Geometric morphometric analysis of Protoconites minor from the Cambrian (Terreneuvian) Yanjiahe Formation in Three Gorges, South China

The Ediacaran to Cambrian transition is a critical interval of time during which major evolutionary changes occurred. Recently, abundant Protoconites minor have been recovered from the silty shales of the lower Cambrian Yanjiahe Formation (Terreneuvian, Fortunian - Stage 2) in the Three Gorges area of South China. These fossils represent an important ecological diversification of macroscopic organisms at the onset of the Cambrian. Protoconites minor is a probable cnidarian-grade organism preserved by carbon compression. Herein, geometric morphometric analyses are applied to crack out specimens of P. minor to reveal any cryptic morphological details that may have implications for their morphological diversity, ontogenetic processes, and taxonomic identification. These statistical analyses reveal a strong relationship between size and shape, which indicates that the overall shape of P. minor was mainly controlled by allometric growth. The smaller specimens are generally wider at the anterior and more commonly have straight-sides. Larger individuals tend to be narrower at the anterior, with bending more common. Our analyses demonstrate that there are transitional forms between larger, strongly bent specimens and smaller, straight specimens, suggesting that the assemblage likely consists of a single species

Alternative splicing regulates vesicular trafficking genes in cardiomyocytes during postnatal heart development

During postnatal development the heart undergoes a rapid and dramatic transition to adult function through transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms, including alternative splicing (AS). Here we perform deep RNA-sequencing on RNA from cardiomyocytes and cardiac fibroblasts to conduct a high-resolution analysis of transcriptome changes during postnatal mouse heart development. We reveal extensive changes in gene expression and AS that occur primarily between postnatal days 1 and 28. Cardiomyocytes and cardiac fibroblasts show reciprocal regulation of gene expression reflecting differences in proliferative capacity, cell adhesion functions and mitochondrial metabolism. We further demonstrate that AS plays a role in vesicular trafficking and membrane organization. These AS transitions are enriched among targets of two RNA-binding proteins, Celf1 and Mbnl1, which undergo developmentally regulated changes in expression. Vesicular trafficking genes affected by AS during normal development (when Celf1 is downregulated) show a reversion to neonatal splicing patterns after Celf1 re-expression in adults. Short-term Celf1 induction in adult animals results in disrupted transverse tubule organization and calcium handling. These results identify potential roles for AS in multiple aspects of postnatal heart maturation, including vesicular trafficking and intracellular membrane dynamics.Myotonic Dystrophy Foundation (Postdoctoral Fellowship

Driving oxygen coordinated ligand exchange at nanocrystal surfaces using trialkylsilylated chalcogenides

A general, efficient method is demonstrated for exchanging native oxyanionic ligands on inorganic nanocrystals with functional trimethylsilylated (TMS) chalcogenido ligands. In addition, newly synthesized TMS mixed chalcogenides leverage preferential reactivity of TMS-S bonds over TMS-O bonds, enabling efficient transfer of luminescent nanocrystals into aqueous media with retention of their optical properties

Genetic Sharing with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors and Diabetes Reveals Novel Bone Mineral Density Loci.

Bone Mineral Density (BMD) is a highly heritable trait, but genome-wide association studies have identified few genetic risk factors. Epidemiological studies suggest associations between BMD and several traits and diseases, but the nature of the suggestive comorbidity is still unknown. We used a novel genetic pleiotropy-informed conditional False Discovery Rate (FDR) method to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with BMD by leveraging cardiovascular disease (CVD) associated disorders and metabolic traits. By conditioning on SNPs associated with the CVD-related phenotypes, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, high density lipoprotein, low density lipoprotein, triglycerides and waist hip ratio, we identified 65 novel independent BMD loci (26 with femoral neck BMD and 47 with lumbar spine BMD) at conditional FDR < 0.01. Many of the loci were confirmed in genetic expression studies. Genes validated at the mRNA levels were characteristic for the osteoblast/osteocyte lineage, Wnt signaling pathway and bone metabolism. The results provide new insight into genetic mechanisms of variability in BMD, and a better understanding of the genetic underpinnings of clinical comorbidity

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI