Young people, crime and school exclusion: a case of some surprises

During the 1990s the number of young people being permanently excluded from schools in England and Wales increased dramatically from 2,910 (1990/91) to a peak of 12,700 (1996/97). Coinciding with this rise was a resurgence of the debate centring on lawless and delinquent youth. With the publication of Young People and Crime (Graham and Bowling 1995) and Misspent Youth (Audit Commission 1996) the 'common sense assumption' that exclusion from school inexorably promoted crime received wide support, with the school excludee portrayed as another latter day 'folk devil'. This article explores the link between school exclusion and juvenile crime, and offers some key findings from a research study undertaken with 56 young people who had experience of being excluded from school. Self-report interview questions reveal that whilst 40 of the young people had offended, 90% (36) reported that the onset of their offending commenced prior to their first exclusion. Moreover, 50 (89.2% of the total number of young people in the sample), stated that they were no more likely to offend subsequent to being excluded and 31 (55.4%) stated that they were less likely to offend during their exclusion period. Often, this was because on being excluded, they were 'grounded' by their parents

Limits on the high-energy gamma and neutrino fluxes from the SGR 1806-20 giant flare of December 27th, 2004 with the AMANDA-II detector

On December 27th 2004, a giant gamma flare from the Soft Gamma-ray Repeater 1806-20 saturated many satellite gamma-ray detectors. This event was by more than two orders of magnitude the brightest cosmic transient ever observed. If the gamma emission extends up to TeV energies with a hard power law energy spectrum, photo-produced muons could be observed in surface and underground arrays. Moreover, high-energy neutrinos could have been produced during the SGR giant flare if there were substantial baryonic outflow from the magnetar. These high-energy neutrinos would have also produced muons in an underground array. AMANDA-II was used to search for downgoing muons indicative of high-energy gammas and/or neutrinos. The data revealed no significant signal. The upper limit on the gamma flux at 90% CL is dN/dE < 0.05 (0.5) TeV^-1 m^-2 s^-1 for gamma=-1.47 (-2). Similarly, we set limits on the normalization constant of the high-energy neutrino emission of 0.4 (6.1) TeV^-1 m^-2 s^-1 for gamma=-1.47 (-2).Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Identification of claudin-4 as a marker highly overexpressed in both primary and metastatic prostate cancer

In the quest for markers of expression and progression for prostate cancer (PCa), the majority of studies have focussed on molecular data exclusively from primary tumours. Although expression in metastases is inferred, a lack of correlation with secondary tumours potentially limits their applicability diagnostically and therapeutically. Molecular targets were identified by examining expression profiles of prostate cell lines using cDNA microarrays. Those genes identified were verified on PCa cell lines and tumour samples from both primary and secondary tumours using real-time RT–PCR, western blotting and immunohistochemistry. Claudin-4, coding for an integral membrane cell-junction protein, was the most significantly (P<0.00001) upregulated marker in both primary and metastatic tumour specimens compared with benign prostatic hyperplasia at both RNA and protein levels. In primary tumours, claudin-4 was more highly expressed in lower grade (Gleason 6) lesions than in higher grade (Gleason ⩾7) cancers. Expression was prominent throughout metastases from a variety of secondary sites in fresh-frozen and formalin-fixed specimens from both androgen-intact and androgen-suppressed patients. As a result of its prominent expression in both primary and secondary PCas, together with its established role as a receptor for Clostridium perfringens enterotoxin, claudin-4 may be useful as a potential marker and therapeutic target for PCa metastases

Disturbance Alters the Phylogenetic Composition and Structure of Plant Communities in an Old Field System

The changes in phylogenetic composition and structure of communities during succession following disturbance can give us insights into the forces that are shaping communities over time. In abandoned agricultural fields, community composition changes rapidly when a field is plowed, and is thought to reflect a relaxation of competition due to the elimination of dominant species which take time to re-establish. Competition can drive phylogenetic overdispersion, due to phylogenetic conservation of ‘niche’ traits that allow species to partition resources. Therefore, undisturbed old field communities should exhibit higher phylogenetic dispersion than recently disturbed systems, which should be relatively ‘clustered’ with respect to phylogenetic relationships. Several measures of phylogenetic structure between plant communities were measured in recently plowed areas and nearby ‘undisturbed’ sites. There was no difference in the absolute values of these measures between disturbed and ‘undisturbed’ sites. However, there was a difference in the ‘expected’ phylogenetic structure between habitats, leading to significantly lower than expected phylogenetic diversity in disturbed plots, and no difference from random expectation in ‘undisturbed’ plots. This suggests that plant species characteristic of each habitat are fairly evenly distributed on the shared species pool phylogeny, but that once the initial sorting of species into the two habitat types has occurred, the processes operating on them affect each habitat differently. These results were consistent with an analysis of correlation between phylogenetic distance and co-occurrence indices of species pairs in the two habitat types. This study supports the notion that disturbed plots are more clustered than expected, rather than ‘undisturbed’ plots being more overdispersed, suggesting that disturbed plant communities are being more strongly influenced by environmental filtering of conserved niche traits

