings of known susceptibility alleles in a previous lung cancer GWAS, and subsequently applied it in a two-phase GWAS of oral cancer. Results: Known lung cancer susceptibility SNPs were consistently ranked higher by AdAPT BFDPs than by p-values. In the oral cancer GWAS, we sought to replicate the top five SNPs as ranked by AdAPT BFDPs, of which rs991316, located in the ADH gene region of 4q23, displayed a statistically significant association with oral cancer risk in the replication phase (per-rare-allele log additive p-value [p(trend)] = 2.5 x 10(-3)). The combined OR for having one additional rare allele was 0.83 (95% CI: 0.76-0.90), and this association was independent of previously identified susceptibility SNPs that are associated with overall UADT cancer in this gene region. We also investigated if rs991316 was associated with other cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract (UADT), but no additional association signal was found. Conclusion: This study highlights the potential utility of systematically incorporating prior knowledge from the medical literature in genome-wide analyses using the AdAPT methodology. AdAPT is available online (url: http://services.gate.ac.uk/lld/gwas/service/config)

Research and Science Today No. 1(5)/2013

Research and Science Today Journal is a publication founded in 2011 and it is dedicated to the students of all levels (license, master and doctoral) of faculties in the country and abroad. We want to offer the participants the opportunity to present their scientific works in the following areas: Social Sciences, Economic Sciences, Legal Sciences, Humanities, Education Sciences, Engineering, Medicine and Sport. This journal provides students the opportunity to create and/or to improve their abilities to write scientific papers. So each appearance (two appearances per year at which we can add supplements) contains a number of papers written by students, masters and doctoral from the faculties from the country or/and abroad. The journal promotes original studies contributing to the progress of knowledge and it is motivated by the need to address issues of theory and practice in the areas mentioned above

The 12p13.33/RAD52 locus and genetic susceptibility to squamous cell cancers of upper aerodigestive tract

Acknowledgments: The authors thank all of the participants who took part in this research and the funders and support and technical staff who made this study possible. We also acknowledge and thank The Cancer Genome Atlas initiative whose data contributed heavily to this study. Funding: Funding for study coordination, genotyping of replication studies and statistical analysis was provided by the US National Institutes of Health (R01 CA092039 05/05S1) and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (1R03DE020116). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD