An Engineered Nonsense \u3cem\u3eURA3\u3c/em\u3e Allele Provides a Versatile System to Detect the Presence, Absence and Appearance of the [em\u3ePSI\u3c/em\u3e\u3csup\u3e+\u3c/sup\u3e] Prion in \u3cem\u3eSaccharomyces cerevisiae\u3c/em\u3e

Common methods to identify yeast cells containing the prion form of the Sup35 translation termination factor, [PSI+], involve a nonsense suppressor phenotype. Decreased function of Sup35p in [PSI+] cells leads to readthrough of certain nonsense mutations in a few auxotrophic markers, for example, ade1-14. This readthrough results in growth on adenine deficient media. While this powerful tool has dramatically facilitated the study of [PSI+], it is limited to a narrow range of laboratory strains and cannot easily be used to screen for cells that have lost the [PSI+] prion. Therefore we have engineered a nonsense mutation in the widely used URA3 gene, termed the ura3-14 allele. Introduction of the ura3-14 allele into an array of genetic backgrounds, carrying a loss-of-function URA3 mutation and [PSI+], allows for growth on media lacking uracil, indicative of decreased translational termination efficiency. This ura3-14 allele is able to distinguish various forms of the [PSI+] prion, called variants and is able to detect the de novo appearance of [PSI+] in strains carrying the prion form of Rnq1p, [PIN+]. Furthermore, 5-fluoorotic acid, which kills cells making functional Ura3p, provides a means to select for [psi−] derivatives in a population of [PSI+] cells marked with the ura3-14 allele, making this system much more versatile than previous methods

Paleoecology of the Varved Rita Blanca Lake Deposits, Hartley County, Texas

The Rita Blanca lake deposits in the northwestern part of the panhandle of Texas have been dated as Blancan age by vertebrate remains. During maximum development, Rita Blanca lake probably had an elliptical shape with a length of about 6 miles and breadth of about 3 1/2 miles. The subject of this report is the petrology and paleontology of a 4 1/2-foot laminated clay bed of Blancan age low in the exposed Rita Blanca lake deposit of Hartley County, Texas. The main purpose is to determine the paleoecology, in particular the nature of the climatic regime which prevailed during deposition of this bed

Outstanding Educational Performance Awards: Highlighting Top Achieving Arkansas Schools, 2009

Since our founding in 2003, the mission of the Office for Education Policy has been to look at pressing issues through the lens of academic research and disseminate our findings to educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders around Arkansas. Every once in a while, however, we think it is okay to stray from issue analysis and simply share some good news! So, in this Arkansas Education Report (AER) we merely aim to highlight excellent performance and give our congratulations. To that end, we are happy to highlight the top performing schools around the state in an annual AER entitled the Outstanding Educational Performance Awards

Soil Testing: Field, Sample and Laboratory Variability

Soil testing has advanced as a science and has become a tool widely used in making fertilizer recommendations. One of the basic components for ensuring reliability of recommendations is calibration of soil test results to determine the proper match of fertilizer recommendations with the soil test level for each nutrient and crop. Generally, calibration has been accomplished on small plot areas and is quite accurate. Even though there is nutrient variability within small areas, the potential for variability is much greater on a field basis. An important factor in making reliable fertilizer recommendations is the assumption that the soil sample itself accurately represents a field. Large variations in fertility levels and pH within a field can result in poor recommendations. Therefore, the nutrient variability within a field is of interest and importance. In some cases, the nutrient variability within a field can be caused by a number of things such as soil erosion and deposition, combining of fields, past history, fertilization and manure application patterns, soil types and other factors. Large variability within a field has been proven to cause variable yields. Soil test records from many fields over a number of years show that the extent of soil test variability is dependent on the field. Because of this, some fields show little change in soil test levels from year to year while other fields show large changes in the nutrient status from year to year. Such large yearly changes can come from a combination of primarily four sources: 1) Variability in the field as described above; 2) How the soil sample is taken (number of cores, depth, time of year, etc.); 3) Quality control within the laboratory (the capability of the lab to reproduce its results); and 4) Fertilizer applied during the year and time of soil sampling relative to fertilizer application and crop growth. We have closely monitored a field for a number of years to evaluate the effect of these factors on making lime and fertilizer recommendations