Medicago truncatula contains a second gene encoding a plastid located glutamine synthetase exclusively expressed in developing seeds

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nitrogen is a crucial nutrient that is both essential and rate limiting for plant growth and seed production. Glutamine synthetase (GS), occupies a central position in nitrogen assimilation and recycling, justifying the extensive number of studies that have been dedicated to this enzyme from several plant sources. All plants species studied to date have been reported as containing a single, nuclear gene encoding a plastid located GS isoenzyme per haploid genome. This study reports the existence of a second nuclear gene encoding a plastid located GS in <it>Medicago truncatula</it>.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>This study characterizes a new, second gene encoding a plastid located glutamine synthetase (GS2) in <it>M. truncatula</it>. The gene encodes a functional GS isoenzyme with unique kinetic properties, which is exclusively expressed in developing seeds. Based on molecular data and the assumption of a molecular clock, it is estimated that the gene arose from a duplication event that occurred about 10 My ago, after legume speciation and that duplicated sequences are also present in closely related species of the Vicioide subclade. Expression analysis by RT-PCR and western blot indicate that the gene is exclusively expressed in developing seeds and its expression is related to seed filling, suggesting a specific function of the enzyme associated to legume seed metabolism. Interestingly, the gene was found to be subjected to alternative splicing over the first intron, leading to the formation of two transcripts with similar open reading frames but varying 5' UTR lengths, due to retention of the first intron. To our knowledge, this is the first report of alternative splicing on a plant GS gene.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study shows that <it>Medicago truncatula </it>contains an additional GS gene encoding a plastid located isoenzyme, which is functional and exclusively expressed during seed development. Legumes produce protein-rich seeds requiring high amounts of nitrogen, we postulate that this gene duplication represents a functional innovation of plastid located GS related to storage protein accumulation exclusive to legume seed metabolism.</p

First year performance of the IceCube neutrino telescope

The first sensors of the IceCube neutrino observatory were deployed at the South Pole during the austral summer of 2004-2005 and have been producing data since February 2005. One string of 60 sensors buried in the ice and a surface array of eight ice Cherenkov tanks took data until December 2005 when deployment of the next set of strings and tanks began. We have analyzed these data, demonstrating that the performance of the system meets or exceeds design requirements. Times are determined across the whole array to a relative precision of better than 3 ns, allowing reconstruction of muon tracks and light bursts in the ice, of air-showers in the surface array and of events seen in coincidence by surface and deep-ice detectors separated by up to 2.5 km

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents for tumor diagnosis

10.1260/2040-2295.4.1.23Journal of Healthcare Engineering4123-4

Limits to the muon flux from neutralino annihilations in the Sun with the AMANDA detector

A search for an excess of muon-neutrinos from neutralino annihilations in the Sun has been performed with the AMANDA-II neutrino detector using data collected in 143.7 days of live-time in 2001. No excess over the expected atmospheric neutrino background has been observed. An upper limit at 90% confidence level has been obtained on the annihilation rate of captured neutralinos in the Sun, as well as the corresponding muon flux limit at the Earth, both as functions of the neutralino mass in the range 100 GeV-5000 GeV.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to Astropart. Phy

Deconstruction of the (Paleo)Polyploid Grapevine Genome Based on the Analysis of Transposition Events Involving NBS Resistance Genes

Plants have followed a reticulate type of evolution and taxa have frequently merged via allopolyploidization. A polyploid structure of sequenced genomes has often been proposed, but the chromosomes belonging to putative component genomes are difficult to identify. The 19 grapevine chromosomes are evolutionary stable structures: their homologous triplets have strongly conserved gene order, interrupted by rare translocations. The aim of this study is to examine how the grapevine nucleotide-binding site (NBS)-encoding resistance (NBS-R) genes have evolved in the genomic context and to understand mechanisms for the genome evolution. We show that, in grapevine, i) helitrons have significantly contributed to transposition of NBS-R genes, and ii) NBS-R gene cluster similarity indicates the existence of two groups of chromosomes (named as Va and Vc) that may have evolved independently. Chromosome triplets consist of two Va and one Vc chromosomes, as expected from the tetraploid and diploid conditions of the two component genomes. The hexaploid state could have been derived from either allopolyploidy or the separation of the Va and Vc component genomes in the same nucleus before fusion, as known for Rosaceae species. Time estimation indicates that grapevine component genomes may have fused about 60 mya, having had at least 40–60 mya to evolve independently. Chromosome number variation in the Vitaceae and related families, and the gap between the time of eudicot radiation and the age of Vitaceae fossils, are accounted for by our hypothesis