Fluorine

Considering the long time in which fluorine compounds have been used it seems rather surprising that it was not isolated as an element until 1886. This long delay was not due to lack of effort, but to the reactivity of fluorine and the hazards of working with it and many of its compounds

From fighting to freedom: Stories from Serbian Balkan war refugees

The 1990s saw the dissolution of former Yugoslavia following the decline of Communism. Ethnic cleansing campaigns resulted in the displacement of many of the region’s citizens. There is limited published research which specifically examines Serbian experiences of trauma and transformation as a result of the civil unrest. The lack of research attention that this population has received was likely influenced by the international mass media reporting of the events during this time, which portrayed the Serbs as the sole transgressors of the ethnically-driven conflicts. This qualitative study involved ten Serbian participants who migrated to Australia as a result of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. Through multiple semi-structured interviews with participants, eight stories were produced, where three participants co-constructed their stories. Six of these stories have been selected for presentation in this book. In analysing the interview data, eight key themes were identified. These were: changing conceptions of ethnicity; the role played by wider social networks; the importance of family throughout participants’ lives; the impact of war experiences; the experiences and impact of health difficulties; the role of grief and loss; the importance of age in shaping participants’ experiences and responses to trauma; and the importance of lifelong learning. In considering these themes, three adaptation patterns – active integration, passive integration, and segregation – were developed and are specific to the participants in the study.https://research.acer.edu.au/saier/1021/thumbnail.jp

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell APU Feasibility Study for a Long Range Commercial Aircraft Using UTC ITAPS Approach

The objective of this contract effort was to define the functionality and evaluate the propulsion and power system benefits derived from a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) based Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) for a future long range commercial aircraft, and to define the technology gaps to enable such a system. The study employed technologies commensurate with Entry into Service (EIS) in 2015. United Technologies Corporation (UTC) Integrated Total Aircraft Power System (ITAPS) methodologies were used to evaluate system concepts to a conceptual level of fidelity. The technology benefits were captured as reductions of the mission fuel burn and emissions. The baseline aircraft considered was the Boeing 777-200ER airframe with more electric subsystems, Ultra Efficient Engine Technology (UEET) engines, and an advanced APU with ceramics for increased efficiency. In addition to the baseline architecture, four architectures using an SOFC system to replace the conventional APU were investigated. The mission fuel burn savings for Architecture-A, which has minimal system integration, is 0.16 percent. Architecture-B and Architecture-C employ greater system integration and obtain fuel burn benefits of 0.44 and 0.70 percent, respectively. Architecture-D represents the highest level of integration and obtains a benefit of 0.77 percent

Fuel Cell Airframe Integration Study for Short-Range Aircraft

The objective of this study is to define the functionality and evaluate the propulsion and power system benefits derived from a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) based Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) for a future short range commercial aircraft, and to define the technology gaps to enable such a system. United Technologies Corporation (UTC) Integrated Total Aircraft Power System (ITAPS) methodologies were used to evaluate a baseline aircraft and several SOFC architectures. The technology benefits were captured as reductions of the mission fuel burn, life cycle cost, noise and emissions. As a result of the study, it was recognized that system integration is critical to maximize benefits from the SOFC APU for aircraft application. The mission fuel burn savings for the two SOFC architectures ranged from 4.7 percent for a system with high integration to 6.7 percent for a highly integrated system with certain technological risks. The SOFC APU itself produced zero emissions. The reduction in engine fuel burn achieved with the SOFC systems also resulted in reduced emissions from the engines for both ground operations and in flight. The noise level of the baseline APU with a silencer is 78 dBA, while the SOFC APU produced a lower noise level. It is concluded that a high specific power SOFC system is needed to achieve the benefits identified in this study. Additional areas requiring further development are the processing of the fuel to remove sulfur, either on board or on the ground, and extending the heat sink capability of the fuel to allow greater waste heat recovery, resolve the transient electrical system integration issues, and identification of the impact of the location of the SOFC and its size on the aircraft

Basal Temporal Language Area: Evidence from Cortical Stimulation and Surgical Ablation

TB

Rodent-associated Bartonella Febrile Illness, Southwestern United States

Patients showed seroconversion to rodent-associated Bartonella antigens, but not to Bartonella pathogenic for humans

Integrating Dynamic Subsurface Habitat Metrics Into Species Distribution Models

Species distribution models (SDMs) have become key tools for describing and predicting species habitats. In the marine domain, environmental data used in modeling species distributions are often remotely sensed, and as such have limited capacity for interpreting the vertical structure of the water column, or are sampled in situ, offering minimal spatial and temporal coverage. Advances in ocean models have improved our capacity to explore subsurface ocean features, yet there has been limited integration of such features in SDMs. Using output from a data-assimilative configuration of the Regional Ocean Modeling System, we examine the effect of including dynamic subsurface variables in SDMs to describe the habitats of four pelagic predators in the California Current System (swordfish Xiphias gladius, blue sharks Prionace glauca, common thresher sharks Alopias vulpinus, and shortfin mako sharks lsurus oxyrinchus). Species data were obtained from the California Drift Gillnet observer program (1997-2017). We used boosted regression trees to explore the incremental improvement enabled by dynamic subsurface variables that quantify the structure and stability of the water column: isothermal layer depth and bulk buoyancy frequency. The inclusion of these dynamic subsurface variables significantly improved model explanatory power for most species. Model predictive performance also significantly improved, but only for species that had strong affiliations with dynamic variables (swordfish and shortfin mako sharks) rather than static variables (blue sharks and common thresher sharks). Geospatial predictions for all species showed the integration of isothermal layer depth and bulk buoyancy frequency contributed value at the mesoscale level (\u3c 100 km) and varied spatially throughout the study domain. These results highlight the utility of including dynamic subsurface variables in SDM development and support the continuing ecological use of biophysical output from ocean circulation models

STAT1-deficient mice spontaneously develop estrogen receptor alpha-positive luminal mammary carcinomas

Abstract Introduction Although breast cancers expressing estrogen receptor-α (ERα) and progesterone receptors (PR) are the most common form of mammary malignancy in humans, it has been difficult to develop a suitable mouse model showing similar steroid hormone responsiveness. STAT transcription factors play critical roles in mammary gland tumorigenesis, but the precise role of STAT1 remains unclear. Herein, we show that a subset of human breast cancers display reduced STAT1 expression and that mice lacking STAT1 surprisingly develop ERα+/PR+ mammary tumors. Methods We used a combination of approaches, including histological examination, gene targeted mice, gene expression analysis, tumor transplantaion, and immunophenotyping, to pursue this study. Results Forty-five percent (37/83) of human ERα+ and 22% (17/78) of ERα- breast cancers display undetectable or low levels of STAT1 expression in neoplastic cells. In contrast, STAT1 expression is elevated in epithelial cells of normal breast tissues adjacent to the malignant lesions, suggesting that STAT1 is selectively downregulated in the tumor cells during tumor progression. Interestingly, the expression levels of STAT1 in the tumor-infiltrating stromal cells remain elevated, indicating that single-cell resolution analysis of STAT1 level in primary breast cancer biopsies is necessary for accurate assessment. Female mice lacking functional STAT1 spontaneously develop mammary adenocarcinomas that comprise > 90% ERα+/PR+ tumor cells, and depend on estrogen for tumor engraftment and progression. Phenotypic marker analyses demonstrate that STAT1-/- mammary tumors arise from luminal epithelial cells, but not myoepithelial cells. In addition, the molecular signature of the STAT1-/- mammary tumors overlaps closely to that of human luminal breast cancers. Finally, introduction of wildtype STAT1, but not a STAT1 mutant lacking the critical Tyr701 residue, into STAT1-/- mammary tumor cells results in apoptosis, demonstrating that the tumor suppressor function of STAT1 is cell-autonomous and requires its transcriptional activity. Conclusions Our findings demonstrate that STAT1 suppresses mammary tumor formation and its expression is frequently lost during breast cancer progression. Spontaneous mammary tumors that develop in STAT1-/- mice closely recapitulate the progression, ovarian hormone responsiveness, and molecular characteristics of human luminal breast cancer, the most common subtype of human breast neoplasms, and thus represent a valuable platform for testing novel treatments and detection modalities