Canola: A New Cash Crop for Kentucky

For the past few years, Kentucky farmers have become more interested in alternative cash crops for their farming operations. One such crop that is starting to receive attention is Canola. Classified as an oil crop, Canola is a type of oilseed rape. Rape is a member of the mustard family and is closely related to turnip. cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and mustards. It is a cool-season annual and an important oilseed crop in many parts of the world that is used for both human consumption and industrial purposes. Major rapeseed production areas are in Europe and Canada. The seed contains approximately 40- 45% oil content (dry basis) and 35% protein (oil-free dry basis). Two products are made from processed rapeseed; an oil that has industrial or edible uses and a high protein meal which can be used in animal feed. There are two types of rape. One type is used for industrial purposes and sometimes called industrial rape. The other is Canola which is used for human and animal consumption. The oil from the varieties of industrial rape contains a high amount of erucic acid (50% or more) and is not suitable for human or animal consumption. It is used in the rubber industry, textiles, detergents, leather, plastics and special lubricants. The meal from these varieties contains high levels of glucosinolates which make it unsuitable for livestock consumption. The current Canola varieties were made possible by breeding improvements which greatly reduced the undesirable components in rapeseed (erucic acid and glucosinolates) and made it suitable for human and animal consumption. The name given to this type of rapeseed is Canola , which is an international registered trademark of the Canola Council of Canada and the name used to identify the modern rapeseed varieties known as double low with 2% or less erucic acid content and less than 30 micromoles of glucosinolates per gram of oil-free meal. One of the strong selling points for Canola oil is its very low saturated fat level and favorable mixture of mono-and polyunsaturated fats. Like other vegetable oils, it contains no cholesterol. Many feel the edible rapeseed oil market will improve as new vegetable oil products made from rapeseed continue to be developed. In addition, there are strong foreign markets, particularly in Europe and Japan, with demand on the increase. The Canola meal is 35% protein and has an economic worth of about 703 the value of soybean meal (44% protein). The value of the meal is also limited by its high fiber and low lysine content

Spatial Distribution of Competing Ions around DNA in Solution

The competition of monovalent and divalent cations for proximity to negatively charged DNA is of biological importance and can provide strong constraints for theoretical treatments of polyelectrolytes. Resonant x-ray scattering experiments have allowed us to monitor the number and distribution of each cation in a mixed ion cloud around DNA. These measurements provide experimental evidence to support a general theoretical prediction: the normalized distribution of each ion around polyelectrolytes remains constant when ions are mixed at different ratios. In addition, the amplitudes of the scattering signals throughout the competition provide a measurement of the surface concentration parameter that predicts the competition behavior of these cations. The data suggest that ion size needs to be taken into account in applying Poisson-Boltzmann treatments to polyelectrolytes such as DNA

Symbolic Computation of Quantities Associated With Time-Periodic Dynamical Systems 1

Many dynamical systems can be modeled by a set of linear/nonlinear ordinary differential equations with periodic time-varying coefficients. The state transition matrix (STM) Uðt; aÞ, associated with the linear part of the equation, can be expressed in terms of the periodic Lyapunov-Floqu et (L-F) transformation matrix Qðt; aÞ and a time-invariant matrix RðaÞ containing a set of symbolic system parameters a: Computation of Qðt; aÞ and RðaÞ in symbolic form as a function of a is of paramount importance in stability, bifurcation analysis, and control system design. In earlier studies, since Qðt; aÞ and RðaÞ were available only in numerical forms, general results for parameter unfolding and control system design could not be obtained in the entire parameter space. In 2009, an attempt was made b

SIM-STEM Lab: Incorporating Compressed Sensing Theory for Fast STEM Simulation

Recently it has been shown that precise dose control and an increase in the overall acquisition speed of atomic resolution scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) images can be achieved by acquiring only a small fraction of the pixels in the image experimentally and then reconstructing the full image using an inpainting algorithm. In this paper, we apply the same inpainting approach (a form of compressed sensing) to simulated, sub-sampled atomic resolution STEM images. We find that it is possible to significantly sub-sample the area that is simulated, the number of g-vectors contributing the image, and the number of frozen phonon configurations contributing to the final image while still producing an acceptable fit to a fully sampled simulation. Here we discuss the parameters that we use and how the resulting simulations can be quantifiably compared to the full simulations. As with any Compressed Sensing methodology, care must be taken to ensure that isolated events are not excluded from the process, but the observed increase in simulation speed provides significant opportunities for real time simulations, image classification and analytics to be performed as a supplement to experiments on a microscope to be developed in the future.Comment: 20 pages (includes 3 supplementary pages), 15 figures (includes 5 supplementary figures), submitted to Ultramicroscop

Blood Pressure Reactivity to an Anger Provocation Interview Does Not Predict Incident Cardiovascular Disease Events: The Canadian Nova Scotia Health Survey (NSHS95) Prospective Population Study

We examined the association between blood pressure (BP) reactivity to an anger provocation interview and 10-year incident CVD events in 1,470 adults from the population-based 1995 Nova Scotia Health Survey (NSHS95). In an unadjusted model, those in the highest decile of systolic BP reactivity were more than twice as likely to have an incident CVD event compared to those in the decile with no reactivity (HR = 2.33, 95% CI = 1.15 – 4.69, P = 0.02). However, after adjusting for age and sex, and then also for Framingham risk score, body mass index, and education, this relationship was attenuated and not statistically significant. Diastolic BP reactivity was not associated with CVD incidence in any model. Individual differences in BP reactivity to a laboratory-induced, structured anger provocation interview may not play a major role in clinical CVD endpoints