The Allen Telescope Array

The Allen Telescope Array, originally called the One Hectare Telescope (1hT) [1] will be a large array radio telescope whose novel characteristics will be a wide field of view (3.5 deg-GHz HPBW), continuous frequency coverage of 0.5 - 11 GHz, four dual-linear polarization output bands of 100 MHz each, four beams in each band, two 100 MHz spectral correlators for two of the bands, and hardware for RFI mitigation built in. Its scientific motivation is for deep SETI searches and, at the same time, a variety of other radio astronomy projects, including transient (e.g. pulsar) studies, HI mapping of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, Zeeman studies of the galactic magnetic field in a number of transitions, mapping of long chain molecules in molecular clouds, mapping of the decrement in the cosmic background radiation toward galaxy clusters, and observation of HI absorption toward quasars at redshifts up to z=2. The array is planned for 350 6.1-meter dishes giving a physical collecting area of about 10,000 square meters. The large number of components reduces the price with economies of scale. The front end receiver is a single cryogenically cooled MIMIC Low Noise Amplifier covering the whole band. The feed is a wide-band log periodic feed of novel design, and the reflector system is an offset Gregorian for minimum sidelobes and spillover. All preliminary and critical design reviews have been completed. Three complete antennas with feeds and receivers are under test, and an array of 33 antennas is under construction at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory for the end of 2004. The present plan is to have a total of about 200 antennas completed by the summer of 2006 and the balance of the array finished before the end of the decade

JWST/NIRCam probes young star clusters in the reionization era sunrise arc

This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Hubble Space Telescope (HST). These observations are associated with JWST GO program 2282 and HST GO programs 14096, 15842, and 16668. The data (doi:10.17909/cqfq-5n80) were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contractNAS 5-03127 for JWST. We acknowledge financial support from NASA through grant JWST-GO-02282. We thank the anonymous referee for the constructive comments. A.A. acknowledges support from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet project grant 2021-05559). A.A. and A.C. thank M. Messa for sharing an earlier version of his software. E.V. acknowledges financial support through grants PRIN-MIUR 2017WSCC32 and 2020SKSTHZ and INAF “main-stream” grants 1.05.01.86.20 and 1.05.01.86.31. We acknowledge support from INAF GO grant 2022, “The revolution is around the corner: JWST will probe globular cluster precursors and Population III stellar clusters at cosmic dawn” (PI: Vanzella). J.M.D. acknowledges the support of projects PGC2018-101814-B-100 and MDM-2017-0765. M.B. acknowledges support from the Slovenian national research agency ARRS through grant N1-0238. P.D. acknowledges support from NWO grant 016.VIDI.189.162 (“ODIN”) and the European Commission’s and University of Groningen’s COFUND Rosalind Franklin program. M.O. acknowledges support from JSPS KAKENHI grant Nos. JP22H01260, JP20H05856, and JP20H00181. S.F. acknowledges support from NASA through NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HSTHF2-51505.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. B.W. acknowledges support from NASA under award No. 80GSFC21M0002. L.J.F. and A.Z. acknowledge support by grant No. 2020750 from the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), grant No. 2109066 from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Ministry of Science & Technology, Israel. E.V. thanks the colleague Antonio Sollima for inspiring discussions on local stellar clusters; Antonio, unfortunately, passed away prematurely at the age of 43, during the acceptance of this work